The Six Traits of writing are Voice, Ideas, Presentation, Conventions, Organization, Word Choice, and Sentence Fluency. It creates a common vocabulary and guidelines for teachers to use with students so that they become familiar with the terms used in writing.

Not everyone uses the 6+1 traits: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation. Some use four traits; some use more. However, these same six or seven characteristics show up on everyone's list in one form or another.

You can think of voice in your writing just like how you think of your speaking voice. It's determined not only by what you say, but also how you say it. Example: It was very unfortunate that Tina missed her bus because she had already been late once this week.

The term “sentence fluency” refers to the way individual words and phrases sound together within a sentence, and how groups of sentences sound when read one after the other. We can't start every sentence the same way. We can't expect people to read our writing if we do.