Up: [[Thinking]] Created: 2023-06-27 Updated: 2026-02-06 MOVES is an acronym I’ve created for five characteristics of writing, each of which MOVES thought forward. ## Multiple Modes A general rule of thumb in learning is that the more processing you have to do, the better. It is one of the reasons that note-making is so superior to highlighting and underlining. Writing requires hand (enactive), eye (iconic, the graphic product), and brain (representing thought in words). Jerome Bruner, educational researcher, defined this as an inherently reinforcing cycle for learning. ## Organized With the possible exception of some stream of consciousness writing practices, most writing, even writing for yourself, is connective, based on conceptual groupings, and on structures such as compare and contrast, cause and effect, or argument. In other words, even if every note isn’t the full 7C’s, you are likely using many of them quite automatically. ## Visible Writing makes thought visible and concrete so that you can interact with it, play with it, modify it. The relative permanence of written words allows you to rethink and revise over an extended period of time. The development of that thought is also visible if you choose to keep your notes and revisions. This is one way to prove to students that writing is thinking. ## Explicit Writing isn’t just talk that has been written down. Talk leans on the environment for context. Writing has to be explicit. It’s one of the reasons an audience for writing is important, at least to kids in school. An audience reinforces that writing is always a dialogue and in any dialogue you have to make yourself clear — to the audience and to yourself. ## Slower This characteristic is often referred to in the literature as self-paced, but I’m going with the result of that self-pacing. Writing is always slower than speech, especially if you think of writing as organizing thought not just producing it. Slowing down makes it easier to be reflective See also [[Quotes - Writing is Thinking]]