Imagine yourself at a party. When you arrived, you said hello to friends and found something to eat or drink. Then you walked around, listening briefly to several conversations. Eventually, you joined a group that was talking about something you found interesting.

If you’re like most people, you didn’t jump right into the conversation. Instead, you listened for a few minutes and thought about what was being said. Perhaps you learned something new. Eventually, you added your voice to the conversation, other members of the group picked up on what you said, and the conversation moved along. The same thing happens when you join a new group online. Whether you join a discussion board or a Facebook group, more than likely you listen in (or read what’s been posted) to learn about the group’s interests before you make any posts.

You can use your understanding of how conversations work to become a better writer. By thinking of writing as a conversation, you’ll realize that good writing involves more than simply stating what you know. You’ll see writing, instead, as a process of joining, reflecting on, and contributing to a conversation about a topic or an issue.

Thinking of writing as a form of conversation allows you to build on skills you already possess. In addition, because written conversations take place over much longer periods of time than spoken conversations do, you can use your conversational skills to far greater advantage. You can thoroughly consider your purposes and analyze your readers’ needs, interests, and backgrounds. And you can explore the contexts — physical, social, and cultural — that will shape how your document is written and read.

Today, many of us are as likely to engage in conversations through writing as through speaking. Some of us prefer a text message to a phone call. Some of us spend more time using e-mail than talking with friends. Some of us spend entire evenings on Web discussion forums, sharing information or arguing about the best new games, music, or movies. Some of us post, read, and reply to blogs on a regular basis. And some of us spend more time keeping up with friends on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr than we do hanging out together.

Interestingly, if you ask people who spend significant amounts of time online whether they do much writing, they’ll often say they don’t. They don’t think of creating text messages, e-mail messages, status updates, comments, notes, forum posts, or blog entries as writing. Yet it is. And the writing you’ve done in these settings can help prepare you for the writing you’ll be asked to do in class or at a job.

Of course, there are differences between the writing you do online and the writing you do in an academic essay. Using abbreviations such as OMG or LOL in an essay might go over just about as well as writing “In summary, the available evidence suggests” in a text message. Despite these differences, you can build on your experiences as a writer in a wide range of settings. Just as you will adapt your tone or level of formality in a spoken conversation to the people involved in the conversation — for example, treating new acquaintances differently than you treat old friends — you’re likely to adapt your writing to the situation in which you find yourself. Just as you’ll tailor your comments to friends when you write on their Facebook pages, you can consider the interests and experiences of the people who will read your next academic essay. And just as you’ve learned to be critical — even suspicious — of what you read online, you can apply the same caution to your reading of the sources you encounter as you work on assignments.