Revision and LN2 (20 min)
Go to CourseWeb>Course Documents>Assignment Prompts. Download “Revision Guidelines” and “Learning Narrative 2.”
Things to consider: Use secondary sources and link to them, careful not to get lost in the data analysis, remember your audience, have a specific publication in mind and know their style/org, don’t overstate (okay to be humble and honest here!).
Publication Research:
-Look for 3 publications if you haven’t already. Choose ones that have published on your topic or something similar.
-Do an audience analysis. What are the topics usually in this publication? Who is interested in these topics? How do they talk about these topics? Who usually talks that way? What images are there? Who gravitates toward that sort of aesthetic?
-Choose 5 articles/posts/documents on your topic or a similar topic. What is the tone generally? The organization? The design (e.g., layout, paragraph length, color, images, headers)? How can you mimic some of these elements in your piece?
Style: Emphasis (30-45 min)
I don’t comment in depth on style in your drafts because if I did that you would have a million comments from me, which would be overwhelming and unhelpful. Instead, I like to spend class time on some general points about style that I expect you to apply in your writing.
We won’t get through all of this today, but we will see how far we get and pick back up on this stuff on Thursday (9/26).
The general focus here is emphasis. Much of what we do at the sentence level and with individual words is to try to get our readers to consider one or two things more than the other things in the sentence or in the paragraph. The question is: how do we utilize what we know about language (and, for non-verbal rhetoric, things like images, design, sound, etc.) to make sure we are emphasizing what we want emphasized.
We do (some of) this unconsciously! So some of this stuff might either feel obvious or too small to have an impact. However, we are all individual writers with our own individual quirks, so we don’t do all of these things . Further, being aware of things we do unconsciously will help you do those things even better if you are aware that they are happening. Especially in revision.
Amplification
Generally speaking, amplification happens by trying to mark what is most important. This is very similar to emphasis in general, but there are specific methods from classical rhetoric that can be helpful in terms of what amplifies (and, conversely, what can diminish).
Amplification can be really important for writing with numbers, because, to make them meaningful, we have to point to what is large or small, fast or slow, etc.
Method 1: Strategic Word Choice
This is the most straightforward method. There is no empirical way to measure “stronger” or “weaker” words, but there is a fuzzy way to choose words that will leave more or less of a mark on a reader.
Subtle example: “Access to safely managed drinking water is increasing across Guatemala, but it is increasing at a greater rate in urban areas than rural areas, areas which already suffer from (WEAKER: have) decreased access to safe drinking water compared to urban areas.”
Less subtle: “In the past, students who’ve attended Breakthrough have an extremely (WEAKER: no modifier at all, fairly, slight) high amount of success in making their college dreams come true. “
Method 2: Series Construction
Another fairly straightforward one, here you create a list that either climbs higher in intensity to the highest position or climbs lower to the most diminished.
E.g., He has been arrested for jaywalking, a DUI, and murder.
Another version of this is “topping,” in which your last item almost escapes even belonging in the series. That is how different and how much higher or lower it is. “He was the greatest singer ever–except for Whitney Houston.”
Another version is to have the last item be something you have no words for, or something that you identify that you have nothing more to say. You explicitly mention nothing could possibly be higher or lower.
Method 3: Comparison
To inflate or deflate something, you compare it to something different but similar. Obvious one on the internet: Hitler.
Method 4: Reasoning / Inference
This one is tricky. You want to lead your reader to an inference. For instance, to comment on how successful a military general was, you comment in excess about the army that general opposed: “The Roman army’s professionalism and preparedness was unmatched during its reign” to talk about how good of a general Hannibal was.
Method 5: Copia or Accumulation
Repeating, restating, or any method of staying on a topic by continuing to write about similar material. This keeps the audience’s mind on the same subject. Whereas the previous methods are about salience–that is, having something set a part from something else–this method is about having nothing else in the field of vision but this one item (there is nothing else).
Examples:
“States such as Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida spent far more to reform schools than those in California, Nevada, and Arizona. The South East received a total of $80 million to put toward grants — almost double what the West received.”
“It’s no secret that the “staple” of American Ninja Warrior is the Warped Wall, it’s the most famous obstacle and the one that shows up the most, appearing in 86 of the 122 unique courses throughout the first ten seasons of the show, a whopping 70.5% appearance rate.”
” According to the FBI crime dataset, the number of reported and estimated legacy-definition rapes in the United States increased by 4.7% from 2015 to 2016, the highest number of rapes in almost two decades. “
“So I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I did find that most dog’s just aren’t super smart. In fact, most dogs are very average. That may explain why I have a hard time getting Rex to just stay still sometimes. It may not be because of his small size, but just because of the fact that he is a dog, and sometimes dogs just aren’t that smart. That’s okay, though. I still think Rex is perfect, even if he does act like he’s never been fed in his life”
Activity: Tell your partner the method of amplification you used for Journal 3. Then, have them try to use the same method and same part of the text without telling them what you did. What did they come up with? If time, have them choose a different method and see what they chose to do to help improve the piece.
Punctuation
Punctuation means something. But it also means something in addition to what it means. Take a text message, for example. How do you react to someone who ends a one sentence text with a period? What’s that mean?
Generally speaking, punctuation helps set something a part, and depending on the choice, it can lengthen the amount of time on something at shorter or longer intervals of time. Additionally, punctuation can help keep ideas either more close together or farther a part.
This website on punctuation is a fantastic resource. I won’t cover everything today, but want to hit on a few key ones (in a general order from keeping things most separate to most together)
- Period: separates sentences
- Colon: separates clauses, phrases, and words for emphasis or for lists
- Em-dash: separates clauses, phrases, and words. The most flexible punctuation mark, it can take the place of commas, parentheses, or a colon. EXAMPLE- “On the surface, it seems that, on a national level, schools that applied to utilize the Transformation Model were the most likely to receive grants from the state. This makes sense, too — the Transformation Model is associated with the least amount of risk.”
- Semicolon: separates two independent clauses (IMPORTANT: has to be a complete thought, it does not separate dependent clauses)
- Comma: This thing does a lot. We will talk more about this when we get to sentence types. But just know that when you are interrupting yourself in a sentence to add information, you can often also use an em-dash or parentheses. Maybe with some rearranging you could use a colon or semicolon instead. All said, commas are usually the “quickest” way to emphasize something else and disrupt the flow of a sentence.
These are a hard and fast order, but it is generally true that the period and comma are on opposite ends of the spectrum and the others make up middle points.
Let’s try this out. Rank the following sentences for what you think has the most effective use of emphasis using punctuation.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Sentence Position
Punctuation (sometimes by way of sentence type, see below) often helps us emphasize things by either compensating with bad position in a sentence (e.g., using em-dashes instead of commas in middle of sentence) or to roll into and elongate emphasis at better positions at beginning or end of sentence.
Fahnestock (205-206) notes that, following speech where we often lower our voices or linger slightly on the last word of an utterance, in writing, it is conventionally true that the last position of the sentence will receive the most emphasis.
After that, the beginning of the sentence receives the next most emphasis.
And, if you want to bury something, leave that in the middle portion of the sentence.
Rhythm: Sentence Type and Length
Having a varied rhythm (to include varied lengths of sentences) is important for keeping your reader engaged. Think about a monotoned speaker–boring, right?
However, places where you violate the expected rhythm can also help you make a point, to emphasize something.
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 on sentence types at Purdue OWL with examples):
Simple
Compound
Complex
Compound-Complex
[Also, the fragment]
Activity: Find a paragraph that you think has a great rhythm in general and/or uses varied rhythm to emphasize a point. Label each type of sentence and see how long the sentences are (you can calculate average length of sentences here and then just highlight each sentence to see word count).
If time, find a paragraph that you want to vary the rhythm a bit more or want to emphasize a point a bit more. Try to combine or separate out sentences using different sentence type, length, and punctuation.
Coherence: “Given/New” Principle
One of the best ways to think about coherence is the given/new principle in writing.
Generally speaking, the opening of a sentence (‘given’) contains information that the reader already knows and the ending of a sentence (‘new’) contains new information. The ‘given’ information is based on one of two sources:
- Something that is common knowledge or transition words that signal reference (explicit or implicit—as in, inserting common knowledge at beginning that wasn’t mentioned yet, having a sentence of only new information because the new information implies the old/common knowledge, or a transition marker that refers back)
- Something that was referred to in the previous sentence or earlier in the passage.
Here is an example from one of your drafts that illustrates the Given/New principle really well. Does it read smoothly to you?
One trend that the data showed that isn’t a common trend is the increase in precipitation. The total precipitation in Pittsburgh has consistently increased since 2009. In 2009 there was 29.55 inches of precipitation, and in 2018, the value had risen all the way to 66.71. This observation could mean several things. One, it could be that the increase in temperature has increased the rate of evaporation, resulting in more rain and snow. It could also mean that the changing temperatures could be causing a change in the weather patterns around the Earth, and this could shift the winds and pressures that would force the clouds to end up over Pittsburgh. Additionally, it could be that the higher temperatures are melting more snow in the mountains around Pittsburgh, raising the volume of water in the rivers, increasing the likelihood of evaporation. All of these are possible explanations for the increase in precipitation, but at this point there is not enough research to back any of these ideas. If this trend continues, it would be worth researching to better understand what to expect for the future of precipitation in Pittsburgh.
If you are a writer that frequently gets comments on papers that your writing is “clunky” or hard to follow, this can be one fairly easy method to improve the readability for your reading.
Register Mixing
This is a term from linguistics and essentially refers to word clusters or patterns in syntax (i.e., sentence order/arrangement) that frequently re-occur around a specific topic or tone: formality, discipline of study, workplace, industry, etc.
Writing in a given situation means learning the appropriate register or registers (e.g., register for a journalistic piece with a public audience may be a register slightly or even drastically different from register used for public writing on a factsheet on a webpage for a government agency).
Shifting and mixing registers can also have rhetorical effect.
Rhetoric scholar Jeanne Fahnestock (2011, p. 87) notes that it could be as little as a word or it could be a phrase or sentence. For instance, a long academic passage with clusters of words like hypothesis, generality, explanation could suddenly have a word like “bullshit” in there. Such a word draws attention to itself not only by its own force, but by its contrast between a register that word normally occurs in compared to the register it is contrasting with.
Register mixing involves a more extensive integration between registers. Fahnestock (p. 88) cites the following example from a money market fund’s seminannual report:
The first six months of 2003 were a good period for both stocks and bonds. Interest rates continued to fall and stock prices rose broadly. In addition, new tax cut legislation was enacted and corporate earnings showed signs of improvement.
American Balanced Fund posted a total return of 10.0% for the six-month period ended June 30. The fund outpaced the Lipper Balanced Fund Index, which had a total return of 8.9%. Stocks, as measured by Standard & Poor’s 500 Composite Index, gained 11.8%. Bonds, as measured by the Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond Index, rose 3.9%. The market indexes are unmanaged. (cited in Fahnestock; American Balanced Fund 2003, 1).
What is the difference in information provided in paragraph 1 compared to paragraph 2? What does that tell you about mixing of registers and why it might have occurred?
You might also mix registers when mixing dialects or other languages. For instance, if you speak and write in a community that would respond well to versions of African American Vernacular English, Spanish, or South Philly white working class English, you could mix in words, phrases, or entire sentences inflected with a dialect or language.
Doing so can make a point of emphasis (like the world “bullshit”), as a way to build solidarity with an audience that might also speak that language or dialect, or through other rhetorical aims that take advantage of the symbolizing effect of using a different language/dialect or just the rhetorical force from a given instance of that language/dialect as compared to the Standard English version.
E.g., “Is there anyway to complete the report by the proposed deadline, are we really gonna get that (or ‘dat’) jawn goin by then (or ‘den’)?”
There’s nothing inherently “more” or “less” valuable about one langauge or dialect as compared to another. It is also very difficult to pin down exactly what “Standard English” even is. Truthfully, any instance of what someone could call Standard English in a given instance will have some mixture of register going on.
Mixing in dialects and other languages happens more often than you think (especially in speech), but you should “read the room” before thinking strategically about how you might use it with an overt rhetorical purpose in writing or speech.
Next Time
-Read chapter 8 in Miller on examples and analogies
-work on public writing revision and LN2
-We are getting busy soon! So don’t fall behind. Start revising now. Will have comments to you by end of day today or early tomorrow.