Although most of your college writing will use academic English, some of it may call for specialized occupational or professional varieties of English—those characteristic of medicine, say, or computer science or law or music. Similarly, you may wish to use regional, communal, or other varieties of English to connect with certain audiences or to catch the sound of someone’s spoken words. Think about what languages and varieties of English will be most appropriate for reaching your audience and accomplishing your purposes.

Think carefully about style: should you be casual and breezy, somewhat informal, formal, or extremely formal? The style you choose will call for certain kinds of sentence structures, organizational patterns, and word choices. And your style will be important in creating the tone you want, one that is appropriate to your assignment, audience, topic, purpose, and genre. Remember that visual and audio elements can influence the tone of your writing as much as the words you choose.

For Multilingual Writers: Bringing in other languages