Writing in the Electronic Environment vs the Traditional Method

Writing plays a major part in my everyday life as I tweet, take notes, send messages and keep in contact with friends. With the advancement with technology digital writing has become more popular. Writing for me in the electronic environment is fun and is done at ease as I focused less on the act and more on the end result; making the process less tedious and less frustrating.

Using technology has made the writing process a lot easier for me as I developed an understanding of the need to tailor my work. I corrected and changed my work with ease which encouraged me to see writing as a recursive process. I was able to read and edit my own work. Additionally, I was not burdened with the thought of having to rewrite an entire paragraph or story whenever I made a mistake or when reorganizing my written piece. Instead, with technology and software such as Microsoft, this is done in a matter of seconds with the click of a button. I am able to make changes as I go along and make necessary adjustments as my thoughts continued to flow.

Though there are many benefits to the use of technology to enhance my writing experience, there are a few challenges that I also faced. I paid little attention to the cohesion and coherence of my writing. This is because a lot of the grammatical errors I made was automatically corrected as I typed using Microsoft.  It had helped me to produce grammatically correct work however, the real underlying problem I had wasn’t given much attention. Furthermore, I was quite easily distracted from my writing as I would log onto other sites or use social media.

Using the traditional pen and paper method of writing has helped me in the internalization of information and also aided in the remembering process as I was able to paraphrase and summarize my notes, thus enhancing my note taking skills. My brain was more actively involved as I produced more ideas and got a better flow when writing. This is because I was able to slow down and think about what I was going to write as I was less distracted. Even though this process was time consuming, I took the time off to plan effectively before writing which helped with the organization of my writing. I had to ensure that my sentences were grammatically correct with proper use of punctuation marks and no spelling errors.

 Nevertheless, both methods have proven to be effective in developing my writing experience. There is no doubt that the digital era is taking over and everyone is progressing towards its uses but I still revert to using my pen, pencil and paper to construct a plan or outline for my writing.