Recognizing my writing’s meaning was critical. I’ve learned to clarify my aims for each work: to inform, explain, entertain, convince, or analyze. Before the course, I had a rudimentary concept of purpose, but I overestimated its relevance in writing. Without first determining the aim of a text, there may be a lack of direction in the work, or the audience may not respond to the material in the way the author hoped. Writing for a specific goal affects language, content, and structural decisions, and writing reasons for our topic selections in assignments throughout the course aided in determining the purpose and a subsequent approach to the writing itself.