Style: Take Two

At the beginning of this course, I thought style was simply the voice that the writer has. While this, I think, is still true style is much more. Style is not only the voice in which a writer has but the way in which it is written. A piece of writing can take on many shapes. As we emerge ourselves in our assignments we learned some history about early writing technologies and uses of style. We were introduced to a new form of style "comics". Comics have their own personal style in which words and images are used to convey a story or message. Scott McCloud demonstrated this in his book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Thanks to the web page design assignments we saw that style can be in a form on the Internet.

Incorporating all these ideas and forms of writing, style is not how well I can draw or create a web page. It was not about how creative I could get by creating my own writing technology. It's about how I could successfully convey my ideas and thoughts in a well though out out organized manner.

The Most Important Rule

After looking over the rules of SpiderPro 100 Do's and Don'ts of Web Design, the most important rule when designing a web page is Do Know Your Audience.

I think that this is the most important rule because so many times I open web pages that are not what they say they are. Some of these particular sites are not specific to their links and end up being something completely different then what they appear to be. To me it is a waste of time and energy to look at these sites.

In terms of our Website Assignment I reminded myself often of this rule. Sure I could have put many different sites on there that interest me and sure it's okay, but I wanted to stick to my specific audience, my fellow English 328 classmates. I tried to put on my page a couple of sites that might interest my classmates and be a resource for them. I think it is a balancing act of what to put on our pages and what not to. So I tried to be specific and stick to my specific audience.

In order to know my audience I have read several classmates papers throughout the semester. I think it was a good idea to have an initial web page posted that was less specific and allowed us to get to know one another. You can get a feel for people which is so important because we do not have that face to face contact as in a regular setting in a classroom. I tried to write and develop my page based on this limited knowledge of my classmates. For most it was the first web pages developed, so I tried to keep the language and context of my page simple and easy to follow.

Without knowing your audience, you are more likely for "short-term visitors" to your page. People want to look up an address and have the information and links readily available. It's kinda like sentence development we learned from Williams-leave out the unnecessary words and write concisely using the least words possible.

Connecting Web and Paper

There are many comparisons between paper writing and web writing. Looking over the assigned readings I have chosen a couple of examples of how web pages connect to paper writing.

The strongest connection between the two styles of writing is the concept of writing about the subject. According to the SpiderPro website, it is important to stick to the concept you are writing about. As in the readings of Skunk and Williams and others, writers should construct sentences in which are topic oriented and well organized. This concept applies to many of the rules found on this website that all correlate back together, such as writing for a specific audience, using short concise sentences without the filler words.

When pulling up a web page the reader wants to be able to navigate throughout it and find specifically what they are looking for. Just as a writer should do when writing on paper-organize your thoughts in a manner that is simple and easy for the reader to navigate through. Writers in either manner do not want their audience to give up when reading their pieces of writing because it is simply to hard to get through.

Another similarity that I see between web writing and paper writing is asking your audience for feedback. It is important for us in this class to allow others to edit our papers and offer constructive criticism and advice in order to make our papers the best they can be. As in a web page it is important to receive feedback from our web audience about how to improve the quality of our writings and layout of web pages.

When using different sources for our writings it is important to cite our sources. In paper writing we use a Works Cited page and in web pages we use Links to link our readers to that specific page for that information.

To me the differences are obvious. We can do a lot more in web writing, as far as imagery and text and color than we can in paper writing. Layouts could be different between the two styles of writing. It's easier to sit here and type this blog rather than write it out by hand.

McCloud-Part two

For the second part of the blog, I looked closely at Lauren's comic The Accidental Dentist. This comic was completely different from the one that I chose. This comic was about three gentlemen and the "accidents" that happen to them. When examining their names further we see the one gentlemen is G.W.B and is spoofing the presidents and the "mistakes or accidents" that some feel he has done in his presidency.

The first difference from my comic is the images itself. The Accidental Dentist uses a tremendous amount of detail. The faces are very detailed and G.W.B is very obvious. But to me, other than G.W.B, that detail takes away from my interpretation of the other gentlemen. As McCloud states sometimes it is better to have a more "cartoon face" because "the more people it could be said to describe" (31).

Another difference is the use of color in the last frame. As McCloud describes the differences of colors in his book he states that "flat color forms themselves take on more significance" (192). I think that this is applied to the last frames of this comic because it is taking on more emphasis in relation to the rest of the comic.

If anything the differences between these two simple comics authored by the same person fuller emphasises McCloud's point on comics, "the world of comics is a huge and varied one" (4). For me although I did not particularly like The Accidental Dentist, not only did I not agree with the concept of the comic, it was just to busy and everything that turns me off when reading comics. Comic reading is not specific to one person but encompasses a wide variety of audiences.

Scott McCloud- Part 1

The comic I chose was one found on Scott McCloud's website entitled I AM THE MOST BEAUTIFUL DOG IN THE WORLD. The comic itself is very simply drawn with simple text. It tells the story of a man, I am thinking in his 20's, playing with his dog in the park. The man prompts the dog to play fetch and is convinced this is what the dog wants to do. So after a big toss of the stick the man expects the dog to go get the stick. However the dog does not move or change expression after the stick was thrown. The man starts off calm and tries to prompt the dog to get the stick. After realizing the dog will not move, the man gets frustrated and we see his expression change throughout each frame. Finally the man starts shouting at the dog to get the stick and starts to detest the dog because he is disobeying him. As the dog continues to stay immobile the man marches off and the dog continues to stand still. The last frame is the same as the first with the caption, "I AM THE MOST BEAUTIFUL DOG IN THE WORLD".

I think this comic exemplifies some concepts in McClouds book, Understanding Comics, The Invisible Art. This comic is the direct opposite of what McCloud describes as the typical notion of a comics usually are. He states that he thought comics were "usually crude, poorly-drawn, semiliterate, cheap disposable, kiddie fare (3). This comic is very simply drawn with few words that tells a story. The sequence of pictures within this comic build upon the previous allowing the reader to in a sense "read" the comic.

Another way in which I relate the concepts in McCloud's book to this comic is the simplicity of the drawings. As McCloud writes in the book, "there's something more at work in our minds when we view a cartoon-especially of a human face which warrants further investigation (31). The comic itself did not specify what age the man was in the comic nor his gender in fact. Because of the nature of the simple drawing I was able to apply my own thoughts and interpretations of the comic and not be told how to interpret the comic because of the drawings. The dog itself did not have any distinguishing features to warrant the type or gender of the dog. This, I think, is the art of interpreting comics.

What other's think?

It was interesting reading other's view's on Strunk and White and Williams.  So many different opinions were given.  It shows that every person's take on style and understanding style is different to some degree.   It's interesting to me that Kristen felt as it was "difficult to find new ideas from my classmates’ blogs because I found that many of us had the same ideas and comments when it came to William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s The Element of Style and Joseph M. Williams’ Style: Toward Clarity and Grace.".  While I agree to a point, I think I learned at least a little from each thought even if it we mostly agree about the ideas in the book.  

Overall I agree with most students in the class and have mixed feelings about the readings.  As Lauren states, I feel the section on "Words and Expressions commonly misused" was very outdated.  The way I took it was a reminder in which the ways in which we write can be a turn off because we simply misuse the words we use.  

I think that most of us agree S&W reading is a quicker reference to use.  Yeah it's great for students to have a great reference  and for us to quickly find it on the shelf.  But as Beth makes a great point, the intention for us reading it is to make us better writers.  For as we teach our students we will pass down the information we learned from these books and teach directly out of them.

Comparing Strunk and White with Williams

The book by Williams was very difficult to read.  But I have to say the second part was easier than the first but I found myself getting confused by the arrows and diagrams.  Again I benefited, as I did with Strunk and White, the most from the sections on paragraph and sentence structure.  I think the Williams did a good job giving plenty of examples, although some were very length and hard to concentrate on.  

I understand that the first part of Williams book was jam packed with information.  I had to force myself to concentrate on it and reread parts of it.  Like in my previous blog regarding Strunk and White, I struggle with sentence and paragraph structure.  I found a lot of their information useful but outdated.  So I suppose that is why I "liked" the second part of Williams book better.  Yes I could have done without the diagrams and arrows and boxes, however I feel I am a more conscientious writer.  

If I had to choose between the two books on which benefited me the most I would have to say it was an even draw.  I think they both posses certain positive attributes.  S&W was defiantly an easier read but was outdated in some language.  Williams was much more in depth an analytical but provided numerous examples of what he was explaining.  It was a more up to date read but overall provided the same information in a different more expanded way. 

Both books have improved my ability to write more successful. 

Original Text:

General Education is the core of an undergraduate education. It is general in that it provides students with a comprehensive educational experience and prepares them for study within their major. General Education teaches students to think critically and communicate effectively; it provides an introduction to the methodologies and practices of the academic disciplines; it promotes intellectual curiosity and a love of learning.

Revised text:

General Education studies are the foundation upon which a student builds skills which prepares them to pursue a final degree of their choosing.  Although at times it appears a repetitive process, general studies promote critical thinking and communication skills.  General Education studies develop and enhance all academic disciplines by stimulating student's intellectual curiosity thus facilitating a love of learning. 

I decided to fix this sentence because although it was somewhat clear, I felt I could make it more appealing to the population reading it.  Using Williams book I tried to make the topic sentence of the paragraph clear and used the following sentences to support that sentence.  I followed the advice from Williams book found on page 67, "If you start a sentence well, the end will almost take care of itself." I attempted to make each sentence flow into the previous one and tie it up at the end.  

I found this difficult as I tried to specifically find the points that Williams pointed out.  But I think I followed them more generally and more specifically benefited about sentence structure and paragraph building. 

Strunk and White

After reading the book The Elements of Style, I felt like I had read this before.  I believe throughout the two Linguistics classes that I have taken, most of the articles and readings stem from this book.  It was all familiar to me in some sense or another.

The two rules that I benefited the most from is Rule 13: Omit needless words, and Rule 9: Make the Paragraph the unit of composition.  I believe that Rule 13 applies to a lot of people, especially those who are untrained writers.  I can relate to Strunk's statement :

    A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary

sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines,

and no machine no unnecessary parts.

At times I tend to put in extra words that really are not needed to get the same point across.  Many folks, I believe, think that by putting in those extra words spice up their writings and make it more powerful.  Contrary to that belief those extra words can hold up a sentence and perhaps turn off the reader by not allowing them to relate to the sentence because of those extra words.  

In my case Rule 9 is very poignant because I have a terrible time constructing paragraphs.  Most of the time I ramble on about things that don't belong in that particular paragraph.  I don't make the original thesis statement of the paragraph and stick with that particular subject throughout the paragraph.

The rule in which I benefited least from was Rule 11: Put statements in a positive form.  This was just boring to me.  At times I thought the sentences used for examples were best left how they were.  I am not sure I 100 percent disagree with this rule, but I tend to think that how we write is how we would say things.  And by changing those words and putting them into a positive form may change the entire meaning itself.

Writing Project

Part 1:

Both Manguel and Barron's articles speak about the historical aspects of writing.  Maguel's perspective is that of the historical development of books and the importance of their development over time to fit the needs of the era.  Barron's article talks about the development and changes of writing itself.  Throughout Barron's article we see the evolution of the simple pencil, which in reality was not a simple process at all, to the more complex world of computers and the Internet.  Both authors are showing the necessary and somewhat unnecessary evolutions of writing itself.  I agree with Barron that the uses of pencils have almost become absolute and do myself have trouble with spelling because of my over use of spell check on the computer which does it for me.  I have become so used to using the computer  that even books are obsolete .  I could not tell you how to look up a book in the library using the card catalog.  Technologies have changed our "norms" and pen and paper writing and libraries are not on the fore front anymore.  We have adapted into a new era where yes our writing has been compromised by them.

Part 2:

Stick being sharpened to a point on a rock

So I agree with most this was a difficult assignment.  At first I was not to interested in doing this project. Like most I take advantage of our modern "technologies".  But after thinking about it and really pondering what to do, I found that it was interesting to do and challenge my mind.  

I wanted to do something extreme and really take on the assignment literally and CREATE a new invention for writing.  But I found that most of my ideas involved modern things that were not natural in our environment.  So I went back to the most basic notions and stopped over analyzing everything.

My invention is simply using a stick and wet dirt, or sand, in my driveway.  The stick is natural to our environment.  I took the end of the stick and sharpened it to a point by rubbing it on the top of a rock.  This created more of a modern pencil and simply wrote in the dirt.  I wet the dirt slightly and found it was easier to write in.  I can sympathize with people from different eras, as in Manguel's essay, about their frustration on trying to communicate their thoughts, ideas, etc. without our modern conveniences of paper, pens, pencils, crayons, etc.

  

First attempt at writing in the wet sand- a jumbled mess.

First Blog

So this is my first blog ever. I am pretty knowledable about the computer but no so much on the internet. This is pretty exciting now that I have gotten over the fact I had to create the "dreaded blog". I guess the fun begins now!

GO TIGERS!

Writing Style

To me writing style is simply the way in which a person writes; their voice. Different people have different voices, hence different writing style. My personal writing style is very much how I would talk to you in person. At times I tend to ramble on and on, as I would in face to face communication, forcing me to edit my articles at times. I believe I stay true to my own self and have learned throughout the years that having your own personal style is how you have the most successes.

It's important for people to follow the basic rules of writing, i.e. correct puncuation, grammer, spelling ect. But it is most important for people to allow themselves to talk natually in order to get their points across. Writing style is an intimate expression of ones self.