Throughout this textbook you have practiced the writing process: prewriting, writing, and revising. No matter what you are writing or under what conditions it occurs, you should experience these three stages of writing. Even a text message is drafted mentally, written, and then often reviewed quickly, if for no other reason than to catch failed autocorrections. 

In formal, academic writing contexts, the prewriting stage holds extra significance. Prewriting is when you check your understanding of the prompt, decide the direction you want to take on the topic, and put limits on what you will include. This stage can often make or break an essay. 

Scope

As part of prewriting, you will need to consider the scope of your writing. The word scope is used to describe extent and relevance. In the context of writing, you determine scope through your thesis statement and topic sentences. Your thesis controls what ideas will be relevant in the overall essay, and each topic sentence dictates the limits of that one point that you are addressing. In other words, scope is seen at the paragraph and the essay level.

Effective control of scope in an essay means that you will have unity of ideas and cohesion. Again, this unity and cohesion should be evident at the sentence, paragraph, and essay level.

In timed writing, you need to decide very quickly what your scope will be. While this is partially set by the requirements of the prompt, there will always be some degree of freedom with the scope you choose. For example, a TOEFL prompt requiring you to propose a solution to a problem may allow the freedom of choosing one solution and describing at length why it is the best option or suggesting multiple solutions that are described in less detail.

Scope can be thought of as a wide focus or a big magnifying glass. You are still focused one one topic for the main idea, but are using multiple shallowly explained examples or reasons for the body paragraphs about that topic. 

Examples

The 1st scope below includes four ideas about business success: creativity, hardwrok, trust, and communication. Each of these four ideas would probably be described or explained a little. The student could choose an even wider scope to include other factors of buisness success such as foresight or organization etc.. The wider the scope, the less likely you will be able to develop each idea deeply. You will probably describe these ideas shallowly and rely on the variety of topics of the body paragraphs to hopefully explain your main idea instead.

The 2nd scope below includes one idea about business success: trust. This is a narrow scope. If this one idea is only described in one shallow body paragraph, it will not be enough for the reader to understand the main idea. Therefore, this idea will likely be developed with a deeper scale than the four topic version and include multiple paragraphs of examples or explanation about that one idea: trust between the company and customer, trust between the company and other companies, and trust between empoyer and employee. Essays with a narrow scope make up for the lack of variety by having a deep scale of information about the few topics they do include.

Scope 1:

Image: Barraza 2022 (made with PowerPoint and PowerPoint Icons)

Scope 2: 

Image: Barraza 2022 (made with PowerPoint and PowerPoint Icons)

Scale

A concept that goes hand in hand with scope is the idea of scale. Scale in writing focuses on how much you will say about a topic. At first glance, this may seem very similar to the definition of scope. However, the difference here is that scale is more connected to the development of those united and cohesive ideas. 

Scale comes down to how many body paragraphs are needed and how many supporting ideas are best for each paragraph. You do not want to overwhelm your reader by including too much information, but you also do not want to undersupport your ideas. 

When you brainstorm, the scale of your writing is also controlled by your thesis and topic sentences. Additionally, any bullet points you add in that brainstorm will help you remember your scale.

For example, the scale reminders for the outlines in the first exercise in this chapter would be to include both short- and long-term effects. Without including that scale of time, you miss part of the prompt. Outline 1 includes both national and global impacts of declining populations, which expands the scale for the essay by location as well. Outline 2, however, keeps a smaller scale on the topic by only mentioning the effects at the national level.

Scale can be thought of as a narrow focus or a small magnifying glass. You are still focused one one topic for the main idea, and are using one deeply explained example or reason for the body paragraphs about that topic.

You may use different scope and scale depending on the task and the constraints of an assignment. A 5-10 page research essay written over many weeks has the room and time for you to have both a wide scope and a deep scale. A 1-2 page essay written in 30 minutes will likely have a smaller scope or shallower scale. You can either write an essay with wide scope or an essay with deep scale, but it is difficult to do both in only 30 minutes. You will need to consider the time constraints when making decisions about what you will be realistically able to write well in 30 minutes. 

The Scope and Scale Lake

You can think of scope and scale in an essay like a lake. The lake may be large (broad focus) or small (narrow focus). The lake may be shallow (lightly developed) or deep (thuroughly developed). You may have use any combination of scope and scale including medium scope and medium scale. It is your choice. 

Image: Barraza 2022

You will need to consider the questions of scope and scale when planning your essay. What scope can you realistically write about given the constraints of the assignment? What scale would best develop your ideas for the reader?

As you answer these questions keep in mind that your essay should be balanced. You should have a similar scale accross all body paragraphs. Either the whole lake is shallow or the whole lake is deep. If the scale of the essay switches part way through, the reader will think that you tried to write a deep essay but ran out of time or will just be confused about your organization. 

Examples

Here are two example essays. One essay has a broad scope, but a shallow scale. The other essay has a narrow scope, but a deep scale. 

Image: Barraza 2022 

TH = thesis, TS = topic sentence, RTH = restated thesis statement

Exercises