Sentence Style: Types, Variety, Emphasis (30 min)
Activity: Go to either the long version of your biography or one of your cover letters. Copy/paste into http://countwordsworth.com/wordspersentence to get the average sentence length you have. Then, count the number of words in each sentence.
Is there a lot of variance (i.e., are your sentences mostly close to the average or is there a wide range)?
Sentence Variety and Engaging Writing
For some writing, sentence variety will not matter as much. In short emails, in short memos, in some policy writing or some technical documents (especially instructions). However, writing that is longer and writing that you might worry people will stop paying attention to? Sentence variety is one trick you have as a writer to keep readers engaged.
One way to vary sentences is to make them different lengths. You can do this by cutting or adding to them. You may intuitively have a sense to do this. Whether you do or do not, though, knowing the units of words is one way to help: adding/removing phrases, expanding a dependent clause into an independent clause as a new sentence, combining sentences into one sentence with multiple independent clauses, etc.
The Phrase: Missing a subject or a verb, but as a collection of words, has meaning potential.
Examples: The dog with the ball. From there, they went to the park.
The Clause: a subject and a verb (often also includes phrases and words that modify the subject and verb).
Examples: He [subj] ran [verb]. She [subj] jumped [verb] up and down [adverbial phrase]. They [subj] jumped [verb] high [adverb] before stopping for a break [prepositional phrase].
The Independent Clause: It forms a complete sentence and thought, but can have other words, phrases, or clauses that modify it.
Examples: He ran. They jumped high before stopping for a break.
The Dependent Clause: It has a subject and a verb, but it needs an independent clause to complete the thought.
Example: While they were tired, they were able to muster enough energy to complete the task.
Sentences: An independent clause or a combination of independent and dependent clauses.
Examples: [any of the examples for independent clause or the full sentence for dependent clause example]
Sentence Types: The four types of sentences, based on structure, are (more at Purdue OWL with examples):
Simple
Compound
Complex
Compound-Complex
[Also, the fragment]
Sentence Variety and Rhetoric: Proximity and Emphasis
Very Far: It was a rough day for Melissa. She had to cover a second shift for her friend at work. And now she was stranded. Because her car broke down. Great.
Far: It was a rough day for Melissa. She had to cover a second shift for her friend at work. Plus, now she was stranded at work because her car broke down.
Close: It was a rough day for Melissa, especially since she had to cover a second shift for her friend at work. Plus, now she was stranded at work because her car broke down.
Very Close: It was a rough day for Melissa, especially since she had to cover a second shift for her friend at work; now she was stranded in her broken down car.
Using em-dashes, along with semicolons and colons, can utilize proximity for purposes of emphasis.
–Very close with greater pause for dependent clause: It was a rough day for Melissa–especially since she had to cover a second shift for her friend at work; now she was stranded in her broken down car.
–Very close with longer pause for rhetorical triplet: It was a rough day for Melissa: she had to cover a second shift for her friend, her car broke down, and now she is stranded.
This punctuation guide website is a wonderful resource.
Much of this, too, depends on position in the sentence. Generally, the ranking of position of emphasis in English is:
- End of Sentence
- Beginning of Sentence
- Middle of Sentence
Periodic sentence: ends with the independent clause (suspense builds toward that last point).
Loose sentence: begins with independent clause (starts with point and then qualifies–might create more caveats or doubts about a point).
A sentence that opens with modifiers is left-branching. Example: Always fond of a free meal, he made sure to get there early.
A sentence that ends with modifiers is right-branching. Example: He got there early, never one to miss a chance at a free meal.
A sentence that has its modifier(s) interrupt the subject and the verb is middle-branching. Example: He–never one to miss a chance at a free meal–got there early.
What are the rhetorical advantages of interrupting with a middle-branch?
Most sentences in written English are left-branching, but all three are used often enough for differing purposes.
[Slide 17 example of same sentence with left, middle, and right branching]
Activity: Return to document you looked at in first activity. Revise a sentence by cutting, combining, etc. via what we talked about in regard to word units, sentence type, proximity, punctuation, emphasis, and/or branching. What was the different rhetorical effect in the new version?
Workshop Two Job App Projects (30-45 min)
I have three separate job app projects that I wanted to look at together with you all. One we will spend a good deal of time on, and if time, we will get to the others.
One was based on someone who, relatively, had a lot of experience for the jobs they were applying for. I thought this person generally did a really good job strategically customizing while also being direct and efficient in their language.
The other two do a good job at taking on the register of the job ad and had some rhetorical savvy for utilizing experience that is not explicitly relevant to the job ad to make the case for their abilities aligning with the job ad’s requirements.
Unit 1 Project Revision (30-45 min)
Let’s check in on this.
Break (10 min)
Genre / Letters, Memos, and Emails (30 min)
Genre: The Automated Rhetorical Situation
Any responses from people in industry? What are all the workplace genres you can think of?
Activity: For homework, you had to choose which genre for which situation and create an outline for one of those situations. Group off in 4s and talk about your rationales. We will come back and discuss.
The Memo: What’s it for? Conventions? When to violate?
The Letter: What’s it for? Conventions? When to violate?
The Email: What’s it for? Conventions? When to violate?
Activity: As a group, write a memo that summarizes the genre conventions for memos, letters, and emails. Include any information that you think is particularly important (e.g., style/tone for emails, netiquette, direct vs. indirect memos) for writers. You won’t include *all* information from the chapter, since this is a summary. See example memos on our CourseWeb in Course Documents so you can get a better sense of formatting possibilities than you can see in the chapter.
After drafting a memo as a group (or, if short on time, an outline with a plan for each paragraph or section), compose an email that goes out to the class informing them that the memo is attached and how they can use the memo.
Unit 2 Project Check-in (30-45 min)
Want to talk to as many people as I can about initial ideas for Unit 2 project. As you wait, use your time either on Unit 1 revisions or start working on Unit 2 project.
*Let’s group up based on the option you selected. I’ll come around and talk to you in those groups.
Design and Accessibility (10-15 min)
We will start our discussion on these topics based on reading for today, and continue this during beginning of next class.
What do you value about design? What about accessibility? Go to the readings to help you think through this. I’ll give you a few minutes to review. Let’s list them out on the board.
Some additional items to consider:
Alternative text: *Stephanie Kerschbaum on image descriptions
To serif or not to serif?: Based on many studies, feels like the idea of serif or sans serif being better online vs. print is too simplisitic. It really doesn’t matter in older media, and matters even less now with better screen resolution, updated fonts, etc. Contrast is useful, though, if you want to separate headers from body text, etc.
Difference between design and accessibility? Next time we will do an activity to better think through this question.
Review
-Use revision as an opportunity to see how you can keep your reader engaged (cohesion with given/new, variety with sentence types/lengths) and land the points you want to make (position and emphasis).
-As you revise job app materials, consider strategic customization, clean design possibilities, adapting your register to the company in targeted way, and thinking critically about your experience as relevant.
-As we write in more genres, we have to think how we adapt our approaches and as we enter more situations, we have to think critically about the appropriate genre to choose.
-Finally, design and accessibility are two crucial elements of ANY document you write, not matter what its purpose. Even the most boring document imaginable can be improved by critical attention to these elements.
Next Time
-Will continue design/accessibility
-Will talk about research in workplace
-Will talk about report and proposal writing
-Will have more studio time on projects
-New potential due dates (discussed earlier in class)
For next class: see schedule for readings. Keep up with Unit 1 and Unit 2 projects.