Kyle's Style Responses
From Mizzou Wiki
In chapter 1 it talks about how writers today write a paper on what makes sense to them and not the audience. People forget that when you write you try to make sure that the audience who is reading it understands what you are talking about and so that it makes sense to them as well as you. It is important though that the writer revises his paper in order to make corrections and to get an idea of what the audience is reading. Through revision it helps you know when the sentence only makes sense to you and probably not the readers. Also it is important that when you write and you change a topic that you transition into the new topic in the previous sentence. You don't want the readers to wonder how you went from talking about this and then straight into another topic without telling them how this relates to your main topic.
--You should read the Style Responses assignment, and then approach the later assignments.
Chapter 3 Chapter 3 talks about how it is important to clarify you writing and that it is important to have the right verb in a sentence. It shows how just by the slightest change in a word can make the sentence that much clearer and it will help the reader understand what is being said. It tells is that we should revise our work in order to make corrections that are necessary to making a stronger, clearer sentence. The chapter shows how easy it is to make a mistake in writing an unclear sentence and how by changing the complex of the verb it helps the sentence become clearer and allows the readers to understand.
Chapter 3 was similar to chapter 1 in the way the author tells us to clear in our writing so that the readers understand what is being said. It tells use action verbs to help make the sentence stronger and to clarify the action of the subject in the sentence. The author was able to show a distinct difference between 2 sentences with the same words but changed one sentence with the changing of the verb usage. By changing the verbs from an example in the book from jump to jumped gives the verb a much stronger position in the sentence and makes the sentence clearer. The author shows how one sentence is unclear and that with the simple replacement with an action verb can make that same sentence clearer and easier for the reader to understand. He also makes it clear that in order to make sure you have a sentence that is clear that you must always revise your work to make sure that you understand what you wrote and get a glimpse of what the reader will be reading. That is how to determine whether or not the sentence needs an action verb or is fine the way it is. Lastly it is also important that you analyze your work and make sure that it is perfect and that you have you have distinguished your main characters and the verbs that follow it.
This chapter really showed me how much that the wrong usage of a verb can confuse people in what your trying to say. I have had some issues with making my sentences clear and easy to understand but i believe that this chapter will help me in writing clearer so that when people read my writing they won't become as confused to what i am trying to say and that they will understand what i am writing about. In the past i have had issues with my word structure in writing sentences and often teachers asked me what i was trying to say in a sentence. This chapter has helped me understand what i have to do to correct myself and write clearer to write a less confusing paper.
Chapter 5
In chapter 5 it talked about the flow of a paper and that when you write your paper it should flow along instead of being choppy and unclear. It talked about how when writing the paper and to make it flow that the writer should begin sentences with information that the reader may already know and end the sentence with something the reader may find interesting or what they didn't know. It gives examples of how by changing the verb tense could make the paper flow and become clear as to what they are saying. It also talked about how to write coherently which allows you to be able to write clearly and make the paper flow.
The author did a good job in explaining how to write coherently and to make the paper flow to help the reader understand what is being written. He shows how by making simple verb tense changes will give the paper a better flow and allow the paper to become more clear and easier to read. He gives good examples of how to write coherently from changing one sentence by rearranging some words and changing the verb tense can make the sentence flow and become less choppy and unclear. He was able to show how by giving information that readers may already know in the beginning of a sentence and then writing information that they may not know at the end would keep the readers interested and wanting to read more.
I believe that after reading this chapter that it will help me understand how to make my paper flow by rearranging the words i use and the verb tense i use. In the past my papers have been choppy and unclear to what is being said because i wasn't writing coherently and the paper didn't flow and it was choppy. I hope that after reading this chapter i can write a paper that will flow and have useful information that the readers can relate to and also learn something new.
Chapter 10
In chapter 10 Joseph Williams does a good job explaining what clear writing is and looks like. I still have some problems being able to write clearly so that the reader can understand what i am writing and just not myself. He refers to in his chapter to "write to others as you would have others write to you". He also says in the chapter that the writer is responsible for writing clearly so that the reader can understand what the writer is talking about. The the writer must maintain a balance in his writing so the reader doesn't become confused and unclear about what is being written.
Williams tells us how to respond to complex writings and writers. Most of the time writers will say that they must write in a complex style because they are writing innovatively. Readers don't want to sit and try to understand every word that is complex. Williams says, "we ought not assume that they owe us an indefinite amount of their time to unpack it." I think that this is a good way of putting that readers shouldn't have to spend so much time reading something complex when it should be simple and easy to read. The Declaration of Indepence is made of a few complex sentences. To be able to understand a document like that you would have to take time to understand the language it was written in and to learn what it is talking about. I think that all the ideas were mostly Jefferson's and that the language he wrote it in was so that people could understand how important this document was.
Through reading all these chapters I believe that it has helped me a little in becoming a better writer but that I still have a ways to go. The book is always talking about writing clearly and in order to be a good writer you must be able to write clear so the reader can understand. Also to have balance in writing is important so that the reader doesn't become lost and confused as to what is being written. I still need to work on the balance of my papers and to be able to make my paper flow and transition fluently. Overall, this book was good and i enjoyed understanding how to improve my writing and to hopefully improve on my writing in college.
