writing

«writing» in Mova's school dictionary: The activity or skill of putting words on paper or a screen — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (writing; a writing — rare; writings); verb, -ing form of write (write, writes, wrote, written, writing)

meaning for a pupil

1) The activity or skill of putting words on paper or a screen. tree →

2) Words that are written: "There was writing on the wall." tree →

3) A person's handwriting: "I can't read your writing." tree →

4) Books, stories, poems or articles that someone has written; "writings" are someone's written works. tree →

5) The job of being a writer. tree →

sense in the lessons

In school, "writing" is a whole subject: creative writing, persuasive writing, story writing, joined-up writing. Teachers mark your writing for ideas, spelling, punctuation and handwriting. "In writing" means written down, which makes it official: "Please put your request in writing." "The writing is on the wall" means trouble is clearly coming (from a story in the Bible, Daniel 5). Phrases: "in writing", "creative writing", "joined-up writing", "the writing is on the wall".

examples

• We did some creative writing about a dragon. tree →
• Your writing is much neater this term. tree →
• I can't read the writing on this old letter. tree →
• Please put your complaint in writing. tree →
• Roald Dahl's writing makes children laugh. tree →
• She is writing a story about her cat. tree →
• The writing on the board was too small to see. tree →
• After losing six games, the writing was on the wall for the team. tree →
• And that means a lot of writing to the papers and things. tree →

note

Spelling: one t (writing), but "written" has two t's. The w is silent. Uncountable in the activity sense: "Writing is fun." Past of write: wrote; past participle: written. Homophone trap: "write" sounds like "right" and "rite".

In the corpora

• Chatbots are good at writing stories because they learned from huge numbers of stories.
• Personal writing must come from your own life, because only you know your own stories.
• Teachers often allow AI for brainstorming but not for writing your work; ask first when unsure.
• Writing on your own builds your writing muscles.
• Changing a few words in someone else's writing does not make it yours; it is still copying.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «writing» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.