Now that we got some style fresh on our mind, I want you to choose one paragraph that you have written in this class and revise it with at least two of the elements of style from the previous page in mind.
In a comment below, do the following:
- Paste the original paragraph
- Paste the revised paragraph with at least two of the elements of style from the previous page in mind incorporated into your revision
- Explain what you revised and why.
After commenting, click on the button below to continue.
Original paragraph:
“So, while my view of Chinese is more like how one would study a Renaissance painting, or critique a statue, English to me is more of a tool that I use to navigate my environment. I’m sure there is plenty of English literature that is worth observing, but I don’t think that I’ve had enough exposure to it to the degree that I would appreciate it as much as I do with Chinese literature. And even if I do, there will likely be aspects from both that would disparately differentiate them from each other.”
New Paragraph
While my attitude towards Chinese is similar to how one would study a painting, English is like a tool I use to navigate my environment. I’m sure there are plenty of English literature that is worth observing. However, I don’t think I’ve had enough exposure of them to the degree that I would appreciate it as much as I do for Chinese literature. And even if I do, there will likely be aspects from both that would disparately differentiate them from each other.
Explanation
First, I revised the first sentence. I cut it to about 2/3 the length it was before. I feel that if I can explain something in 15 words, I shouldn’t need to use 25.
Second, I used punctuation to shorten my third sentence. I replaced “but” with “However” so that the long sentence can be broken into two shorter sentences. I think that it made the sentences easier to understand.
Original:
I am proud to be a Jew. I am proud to be an American… but just because I am proud of who I am, does not mean that I need to make my identity be known to the world. I am sure that my stance on this idea of “being proud of your language” is controversial. Some people may call my theory dumb or selfish; while I agree that it may be selfish not to contribute to a cause bigger than myself, again, I think it is best to simply support from the sidelines and live my life in peace without fear.
New:
“I am proud to be a Jew. I am proud to be an American. However, that does not mean that I need to make my identity be known to the world. My stance on this idea of “being proud of your language” is controversial to some. My theory may be seen as dumb or selfish; while I agree that it may be selfish not to contribute to a cause bigger than myself, again, I think it is best to support from the sidelines and live my life in peace without fear. Ignorance is bliss.”
Explenation:
I mainly cut everything down and simplified my sentence structure. By doing this, I am getting sttarght to the point and am getting rid of any fluff or unnecessary information that can be found in the paragraph. In turn, the sentences become more professional, straight to the point, and easier to read.
Before:
“Kyun, Papa?” I questioned my father, who had been sitting back on the couch hugging his cup of chai to his chest. A mischievous smile impregnated his face. “Someone told me Maria’s asked too many questions. I should have listened.”
After: “Kyun, Papa?” I questioned my father, who had been sitting back on the couch hugging his cup of chai to his chest. A mischievous smile spread across his face. “Someone told me Maria’s asked too many questions. I should have listened”.
Explaination: The main correction was of word choice. Previously, I had used the word impregnated to describe movement of the facial emotions. I later substituted the word spread. My original thought process in choosing the word impregnated was to use a word that conveyed that the smile gradually spread across his face and became really evident and bright. Although I had considered the word spread I felt it was inadequate for how I wanted to describe the smile. But as I have learned, in word choice sometimes is better just to go with simple words instead of complicating the writing and making it harder for the reader to connect with the writing.
Original paragraph
Murray reinforces the importance of revision by noting that a writer must be his or her own worst enemy. According to the author, a writer must “detach themselves from their own page so they can apply both their caring and their craft to their own work” (Page 196). He further notes that detaching oneself is not always easy but that its an effective way of revising because it allows writers to accept criticism and to respond by applying unbiased judgment. From this perspective, one can conclude that it is only when a writer is critical of their writing that they can produce pieces of writing that have higher chances of being regarded as masterpieces.
Revised paragraph
Murray reinforces the importance of revision by noting that a writer must be his or her own worst critic. According to the author, a writer must “detach themselves from their own page so they can apply both their caring and their craft to their own work” (Page 196). He further notes that detaching oneself is not always easy but that it is an effective way of revising since it allows writers to accept and respond to criticism from an unbiased outlook. From this perspective, one can conclude that it is only when a writer is critical of their writing that they can produce pieces of writing that can be considered as masterful.
Explanation
The two things that I have changed in the paragraph are some words and sentence lengths. I decided to change several words by adding more vocabulary with the aim of making the piece of writing more engaging. On the other hand, changing the sentence length was aimed at making the writing more legible and precise.
Revision is to writing as frosting is to a cake, without it, it would be incomplete. Revision is different than actually writing because you are only critically fixing and correcting your written draft. While on the other hand, in writing you are trying to get down as many related ideas and thoughts down before they slip your mind. Hence, most first drafts end up having mistakes on almost every line. Revision then helps organize that raw first draft polishing it up over and over until it’s as close to perfect as writing can be.
Revised:
Revision is to writing as frosting is to a cake, without it, it would be incomplete. Writing is not the same as revision, furthermore, during revision you are correcting your first drafts. While on the other hand, in writing you are trying to get down as many related ideas and thoughts down as possible. Hence, most first drafts end up having mistakes on almost every line. Revision helps polish up these messy drafts bringing them close to perfection.
Explanation:
In my revision of this paragraph I switched around the order of some sentences making them more coherent and adding punctuation. I also changed some of my word choice to make it sound more dramatic and catchy.
Growing up into a Hispanic household has so far been able to shape my identity into who I am today. The typical day would involve speaking to my grandmother who honestly has changed my life and I am grateful for. It was always a given that I would learn to speak Spanish as it was the only language spoken in the house, growing up this was always something that my friends would be shocked at. Early on in school, Spanish classes were pretty easy as I already knew most of the words, and many of my friends would look to me to help them and learn new words which was always fun to do.
Growing up in a Hispanic household has changed me, for good reasons and for some I may not have realized. My grandmother has had a major impact on my life and I am grateful for her. I have had to balance knowing both English and Spanish, and this has been beneficial. Learning spanish was not too dificult, I was given many resources and in school, these abilities would be reinforced to assist me as well. I am thankful for being able to be bilingual because I can help others as well.
I have decided to revise my punctuation in my revision as well as the length of my sentences. I add too many extra words sometimes to make up for length requirements, but I am working on this.
Original:
Society has made language way more than a means of understanding each other. Language can depict what kind of people you are able to speak to and from that how you are able to live life. Language is more than those that can be grammatically taught, like: Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc.. It is true the language may be able to answer some questions like where you are from and where you may live but it doesn’t speak to your character. My whole life has been a game of picking and choosing what is the right thing to say and when or where do I say it. My hope is that one day the world will realize that even though language can be a barrier it doesn’t mean we are that different; language shouldn’t prevent us from opportunity or collaboration.
New:
Society has made language way more than a means of understanding each other. Language can depict what kind of people you are able to speak to and in correlation to that what life you live. Language may be able to answer some questions, like where someone’s from and where someone may live, but it doesn’t speak to character. My life has been a game of choosing what is the right thing to say and when or where do I say it. I did this in hope that my language could speak for my character and with that I’d be be able to maneuver my way into a different class of people. Language tends to be a barrier between different groups of people but from my experiences I could see there are similar types of people within many languages. Someday I hope society starts looking past language differences. Language shouldn’t prevent anyone from opportunity or collaboration.
Explanation:
I basically changed the structure of the paragraph. A lot of the sentences had nothing to do with the previous and correlating sentences flow better if put next to each other. I also changed word choice like to make it known it is my experience.
Original:
Lost in the chaotic cacophony was the fact that it was a new virus for our species,
and we had no inherited immunities to it. People still die from the flu but at a much
lower rate than previous generations because we develop new vaccines and better
treatments. This new virus has no known “best” treatment and there is no safe vaccine yet. We also do not exactly know if there are long term effects from infection. So, in a frenzy to debate over useless points, not enough people informed themselves and as of October 2020, the United States has over 5% of the population confirmed infected at any point.
New:
Lost in the chaotic cacophony was the fact that it was a new virus for our species.
We had no inherited immunities to it. Indeed, people still die from seasonal flu – but at a much lower rate than previous generations. This is possible because doctors and scientists tirelessly develop better treatments and new vaccines. COVID-19 has no known “best” treatment and there is no safe vaccine yet. Moreover, we also do not exactly know if there are long term effects from infection. As a result of pointless debate, not enough people informed themselves. and as of October 2020, the United States has over 5% of the population confirmed infected at any point.
Explanation:
A bad habit of mine is throwing a ton of information and declarative sentences at once. This happened again with my Literary Narrative revision. Here, I added in some transitional words and some more pauses to emphasize the parts that I wanted. It’s necessary to slow down the parts that you want to sink in.
Original:
Boys vs. girls, whatever group copied faster would be rewarded by going out to lunch break early. Against the clock, I always tried to copy as fast as possible so that my peers wouldn’t be penalized but the teacher had it for me and would often stand behind me while I was filling my journal if there was a letter that was not of her liking she would make me repeat the whole sentence. Drawing the letters the way she wanted it required much more effort and it was much slower, it was just not the way my hands worked. Almost daily the boys in my class would get heated at me because my efforts to write “adequately” and fast were fruitless.
New:
Boys vs. girls, whichever group copied faster would be rewarded by going out to lunch break early. Against the clock, I always tried to copy as fast as possible so that my peers wouldn’t be penalized, but the teacher had it for me. She would often stand behind me while I was filling my journal; if there was a letter not of her liking she would make me repeat the whole sentence. Drawing the letters the way she wanted them was just not the way my hands worked. Almost every day, the boys in my class would get heated at me because my efforts to write “adequately” were fruitless.
Sometimes I dont want to lose focus of what I’m writing, I don’t want the ideas to scape my mind so I write them as fast as possible. When this happens my sentences can end up being too long, Lacking comas and proper punctuation, as well as having too much clauses per sentence. I also erased some redundancies that were already explicit in the text.
Original:
When I started grade school, I was introduced to reading and writing. At this point, I really enjoyed these activities. At school, the teacher would always say something like, “Today, you’re going to write a personal narrative about whatever you want. Anything that happened to you recently or anything that has ever happened to you will work.” And when it came to reading it was, “Now we are going to read independently for twenty minutes. Go pick whatever book you want to read and you can begin.”
New
When I started grade school, I was introduced to reading and writing, and at that point, I really enjoyed these activities. In school, the teacher would always say something like “Today, you’re going to write a personal narrative about whatever you want!” And when it came to reading it was, “Now we are going to read! Go pick out a book that looks interesting.”
Explanation
I triend to change some of the punctuations so that it showed when something was exciting to me. On top of that I just tried to make thing flow more smoothly as I wrote by changing some puntuation.
Original:
Most of my life, I associated myself as a member of the Hispanic culture because it was all I knew growing up. Eventually, I realized that when it came to Spanish literacy, I knew nothing. My parents would always tell me to write notes to my cousins in Colombia or birthday cards to my grandma because us latinos are constantly expressing how much we love each other. When the time came, I would usually write the bare minimum because I had no idea how to spell other words when express my feelings. Spanish can be complicated because the words include many accents and spelling changes when conjugating verbs. Since I was unable to write in Spanish, I also had a difficult time reading cards sent to me from Colombia. My cousins would constantly give me a hard time about this and would call me “gringo,” which means white boy in Spanish. This made me think, if I can not read or write in Spanish, am I really part of the community? I saw myself as too Hispanic to be American and too American to be Hispanic.
New:
Most of my life, I associated myself as a member of the Hispanic culture because it was all I knew growing up. Eventually, I realized that when it came to Spanish literacy, I knew nothing. I constantly had to write birthdays cards or thank you notes to my family down in Colombia. This is unavoidable because my family constantly expresses love and gratitude. When the time came, I would usually write the bare minimum because I had no idea how to spell other words when express my feelings. Spanish can be complicated because the words include many accents and spelling changes when conjugating verbs. This also affected me when I would read the letters sent to me from Colombia. My cousins would constantly give me a hard time about this and would call me “gringo,” which means white boy in Spanish. This made me think, if I can not read or write in Spanish, am I really part of the community? I saw myself as too Hispanic to be American and too American to be Hispanic.
Explanation:
When revising, you do not have to change everything you once wrote. Here, I only changed certain words and sentences to make my writing easier to understand and a better word use.