Writing to reflect is one of the most common activities writers undertake. At the beginning of almost every writing project, writers spend time exploring and deepening their understanding of their subject. In this sense, writing to reflect provides a foundation for documents that inform, analyze, evaluate, solve problems, and convey arguments.

Reflection can also be the primary purpose for writing a document. In journals and diaries, writers reflect on a subject for personal reasons, often with the expectation that no one else will read their words. In more public documents — such as memoirs, letters, opinion columns, and blogs — writers also use reflection to share their thoughts in ways that benefit others.

Reflective writing is carried out by writers who adopt the role of observer. These writers spend time learning about and considering a subject. Sometimes they explore the implications of putting a particular idea into practice. Sometimes they trace relationships among ideas and information. Sometimes they ask whether or how an author’s words might help them better understand their own lives. Sometimes they ask whether their understanding of one situation can help them better understand another.

Readers of reflective documents usually share the writer’s interest in a subject. They want to learn what another person thinks about the subject, and often they’ll use what they’ve read as the basis for their own reflections. In general, readers of reflective documents expect writers to provide a personal treatment of a subject, and they are willing to accept — and are likely to welcome — an unusual perspective.

To gather details for their observations, writers of reflective documents use sources, including their personal experiences and expertise, reports of recent events, and cultural materials such as music, art, movies, plays, books, short stories, and poems. These sources can also provide the inspiration for a reflective document. For example, a writer might reflect on an experience, a book, a poem, or a song.

Writers of reflective documents often connect their observations to the social, cultural, and historical contexts they share with their readers. For example, they might refer to events or people who have recently received attention in the news media. In addition, they might refer to works of art, such as the Mona Lisa, or quotations from well-known works of literature, such as Hamlet’s question “To be, or not to be?” Writers of reflective documents are also aware of the physical contexts in which their documents are likely to be read, and they design their documents to meet the needs of those contexts: for instance, a short essay for a writing class will typically feature double-spaced text with wide margins and few, if any, adornments, while a blog entry might include animated graphics, audio and video clips, or links to related Web sites.

Whether writing for themselves or others, writers use reflective writing to connect ideas and information, often in new and intriguing ways. Through reflection, writers can create new ways of understanding the world in which we live.