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.

Possible Commercials

I love commercials. I’m one of those odd people who does. I actually miss having cable and seeing new ones that either entertain me and make me laugh or ones that piss me off and get me up on one of my soap boxes. I used to love watching the Superbowl for the commercials, but lately they just aren’t as good. But luckily, we have the interwebs and I can find the commercials I love.

 This commercial is from the 2009 Superbowl and is for Teleflora. This is one of those commercials that pisses me off:

Yeah.

But my all time favorite commercials are the California Cow commercials. I love them so much. I don’t know how great they would be for this project, but I love them so much, I really want to make it work.  Here are a couple of them:

But one commercial that I really love and think is pretty brilliant is one that aired in the UK in 2007 for Cadbury Dairy Milk.

I’m not sure which I’m going to do, but I do love them all. And man, do I miss cable.