Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Extra-Credit Exercise -- Hand in a HardCopy
Try your hand at tightening this wordy example. You'll earn 10 extra-credit points
Successful writers share a common trait: voice. They write in myriad tones— plaintive, witty, sassy, smart—to suit the subject matter. To make a good grade, college writers typically focus on tone rather than on tightness.
Voice is vital. You can overemphasize it, though, making careless errors that irk professors who have to read a voluminous amount of essays and exercise. You can help them by employing copyediting techniques, not only to polish your prose, but also to increase output.
Create your response first, focusing on voice and target audience. If your piece is the proper length, use the techniques belowto tighten your piece and then add more substance—pithy quotes or pertinent research. If you exceed the word count, use the techniques to sculpt a publishable piece. Finally, hone, revise and polish your prose to suit course requirements.
WD Based on an article by Michael J. Bugeja: a professor of journalism and a special assistant to the president at Ohio University.
Writers Digest; July 2001 Page 42
Below is a loosely-written 215-word item.
Edit it; make it consise.
Jane Doe slumps down in her chair until midnight amid the slush and stale pizza in front of piles of essays threatening to avalanche on her half-empty bottle of cola onto the grimy tile floor of the kitchen.
There are many reasons why Doe, an assistant professor, puts a failing grade on some essays, and length of the essays is one of them.
Professors dislike wordiness. Why shouldn’t they? Less is really more.
“Too many writers tend to be wordy. True, a response should be conversational. But it shouldn’t ramble. We just don’t have the time. Good prose—good college-level prose, at least—plants an image or idea in the mind of the reader, phrase after phrase,” Doe says.
According to Doe, on manuscripts, approximately 42 responses out of 480 per month is acceptable, requiring 12 hours evaluation per week during a semester. Consider a 1-week assignment with 15 contact hours per week in which the instructor will be grading/marking and will require prep time. The instructor would be credited service of:
15 x 3.48 = 52.20 hours of service per week
52.20 x 2 = 104.40 hours of service total
Before taking a sip of her soda pop, Doe places a failing mark on another response after reading her umpteenth submission and noting the perils of teaching today.
Consequently, it is tougher than you might think to hand in a padded response. However, a student’s chances of success will improve by using copyediting techniques. Otherwise, you will waste time and money and give up on the dream of being an A-plus writer.
Tightening Tips:
• Extreme mood setting. Use a few descriptive words in your lead, of course, but don’t overload it with sensory data.
• “To be” constructions. You usually can collapse sentences that begin with“there are” or “it is.”•Conjunctive constructions. Each excised word counts when you are trying to honor word counts. Cut unneeded conjunctions.
• “To be” appositives. You can tighten appositives that begin with “who is,” “which are,” etc.
• Excessive possessive constructions. You usually can delete “of by repositioning words or by using a noun’s or pronoun’s possessive case.
• Exclamatory comments. Sometimes they emphasize a point. Mostly, they take up space.
• Parenthetical comments. Analyze any thing parenthetical. If important, it’s misplaced foreshadowing. If unimportant, delete it.
• Rhetorical comments. You usually can omit these without losing meaning.•Unprocessed quotations. Make full quotes partial, paraphrasing weak, redundant or ungrammatical sections. The written word is usually sharper than the spoken.
• Unprocessed research: Here, the research is in the wrong voice. Worse, it’s usually wordy.
•Adverbial time elements: Cut the adverbs and revise chronologically. Or end up with gobbledygook. •Adverbial transitions: One or two per manuscript may be allowable, but this isn’t.
—Michael J. Bugeja
Successful writers share a common trait: voice. They write in myriad tones— plaintive, witty, sassy, smart—to suit the subject matter. To make a good grade, college writers typically focus on tone rather than on tightness.
Voice is vital. You can overemphasize it, though, making careless errors that irk professors who have to read a voluminous amount of essays and exercise. You can help them by employing copyediting techniques, not only to polish your prose, but also to increase output.
Create your response first, focusing on voice and target audience. If your piece is the proper length, use the techniques belowto tighten your piece and then add more substance—pithy quotes or pertinent research. If you exceed the word count, use the techniques to sculpt a publishable piece. Finally, hone, revise and polish your prose to suit course requirements.
WD Based on an article by Michael J. Bugeja: a professor of journalism and a special assistant to the president at Ohio University.
Writers Digest; July 2001 Page 42
Below is a loosely-written 215-word item.
Edit it; make it consise.
Jane Doe slumps down in her chair until midnight amid the slush and stale pizza in front of piles of essays threatening to avalanche on her half-empty bottle of cola onto the grimy tile floor of the kitchen.
There are many reasons why Doe, an assistant professor, puts a failing grade on some essays, and length of the essays is one of them.
Professors dislike wordiness. Why shouldn’t they? Less is really more.
“Too many writers tend to be wordy. True, a response should be conversational. But it shouldn’t ramble. We just don’t have the time. Good prose—good college-level prose, at least—plants an image or idea in the mind of the reader, phrase after phrase,” Doe says.
According to Doe, on manuscripts, approximately 42 responses out of 480 per month is acceptable, requiring 12 hours evaluation per week during a semester. Consider a 1-week assignment with 15 contact hours per week in which the instructor will be grading/marking and will require prep time. The instructor would be credited service of:
15 x 3.48 = 52.20 hours of service per week
52.20 x 2 = 104.40 hours of service total
Before taking a sip of her soda pop, Doe places a failing mark on another response after reading her umpteenth submission and noting the perils of teaching today.
Consequently, it is tougher than you might think to hand in a padded response. However, a student’s chances of success will improve by using copyediting techniques. Otherwise, you will waste time and money and give up on the dream of being an A-plus writer.
Tightening Tips:
• Extreme mood setting. Use a few descriptive words in your lead, of course, but don’t overload it with sensory data.
• “To be” constructions. You usually can collapse sentences that begin with“there are” or “it is.”•Conjunctive constructions. Each excised word counts when you are trying to honor word counts. Cut unneeded conjunctions.
• “To be” appositives. You can tighten appositives that begin with “who is,” “which are,” etc.
• Excessive possessive constructions. You usually can delete “of by repositioning words or by using a noun’s or pronoun’s possessive case.
• Exclamatory comments. Sometimes they emphasize a point. Mostly, they take up space.
• Parenthetical comments. Analyze any thing parenthetical. If important, it’s misplaced foreshadowing. If unimportant, delete it.
• Rhetorical comments. You usually can omit these without losing meaning.•Unprocessed quotations. Make full quotes partial, paraphrasing weak, redundant or ungrammatical sections. The written word is usually sharper than the spoken.
• Unprocessed research: Here, the research is in the wrong voice. Worse, it’s usually wordy.
•Adverbial time elements: Cut the adverbs and revise chronologically. Or end up with gobbledygook. •Adverbial transitions: One or two per manuscript may be allowable, but this isn’t.
—Michael J. Bugeja
Monday, February 2, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Week Three Response - Comment Under This Post
Reminders:
Wednesday, Midnight Deadline
250 word limit.
See the Comment Format & Sample Below
ABC Active Reading
A Title - Jot down two or three titles that come to mind as you study, then select the best oneor make a composite of them.
Basic Passage – Choose the passage, sentence or lines (no more than three) which include thecentral meaning or is the key to the contents of the passage. This passage should connect withthe title.
Correlate - Write out the passage in your own words, that is, paraphrase. Then write outhow the passage, sentence or lines apply to you, to someone you know, to a group or to society.
Here are some questions that might help you. See what connections you can make and explore:
Are there any passages in the reading that you, because of your life experience, are especially able to understand and appreciate? Write about one of those passages and show how it relates to your experience.
Have you experienced or witnessed anything that the character or persona doesn’t take into account? Write about one or more of those events, and tell how to change the character’s knowledge to take them into account.
Choose a passage from the reading, and tell what it helps explain about an experience you have known. After you have said as much as you can, consider this: does the passage exhaust the meaning of the experience, account for the experience you have in mind?
Would a person who accepted this character’s ideas choose the same paths in life that you have chosen or that you have seen others choose? How would the ideas for this reading alter your life or the life of someone you know well?
Are the writer’s or character’s ideas useful to a person in certain lifestyle or profession? What difference would these ideas make for someone living that lifestyle or practicing that profession?
Use the following headings in your response:
· A Title
· Basic Passage
· Correlate
Sample Response
On Death and Beauty
No reading does a better job of conveying the war experience than Tim O’Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story. O’Brien tells of a man named Rat Kiley who has to write a letter to his best friend’s sister. The description given by Kiley to Lemon’s sister doesn’t match her perception of her brother prior to departing for Vietnam. Kiley tells her of Lemon’s practice of fishing with “a whole damn crate of hand grenades,” and of him having “steel balls.” One recollection of Lemon’s death describes him as being lifted up by the blast, like a beam of light. It’s quite a beautiful description, given the violent nature of what had taken place.
I’ve always been compelled by this literature of survival, literature about people thrown into extremeconditions that simultaneously conveys a beauty and violence. When Esquire published a special issue on survival in July of 2004, I snatched it up. The issue features articles with titles like, “Ten Tough Bastards,” and “Classic Survival.” It also featured an excerpt from Senator John McCain’s account of his five years as a POW of the Vietnam War. That too played to a kind of romanticized, beautified vision.
Hemingway’s description of death and his use of figurative language in “Snows of Kilimanjaro” also serve to romanticize war.
Basic Passage
Because, just then, death had come and rested its head on the foot of the cot andhe could smell its breath. [...] “Tell it to go away.” It did not go away but moved a littlecloser. “You’ve got a hell of a breath,” he told it. “You stinking bastard.”
Truman Capote, in a critique of Hemingway, attempted to pull the cover away from this romantic view of the war hero/survivalist by calling him a “queen…a man who he presumes “pretended to be a hearty, courageous person.” Capote challenges the image of heroism and war created by American culture.
Note: This response was written a few years ago, before the 300 word limit was imposed. It contains 250 words – still close to what you should produce weekly.
Also, note that most of the writer’s correlation is above the basic passage. The lesson: you can move parts around, just be sure every part is there: A title, Basic Passage, Correlation.
Wednesday, Midnight Deadline
250 word limit.
See the Comment Format & Sample Below
ABC Active Reading
A Title - Jot down two or three titles that come to mind as you study, then select the best oneor make a composite of them.
Basic Passage – Choose the passage, sentence or lines (no more than three) which include thecentral meaning or is the key to the contents of the passage. This passage should connect withthe title.
Correlate - Write out the passage in your own words, that is, paraphrase. Then write outhow the passage, sentence or lines apply to you, to someone you know, to a group or to society.
Here are some questions that might help you. See what connections you can make and explore:
Are there any passages in the reading that you, because of your life experience, are especially able to understand and appreciate? Write about one of those passages and show how it relates to your experience.
Have you experienced or witnessed anything that the character or persona doesn’t take into account? Write about one or more of those events, and tell how to change the character’s knowledge to take them into account.
Choose a passage from the reading, and tell what it helps explain about an experience you have known. After you have said as much as you can, consider this: does the passage exhaust the meaning of the experience, account for the experience you have in mind?
Would a person who accepted this character’s ideas choose the same paths in life that you have chosen or that you have seen others choose? How would the ideas for this reading alter your life or the life of someone you know well?
Are the writer’s or character’s ideas useful to a person in certain lifestyle or profession? What difference would these ideas make for someone living that lifestyle or practicing that profession?
Use the following headings in your response:
· A Title
· Basic Passage
· Correlate
Sample Response
On Death and Beauty
No reading does a better job of conveying the war experience than Tim O’Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story. O’Brien tells of a man named Rat Kiley who has to write a letter to his best friend’s sister. The description given by Kiley to Lemon’s sister doesn’t match her perception of her brother prior to departing for Vietnam. Kiley tells her of Lemon’s practice of fishing with “a whole damn crate of hand grenades,” and of him having “steel balls.” One recollection of Lemon’s death describes him as being lifted up by the blast, like a beam of light. It’s quite a beautiful description, given the violent nature of what had taken place.
I’ve always been compelled by this literature of survival, literature about people thrown into extremeconditions that simultaneously conveys a beauty and violence. When Esquire published a special issue on survival in July of 2004, I snatched it up. The issue features articles with titles like, “Ten Tough Bastards,” and “Classic Survival.” It also featured an excerpt from Senator John McCain’s account of his five years as a POW of the Vietnam War. That too played to a kind of romanticized, beautified vision.
Hemingway’s description of death and his use of figurative language in “Snows of Kilimanjaro” also serve to romanticize war.
Basic Passage
Because, just then, death had come and rested its head on the foot of the cot andhe could smell its breath. [...] “Tell it to go away.” It did not go away but moved a littlecloser. “You’ve got a hell of a breath,” he told it. “You stinking bastard.”
Truman Capote, in a critique of Hemingway, attempted to pull the cover away from this romantic view of the war hero/survivalist by calling him a “queen…a man who he presumes “pretended to be a hearty, courageous person.” Capote challenges the image of heroism and war created by American culture.
Note: This response was written a few years ago, before the 300 word limit was imposed. It contains 250 words – still close to what you should produce weekly.
Also, note that most of the writer’s correlation is above the basic passage. The lesson: you can move parts around, just be sure every part is there: A title, Basic Passage, Correlation.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Test Blog - Comment Under This Post
You can merely write a few words to test or you can put up a response with headings, playing with various fonts and so forth. We'll take a look at these Monday 26th.
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