Selecting and Limiting Your Topic
Effective writing depends on the writer’s ability to limit the scope of a subject. We are never able to write everything that could be said about a topic; most writing assignments include specified length limits. College writing in all disciplines requires students to decide what is really important about a subject. Writing situations after graduation impose similar limits. Business reports, scientific articles, research grants, and dissertations have limits, and readers have limits; they have limited time and massive amounts of information to absorb. Our task is to provide important information in the space we are given.
Limiting your subject begins with answering certain questions:
What subjects interest you as a writer?
What do you think will interest your readers?
What information can you find regarding your subject?