As math teachers, the authors often encountered students who could ace a test but not explain their reasoning. This phenomenon was disturbing to them, and they fought for years to help students both understand mathematical concepts and develop meaning for them. Since their primary goal was to develop mathematically literate students, their solution was to help them explain their thinking and focus their efforts on writing. Doing this depended on expanding tools for incorporating writing into their classroom. They worked tirelessly to help students understand that writing in mathematics should consist of: (1) drawings, pictures, tables, and graphs; (2) incomplete sentences that included symbols, equations, and expressions; (3) explanations of problem-solving methods and justifications of processes; and (4) reflections of learning. Writing aided their students in communicating their thinking in an organized and coherent manner and encouraged them to see mathematics as interconnected concepts, helping them make connections between classroom content and real-life situations (NCTM 2000). In this article, the authors present four writing strategies they used in their classrooms to promote reasoning, sense making, mathematical connections, and clear communication. They found that these strategies were an easy fit with many topics they taught. Each strategy can be easily adapted to various topics in mathematics.