Absolute Style

There are many things I believe I have learned from reading “Style: toward clarity and grace” by Joseph Williams, and “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White. Among these things are to use metaphors, have coherence, to write what comes naturally, to revise and rewrite, and to avoid fancy words.

First, write what comes naturally. I think this is important because it shows the writer’s personality. When a writer writes what comes naturally they use words and phrases unique to them. Or like when I wrote a story I titled “Guardian Angel” my teacher said I gave a sense of honesty and spirituality. I gave the sense of honesty just from my word choices, a lot of which I used in the first draft and they just stuck through the drafts because it is part of the story.

Coherence is also important. If what you are writing does not stick together the reader will reject it. For example, if I wrote an essay that just went from one sub-topic to the next, without connecting them to the main topic, readers wouldn’t accept it. They would be left wondering what I was talking about. If someone wrote an essay on gardening and started talking about the guy who experimented with peas and with dominant and recessive traits, the readers would be left wondering what the guy had to do with how knowing about him will help them keep their plants alive.

Thirdly, I think metaphors are important. They can help a writer, or anyone make a point. You don’t have to be a writer to use a metaphor. In middle school I was called to the counselor’s office because my teachers noticed I wasn’t as happy as I usually was. I have controlling parents, and I was having a fight over how controlling they were. I don’t remember the specifics of the argument anymore, but that isn’t important. When the counselor asked how I felt, I replied “I feel I’m a ball in a dryer.” I didn’t have to go any further, she immediately knew how I felt, or at least had a good idea. A ball in a dryer has no control over where it goes, which is how I felt, and I didn’t have to explain anymore after the metaphor. The counselor even commented she liked how I used the metaphor to explain how I felt. You can’t get away with not explaining a metaphor in writing. You don’t have a second chance to say something, or clarify if one reader doesn’t understand the metaphor. So in writing it’s better to explain the metaphor. With my ball in a dryer example, I would have explained how the ball has no control over where it goes, and how it is trapped in the dryer, and can’t get out until someone comes and says its okay and removes the ball from the dryer.

Last but not least, and I believe the most important thing, is to revise and rewrite. If in your writing you use a quote where the person uses a word like ain’t, you need to revise and change the word because ain’t isn’t a word. That and no one gets it right the first time. Most of us revise our writing while we write. We use a computer and we cut and paste, and use the backspace key before we’ve written the first draft from start to finish. Like this post, I have used the backspace key at least fifty times; I have also used the arrows to go back up to previous paragraphs and add things to my explanations to help make the explanations better. Revising is also important because it helps us catch our spelling errors, and even though we may use the spell check, it doesn’t catch where we have typed "of" instead of "if".

Discussion

What Ian brought up about Strunk and White saying you need to put your emotions on the back burner in his post titled Strunk and White’s EofS…Part Uno…, is also something I can relate to. I tend to write when feeling something other than okay. If I become angry I write, if I become ecstatic I write, but my writing tends to be a mirror of the emotion I am feeling at the moment I write it. So when doing a school paper, or something for a business it is important to put emotions on the backburner.

Also when Ian says that he was taught the bigger the words used in the paper, the better the better the paper became is another thing I can relate to. Teachers always encouraged me to use bigger words I had never used before, especially in middle school, in fact, for a few papers, one of our requirements were to use a given number of big words we had never used before. Blair brings up a point when talking about using big words in her post titled Style…from the yellow book. She says we make ourselves sound like idiots rather than educated people when we use the big words. I think this is part because we try so hard to use the big words we don’t necessarily use them correctly, and they just sound wrong in the sentence; even the uneducated that have no idea what the word means can tell when used incorrectly because of how wrong it sounds in the sentence. I remember in middle school when I was writing a myth, we had to use words we never used before. So I just chose a sentence, picked a word, and then used the Thesaurus to find a synonym. I looked up the words in the dictionary to try and use the right word, but I didn’t quite understand the definition of whatever words I was looking up. After putting the word I had chosen in the sentence the sentence just didn’t sound right, my instinct told me it was wrong, but I convinced myself that because I had looked up the definition and thought I understood the definition, that I had used it right. When I got the paper back, the teacher had a talk with me, and explained what the word meant; I hadn’t used the word right. My gut told me it was wrong even though my head said it was right. This shows that even someone who doesn’t understand the word can tell it is wrong. They may not know why it is wrong, like my gut couldn’t say why the word was wrong, but the people do know it is wrong, just as I knew the word I chose was wrong.

Ian also mentions the importance of writing having a rhythm, this I already knew but find to be very important. If writing has no rhythm then it discourages the reader from reading because nothing fits. When we get random bits of information we get bored. A piece of writing without rhythm is like a jerky car ride. You get frustrated in a jerky car ride because you prefer a smooth ride. The same goes with writing, if it has no rhythm, there is no smooth ride, it comes off as being all choppy. Everything should flow like a river. When we give writing that rhythm, then it has the flow, the smooth ride, we are looking for.

Metaphors for Writing Technology

Writing technology is a car on the technology train. When the computer was first invented it was seen as a faster way to compute numbers, which is how it got its name. Then technology advanced again and the computer became smaller, and people used it to write. Technology is always advancing, and the cars on the train are all the different technologies we have in our lives.

Writing technology is the body of a dancer. A dancer uses her body to let the music speak; writing technology is what a writer uses to let their soul speak. A writer’s soul is not easily heard, but it can be heard loud and clear through their writing. The writing is the soul talking, and the writing technology, such as the pen and paper, are the instruments used by the soul to talk. Where the body of the dancer is what music uses to talk.

Strunk & White vs. Williams

My first post on Strunk & White I said the two most helpful rules were to talk in the positive and to omit needless words. Strunk & White has to be brief with his explanations because it is a pocket book, Williams is more descriptive with why you should or shouldn’t do something because that is his goal.

In Strunk & White with rule 15 about using the positive, he doesn’t even use two pages to describe why it is a writer should do this and how to do it. This could be difficult for some to understand what to do and get the hang of changing things to the positive. One thing Williams does that Strunk & White does not, is gives a few phrases in the negative, and how to say them in the positive, like “not many” would be “few”, and “did not accept” would be “rejected”. This table is something that helped me because it directed my thinking rather than trying to change the whole sentence as I thought would have to be done from Strunk & White, I see it’s a small phrase that needs to be changed, and rewording a phrase is easier to do than a sentence.

Strunk & White says to omit needless words, Williams however, describes something called metadiscourse which is our thoughts like saying I believe, and says that these things are unnecessary and should be omitted. The other thing is all throughout Williams book, he talks about metadiscourse and what to omit, where Strunk & White takes less than two pages to talk about what should be omitted, and never touches on the I believe stuff. Plus Strunk & White only touches on redundancies and wordiness using “the reason why is that” should be “because” as an example of wordiness.

Another thing I mentioned in my first post was Strunk & White’s section on headings, and that I thought it most unhelpful. For one it talks mostly of margins, and a general format for sending a manuscript. The section doesn’t really talk about headings, and the section is only about a paragraph. When Williams talks about headings he talks about actual headings not margins for a manuscript. Williams talks about what a writer needs to know about headings. He talks about where to place a heading, what should be in a heading, says they help a writer when trying to organize their paper as well as helps the reader pick out the areas they would like to read.

Overall, Williams is better. Williams goes into more details on what is expected and clarifies what he is trying to say. But then Strunk & White is a good travel size, something you can take anywhere, that’s what Strunk & White wanted, he wanted something you could carry on the plane, or take with you in the park, and still be able to revise your writing. Williams wanted to be clear about what he was talking about and what he meant for a writer to revise, and why it is important for a writer to revise those things. I need things almost spelled out completely for me, so I prefer Williams over Strunk & White, but others may feel Strunk & White is all they need.

Rochelle critique

The opening paragraph, Rochelle starts telling a hypothetical story. From this, I as a reader think this is either a hook for amusement parks, or Cedar Point. The problem with this is she does more opinion of spending time at Cedar Point.

“Cedar Point is the best amusement park in Ohio and I have been to a lot of amusement parks.” She tries to sell herself as an amusement park expert and sets herself up to talk about how great Cedar Point is. The rest of the paragraph however talks about where Cedar Point is located.

Principle four of Joseph M. Williams Style Toward Clarity and Grace says “A reader will feel that a paragraph is coherent if she can read a sentence that specifically articulates its point.” The paragraph does not do this. She starts saying Cedar Point is the best amusement park, and then tells where it is. Then goes to say it’s in Sandusky Ohio, on Lake Eerie, and even says the breeze off Lake Eerie is great when at the park. I don’t think anyone can put all the things she put in that paragraph under one topic. When talking location, I could care less about breezes off a lake or that Cedar Point is considered by Rochelle the best amusement park in Ohio.

Style

“Style: Toward Clarity and Grace” by Joseph M. Williams explains many problems people have with writing. One being coherence, which is something I have trouble with.

"In the scene when Chief Whitlock is racing out of the hotel to avoid being caught once out the door he ditches the case of money he just retrieved in a dumpster. Then quickly reaches for his badge and tells the hotel security chasing him the guy they are after is still inside and that he’ll take the back and they should go upstairs. Good thing the hotel security don’t really know who they’re chasing. There is a lot going on in this scene. So here it is broken down."

This is a paragraph from a scene analysis paper I did in the English 200 class I took at Schoolcraft College. It doesn’t really have coherence. When revising the paragraph, I had to keep revising my revision because I wasn’t saying what I had even meant to say; I was saying what I interpreted from the original paragraph. One sentence made me cringe before I revised the paragraph. “Good thing the hotel security don’t really know who they’re chasing.” It is the word don’t, it doesn’t sound right.

"In the scene, Chief Whitlock dumps the case of money in a dumpster. He turns around, grabs his badge, shows it to the hotel security, and says the guy is still inside; he’ll take the back and they should go upstairs. Good thing the hotel security didn’t know who they were chasing. Following is the breakdown of the scene."

With the revision, I tried to talk more in the active voice and make it more coherent. The original, I felt was kind of choppy, and I wasn’t clearly stating what I meant. I have been told the majority of people think logically, and I didn’t put the scene in logical, chronological, order. In the revision, I take the reader through the scene step by step, rather than a jumbled mess. I also avoided starting a sentence with so in the revision.

Strunk and White comments

I think Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is great for me as a student, and as a writer, because it clarifies a lot of the rules I've already heard, plus adds a few new rules that will improve my writing.

I found rule number 17 “omit needless words” (Strunk, White. 23-24) helpful. This is helpful to me because I tend to ramble and insert unnecessary words. I’m always being told to be more concise. My problem with the rule, is I often have trouble finding the unnecessary words. Or if I find the unnecessary words, I will have trouble rephrasing the sentence to get rid of the extra words. But after reading the description under the rule, I think I understand what to look for and how to rephrase the sentence better than before.

Rule 15 “Put statements in positive form.” (Strunk, White. 19) I can see being helpful to me. In a journalism course I took, I was told to never write ‘not guilty’ or ‘not innocent’ just in case a typo happens and it is printed ‘guilty’ when the person is really innocent. Printing something like that would be a big mistake. Another reason why this rule is a good rule is because it gets rid of unnecessary words like the example used on page 19, “He was not very often on time,” and the positive “He usually came late.” The negative is seven words and the positive is only four words. So putting sentences in positive form can also help get rid of needless words.

What Strunk and White had to say about headings, I found unhelpful. “Headings. If a manuscript is to be submitted for publication, leave plenty of space at the top of page 1. The editor will need this space to write directions to the compositor. Place the heading, or title, at least a fourth of the way down the page. Leave a blank line, or its equivalent in space, after the heading. On succeeding pages, begin near the top, but not so near as to give a crowded appearance. Omit the period after a title or heading. A question mark or an exclamation point may be used if the heading calls for it.” (Strunk, White. 34) I find this unhelpful because when submitting a manuscript for publication, I have always been told to put in your title one-third down the page, not a quarter of the way down. At the top of the first page, on the left side, you put your contact information, on the right side, you put the total word count, the rights being offered for sale, and your copyright notice. On the following pages, all that is at the top is the author’s last name, a dash, and the page number. All the pages are double spaced, with one inch margins on all sides. It is in these spaces that the editor will write any comments about the manuscript, which unless accepted, will never reach the author, because publications don’t return rejected manuscripts.

Introduction

My name is Sarah Bammel. I am a professional writing major at Eastern Michigan University, in my junior year. I have been writing stories and poems ever since I learned how to write.

I have taken many writing courses in my college career, and I was a writing tutor during my second year at Schoolcraft Community College. I have a hard time sticking to facts, without trying to appeal to people and make them really think about the subject I’m writing about.

I have a writing style that touches the emotions, or at least tries to touch the emotions. My goal as a writer is to inspire people to be themselves, and achieve great things. I’m always trying to be fancy with my writing and use metaphors and similes whenever possible. I feel this helps appeal to people’s emotions, and make them want to dig further on the subject, if I can relate it to something they know or feel. This is why I have a hard time sticking to facts. The metaphors in my writing would not be considered fact.