the fight against bad English
The author has now gone back on the original argument. First the English language is degrading, and now it's how the language is used. I get where the author is trying to go : good English means better thoughts--but this is a terrible argument to get to that point.
It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
This argument is not working. How one uses language is not the same thing as the language. By this logic we will end up grunting and pointing in no time at all. Is that really reasonable?
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.
Is the English language in a bad way? I read beautiful language frequently. This seems similar to an old person wagging the figure at some teenager's slang.
Beginning with the exciting material and ending with a lack of luster often leaves us disappointed and destroys our sense of momentum.
I had a writing instructor here at BYU say the opposite. Nice.
Long sentences need not be difficult to read; they are only difficult to write
I'm always very conscious of this in my scientific writing. It's very difficult to get a highly technical point across without a huge sentence, and for some reason the long sentences seem wrong to me. I have my previous English instructors to thank for that.
Information is interpreted more easily and more uniformly if it is placed where most readers expect to find it.
This is an interesting case for genre being helpful rather than restrictive.
Improving the quality of writing actually improves the quality of thought.
I can absolutely get behind this statement. If you can write it clearly, then you can think through it clearly.
We argue here that complexity of thought need not lead to impenetrability of expression
This statement here seems false for complex mathematics. To me, there are better and worse textbooks, but even the best textbooks are still difficult to read. The difficulty lies in the content, not the way it was communicated.
Should I need more detail, I access any provided data repositories or supplemental information.
For experimental physics, I'm usually left wondering how calculations or data processing happened so that I can apply it to my own method. Papers seem to be pretty thin on these details, but the supplemental information usually has something of value.
Citation lists can help you decide why the paper may be most relevant to you by giving you a first impression of how colleagues that do similar research as you do may have used the paper.
If I see a paper that is frequently cited in a research area, I know I can gain a lot by just skipping straight to that paper.
I start by reading the abstract. Then, I skim the introduction and flip through the article to look at the figures. I try to identify the most prominent one or two figures, and I really make sure I understand what's going on in them. Then, I read the conclusion/summary. Only when I have done that will I go back into the technical details to clarify any questions I might have.
I can vouch for this method. This is the method that I see my research advisor use in practice.
Why, what's this? An abstract, all for me? Blessed be the editors of scientific journals who knew that no article is comprehensible, so they asked their writers to provide, à la Spaceballs, "the short, short version." Okay. Let's do this.
This isn't really corner cutting if you're doing research. If you were assigned to read it for some course or meeting, then sure. But when we are looking for references, this couldn't possibly be corner cutting.
What a strange document a scientific journal article is. We work on them for months or even years. We write them in a highly specialized vernacular that even most other scientists don't share. We place them behind a paywall and charge something ridiculous, like $34.95, for the privilege of reading them. We so readily accept their inaccessibility that we have to start "journal clubs" in the hopes that our friends might understand them and summarize them for us.
In all honesty, this is part of the reason why I've felt disillusioned by science as I've become more familiar with its ways. The emphasis on producing these papers--papers which are so specialized and really only read and understood by a handful--to get tenure or to get funding seems insane sometimes.
It took me more than 2 hours to read a three-page paper. But this time, I actually understood it.
This is generally on the order of how long it takes me to read a paper. Makes me feel better about it because I have to work seriously hard to understand. Yet the pay-off is fantastic
“a rhetorically sound definitionof genre must be centered . . . on the action it is used to accomplish”(151). How might this look? These actions don’t have to be complex;many genres are a part of our daily lives. Think about genres as toolsto help people to get things done.
If we thought about genre this way then it might be less suffocating and restrictive.
ecause this genrewas completely new, he had complete freedom to pick its form andcontent.
It can't be complete freedom. He is still restricted by how speeches from authorities in the past have been presented. His creation of the genre of the state of the union speech is a mixture of other genres he undoubtedly relied on.
I immediately called on my genre knowledge—my past expe-rience with reading and writing similar texts in similar situations—toorient me to the expectations of this genre”
Can't this be restrictive in some way? We discussed in class that physics technical writing can be so dense and complex that it's impossible to digest, and that we might be the generation that gets rid of that--but isn't that part of the genre?
But what would happen if I wanted to write a countrysong that didn’t do any of the above things? Would it still be a countrysong?
This gets to the heart of what really defines a genre. For country, is it the signature sound of the instruments? Is it the style of lyrics? What if you combined the lyrics with the sample style of hip hop? That's a thing that exists by the way.
Q: What do you get when you rewind a country song?A: You get your wife back, your job back, your dog back . .
It's an overused trope but I find it to be hilariously accurate.
So we need to learn to ask questions, to observe, and to read widely and carefully in order to find out how to shape writing as we draft.
Emphasize the "read widely" part. More knowledge could only help.
things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms—
Yet I know people who chose to live an uninformed life--at worst out of principle and at best out of apathy.
If we don’t know enough, our writing will never be very good. And writers who know their subject well can write about anything in an interesting way.
I've found that it's difficult for me to write about anything unless I've spent a lot of time understanding. Research like crazy and then writing becomes easier for me.
We don’t correct our writing while we draft.
I have heard this so many times and it's quite annoying. It assumes that there's one solid process that works every time, and you better get with it or you won't be good at writing.
Also, the processes didn’t occur in a line—they recurred. That is, writers generally did not complete all the activities that might be labeled prewriting before they began drafting. And they may have done some revising before they were finished drafting. They also may have gone back after a draft was completed and done more inquiry or prewriting activities. The parts of the process weren’t sequential.
To be honest, I feel like the idea in my head is that these processes occur almost linearly most of the time. It makes each step of the process a big mountain to overcome. What if it in fact wasn't that way?