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Be Your Best ObjectivesBy the time you finish this you guide, you should:
Terms
ResourcesThe following Internet and print sources can help you with the concepts covered in this unit: Be Your Best: Usage describes some common problems in grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. Updated February
5, 2002 |
IntroductionCrucial to every effective essay, oral presentation, or other piece of communication are both content and clarity. Without a good claim, compelling support, logical organization, and clear sentences, you will not convince an audience of your points. Even if you have all of these elements, however, you will have an even more effective argument if you package them with style. Like great actors, athletes, and politicians, good writers win over their audience with not only what they do, but how they do it. In the realm of academic argument, for example, they phrase their ideas concisely, use appropriate and powerful words, and inject life into their sentences through the use of imagery, figurative language, rhythm, and other elements. In general, they also observe the conventions of Standard English in the areas of spelling, punctuation, mechanics, and grammar. The information below can help you to polish the style of your writing and speaking. Writing Engaging Prose
Perhaps because it relies on so many factors and has no single set of rules, style is hard to teach and hard to learn--at least consciously. Rather, writers tend to develop their style simply through repeated exposure to language, specifically through writing and reading. Every time you put your thoughts into words, you challenge your mind to find the best means of expression-that is, to sift through all of the possible words, organizational styles, sentence variations, and forms of figurative language stored in its neurons and produce the elements that work in a particular situation. It's a little like playing tennis or basketball, where practice continually forces your body to find solutions to problems. In both mental and physical exercise, you improve because you become aware of new solutions and more adept at using them. For similar reasons, reading will help your writing. Seeing how good writers manage parallels and metaphors makes you more aware of these devices, just as watching Monica Seles charge the net or Michael Jordan drive to the basket exposes you to new possibilities of physical movement. Rarely, of course, are you conscious of any of this development. As Yogi Berra pointed out, "You can't think and hit at the same time." In fact, you probably will find that your writing is improving without knowing why. That's fine. In this case, it is the end and not the means that matters. Nonetheless, it may help to study a few of the most common and effective techniques for writing with style. Write an effective introduction. A good introduction not only concisely announces the purpose and main points of an essay, but engages readers' attention so that they want to read on. Although almost all good introductions contain these two elements, they achieve them in many different ways. Some introductions contain amusing or striking anecdotes; others tantalize readers with interesting details ; still others merely grab readers because of their lively writing style. Avoid cliches--phrases or approaches that do not engage readers because they already are overused. Choose the right word. As a speaker of English, you have access to an enormous stock of words. In many cases, a basic English word has dozens of synonyms that allow a writer to express a particular shade of meaning, make use of a powerful connotation, or simply create a desired sound effect. For example, consider these synonyms for "laugh": "cackle," "guffaw," "roar," "giggle," "chuckle," "howl." Here are some tips in choosing words. Use forceful nouns and verbs: "Moments later Dick had forgotten his pain. He was shouting with excitement. Otto and his Cowboy were shouting, too. Perry had hooked "a big one." Ten feet of soaring, plunging sailfish, it leaped, arched like a rainbow, dived, sank deep, tugged the line taut, rose, flew, fell, rose. An hour passed, and part of another, before the sweat-soaked sportsmen reeled it in." (Truman Capote) Keep it simple: "There's old Pete, face like a searchlight. He's fifty yards off to my left, but I can see him plain as though there wasn't any fog at all. Or maybe he's right up close and real small, I can't be sure. He tells me once about how tired he is, and just his saying it makes me see his whole life on the railroad, see him working to figure out how to read a watch, breaking a sweat while he tries to get the right button in the right hole of his railroad overalls, doing his absolute damnedest to keep up with a job that comes so easy to the others they can sit back in a chair padded with cardboard and read mystery stories and girlie books. Not that he ever really figured to keep up--he knew from the start he couldn't do that--but he had to try to keep up, just to keep them in sight. So for forty years he was able to live, if not right in the world of men, at least on the edge of it." (Ken Kesey) Write concisely. Words are good things. But it cannot be doubted that the careless compounding of words-especially when one decides to compound these words together in one long, rambling sentence construction that loses the reader's attention about half-way through its procession-can try the reader's patience and time in a way counterproductive to the writer's purpose at hand. Use this three-step process to streamline your sentences:
When practical, combine sentences. Combining short sentences helps you not only to make your writing more engaging, but also to clarify the connections among your ideas. Here are some tools you can use to combine sentences:
Be aware of rhythms in language.You probably have heard someone say that a piece of writing does or does not "flow." While fluidity in writing is tough to characterize and comprises many different elements, one of the chief concerns is rhythm. Because it is made up of stressed and unstressed syllables, as well as long and short sentences and phrases, the English language--like music--has rhythm. Just as in music, some rhythms sound natural and harmonious, while others sound forced or cacophonous. Here are some devices that often lend harmony to a piece of writing. Parallels: "The whole world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." (Horace Walpole) Repetition: "If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well." (Martin Luther King, Jr.) Suspension: "When you are in a contest, you should work as if there were--to the very last minute--a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything." (Dwight D. Eisenhower) Carefully placed short sentences: "What are we out at the park for except to win? I'd trip my mother. I'll help her up, brush her off, tell her I'm sorry. But Mother don't make it to third." (Leo Durocher) Place segments of meaning for emphasis.Using syntax and sentence arrangement, you can highlight a word or phrase to emphasize a point or create a humorous effect. Within a sentence: "Even the enduring knock against him [Vice-President Al Gore] that he is wooden has the effect of making him seem, compared with a President who muses about his underwear on MTV, startlingly Presidential." (Peter J. Boyle) Within a paragraph: "It makes me think of one of the most horrifying scenes in American literature-in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Last Tycoon,' when the studio head tells the writer how to write. And the writer listens." (E.L. Doctorow) Use figurative
language and allusions when appropriate.Used in moderation, figurative language--language that works on a
level other than denotative meaning--can bring prose to life. An allusion
is a reference to a book, movie, song, building, quotation, or anything with
which the writer thinks the reader is reasonably familiar. Because they are
based on analogy, allusions often bring a point strikingly into focus.
Because they depend on recognition, they also give the reader a feeling of
satisfaction. To build your stock of allusions, get in the habit of jotting
down quotations and other material that you find insightful or amusing. Read
over this list every once in a while. You may be surprised by how easily
these items come to mind when you are trying to make a point in speech or
writing.
Metaphor: "O, she is the antidote to desire." (William Congreve) Imagery: "And suddenly nobody's hooting at him anymore. His arms commence to swell, and the veins squeeze up to the surface. He clinches his eyes, and his lips draw away from his teeth. His head leans back, and tendons stand out like coiled ropes running from his heaving neck down both arms to his hands. His whole body shakes with the strain as he tries to lift something he knows he can't lift, something everybody knows he can't lift." (Ken Kesey) Allusion: "To say Peanuts is about children is to say Huckleberry Finn is about boating." (Rheta Grimsley Johnson) Writing Standard EnglishPerhaps you have had this unsettling experience: You sweat over a paper, writing, revising, reading every paragraph three, four, maybe ten times. You confidently hand it over to your classmate or roommate and sit back to wait for the praise. Before your back hits the chair, the reader says, "You misspelled 'the' in the first sentence." How does it happen? The problem is that writers are too close to their work. They are so preoccupied by the evidence, transitions, paragraph organization, and style that they miss those pesky misspellings and comma problems that blaze like signal flares to other readers. Because those elements conflict with the conventions of Standard English—the accepted form of English generally used in academic writing, journalism, and other types of relatively formal discourse—they can distract readers from your content and generally should be removed through the process of proofreading. The key to successful proofreading is actually seeing the words and punctuation--not the cogent argument, not the solid organization, not the stylistic flourishes, but the little black marks on the page. You can see those marks if you follow this procedure:
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