Tim Gunn on Style – Make it work!!

My original blog post on style. Gosh, it feels like it was written years ago instead of just a few months. It’s been an odd semester altogether for me this fall, so going back and reading my old posts has reminded me of everything that has gone on.

Anywhoodle …

During this particular class this semester, I have learned quite a bit about style and what I agree with when it comes to style guides like Strunk & White and Williams. I agree that writing, in general, should follow certain guidelines when it comes to syntax, sentence structure, concision, and grammAr. What I think gets lost in the message is that as a writer you can – and should – manipulate those guideline to create your own voice and style. You can use casual language and even vulgarity and still have stylistically “correct” writing.

Now, I use the scare quotes because language is a living, breathing, always-evolving thing. There are always going to be people fighting over what is correct. As recently as a semester or two ago I got dinged for ending a sentence with a preposition, even though it’s an arbitrary rule that, from my research on it, seems to come from some prescriptive grammar rules that the upper classes used as an upper crust, hoity-toity secret handshake. As the Winston Churchill anecdote says, “That is the type of English up with which I will not put.”

However, like most things, there are times and places for each type of writing. In technical writing, you don’t want to use casual language and you NEED to be clear and concise. In work or school related writing you (for the most part) don’t want to drop f-bombs or call someone vulgar names.

My point being that style, in terms of writing but not unlike sartorial sensibilities, is a matter of the type of thing being written, the author’s own voice, and the reader’s personal taste. ee cummings got a lot of crap (and English students get a lot of mileage out of using him as an example, don’t they?) for not using punctuation and capitalization. Not being a huge fan of poetry, but a big fan of writing what you want, how you want, I don’t get the big deal. Writing for entertainment purposes shouldn’t have rules on it – it’s entertainment. So long as it doesn’t break the law (libel) or meets the requirements for your teachers, instructors, and professors, who the hell cares how you write? You’ll find your audience and you’ll find your style.

So I say: Rock your style and to hell with what the fashionistas, or rather, the writer-istas say.

Peer Review – The Final Font-ier

Ha ha ha!! Get it? FONT-ier?

Sorry about that. I’m sugared up from my daughter’s birthday party. Red velvet cake, oh how I adore thee.

Anyway, there are some questions what need answering. So here we go:

• What was the most useful aspect(s) of peer review? What parts of the process  did you find least useful?

      At first, I didn’t think that peer review was going to do anything for me except piss me off that people were reading and CRITICIZING MY WORK. Reading and enjoying, I can get behind, but peers actually reviewing? I’ve never really liked it. I attribute it to a horrible 8^th grade classmate who went out of his way to trash my writing at every turn. But, as we moved on and I started to really understand that my classmates were just as apprehensive about it as I was, gave me the confidence to start suggesting things that I wanted to see. I had to put on my teacher hat and ask myself what I would say if this was a final draft, beyond typos and misspellings which I figured would be caught later on. So, after four rounds of this what I found to be the most useful aspect was knowing what the paper was missing, being able to express that, and getting feedback on content. I think getting feedback on that sort of thing from people who are also writing the same paper as you was awesome. We could give advice based on what we found helped our paper and get advice from others on the same. Also, I loved reading other’s papers to see how they utilized the readings and discussions differently from the way I did.
      If I had to choose something that was least useful, I’d have to say it was (what I thought to be) my favorite way of reviewing – the star system. At first, I loved it, but then it occurred to me that those stars are very subjective and didn’t really help contribute to getting constructive criticism. I know I hid behind, “They’ll know what is wrong if I give them 3 stars. I don’t need to elaborate. 

• What do you think you have learned this term about responding to others’ writing?

I think that I have learned that when responding, it’s best to compliment, then offer a piece of criticism. The negative part always seems to go over better if you give an honest compliment first. Just jumping in with fix this and fix that puts the writer on the defensive from the get go, even those that get a lot out of and enjoy peer review.

• What do you think you have learned this term about making use of your   classmates’ advice?

I learned that it wasn’t personal – it was required. As peer reviewers, we knew that our comments were going to be read not just by the writer of the piece we are reviewing, but by the instructor as well, we can’t just call it in. We have to at least make some effort to actually review. By figuring out that my classmates were not out to get me and that they seem to feel the same way about it as I do helped me to really read the reviews closely and listen to the advice. It’s not like JK Rowling wrote a book and never had any reviews and edits done for her. And Lord knows, I’m no Rowling. If I were, I had a bigger house and a maid to clean it.

• Anything else about peer review?

I really liked the process toward the end, after I knew some of my classmates. I had a read on what approach would work with those that I knew (i.e., humor or seriousness) and if I could tell a blue joke without offending 

YouTube Videos

First of all, there is no doubt in my mind that multimedia/film making is pretty much exactly the same as writing. There are a ton of similarities between the writing process and the filming process. It’s hard to film without a written script. And even if there is no dialogue int he film, there is still a story to tell or an opionion to express through pictures and if you don’t have something in place (like a storyboard), you are going to forget something and your film is either not going to make sense or it will be missing something. Then there is the revision and editing. The editing process in film is very much the same as revising in writing. A shot may seem great on the storyboard, however when ou get face to film, it doesn’t translate and it needs to be changed or deleted altogether.

My groups process has been great. Everyone has participated and we have allowed each other the freedoms to do what we are strong with or have the ability to commit to and still make a great film. For instance, I missed the first in person meeting so I didn’t get to be a large part of the writing process, but I was able to contribute equally by offering up my home as the location and even cooked for everyone so that our little family dinner scene would feel authentic.

For the most part, writing is such a solitary act that going into something that is inherently group oriented like a multimedia or film project can really put you out of your comfort zone, but I have really liked this process so far. I’ve felt kind of lonely over here on my laptop in cyber classroom land. It was nice to be with other people.

Take a Step Forward. Now Take a Step Back. And Now We Cha-Cha.

Looking back, it’s been pretty hard to really make a connection between the style guides and various writings about writing and myself. Part of that has to do with lack of effort on my part. I’ve not been as invested in this class as I hoped to be and I’ve had a hard time saying that the readings – particularly those having to do with style – apply to me. It’s arrogance, for sure, but as this experience has shown me, I do better in a classroom with real people. But, in reading through the other blog posts (as of 8:29 tonight) I discovered that not only was I (as usual) full of crap about nothing applying to me, but that I have connected with the readings and books. I just didn’t realize it.

As I said, I read through the blog posts on this topic and most of them have said basically the same thing: it’s all connected. We still use ancient rhetoric. We  use YouTube on a daily basis, if not for entertainment than for the gaining of information or education. And we all are still learning about, dealing with, and acclimating to new technologies in our lives, and all of these affect our writing – even those of us who would like to think otherwise. But not only that, but it will influence how I look at future projects. Not only for this class, and not just for other classes I will continue to take, but those classes I will teach as well. I’m a Language Arts Education major, so I look at everything as something I might maybe could use in my classroom. Techniques, books, projects – all of it.

Peer Review #3

I got reviewed by two of my group members and the feedback was pretty good. Like most peer reviewing, I didn’t agree with it all, but there were things that I hadn’t thought about before like writing the style guide within a theme other than, “these are things I think should be addressed.”

Though I’m beginning to wonder if my writing or if it’s peer review in general that doesn’t seem to be generating more constructive criticism on actual content. Or maybe it’s that I am used to receiving more specific feedback from teachers/instructors on final drafts and not used to the peer review process.

I am thankful for this process though, because it’s really helping me figure out how I’m going to run it in my own classrooms.

People Are Talking … Blog #11

I was going through the blog posts looking for comments I could discuss with (and ok, I admit it – looking for posts that might have quoted me because I am that shallow and it gives a certain kind of validation that I can not explain) and I ran across this passage in Laura’s blog:

A number of students mentioned Strunk and White’s rule to omit needless words. While I agree with that, I also see a need to write naturally. According to their directions and examples, I write sentences that are too damn wordy. I could probably edit my papers down to half their original size. But if I did that, would it sound like me? I feel like I would lose my voice, my uniqueness, the words that make me, me.

Amen with a side of word to your momma. I am drawn to certain authors because of their voice, their style. People who enjoy my writing like my voice, my style. And I agree with Laura when she posits that to abide by every rule that S&W and Williams put forth could, in the name of great writing!, cause us to lose our individuality and our own voice and style. I do think, though, that as we practice our writing and learn how to incorporate those rules into our voice, the rules will add something, instead of making our words indistinguishable from any other writer. On the other hand, there are those authors who do not abide by all of the rules (e.e. cummings, Mark Z. Danielewski) and are still regarded as great writers because of their eschewing of conventional writing and style rules and guidelines. The challenge is knowing your craft well enough that the rules become second nature and nothing that interferes with our voice, our style.

Laura made mention of Tracy’s blog in which Tracy talked about sexism in writing. Tracy wrote:

 Incorrect use of the plural in order to avoid a “sexist” slant. This one isn’t addressed by Williams until the final chapter. Even there, he seems to be unwilling to issue his opinion, other than to say that avoiding the issue is best. I really wish we could come up with a standard here that would offend neither grammarians nor feminists.

Again, a sentiment that I agree with. When I first went back to school, I started off with the University of Phoenix. My very first class with them was a class on college writing, which was a fantastic class for someone who had not been in a classroom or done any academic writing since the previous century. One of the things that has stuck with me was avoiding gender bias in writing. One of the examples being why the sentence “Please invite all of the city’s officers and their wives.” is gender biased. It is because in the sentence all of the city’s officers are male and the statement does not allow for a female city officer. In this instance, I have made a very concerted effort to reduce my use of gender bias in my writing. But come on – sometimes, there is no choice (I like the example of the lack of a gender neutral word for the animal which has lions and lionesses) and the use of “he” should not, in my opinion, have anything gender based read into it. However, the reference of large objects of transportation (cars, ships, planes) as “she” is gender biased and while it does not piss me off, I think that it should be avoided, if for no other reason than to avoid the personification of non-human things for purposes other than fictional narrative.

On an irreverent note, Silisa wrote:

Commas have always been tricky for me, something that I haven’t always been quite so sure of.

I hate commas. They are the Devil’s own grammatical tool. They have wonky rules for prose and then mean something else in poetry. They pop up wherever they damn well feel like it and screw with the flow of what we are reading and then screw us on points when it comes to papers because we’ve used them wrong. Again. And while all the grammarians and stylists and teachers say there are rules for commas, I think that’s a load of total bull hockey. Maybe not a total load, but at least a little load. Commas, in a word, suck.

All in all, I’ve agreed with most of what my classmates have written on S&W and Williams. I will use them both for very different reasons with an eye toward the same outcome: better papers and better writing.

And Angela? Hurry up with that combined book, alright? Millions of English and Writing students are depending upon you. I swear I’ll buy 500 copies for my students when I finally get out of school.

Blog Post #10 – First Overall Impressions

I may come back and revise this later, but for now I wanted to get some things out of my mind so I could study for my lab quizzes tomorrow and maybe get some sleep.

First of all, I totally wrote about the wrong First Impression back in the middle of the month. I wrote about Williams, not S&W. I only cracked open S&W tonight and ok, I love this book. I like how it breaks things down into basic topics and gives pretty clear and fairly concise guidelines for writing. Writing is something I have always done. I consider myself to be a decent writer when I write for myself. When it comes to classroom stuff, I’m moderate. I try to use style guides because I know that I am too flowery and prosy with academic writing. S&W appeals to me because it lays things out very efficiently: Use this word, don’t use that word, this is the rule, you can do this instead. Williams, while a great resource that I will continue to use, leaves too much up to my over-active mind and can sometimes cause me to second-guess myself which puts my self-confidence in the toilet and causes REALLY bad writing. I have a hard time applying general advice specifically to something I am writing. It is a weakness that I am fully cognizant of. I work better from precise and specific feedback. Why a sentence works or why it doesn’t. Why a thought is in the wrong place. I’m not sure where it comes from or how to conquer it, but I sometimes have a very hard time analyzing my own writing.

Actually, that’s not true. I know where it comes from – writing for class at the very last minute and I can conquer that by managing my time and projects better. But I digress.

About my first impression that I posted about Williams: I do like the book and I do think it will be very useful to me as I take further writing classes. I do still believe that most definitions of bad writing are glorified snobiness and require adherence to rules that are archaic and have no real basis in grammar or language usage. Language is alive and always evolving. I’m pretty sure that the great writers of yesterday think that most authors today are total crap. However, that section aside, the rest of the book makes excellent points and offers great advice for becoming a better writer. Things that, despite my 4 years in high school and my 5+ years of college, I never learned before. I know that it’s good to always be revising your work, but I wonder if there can be such a thing as too much revision and too much rule-following? I would think that it would make for some very boring writing. Like that which can be found in the EMU Catalogs.

In short, I like each book for different reasons. I like the detail and the depth that Williams goes into and I like the quickness of S&W. Both are books that will be added to my writing arsenal and not returned to the bookstore.

Blog Post #9 – Revising the Catalog

The passage that I chose is from the EMU catalog regarding grading and transcripts, specifically pass/fail courses:

“Students also should be fully aware of the possible implications of this option for acceptance into graduate schools and competition for financial aid. It has been ascertained that most graduate schools will accept students who have elected to take some courses on a pass/fail basis, but that if courses taken on this basis are sufficient in number on the transcript, Graduate School Examinations may be utilized to determine the student’s acceptability. Graduate schools, in general, do tend to favor those applicants who have good letter grades on their transcripts.”

Talk about turgid. My Heavens. Could it be any more boring? My revision is this:

Pass/fail courses are an important part of a complete education at Eastern Michigan University. However, these courses should be chosen with a judicious eye toward the student’s final educational goals, specifically regarding admission into a Graduate program. Students who plan to apply for Graduate programs should make every attempt to choose courses for which a letter grade is issued, as letter grades for favored over pass/fail courses. If the number of pass/fail courses on a transcript is deemed excessive, Graduate School Examinations may be used to determine a student’s admission.

I changed this paragraph because I felt that right off the bat, there seemed to be no specific point addressed in the first sentence or two. I used the section on page 50 regarding psychological subjects to change the first sentence to address the fact that this passage is talking about pass/fail courses and their effect on Graduate school admissions. This point gets lost in the original, mostly because of the threatening language and boring-ness of it all. However, I did not want to lose the entire point, so I took a lot of advice from chapter three, specifically on clarity and flow. First of all, the original piece did not have much flow. It jumped from “pass/fail bad for money” to “well, Graduate schools will still admit you” and then back to “don’t take too many or your test will count more than you may want it to!” It flip flops from negative to okay back to negative again. My attempt was to make it more of a logical and cohesive statement, without using language that might freak an applicant out. Secondly, by stating the existence of pass/fail courses and why they need to be taken with care, the paragraph gets to the crux of the issue and doesn’t jam up the works with language that a potential Graduate student might freak out about. Hopefully, my changes improved the paragraph without losing the intent of informing students about the effect that pass/fail courses might have on Graduate admissions.

You only get once chance to make a first impression …

…after that, better get them drunk so they forget the first time.

I can’t remember which classmate said it, but this is one of those textbooks that I was irritated that I had to buy (of course, I also get irritated at having to buy food, so that might not be a fair measure of irritation), but in the end will be very glad I have as I continue on with my degree and get into heavier and more academic writing.  Actually, my husband was thrilled for both of the books for this class and decreed them to be “keepers”.

Personally, I wish we used the word “thereto” more often. I might try to work it in a bit more.

The subject of bad writing was approached and while I don’t deny that there is some BAD writing out there (you can NOT be a reader of fanfiction and NOT find bad writing, it is a universal truth), but despite how bad anyone thinks it is, guaranteed that there is someone else who thought it to be the best thing written down since The Canterbury Tales. I’ve written some total crap in my time that was still positively reviewed, and I written some awesome stuff that was poorly received. Bad writing is in the eye of the be-reader? And how do personal feelings toward the author/writer of the piece affect your opinion of it? I know that anything I read that Anne Coulter writes is going to be tainted by the fact that I feel she is the Devil herself and should be subjected to horrible things. And I would think that as a teacher, it would be difficult to not judge written assignments more harshly because I didn’t like a particular student. Hopefully, that won’t be a problem, but I’m sure at some point, I’ll be tempted to do so. So I really don’t buy Mr. Williams’ discussion and positions on what makes bad writing and why it happens.

All in all though, I read some more and do really like the book. And anything that helps make me a better writer is a wise investment.

Peer Review Take 2

This time was a lot less painless for two reasons:

The biggest was I changed my mind about it, or rather made myself open my mind up to it and not get defensive over it. I mean, Steve is seeing all of us peer review each other so why would nay of us try to be crappy just to be crappy to our classmates? And it’s not like we as individuals get anything out of being crappy to our fellow classmates. We are all here for ostensibly the same reason: to pass this class and move on to what’s next. No offense to Steve, but I doubt this is a class that someone who isn’t working on a degree said, “Hey. I think I’ll take this very involved, very detailed 300-level English writing class because lo, I seem to be bereft of a life.” So yeah – no one’s going to give me a crappy review just for the sake of being crappy. If it’s a crappy review, then maybe I need to take another look at my writing. Or maybe they are just being crappy in which, plllbbbt to them.

The second reason was that I found it easier to do this time around. With the first one, there were really no guidelines, it was, “Review, and make your heart merry!” This time, were given a rating system and parameters – a rubric, basically – and it made it all the easier. As a future teacher, I know what I’ll be looking for on any given writing assignment, but I wasn’t sure really what to look for the first paper because I’m not the instructor and I didn’t know what he was looking for. Granted, at this level we should all be able to look at basics like punctuation and grammar and be able to correct those, but that isn’t really peer review. At least not entirely. Yeah your car be mechanically sound, but if you put crappy oil in it, the mechanics are going to cease to matter.  So, having a rubric to work from, made the process a lot easier this time around.