Eng 328

Go Go Gadget!!!!!!!!!

2005-03-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

Williams provides a lot of information about what to write and how to write it. I I were to tell a fellow colleague about what the most important things about the book were it would be: managing the flow of information, maintaining clarity, appropriate length, and avoid passive voice.
Managing the flow of information cover several important issues. When the flow of information is well managed it ensures that the reader is not board or bombarded with too much information. This is a main topic in writing because it encompasses every thing that I have listed. When you properly manage the flow of information you prepare your readers for what will occur next.
Maintain clarity is crucial. We all remember the paper Rochelle wrote. When a paper is muddy a reader can be come confused and frustrated. Clarity does not mean you have to me your sentences have to minimal. “Dick and Jane ran up the hill” is a clear sentence but it doesn’t have any substance. When you have clarity and substance you have Zen.
Appropriate length is imperative because you need a paper that is long enough to articulate your point and short enough so it not long winded. It is also hard to define a word count of a paper. Often times you can articulate what you want to say in 300 words rather than 600.
Avoiding a passive voice is crucial because it gives strength to your paper. It is difficult to correct passive voice because we do not know that we are being passive/ Passive sentences also carry unnecessary words or phrases. A paper is much stronger when it is direct.
There were many more things that one can get out of Williams’ text. Every one wants a paper that is clear and graceful. Williams provides good guidelines and these specifics that are outlined here help me achieve clarity and grace.

Thank the Lord Jesus!

2005-03-10T21:58:00.000-08:00

I feel a lot better after reading some of my fellow collegues blogs. I no longer feel like I am going insane when it comes to my distaste for Williams. After all of my pissing and moaning Rob really sumed up what I was trying to say in one sentence. He said, "For me, Style is remarkably unstulish and difficult to use". Thank you Rob! That's what I'm talkin' about!
I also read Jen's blog. Though she did not particularly hate on Williams, she did make a very good point. Jen commented that, "Williams gives hypothtic advice on style and examples of good writing vs. bad writing". Williams does give hypotheicaly advice. I do not need/want 'hypothetical advice. I want real advice. That is why I hated Willaims' book. He used horrible examples from law students or some potlical babble. Why would I read that? Pointless for me, especially when it is made and I have no clue what you are talking about. Anywho.... I am pissed off about this whole reading situation. I am going to bed. Do with this what you will.

Peace!

Omit Needless Books

2005-03-10T21:47:00.000-08:00

Ok…. The Williams book did not really cover things that I found useful as a college student. I could see my self using this book as a High School English teacher. Williams would help me articulate to a student about what he/she needs in a paper. However, I am not a English teacher, I am a college student. Williams also uses horrible examples. He uses poor examples. For instances, he uses examples from confusing legal documents. I do not want to read legal jargon, especially “bad’ legal. Many of his examples are just babbling on about nothing. Williams needs to omit needless examples. Furthermore, the book is way to “fleshed out” as some pretentious English peeps might say. Human beings naturally do not want to do more work than they have to. I could read Stunk and White, which is 105 pages, including the index and afterward, or I could read 198 pages. Mmmm… what to do? Call me lazy if you want, but Williams is talkin a whole lot of #$@% I ain’t tryin to hear. How’s that for bad grammar? Williams also has a very pretentious tone. For instance he says, “this book is about writing clearly. I wish it could be short and simple like some others widely known, but I want to do more than just urge writers to “Omit Needless Words” or “Be clear”(1). Who died and made Williams the literary god? Short is sweet, bad legal jargon is not. Jargon is certainly not clear. Williams did not accomplish what he trying to do.
In your blog prompt you say, ‘To what extent do you think that the advice offered by Williams is more useful?” It is assumed that it is more useful, you should never assume anything. If you want something to be effective you have to think of your audience. Would you give atheists a bible, I don’t think so. Your audience is a young, 20-something college crowd. Is Williams truly the best book for the this crowd? Not to me and after talking to several fellow classmates it wasn’t useful to them either. Front as they may.
Stunk and White is more useful because it is short, to the point, and cheap. Williams is the polar opposite. But what are you going to do?

Litering and.... LItering and.....Litering and....

2005-03-09T08:09:00.000-08:00

Bonjour!!!!!!!!!! Metaphors are like bathrooms, you just can't stop using them.

OK, this metaphor involves writing. I was talking to my newly significant other about where things were headed. I used writing and literature to get my point across.

"Ok, I just want to be on the same page. Because I'm still on chapter three and you're already at chapter ten".

Here is my metaphor about technology. I want to explain that technology is a tool to someone is, dare I say, a complete douche bag.

"Technology is a tool, just like you".

Thank you, thank you! I'll be here all night... Don't foget to tip your waitress

Too much rock for one paper!! You're sweet Rochelle

2005-02-24T20:54:00.000-08:00

My eyes!!!!! My bleeeding eyes! Holy crap I don't even know where to begin with this paper. Rochelle is sweet, just not at writing papers. Freakin idiot!!!!! OK the form is bad, the puncuation is bad, the grammar is bad, and the flow of thoughts are freakin horrible.

There is absolutly no form. When I read a paper I like a begining, middle, and end. It just makes it much easier to read. As a reader, I have a tough understanding this paper. I believe that the point of the paper was about going to Cedar Point for a good time, but so what? Not to mention the paper was very repetitive. There needs to be a consistant string of topics. She does consistantly talk about Ceader point, but there is no depth to it. Each paragraph is extremly short and need to be more concise. There are also many unnecesary sentences, they can either be edited or put together. I could write forever on form alone, so we must continue.

Puncuation, let's talk about that shall we? There is over use of the comma. That what most people tend to do. Her ideas are very choppy. The commas make her paper more choppy. Also many paragraph just need to be rewritten. For example, "As a family enters a park, the smell of fresh taffy, golden french fries, and sweet cotton hits them. Cedar Point is famous for its taffy but the tasty food will have to wait until later. First they want to hit the rides." Her list is very bad, The idea of having a list is to have similar items. Food is her subject of the list, but the description of the food is varied.

Pretty much every pargraph needs to be rewritten. In fact. I could write a book about what is wrong with this paper. But I am not going to because this is a blog. WTF

The Best Paper is Revised Paper

2005-02-21T07:51:00.000-08:00

Oakly Doakly...... here we go...........

So, for English 227 we had to discuss what the difference was between "nudity" and "nakedness", here is an few short sentences of what I wrote:

"A conventional peron would sat that nakedness and nudity are the same thing. However, Berger sees them as two different thinkgs. Berger sees nakedness as to be yourself. But to nude implies more of an attitude than a physical aspect. Nudity is to be more of a display. Berger considers nudity as an art form, whereas nakedness is parallel to everydayness. Nudity as described by Berger, is a form of beauty. I do agree with Berger on many degrees. I see nakedness as natural as well as vulnerablity".

What I was trying to get across was that there is a diference between being "naked" or "nude"., to a certain extent at least. Whether or not you say "nude" or "naked" every one's ears will still perk up. But...... there is a difference between I posed "nude" for Playboy and I have a "naked" picture in playboy. The words "nude", "posing", and "Playboy" are more sexy or sensual. There are certain cultural aspect to these workds,, especially something as mainstream as the infamouse publication of Sir Heffner. Semantics..., yes. I do think that I got my point across when discussing the semantics between nude and nakedness. It's funny though, because when I was trying to re-type the passage I was tryiing to correct the sentences.

The passage that I wrote was my first paragraph, I think that I could have definatly had a better opening paragraph. In fact there is no real "opening" at all. I would also change the third sentence. I would remove the word "but" and expand the sentence. I would add more descriptive words and flesh out the idea. No pun intended. I thoought that this paper was pretty good over all, it was just a respone to a reading assignment, not a formal essay.

Creating Clarity and Grace

2005-02-18T07:43:00.000-08:00

When reviewing my writing after reading Style I did find some "mistakes", or problems if you will. I would say on of my biggest problems is using short sentences. I have had the misconcpetion that short sentences always equal clear sentences. Furthermore, I am scared of long sentences, I am paranoid of having a run on sentence. I also have trouble using approprite verbs, as discussed in chapter two. Often, I state that an action is taking place, not expessing that an action is taking place. When I write a research paper I have trouble with what Williams would call "Managing the Flow of Information". Under that heading Willaims discussed passive vs. active voice. I would in fact say something like, "a black hole is created by the collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble.'' Instead of using something like, "The collapse of a dead star into a point no larger than a marble creates a black hole'' (47). I don't know.... I am sure that there are many things wrong with my "style", infact I am sure there are many things that could be nit picked out of this blog, but this Style book is not very well written, at least in my opinion. (look I have a long sentence, yesssssssss!) I had a lot of trouble reading this book to be honest. It seemed like a lot of jargon to me, so there for I cannot anaylize/criticze my papers adequtly after reading these chapeters. I feel that this book is hard to follow and it gives poor examples. But anywho......I did pick up a few things, not a lot though. I am just going to leave it at that.

The stylish elments of style

2005-02-16T08:57:00.000-08:00

We all want the things that we own to be useful. Because if they cannot improve your quality of life, or at least make it a little bit easier, than what is the point? As a college student I am very experienced with useless things and useless people. Lazy roommates aside, I end up spending a great deal of my parents’ hard earned money on useless, yet required materials. These “materials” if you will, are not only useless but also outrageously expensive. What are these overpriced, useless things you ask? Books my friend, books. For some unknown reason ninety percent of my professors have a predilection towards books that are in the price range of seventy-five dollars and more. Furthermore, I only end up reading a chapter or two because the book is rendered useless due to its dry content and long windedness. There is a light at the end of this horrible reading tunnel, because every once in awhile a quality book comes along. A book that you can actually read, understand, and apply to your life. A book so glorious that its usefulness is also reflected in its bargain price. This type of book only comes around once a semester. This semester that book is The Element of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White.

There were many things that I found useful in The Elements of Style. It provided good guidelines that would help a writer compose a better paper. The book also contained excellent examples to illustrate these guidelines There was one section however that I found particularly useful, which was the “elementary rules of usage”. There were basic things that I should have known when it comes to constructing a paper but have neglected to learn. For example, Strunk and White talk about the use of a dash to make a separation stronger. They use the following sentence to illustrate their point, “His first thought on getting out of bed-if he had any thought at all-was to get back in again” (Strunk 9). I thought that this sentence was amazing, I clearly got the point and the dashes did make it a stronger sentence. If the author would have used commas I do not believe that the sentence would have been as strong.

Another chapter in the book that I found very useful was “Words and expressions commonly misused”. There are indeed many words that I misused while writing my paper. It wasn’t so much the misuse of the words, but my general ignorance that they were in fact misused. One particular example I enjoyed was the use of the word “can”. Strunk states, “Can means ‘am (is, are) able.’ Not to be used in substitution with may” (42). I have always heard the expression “may I”, but never really understood the difference between that and “can I”. Apparently I am not the only person that was unaware of this, because this word is constantly misused. This is why this book is useful, because every writer can benefit from it.

When it comes to this book being unhelpful or outdated nothing really came to mind while I was reading and rereading this book. In fact, much of the book is high lighted and dog-eared. I put off buying this book until the beginning of this week. I truly wish that I had bought this book early in my college career.

All in all the more useful things are the better of course. To my surprise this book proved to be highly useful. After wanting to throw every useless book at every one of my useless roommates it is nice to purchase something that will do me good for once.

But wait there's more!!!!!

2005-02-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

Here it is baby!!!!! Let's talk about what my idea of "writing style" is, shall we? To me your writing style is who you are, kind of like your clothing style. Your style is your "voice", if you will. Your "style" is your writing finger print, it what you write, how you write, and most importantly why you write it. I suppose that this relates to my writing "experience" because I am class room trained. My style relates to my experince because I went/ am going through. There is a lot of trial and error when it comes to writing, especially when you are writing for a prof and catering to what they want. Every time I think I suck at writing I read someone's paper who does not have a lot of writing experince. I find my self feeling better, because when some one is a student of English or Writing (or not for that matter) their work shows it.

thats all for now,
Peace!

What about my experience?

2005-02-07T10:20:00.000-08:00

As you can see I try to be colorfull, just like my language and my personality. But anywho, as far as writing expereince goes it is all in the class room. I used to be an English major but I changed it to my minor and my major is now in History. I suppose that I just got sick or writing and of discussing abstract concepts that have no real answer. I have always had waitressing or retail jobs, so not a whole lot of writing there. To be honest, I am sick of "experincing" writing. At least when it comes to the class room style of "experience".

My writing experience

2005-02-07T10:12:00.000-08:00

Hello la la la! This is Jen Sugg. Who am I? I am a 21 year old student that is studying History and I want to be a teacher. I am jobless and live with 3 girls on Eastern Michigan University's campus. Living with other people definatly sucks, esspecially if your roomies are girls and do not have nice personalities. Just for the record Napoleon Dynamite is by far the fricken sweetest movie ever! Tina eat the ham!