Forty years ago, Nancy Sommers identified dissonance and the ways in which writers respond to incongruities between "intention and execution" as a core competency of revision. While still a challenge for student writers, dissonance now takes different forms, particularly for advanced student writers who embrace theories of revision but…

This article compares essays written in response to the ACT Essay prompt and a locally developed prompt used for placement. The two writing situations differ by time and genre: the ACT Essay is timed and argumentative; the locally developed is untimed and explanatory. The article analyzes the differences in student performance and predictive…

Explores the use of topical structure analysis as a way to understand some textual cues that may prompt revision and as a way to describe the effects of revision. Describes the methodology, results, and implications of a study of some of the textual causes and effects of revision. (HTH)

Describes a case study of the composing strategies used by a professional writer, Donald Murray, concentrating on his planning and revision processes. (FL)

Analyzes the steps in the writing of an established poet and an 11-year-old boy. An appendix provides suggestions about how to encourage meaningful revision. (FL)

Describes classroom experiments, using invisible writing which produces a carbon copy while preventing scanning during the composing process, to examine how different writing tasks differ in their cognitive demands and how the need for scanning may indicate the cognitive difficulty of the task. (HTH)

Discusses taped writing protocols of three students, which indicated how differently subjects responded to small group evaluation according to the writer's personality, level of maturity, and ability to handle writing problems. (HTH)

Based on interviews with university faculty, describes the impact of word processing upon their writing habits. (HOD)

Explains how a year of observing two successful novelists write and revise on the computer provided a number of ideas that are encapsulated in the concept of a fluid text or the writer's conscious avoidance of a text that becomes static or fixed. (HOD)

Reports on a small pilot study that investigated the effect of word processing on the revision of six college freshmen. The results suggested that word processing did not encourage students to revise more extensively. (HOD)

Explores (l) the role of pre-text in translating ideas into linguistic forms, and (2) the relationship of translating and pre-text in the planning and reviewing process. Suggests four observations worthy of further study concerning the nature and function of pre-text. (NH)