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We intend this work to be less a bestiary of bad ideas about writing than an effort to name bad ideas and suggest better ones. Some of those bad ideas are quite old, such as the archetype of the inspired genius author, the five-paragraph essay, or the abuse of adjunct writing teachers. Others are much newer, such as computerized essay scoring or gamification. Some ideas, such as the supposed demise of literacy brought on by texting, are newer bad ideas but are really instances of older bad ideas about literacy always being in a cycle of decline. Yet the same core questions such as what is good writing, what makes a good writer, how should writing be assessed, and the like persist across contexts, technologies, and eras. The project has its genesis in frustration, but what emerges is hope: hope for leaving aside bad ideas and thinking about writing in more productive, inclusive, and useful ways. The individual entries, which we came to dub as both opinionated encyclopedia entries and researched mini-manifestos, offer syntheses of relevant research and experience along with cross-references to other entries that take up related subjects. Instead of the typical trappings of academic citation styles (APA, MLA, Chicago, Oxford, etc.) that are specific to certain disciplines, we asked authors in the Bad Ideas collection to summarize the available research and present it in a way similar to how a newspaper, introductory textbook, or podcast might deliver such research— not through individual citations, but through a list of resources and further reading that would point readers to follow-up material. Introduction 3 The authors of these entries are often published experts in these fields, so searching for their other work at a library or online will produce additional information on these topics. We have provided keywords for each entry as well, which correspond to the academic terms that would appear in other peer-reviewed, published research on these topics. The entries cohere around eight major categories of bad ideas about writing that are tied to the production, circulation, cultural use of, evaluation, and teaching of writing in multiple ways. The categories are bad ideas about: • The features of good writing • What makes good writers • How grammar and style should be understood • Which techniques or processes produce good writing • Particular genres and occasions for writing • How writing should be assessed • How technology impacts writing

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