In the context of written composition, "drafting" refers to any process of generating preliminary versions of a written work. Drafting happens at any stage of the

writing process A writing process describes a sequence of physical and mental actions that people take as they produce any kind of text. These actions nearly universally involve tools for physical or digital inscription: e.g., chisels, pencils, brushes, chalk, di ...

as writers generate trial versions of the text they're developing. At the phrasal level, these versions may last less than a second, as writers compose and then delete trial sentences; as fully developed attempts that have reached the end of a stage of usefulness, draft documents may last for perpetuity as saved "versions" or as paper files in archives. In a book that became popular in the 1950s, ''

The Elements of Style ''The Elements of Style'' is an American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary p ...

'', Strunk and White characterize a first draft as a less-edited version of the final draft with the purpose of "foresee ng..the shape of what is to come and pursue that shape". In ''Writing Without Teachers'', a more recent take on the role of draft documents,

Peter Elbow Peter Elbow (14 April 1935) is a Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he also directed the Writing Program from 1996 until 2000. He writes about theory, practice, and pedagogy, and has authored several bo ...

characterizes a draft less as a first attempt at a predetermined final point and more as an attempt at exploring and where a final version might end up. As he puts it, “ iting is a way to end up thinking something you couldn’t have started out thinking.” According to Elbow, the best way to accomplish this is a series of drafts which come together to produce an emerging “center of gravity” that then translates into the main focus on the work—a holistic process, in other words, rather than the linear process envisioned by Strunk and White and early

theory. Elbow reasoned that if a writer "learns to maximize the interaction" among their "ideas or points of view,

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can produce new ones that didn’t seem available." Empirical studies of writers at work indicate that writers can be doing any or all of the following during phases of drafting: * developing cohesion * organizing their thinking in relation to text produced so far * experimenting with phrasing * explaining or linking examples/ideas * generating transitions * discovering a central argument/point * elaborating on key ideas *pausing to make adjustments to spelling, word-choice, and syntax

References

{{Authority control Composition (language) Textual scholarship Publishing

See also

References