How to Writelike ARCHIVED 210813

A basic exercise

Now that you've been introduced to snippets and highlighting, let's walk through what a typical Writelike exercise page consists of.

1. The model snippet

This is the real-world snippet of text that uses the pattern or technique we're interested in.

Here's a snippet of text we wrote to explain snippets. Use the highlighters (either by applying them yourself or clicking Show Our Highlighting) to explore the structure of the snippet.

This is a snippet. It's a genuine piece of text that someone has written for a specific purpose. You can click "Show our highlighting" below to see the pattern they used. Or you can try to identify the pattern yourself by clicking a highlighter above and dragging your mouse over the relevant span of text.

Writelike

2. Worked examples

Once we have highlighted an interesting and useful pattern, we will usually give you one or more worked examples of how that pattern can be applied to different content. 

This example follows the same highlighted structure as the snippet above, but instead of describing snippets the example now describes dogs.

(Note that you can use highlighters on examples just like how you would on the original snippet. And also note that worked examples have blue backgrounds.)

This is a dog. Dogs are domesticated animals that enjoy playing. You could throw a ball for it to chase after. Or you might like to try a game of tug-of-war, with you holding one end of a piece of rope and the dog holding the other.

3. Textboxes

Once you've had time to read the snippet and worked examples, and study the highlighted features in both, we'll usually get you to write something using the same pattern.

Try this:

  1. In the textbox below, write your own description of how to use something.
  2. Try and follow the same structure as the snippet and worked example. 
  3. If you need inspiration for something to describe, open the inspiration image below. 
  4. If you want to check that you have actually followed the pattern, apply highlighters to what you wrote. That highlighting will be saved with your writing when you click Next below.
  5. When you are done, click Next. This is important!

To make it easier to think of something to write about, we sometimes give you an inspiration image, such as this one: 

Cat in wizards clothes in a stone brick room with occult furnishings and little spirits. There are various button icons: a paw print, a stack of cards with a crescent moon on the back, a cog, a book, and a health tracker.

You can use these inspiration images to get ideas for what to write about, or you can find your own images, or you can simply use observation or imagination. It's up to you! 

Write your response here.

It's possible to do these activities by writing nonsense words that still fit the pattern. You'll get more out of the lessons by trying to write something real, though.

Philosophy dinosaur meme. If goats are like mushrooms and you shoot a duck, am I scared of toasters?

Saving your work

Once you've written something in the textbox, you will be able to click Next which will save your writing and take you to the next page.

  • If you have blank textboxes, the Next button won't work.
  • If you close this window or use the Back button, you'll lose your writing—it only saves when you click Next!

Try this:

  1. Click Next and then come back to this page. You should see your writing is still here, along with any highlighting you applied. 
  2. Try changing your text. You'll find you can edit your text, but you'll need to reapply any highlighting.
Previous page