Articles forming a piece of erudite writing (5)

I believe the answer is:

items

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'articles' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)

'forming a piece of erudite writing' is the wordplay.
'forming' becomes 'it' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'a piece of' says to take the initial letters.
'writing' becomes 'MS' (abbreviation for manuscript).
The initial letter of 'erudite' is 'e'.
'it'+'e'+'ms'='ITEMS'

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for items that I've seen before include "Individual articles" , "Bits of news" , "Couples" , "Agenda points" , "Smite (anag)" .)

I've seen this clue in the Evening Standard.

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