spoken, and how it is to be said; in addition [rules] prescribe what is true and false, what is reasonable and what foolish, and what is meant and what not." The concept of a discourse community is vital to academic writers across nearly all disciplines, for the academic writer's purpose is to influence how their community understands its field of study: whether by maintaining, adding to, revising, or contesting what that community regards as "known" or "true." Academic writers have strong incentives to follow conventions established by their community in order for their attempts to influence this community to be legible. Discourse community constraints Constraints are the discourse community's written and unwritten conventions about what a writer can say and how he or she can say it. They define what is an acceptable argument. Each discourse community expects to see a writer construct his or her argument using their conventional style of language and vocabulary, and they expect a writer to use the established intertext within the discourse community as the building blocks for his or her argument. Writing for a discourse community In order for a writer to become familiar with some of the constraints of the discourse community they are writing for, across most discourses communities, writers will: Identify the novelty of their position Make a claim, or thesis Acknowledge prior work and situate their claim in a disciplinary context Offer warrants for one's view based on community-specific arguments and procedures Each of theses above are constructed differently depending on the discourse community the writer is in. For example, the way a claim is made in a high school paper would look very different from the way a claim is made in a college composition class. It is important for the academic writer to familiarize himself or herself with the conventions of the discourse community by reading and analyzing other works, so that the writer is best able to communicate his or her ideas. Writing Across the Curriculum designates educational programs that support improving student writing in the different disciplinary communities, through writing centers, courses in writing programs, and disciplinary courses with substantial writing requirements. The Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse provides resources for such programs at all levels of education. Novel argument Within discourse communities, academic writers build on top of the ideas established by previous writers. Good academic writers know the importance of researching previous work