The Variables of Composition

Writing is written within and for discourse communities, whose values, traditions, and beliefs condition the writer s own values and influence both the process of composition and the products issuing from that process.To understand how writers compose and revise within the business and industry community Broadhead and Freed examine the revision practices of proposal writers in a management-consulting firm. They describe the writers motives and intentions in changing a text. This study provides a firmly based theory of composing and revising that will enable business writers to achieve a balanced perspective by focusing on the ends as well as the means of composingthat is, by focusing on the interplay of product and process."