WYZANT WRITING WEEK 3 062722
WRITING BETTER ENGLISH
ETHOS, LOGOS, PATHOS
- STRUNK AND WHITE, ELEMENTS...
- EMERSON, SELF-RELIANCE
- FROST, POETRY, “The Road Less Traveled”
- WEEKLY SHORT ASSIGNMENT
LAST WEEK’S ASSIGNMENT: WHY STUDY WRITING BETTER ENGLISH?
ELEMENTS OF STYLE, CONTINUED
V. AN APPROACH TO STYLE
1. Place yourself in the background.
Unless, of course, you are writing a memoir or
autobiography. Even then, try not to brag.
2. Write in a way that comes naturally.
Write pretty much as you talk.
3. Work from a suitable design.
An outline will help greatly. In a formal piece, your first
paragraph should outline the presentation such that each sentence could be a
suitable topic sentence for a paragraph in the body of the work that follows.
4. Write with nouns and verbs.
Use specific nouns and descriptive verbs.
5. Revise and rewrite.
You will always find something worth improving; however,
don’t let perfectionism cripple you.
Poet ROBERT FROST, "The Road Not Taken”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
ESSAY, "SELF-RELIANCE," RALPH WALDO EMERSON
THIRD PARAGRAPH OF THE ESSAY (BROKEN INTO SENTENCES HERE):
Trust thyself: every
heart vibrates to that iron string.
Accept the place the
divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the
connection of events.
Great men have always
done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age,
betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart,
working through their hands, predominating in all their being.
And we are now men,
and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not
pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and
benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay under the Almighty effort let us
advance on Chaos and the Dark.
What pretty oracles
nature yields us on this text in the face and behavior of children, babes, and
even brutes.
That divided and rebel
mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the
strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not.
Their mind being
whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are
disconcerted.
Infancy conforms to
nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of
the adults who prattle and play to it.
So God has armed youth
and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it
enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, it will stand by itself.
Do not think the youth
has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me.
Hark! in the next room
who spoke so clear and emphatic?
It seems he knows how
to speak to his contemporaries.
Bashful or bold then,
he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.
Chapter Titles from THE SEEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be
Understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
ASSIGNMENT: 150-200 WORDS:
WHY STUDY THE WRITINGS OF OTHER TIMES AND PLACES?
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