My Writing Guide

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xs1iyqRm-2yH4UJRXOdq-qa7mPnnmAR6SJ2vAJ8Lggw/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CKGijaUL#

Swales and Kantz

I found John Swales' article on creating a research space to be quite useful, because there is nothing worse than feeling as though you are rewriting something that has been said a billion times before (or having to read a paper like that). Finding my own niche is really the only motivating aspect of writing papers for me; to spend ten pages merely rewording what is already out there is the most dismal task I can imagine. I like that he presents us with different options for each step of the process. These will probably be pretty useful when it comes to our upcoming assignment.

I couldn't bring myself to read the entirety of Margaret Kantz's article because I know what she is getting at and I don't need to read a 10 page anecdote to understand. Most students, when they first start writing, simply summarize the information that they have found in their academic papers. They do not realize that they need to add their own original twist on the information that is already out there in order to avoid summary. I know this article because this was my own experience upon coming to college. My freshman composition teacher taught us that we needed to have an argument. Since then I have prided myself on coming up with original arguments for my paper, as well as a structure that is loosely based on logical syllogisms. If A and B then C. I get what she's saying, because my entire English degree has been comprised of writing these kind of papers all the time. If I had known this going into it, I probably would have chosen a different major.

The Source of Annoyance

Kyle D. Stedman's article, "Annoying Ways People Use Sources," attempts to point out the most common source related issues. I was familiar with a lot of these, as I have had other teachers point out how annoying a lot of these issues are, especially the "armadillo roadkill" one, in which the author doesn't introduce the source he is dropping in at all. 

My favorite of his hilariously titled annoyances was Am I in the right movie? I say "favorite" not because I like this mistake but because, in all of the peer reviews I have had to do in college, it is the most bothersome to me. Am I in the right movie? is the analogy Stedman uses to explain the feeling one gets when the quotation in a paper is not grammatically analogous to the preceding lead in. A lot of these seem like tense and subject-verb agreement patterns. His suggestion is practical: read your work aloud. If it doesn't make sense, change it. This seems like it should be logical advice for the entirety of most essays, but people don't usually have the time to go in and proofread. (or take the time, I guess, for all the non-procrastinators out there)

The annoyance entitled I swear I did some research! was somewhat bothersome for me because of its vague nature. I have taken to only citing after quotations, because it is hard to know where to drop in citations after summaries. I think that as long as the information isn't super specific, it is okay to write a summary style section without citing a specific source. It seems like a good rule of thumb might be, "if I had to look this information up, I should cite it." Perhaps our time in the library will help to make this a little more clear. 

I thought that this was a very clever, approachable, useful article. I didn't know Oprah's boyfriend was capable of such writing.  

Genre Analysis

Here is a link to my Genre Analysis paper

Food Blogs: Taking Back Authority