Sunday, August 7, 2022

WRITING BETTER ENGLISH, LESSON 6

KEYS TO PERSUASION:

ETHOS – AUTHORITY

LOGOS - REASON

PATHOS – EMOTION

 

CLASSIC RESOURCES:

- STRUNK AND WHITE, THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

- EMERSON, “SELF-RELIANCE”

- FROST, POETRY, “The Road Not Taken”

- WEEKLY SHORT ASSIGNMENT: “The Road Not Taken”

 LAST WEEK’S WRITING ASSIGNMENT: 150-250 WORDS ON: KIPLING’S “IF”

 

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE, CONTINUED

IV. WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS COMMONLY MISUSED

Allude vs. elude

Among vs. between

And/or

As yet vs. yet

Can vs. may

Data is plural

Disinterested vs. uninterested

Effect vs. affect

 

ESSAY, "SELF-RELIANCE," RALPH WALDO EMERSON

 

FIRST LINE OF FIFTH PARAGRAPH OF THE ESSAY (BROKEN INTO SENTENCES HERE):

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. 

LAST LINES

though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by-and-by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

 

SIXTH AND SEVENTH PARAGRAPHS FROM EMERSON’S “SELF-RELIANCE”

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule.

There is the man and his virtues.

Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade.

Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,—as invalids and the insane pay a high board.

Their virtues are penances.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live.

My life is not an apology, but a life.

It is for itself and not for a spectacle.

I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.

I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding.

My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.

I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions.

I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent.

I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right.

Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.

It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

 

 

 

 

POEM: FROST’S “THE ROAD NOT TAKEN”

The Road Not Taken 

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BY ROBERT FROST

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.

 

REMINDER  / REVIEW

Chapter Titles from THE 7 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

 

WRITING ASSIGNMENT: 150-250 WORDS ON FROST’S “THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

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