Blog #5, Key elements of style

After reading both Strunk and Whites’ “The Elements of Style,” and Williams’ “Style: Lessons Toward Clarity and Grace,” I found that there are many key elements when it comes to style. Style is not just an individuals’ personality coming out in their writing, but has much more to do with the set-up of the paper, the word choice, topic, explanation, examples. I still believe that the essence of style, that is what makes one authors writing more exciting and captivating, can not be 100% taught. Some of that has to come within. Writing is like a rhythm and just as in a dance or song, some of that has to come from within. Helping writers understand the building blocks of good style in writing should be the first priority. Even with a good sense of inner rhythm and personality, if these building blocks are not taught, the consequence could be a muddy paper who’s’ style is completely lost in its confusion.
Having said that, I believe the most important aspect of style is clarity. How do you define clarity to a writer? If you are reading Strunk and White, you simply state, “be clear,” leaving the abstract thought hanging there to plague writers. However, using Williams’ book we find some very concrete rules about clarity. On page 21 he writes, “readers are likely to feel that they are reading prose that is clear and direct when 1. the subjects of the sentences name the cast of characters, and 2. the verbs that go with those subjects name the crucial actions those characters are part of.” Williams then follows his rules with numerous examples of how to put these rules into action. He even explains an exercise that allows writers to test their writing for clarity; “A quick method is simply to run a line under the first five or six words of every sentence. If you find that (1) you have to go more than six or seven words into a sentence to get past the subject to the verb and (2) the subject of the sentence is not one of your characters, take a hard look at that sentences; its characters and actions probably do not align with subjects and verbs.”
The second most important aspect of style, in my eyes, is cohesion. I believe this because I think it goes hand in hand with clarity. Having clear sentences is one thing, but if they are placed in the prose in a nonsensical order, lacking cohesion, the clarity is lost. So how to we create cohesion in writing? William’s states on page 50, “The psychological subject of a sentence is that idea we announce in the first few words of a sentence. It is almost always a noun phrase of some kind that the rest of the sentence characterizes, comments on, says something about.” In other words, your main idea should be put into words in the first few sentences. All of the rest, if not the paper than the paragraph, should be explaining and supporting this idea. Figuring out how to arrange topics that support your big idea is also very important to cohesion. This will control how your reader understands and reads the topics. The topics that you choose should always be in reference to the main idea and should always be understood by your reader through repetition and explanation of the topic and main idea through out the paper.
The third most important characteristic of style for me is coherence. Like the first two aspects, this too has a lot to do with making your writing convenient for readers. It is something that helps them to better understand the idea you want them to get from your writing. As William’s writes, readers expect to read at the beginning of a paragraph or document, the overall theme of that section and near the end they expect to read something that will introduce the next topic. This makes them comfortable and when reading comfortably your reader will probably take from your writing what you intended. So how can we be sure to keep our writing in this form? William’s gives us these steps to follow before writing:

1. list your main characters
2. list a few central concepts that you think will run through your whole text
3. if you think you know exactly what has to go into your POINT sentence, write it out
4. subdivide the problem into manageable segments with their particular thematic strings and characters
5. before you write your first word, decide whether the document is going to be POINT-early or POINT-last
6. If POINT-last, construct an anticipatory POINT sentence to get started
7. as you draft, occasionally remind yourself of your thematic and topic strings
8. if you don’t know your POINT, just start writing and hope

William’s lists some more steps that have to do with revision and re-writing, but this section explains where to start.

Blog #4, Responding to classmate bloggs

Looking through our classes entries about Strunk and White and Williams, I think that most of us are on the same page. Strunk and White are useful for the rules that are necessary when writing composition, but as far as being helpful with Style, I think they missed the boat. As Jesse says in his blog entry #3, “The Williams text is a much more effective way to teach style. The Williams text provides the reader with a clear understanding of how structural elements of style allow a writer to create an essay intended for an audience. The underlying point to the Williams text is that people need to be able to understand what the author’s point is. An essay needs to have a point. An essay needs to provide a reader with more than a series of grammatically correct sentences. As Williams points out, “A reader will feel that a paragraph is coherent if she can read a sentence that specifically articulates its point.” (97) This explanation is much more in depth than the syntactic rules provided by Strunk and White.” Jessy T's Blog
I agree with Jesse and his picking out the main point of William’s text, to understand the point of the whole thing. When we write we know exactly what it is we want our readers to take from the reading, but how can we make sure this happens? If your looking for the answer in Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style,” you might find sentences like, “[w]hen you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair, p.79” a little frustrating. Williams says it better by giving clear principles of clarity, “1. the subjects of the sentences name the cast of characters, and 2. the verbs that go with those subjects name the crucial actions those characters are part of (p.21)” and then following them with detailed examples.
I am going to be an English/Literature teacher, and though my love falls primarily with Literature, I know that teaching students how to write successful papers, for college and beyond, will be a vital role I play. William’s book will serve as an excellent resource in this department because of the many examples he gives. Students will be able to compare their own writing with his good and bad examples to see which one their writing looks more like. I still might use the Strunk and White book for tedious grammatical questions, but in matters of style I don’t think their book is helpful at all.

Blog #3, Williams v. Strunk and White

After reading and comparing the Strunk and White book with Williams’ “Style Toward Grace and Clarity,” I think that Williams’ book will be much more useful to me. What I liked about the Strunk and White book was the explanation of “the rules.” All of those tedious questions that plague writers seem to be answered in the little silver pocket-book. However, after reading “Style Toward Grace and Clarity,” I have a different feeling about Strunk and White’s book. First of all, as I said in the first blog, the Strunk and White book, “Elements of Style,” was written to instruct a professor’s classroom. He basically made a book about items that bug him in student writing and approached the rules as the way he wanted to read a paper. Yes, most of the grammatical rules are true, but his ideas on style could be argued. I don’t think style is something that can be so defined. Make sentences short, use small words, don’t overwrite, don’t over explain, and most importantly, be clear are all rules that Strunk and White list. Though these may be good tips for the beginning writer, and perhaps that is who they were writing to, they don’t give much of a detailed explanation. Being clear is not something you can explain, it is an abstraction and yes writing does need to be understandable and free from awkwardness, but the Strunk and White book does not address how to create this kind of writing. My favorite sentence in the Strunk and White book, on page 79, is: “When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.” Well that sure cleared it up for me, how about you?
Secondly, Strunk and White are dead. Our written and spoken language is constantly changing and evolving, but obviously their book is not going to follow suit. How can we follow a book of rules that may or may not be outdated? The fact that the original copy used only the pronoun “he” in its’ examples, because Strunk refused to see the offense in doing so, is an excellent example of how outdated this book will become. The basic rules are the same, but style in writing is something that changes from class to class for students, and from author to author.
Williams’ book is more useful because of the pages and pages of examples. Instead of just telling the reader the do’s and don’ts, he gives several examples. When describing things that are as abstract as “be clear,” and “don’t over explain,” the only way to help people understand what you mean is to give detailed descriptions of what is right and what is wrong. In the Williams’ book, when talking about the clarity issue, he gives principles of clear writing. Descriptive answers to what makes a sentence clear, “1. the subjects of the sentences name the cast of characters, and 2. the verbs that go with those subjects name the crucial actions those characters are part of (p.21)” and then he follows each of the principles with numerous examples. He clears of the ambiguity with a clear sense of structure. Most importantly, this book is a more modern text. Though it too will become outdated eventually, it’s basic principles and “suggestions,” instead of rules to die by, will remain useful.

Blog #2, University Catalog Critique

Reading Williams' book, "Style toward Grace and Clarity," I found the chapter entitled "Clarity" the most interesting. As Williams writes in this chapter, it is hard to tell what makes certain prose unclear except that in reading it we find many obstacles in our way of making sense out of the passage. On page 43 he writes,

To the degree that we consistently express the crucial actions of our story in verbs and our central characters (real or abstract) in subjects, our readers are likely to feel our prose is clear and direct.

By this he means that the more we focus on our subjects and their actions in our prose, the more sense our piece will make.
Looking at the University catalog, I found many unclear passages. The one that I chose is listed in the Undergraduate University Profile and reads as follows:

The University offers bachelor's, master's and specialist's degree's, as well as a doctoral degree in, appropriately, educational leadership. In all, more than 400 academic majors, minors and concentrations are delivered through Eastern's five degree-granting colleges and its graduate school.

Going with Williams idea about clarity discussed above, the subject in this passage is the University and its actions are the offering of different degrees at the undergraduate and graduate level. Perhaps a better way to state this passage would be as follows:

This University offers more than 400 academic majors, minors and concentrations, provided by five degree-granting colleges, as well as a doctoral degree in educational leadership.

Cutting out some of the abstract language and focusing entirely on the subject and its actions.

Blog #1, Strunk and White

What I found useful about Strunk and White's "Elements of Style," is that all of those tedious questions one has when writing can be found in this book. For example, when I am writing an essay I always get the comma placement in a series of words confused. Come to find out, I have been doing this all wrong as it is. For example, on page 2 Strunk uses the series: "red, white, and blue." I always thought that the comma before the and was dropped. As he explains though, the comma is only dropped before the and in the names of buisness firms. Other things I found useful were the instructions on passive and active voice, tenses, and qoutations. I understand what is meant by passive and active voice, but sometimes when writing I get thrown off by the grammar check and it's correction of a passive voice sentence. It will be helful to have a guide full of examples so that I can visualize how to correct my sentences. The qoutations section is vital to writers. Does anyone really know the correct form for qoutation use in every instance? It seems impossible, there are so many variations. There was one problem however with the qoutation section. I was taught that qoutations were only to be indented (blocked) when the passage was five sentences or more. Strunk states that this should be done when the passage is meant to be more distinguished than the rest of the writing.
The other issue I had with this book was that this book was written by a professor for his class. Are these "rules" actually correct, or are they simply ways in which he wants his students to write? A lot of his rules seem to have to do with sentence order. Though I feel sentence order is important, isn't it a little arbitrary? As long as the sentence makes sense and does not seem awkward, who is he to say it is wrong. I guess I would feel better knowing that these rules did run congruent with our modern English grammar.

An Introduction

I never knew anything like this exsisted! What a cool program that could be used int so many different ways. Anyhoo, back to what I am supposed to be writing about. I am a senior anxiously awaiting graduation even though I know that the job market for English teachers is looking grim:( Currently I work full-time for a credit union down river called, Advantage One Federal Credit Union. Last year I was approached by a high school economics teacher looking for someone to come in and speak to her kids about financial planning, saving and credit cards. I jumped on the opportunity and was given the chance to go into her classroom one whole day a week. I found a really good free resource for such programs called NEFE. The program was a great success and know I do this full-time. This week begins the new season and the new program, I hope it goes as well as last year. So as far as the future goes, I know there is a job for me here and even though I won't be teaching literature right off the bat, at least i'll be in the classroom. Eventually I want to be a professor and intend on going back to school as soon after graduation as possible.

Post #2

At 5:50 PM, lara said…

I never knew anything like this exsisted! What a cool program that could be used int so many different ways. Anyhoo, back to what I am supposed to be writing about. I am a senior anxiously awaiting graduation even though I know that the job market for English teachers is looking grim:( Currently I work full-time for a credit union down river called, Advantage One Federal Credit Union. Last year I was approached by a high school economics teacher looking for someone to come in and speak to her kids about financial planning, saving and credit cards. I jumped on the opportunity and was given the chance to go into her classroom one whole day a week. I found a really good free resource for such programs called NEFE. The program was a great success and know I do this full-time. This week begins the new season and the new program, I hope it goes as well as last year. So as far as the future goes, I know there is a job for me here and even though I won't be teaching literature right off the bat, at least i'll be in the classroom. Eventually I want to be a professor and intend on going back to school as soon after graduation as possible.

Post #1

This is my first blog attempt, what is a blog exactly? I hope to find out soon:)