piece of writing
piece of writing
Meaning
- the work of a writer, anything expressed in letters of the alphabet (especially when considered from the point of view of style and effect)
- part of a writing
- written material
- a complete paragraph
Example Sentences
- The editorial was a fine piece of writing.
- As a piece of writing, Greene’s book on rise of the Inca tribe is a mess.
- I was about 18 years old when my first piece of writing was published.
- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is a fine piece of writing by Robert Frost.
- I’ve been waiting for ages but I didn’t get any new piece of writing from my favourite writer.
- A friend of mine has discovered an ancient stone with mysterious piece of writing on it – from the ruins of a Chinese castle.
- Nowadays anyone can easily publish their ‘pieces of writing‘ online.
- I have written a cute piece of writing for my grandmother.
- Kathleen easily gets influenced by any emotional piece of writing.
Origin
This expression borrows from the phrase “piece of work“. Between the middle ages and the industrial revolution (the period roughly from the 1500s to early 1800s), most manufacturing was done by individual craftsmen working for guilds. The guilds (and indirectly whoever hired it) paid the craftsman for each piece of the item he produced, regardless of the time it took him to produce it. This type of payment and work was called piece work, as opposed to time work (pay for time, like monthly salary). So the output of the work is called a “Piece”. Over the years, as the craft of writing became more popular, writers started feeling that they put in same amount of work into their writing as those labourers put into their craft, so they started referring to any specific output they wrote as a piece. Hence, the expression, “a piece of writing”.
Synonyms
- article
- creation
- essay
- composition
- discourse
- treatise
- book
- paragraph
- editorial
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