Monday, February 28, 2011
Brought to you by Edward James Olmos & James Franco
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Writing With Style
I have always been interested in style, whether it is in song lyrics, textbooks, novels or other written material. I am glad we had the opportunity this week to learn about writing with style. I found it interesting how free you are as a writer to break the rules. The text even mentions considering fragments and run-ons. If you know what you are doing and it works, then why not? If you are going to break such a rule it is important that you make sure it works, otherwise your writing strength will suffer instead of improve.
There are other ways to create style in your writing as well. I liked the part of the text that talked about playing with words. That section explains how creating words can add to your style. It is also a good idea to make sure you use proper words. For example, instead of writing, “talk a lot” you could write, “jabber”, “yammer”, or “chatter”. It is also a good idea to vary the length of your sentences. When every sentence is short, it can make the writing seem dull and choppy. The risk of using many long sentences is that it can cause the audience to lose interest.
Moving along to grammatical errors, I love the made-up word “irregardless”. It is a word that simply could not exist. I didn’t see it written anywhere but I have a friend who uses it liberally even though he knows it’s wrong. It goes to show that breaking rules can add style to speech as well as writing.
Showing and Telling
This week I started reading A.E. Hotchner's personal memoir about dealing with Ernest Hemingway. In it he switches between showing and telling frequently. One section of writing starts off by saying, "Ernest's suite was well attended when I got there." It then goes on like this: In the center of the room was a round table on which rested two silver ice buckets, each containing a bottle of Perrier-Jouet, a huge blue tin of beluga caviar, a salver of toast, a bowl of finely chopped onions, a bowl of lemon slices, a salver of smoked salmon and a thin vase containing two yellow tea roses.
Passive voice aside, he could have just removed the first sentence and only had the second since the second shows and doesn't tell.
The Only Good Lobster is Real Lobster
I have had a problem in the past with using bad cliches and not giving intense detail where it is due. In the future, I think I could analyze what I am writing about and make sure I give correct attribution to details. I could also use fewer bad cliches, and maybe make up some of my own.
Anyway. Here is that picture. Anyone ever had Main Lobster?
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Show, Don't Tell
Another important writing tip is to use quotations. Whenever I write a broadcast story, I always try to have people tell the story. A strong quote adds power and credibility to a story. Some quotes are boring and don't make sense, so you need to be careful which quotes you decide to use.
The editing mistake I found this week was on the news. One of the anchors said that a drunk man had been arrested. According to the AP style book, they should have said the drunken man. Although the sentence the anchor said was not grammatical, I think it sounded better because drunken would sound awkward.
Eye of the beholder
For this weeks editing mistake, I don't know how this went unnoticed but here you go. I'm sure they meant Angus burger, but needless to say I will not be going to a McDonald's that sells Anus burgers.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Right Words
I know I'm a little late due to being out of town over the holiday but I wanted to post anyway. This week I found that using the right word is something you need to be very careful of. To find out why, I needed to look no further than this weeks Power Point presentation. How many times do we use incorrect words in our everyday speech? One that stuck out to me first is the use of “whether or not”. The “or not” part is implied in this instance, so it is a little redundant to say, “We will go whether or not it rains tomorrow”. You can simply remove the “or not” part and have the sentence still make sense. Another common mistake in our spoken language is the use of “off of” versus “off”. I never realized until listening to this weeks lecture that “off of” should NEVER be used. This is definitely something that I will need to focus on in my speech and writing because it is a mistake I know that I constantly make. Simply saying, “Get off of me!” is incorrect. “Get off me!” is be the correct sentence. There are several words out there that may seem correct but that should not be used. This week’s lecture and assignment really made me think and also helped me learn the importance of correct word use.
In Love
I noticed an editing error this week that sort of threw me off. This particular error had me second guessing my editing knowledge and doing some research in the stylebook. I was looking at In-N-Out Burger’s website for nutritional information (or lack thereof) and came across what I believe to be an editing mistake. Under the Food Quality subheading there is a passage that says, “We do all of this in our facility on our property in Baldwin Park, Ca.” The “AP Stylebook” says all states that need to be abbreviated should be done so with capital letters, as in CA, not Ca. If anyone knows any other rule that makes the Ca. version OK please let me know!
Brought to you by Battlestar Galactica & Justin Bieber
Sunday, February 20, 2011
The List
I have heard that English is the hardest language to learn, and now I see why. We have different words for everything and according to the text, more than 300 of them sound exactly like the other. I was talking to Dr. J after the test last week and I confessed that I find myself typing and speaking in a conscious effort to avoid using who/whom. After reading Appendix B, I think I just added some of those 300+ words to do the same thing to.
The man did not sell illicit drugs. The man sold drugs that are not legally permissible to sell.
Thank god for Auto-correct, right?
Right/Rite/Write Words
I am just glad that the men and women who developed the modern English language are dead and gone and all we have to do is conform to their rules, because if they were still alive, we would be having many angry conferences about why they insist on having so many words that sound the same with totally different meanings and ways to use them.
Homonyms and Homophones
The editing mistake I found this week was in the book I'm reading, "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." It's on page 70, and one of the characters is talking and using semicolon's all over the place. He says, "I am by no means of the opinion that a ball of this kind...can have any evil tendency; and I shall hope to be honored with the hands of all of my fair cousins in the course of the evening..." the sentence continues, and after every independent clause there is a semicolon and a coordinating conjunction, which we learned way back in the first weeks is a no-no. Only one or the other should be used, but not both together.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Euphemism
Loathe/Loath
Being a curious traveller of out-of-shape proportions, I went walking in downtown Salt Lake City. I saw a homeless man with a cardboard sign since those are always in vogue with the homeless population. The sign said, "I am loathe to risk my beauty." I'm pretty sure he meant, "I am loath to risk my beauty." Or he meant he loathes to risk his wrinkly goodness. But either way, It's a case of choosing the right words, and he chose....poorly.
Another Week's Blog
The editing mistake I found this week was in my own writing. I was adding notes to a Photoshop assignment. The notes explained the techniques I used to change the picture. I wrote, "I used the saturation tool to effect the color of the picture's background." When I was proofreading my notes, I realized affect should be used because I was using the word as a verb.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Week 7
I took the test on Monday and it was easier than I expected. Then today I picked up my test at Sheree's office and realized that maybe it wasn't as easy as I thought.
I am seriously struggling with what to write for this weeks assignment. I keep deleting it. I am glad this week's work load was lighter with only two items due. I felt like I didn't learn a ton. For the right word assignment I had to look many of them up.
As for editing mistakes this week, I had a chance to edit a press release. Honestly, they did an impressive job when it came to punctuation, but I did have to fix a few of the style choices that they used. They used an acronym before spelling it out earlier in the release and instead of using quotations they italicised a phrase. Normally the italicised phrase would be fine according to AP style, but for the press release purpose it wasn’t.
Again, the Grammar Gods are Cursing Me
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Right Words
This assignment also brought attention to words that sound the same but are only grammatically correct in certain ways. For example, fewer and less. Affect and effect still cause some issues but I am getting better at analyzing the definitions with further concentration on the context of the sentence. One item that I had absolutely no clue about was blond and blonde. I thought blonde was always blonde until the AP style book corrected me. How did everyone do on the test? Well I hope!
p.s. I still cannot comment on the blogs!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Queen of Bull S%!$
In other news, the test wasn't so horrible, however, I did feel there were one or two unfair questions that I'm sure I'll take up with Sheree.
For my mistake of the week, I was looking up record-long sentences. Look at this whopper and don't feel so bad for your clarity and conciseness mistakes.
Taken from Philip Roth’s A Plot Against America
Nearly Halfway There!
I originally thought I had a pretty good grasp on the meanings of different words that sounds alike, but I was mistaken. I thought I knew one, looked it up and realized I was wrong. The homework was definitely a great lesson and learning experience.
I realized I’ve forgotten to write about editing errors I’ve encountered for the last few weeks! Oops! This week I caught one in an email at my work. I can’t copy and paste the full email for privacy reasons but there were several mistakes that I caught. She typed “17 year old” instead of 17-year-old and missed several commas and other punctuation.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Brought to you by Arcade Fire & Russell Brand
Writing with Clarity
The editing mistake I found was in another blog that I read. It was made by one of my friends who, unfortunately, doesn’t have the best grammar. A mistake that she frequently makes is mixing up ‘where’ and ‘were.’ It really bothers me because I don’t think it’s that hard to keep them straight! In the same blog post she had these two sentences: “Really, they where rather easy to make.” And, “I’m not sure were the pictures went.” Some people make some interesting mistakes!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Clarity
I would say most people have dreaded having to write essays for school ever since elementary. Looking back, I remember they always had to be a certain length or contain a certain number of pages done in a certain size of font. The only good thing seemed to be that you could type them double-spaced. I would often add useless words and redundant phrases in an effort to obtain the minimum page requirements. This type of thing is exactly what the text is talking about when it mentions redundancy and wordiness. Use of the word “very” comes to mind when I think of wordiness, and the lecture included other intensifiers that should be avoided such as “really”, “extremely”, “severely”, etc. The text gives examples of redundancy such as “end result”, “repeat again”, and “completely destroyed”. Making these mistakes hinders the clarity and conciseness of your writing, making it difficult on the reader. I have found this week that you can add a lot to a sentence by writing it in active voice and choosing appropriate words. Chapter nine in the book gives a lot of good instruction on what not to do if you want to be a clear and concise writer. I suppose what you should do, then, is the opposite of what the book says. Avoid jargon, redundancy, wordiness, etc. Make your sentences easy to read and easy to understand.
For my grammar error this week I thought I would mention a certain banker who I came across. It was actually a co-worker of mine who works in a different department. He might as well have been speaking a foreign language because just about every other word that came out of his mouth was jargon that I had no clue about. Although this was not something I had read, it showed me how the use of jargon can be completely confusing for people.
A Cluttered World
The other day I listened to a radio commercial about cars. I don't know much about cars, but I do know about people inflating the amount of words they need to use. the announcer went on and on about a sales pitch that bordered on annoying. If he would have went the simple route I still wouldn't have bought a car since that requires cash, but I would've appreciated him more. He said things like, " I have a surplus of cars, and this surplus caused me to lower my prices!" He could have saved some radio time and money by saying, "I have too many cars, and they must go!"
Spartacus Cannot Speak
When I saw that we were going to study being concise and clarity, I immediately thought back to this show. The script that these actors read off of is nothing more than a knife to the English language, and the actors serve as the butchers. Instead of saying, "I will kill you and feel good about it when we fight in the arena" these actors would say something like "When we battle in the arena, I will take your life in honor of myself, my house and whatever god they are looking to in order to channel strength and power. No don't get me wrong, the prophetic nature of which they speak (<-- see)is highly entertaining and it masks bad acting with even worse acting, there is something fascinating about their lingo.
I wonder what would happen if I started speaking this way. Maybe I will do it just to see the reactions I get.
For those who have yet to see Spartacus, consider this mathematical equation:
(Gladiator) + (300) = SPARTACUS!!!
Clarity and conciseness
I must admit that I am somewhat worried about the test. I'm sure that I am over analyzing the situation, but I'm still petrified of taking it. Has anyone taken it yet? Also, I noticed that there is an extra credit section in the grade portion of blackboard. Does anyone know if we are going to get extra credit for this class? Good luck the rest of the way everyone.
- suffering from "senioritis" aka Deric -
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Say What You Mean
A professor I had recently said, "Say what you mean, and mean what you say." This quote kept popping into my mind while reading the chapter. Don't use jargon or words the average person won't understand. Write clear, concise sentences. It's important to think about each individual word in the sentence to make sure it is contributing to the meaning of the sentence. If a word is distracting, remove it. When I remember those rules, I write better sentences.
The editing mistake I found this week was at my brother's basketball game. My sister and I are always the loudest in the audience and scream whenever our team steals the ball or makes a basket. One of the player's parents loves that we get into the games. The dad gave us a note. The first sentence said, "Your stentorian, loud cheering helps the team win games." Honestly, what in the world does stentorian mean?! I looked it up, and stentorian means loud. The sentence is repetitive, and the word loud should be used to make the sentence easier to understand.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Precious Time
Clearly, I love using wordy sentences. It’s one of my weaknesses but also one of the things I so thoroughly enjoy about free-writing. Writing academically drains my creativity at times so it’s always fun to write a blog and just let the words flow how I want them to.
Both the “clarity” and the “conciseness” assignment opened my eyes. Sure, sometimes the exaggerated sentences sound better to the writer, but the reader typically wants quick, short, understandable sentences. Word choice is so important in academic and professional style writing. When people read printed or virtual media, they expect the hard facts and they expect them now. Time, precious as is it, cannot be wasted trudging through meaningless and unnecessary words.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Possessive
Possessive case can be somewhat confusing. Sometimes an apostrophe is required, and sometimes one is not. Some possessive case words are homophones, which can lead to confusion about which form of the word is correct. Whose/who’s, and their/there/they’re, are two examples of these homophones. For this reason, it is also important to recognize what a contraction is and what contractions mean. For example, who’s is a contraction for “who is”. If you said “Who’s glass of milk is on the table?”, it would not make any sense. It would be as though you said, “who is glass of milk…” This is a dangerous grammatical mistake, perhaps because it is not easily noticeable. You may be reading the mistake and not even catch it because it sounds the exact same as the correct word. Mistakenly using there instead of their might be even more unnoticeable because neither word is a contraction and both sound the same. In fact, I find myself using the wrong world fairly often, but I usually am able to catch myself.
Another tidbit I learned about possessives is that an apostrophe is not used with personal pronouns. Some indefinite pronouns do use an apostrophe. This looks like just another one of the many detailed rules to grammar.
The grammatical mistake I found this work is yet another homophone. A restaurant marquee using the world "then" when it should be "than". Their marquee said "choose a side more then just fries". It seems like I come across this mistake almost every day.
Verb tenses:
As for the grammar errors, this week at work I found that many of my colleagues don't know how to use proper grammar. I saw many uses of "who's" instead of "whose" and "it's" instead of "its." This is one area I feel comfortable with. It is not difficult for me to grasp this set of rules like it is for some of the others. I was reading notes left on a client's account by one of our brokers and he had written "the client had it's card stolen." First of all, "it" should not have been used. It should have been he. Even if it was correct for him to use "it" he should not have had an apostrophe. It made me chuckle to myself, but I'm sure I have made mistakes like that also so I couldn't criticize too much.
Case vs. Case
On to the test. Anyone else sweating bullets? I'm just throwing this out there, but I think Dr. J should have to take the test too; but closed book. I'm just saying that it is almost impossible for someone to retain all this knowledge, and after the review I think it is safe to say that she can. I would like to see what score she would get. Anyone else?
I found zero grammatical errors this week because instead of searching for everyone else's mistakes, I was too worried about mine!
Subject-Verb Agreement
When I walk down aisles at grocery stores I like to read the labels of the food that barely qualifies as food. i like to read the labels on the cereals called names like Marshmallows of the Breaded Variety. Or something to that extent. I walked by one cereal that had a coupon sticking out so I grabbed it. The coupon had its subject-verb agreement mixed up. The coupon said, "Buy one and another are free." the coupon, if a person, would be called a poor communicator. The coupon should have read, "Buy one and another is free." Well, it really should have said "Buy one and get one free." But that is for another post.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Keep It Parallel
One of my biggest grammar pet peeves is changing tenses mid-sentence. For example, if your first verb ends in -ing, stay consistent with the -ing tense throughout the sentence. When you shift from past tense to present tense to future tense within one thought, the message of the sentence becomes unclear.
One point I had never thought of before was changing voice. Changing voice means you switch from passive voice to active voice. We all know using active voice is better, but if you must use passive, make sure to stay passive throughout the sentence. If your writing isn't consistent, it confuses the reader.
The editing mistake I found this week was actually in a text. One of the reporters who writes stories for my show wrote, "Whose anchoring the show today?" Granted it's only a text message, but it is still poor grammar. The word whose is in the possessive form. In the sentence he texted me, he should have used the word who's indicating the contraction who is.
That's all I have to say this week. Good luck on the test everybody!
Test next week...
This week has definitely been the hardest so far for me. There are so many rules to remember! Who would have thought that there could be so much to know about pronouns! You’ve got to keep the types straight, some can be considered plural or singular in different situations, and you have to make sure they always match their antecedent. Not to mention who/whom and who/that. I wouldn’t say any one rule is particularly hard, it’s just that there are so many of them! My brain is being overloaded with information!
I went to the review for the test today, and that was very helpful. I think my favorite part was a hint we discussed regarding who vs. whom: who stands in for he or she, while whom stands in for him or her. So if you can reorder the sentence and replace who with he or she and it makes sense, then you’ve done it correctly! I’m not sure if I explained that very clearly, but it really helped me to get a handle on who/whom so that I can understand it. I think I’m ready for this test, but we’ll see!
The grammar mistake I found this week was a particularly funny one. I was looking through some of my photos and found one that I had taken of a student’s comment on rateyourprofessor.com. What’s even funnier is that the teacher (who shall remain nameless) is an English teacher! I don’t know if the student was actually serious when they posted this, or if they were just trying to be funny, but either way it’s a pretty hideous use of the English language!
Review
The proper use of who and whom has been giving me a headache since I started to dissect its proper usage. Simplification is necessary in my opinion to understand some of the rules of usage. For example, I think of who as the subject and replace the who with he or she. I think of whom as the object and replace it with him or her.
Another aspect of today's learning experience was the use of that and which. That is essential with no commas, while which is non-essential with commas. Similar rules apply with the use of good and well. For example, I am good. Good would be used because of the linking verb in between I and good. I am doing well. Well would be used because of the adverb doing.
Looks like our test is next week. Good luck everyone!
Friday, February 4, 2011
Glitz and Fluff
I thought the degrees of adjectives were interesting as well. It reminded me of the scene in Tangled between the wicked queen and Rapunzel, 'I love you,' 'I love you more,' 'I love you most'.
While growing up I learned that you should never say “me.” You should always use “I” instead. Therefore, this has been a very confusing concept to me, or as I learned growing up, this has been a very confusing concept to I. Do you wonder where I went to school? Between you and me, I am still somewhat confused about this concept. I will have to study up on it more.
As for editing errors, I do not like cutesy misspelled words. One example would be Krispy Kreme. I was watching the Simpsons this week and I noticed that they used these cutesy words in one of their episodes. Bart got his own news show entitled “Kidz Newz , Newz Kidz can Uze.” I guess these titles attract attention, but I still do not like them.
Another Week.
I am a passive writer, normally. It is just what I do. How do you make a passive writer an active writer? I have no clue, but the book does. As I read, they shared the valuable concept of avoiding there is/there are constructions. I am queen at using there is and there are. The more I write the better I become at not using this construct. Gradually, I will be the best at creating creative sentences that are void of there is/there are.
My passive writing abilities are changing. I will write emails now and as I am reviewing, questions pop up in my mind like “how can you make this sentence more active?” Is it working? Maybe, I’m not sure yet. I did get an e-mail back from my mom the other day yelling at me for not using well to describe how I am doing. Sheree, you would like my mom. She is grammatically savvy.
Onto my editing adventure. For work I had to go to the archive office in the library and look at Signposts from the 1960s. As I was reading through some of the articles I picked up on spelling mistakes. I found the word stand spelt as standd. Other than that my week was pretty low key.
Blog...
What concept did I learn for week three? Let me see. I gained insight on secret number three, “Organize Your Thoughts.” As I was reading through it, I was struck with how simple this step was in writing. Personally, I have never been one to strategically sit down and plan out my method of writing. After careful thought about this I am realizing that it is probably smart to sit down and follow this simple secret.
After realizing that I need to be better at planning, I took into consideration the concept of revising and I applied it. At work I wrote this profile about a man on campus. I handed in my first draft to be edited and it came back dripping in red. I went through four or five drafts before it finally came to a point where the editors liked what they saw. Revise, revise, revise. Well, I did and hopefully the final product looks better than the first.
As for editing mistakes, I am horrible at finding them. They are all around me and yet my eye just doesn’t see them easily. Horrible I know. What I did notice was how bad people are at using capitals and punctuation on facebook. Where are the capitals and the commas people? I was looking at a cousin’s post and “i” was used a million times and to no avail she did not capitalize them. Shocking, I know. She’s 16 so I’ll let it slide, but I bet her English teacher wouldn’t.
The Book was Wrong...
The Case of the Missing Comma
This editing stuff is A LOT more complicated than I ever expected! The “cases” assignment pretty much freaked me out. I can spot the mistakes but I have a really hard time justifying why they need to be changed at all.
Amid all of the complicated vocabulary and countless rules, I am finding myself becoming more editorially analytical on a daily basis. For example, the other day I received a baby shower invitation for my stepsister-in-law and immediately noticed a punctuation error (the case of the missing comma).
Last week I edited an assignment for my group in one of my classes and was able to catch mistakes I know I wouldn’t have caught before. So as overwhelming as it can be to read rules upon rules every week, something must be sticking in this brain of mine!