"Tuning, Tying, and Training texts": ...like a fine wine.

From the eight stories, I can relate to two separate ones: Goyen's “Sculpting” and Vidal's “Painting”.

When I write, I like to try to write the entirety of the article as if I only had one shot at writing it, and as soon as my final word was typed it would be turned in and graded. Once I'm finished, I go back and refine details as they stick out to me. Eventually, I will be satisfied with the work as a whole and go to the finest part of editing, which is grammar and spelling in my opinion. Going with that though, if I come across parts that need to be taken out completely (bigger parts like full paragraphs), then I work with the painting metaphor. I go back, put in different layers to accent pieces that are already in the first draft. I flow between the two: major writing to finer details, and layering on new material as necessary.

In Wikipedia, the discussions and other edits help make the article more like a group drawing project. One person makes all the touches he needs and puts it up for criticism and revision. Another person can come in and suggest new things for the first artist to revise and think about. At the same time, a third person can come in with an eraser and take things out on his own, then scribble in his own thoughts. Discussion is better for showing us what can work and what might need worked on, along with helping new editors know what kinds of things need to be in an article to be able to stay up. Viewing History is more like Monitoring from our last article. We can look to see what others think about it and watch how our article turns from one drawing with graphite to a masterpiece flowing with vibrant color.

For composing, it's the simple act of learning what's necessary (in the case of Wikipedia) to be acceptable. Moderators and spy bots from that site have their own set of rules for what's allowed on Wikipedia and what's not. Other editors on talk pages or straight editing help us realize what's necessary.

Project 1: Final Touch

Here's a link to my article; edited and finalized.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odin_Brotherhood

In case the actual page gets deleted, here's a link to the user space...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LoneWolfBlaze


Enjoy!

"Toward a Composing Model of Reading": Thoughts on Writing Processes

I think, reflecting back on my process of writing our Wiki article, I may have gone through the parts without thinking of it. I know I planned out the article for what I wanted to do, then went straight to aligning the information in some particular fashion to make the article literate. Once I finished what I thought the article might end as, I went to revising. As for Drafting, I guess I did that just by writing the article itself, but I don't think I consciously went through a drafting process. I know I didn't consciously do monitoring, I just had a sense of “doneness” when I believed I was finished. After we had the critique in class, I did have another chance to go back over with “fresh eyes” for drafting. I got to look at the critique from the classmate (as well as taking a look at the Wiki drawing board) and realizing what I might want to add, subtract, expand, or reformat and reword. Most likely, that made the article that much better, and gave me opportunity to use the critique for future writings (as in where I should expand and where I should be more “to-the-point”)

The five functions are pretty much central to how writing is taught. I still remember all the times I had to write back in english classes when I was younger that they emphasized all five parts: Brainstorming (planning), Outline (alignment), Drafting, Revising, and Final Drafting. They didn't really focus on monitoring, but I feel that was because our papers back then were aimed toward a specific viewpoint before we got a chance to write, therefore cutting out the monitoring (or at least most of it). Monitoring may have come in with rereading our papers to make sure the point was addressed, but I digress...

"Intertexuality and Discourse Community": Just like all the rest...

Porter challenges Murray's idea's about writing by saying that every text is related or the same as other text before it, and that "borrowing" is the same as "plagiarism". Porter makes a good point about the Declaration of Independence. The similarities between the Declaration and the English Bill of Rights were new to me, but it does make sense how they relate. I'm not sure if the claim that Jefferson should have been accused of plagiarism if given the chance, but I digress.

I agree and disagree at the same time with Porter. True, there are many similarities between every text, which does challenge the “autobiographical” sense that Murray talks about. I disagree though, thinking that it's hard to find something original, if it's possible at all. Through the texts I've read in the past, there is a sense of familiarity though them all, even if the topics aren't even close to each other. Everyone seems to "borrow" styles, characteristics, and structure from everyone else. Should that mean that everyone should be accused of plagiarism and shunned for it? I doubt it...

"All Writing is Autobiographical": My thoughts

Murray is looking at how all types of writing have a different style across the different genres (essay, fiction, poetry, etc.). Murray, however, wants us to think of all writing as a sort of autobiography. Murray talks about how our writing reflects our experiences, not to mention everyone's personal writing style. We write with our own personal flair and idioms, putting something of ourselves in everything we write. Along with that, the things we write can become autobiographical just by being written by ourselves. In Murray's example of “Black Ice”, it was loosely connected with personal experience and became more so after the writing was complete.

We can compare this to encyclopedia articles by the depth and passion in the article. If there's a lot of information in one aspect or another, we know the author of that part has a particular attraction to that aspect. The details included, and how they are organized, in every article can also reflect what the author or editor feels is important for readers to know. Taking this idea to wikipedia articles, it shows a multitude of different people because of the numerous articles.

"Rhetorical Situations and Their Contraints": A battle of Understanding

I was confused about “rhetorical situations.” From the reading, I define it as any situation where person X (rhetor) must address and adapt the situation Y (event or activity) hopefully motivating the audience to take action Z (depending on the situation addressed). True enough, that can be a confusing definition. The entire reading was a little “challenging” for me, and I will just do my best answering everything.

The constituents for a rhetorical situation are: rhetor, audience, exigence, and constraints. These terms defined: rhetors are the speaker or writer, the audience are those listening or reading, exigence is the particular subject coming into question or discussion, and constraints are outside influences that affect how well the impact of the argument will be. A compound rhetorical situation, to me, is when more than just one rhetor and/or audience is addressing one situation. The best example he used in the article, at least for me, is the debate on the Best Western sign in Sherwood Hills. The entire town (general public, newspapers, local governments, etc.) was part of the debate. It was an interesting thought to me how one mistake could encompass a entire town:

"The newspaper ran several stories reporting the resort owners' rationale (they f felt they had        applied in good faith and waited long enough) and the council members' reaction (they felt indignant that the owners had flouted the law and were now seeking forgiveness instead of permission)... What might have been a minor bureaucratic matter resolved behind closed doors turned into a town debate..." (Grant-David, pg 114)

It seems that students should be informed because it helps the writers be more convincing and successful. If a writer knows the rhetorical situation and it's constraints, they can play to those restraints and modify themselves to the unexpected. If a writer isn't informed, they might not be as convincing if their timing for the argument is off or they don't adhere to the sympathies of the audience.

Homework 2: "The Phenomenology of Error"

What Williams means by errors are a “social construct” is that everyone makes them, along with the fact that not everyone will recognize them when they occur. If they are recognized, they will either be reacted upon, or ignored. In all the examples he gives about how grammarian's state a rule of grammar and then immediately break said rule just shows how it's part of our writing systems. Throughout the article, I kept having a feeling like something was wrong with a sentence, but I couldn't put my finger on it. When I got to the end and was told there were about 100 errors, it just proved his entire point of ignoring errors. Unless we read everything closely down to the letter, our minds just make the errors fade into the background and make it seem like it's not there. If we don't recognize it, we believe it to be correct.I believe this relates to Wikipedia's reputation of being error-prone because of how available it is to everyone: to read or to edit. Since it's possible that someone who wrote a serious article can be edited by someone else and have the entire article read “Nipples and broccoli”, I believe other teachers fear that if students get their information from there. It might be a stigma that the errors will be more subtle and students won't catch it until they get the grade back on the paper written.

Even with research, I don't think it matters to many readers. An “Encyclopedia”, more or less Britannica (which is probably the most well known encyclopedia), is supposed to represent this tome of all sorts of wisdom, correct down to the final punctuation. Wikipedia, on the other hand, has that everlasting stigma of “everyone can edit posts”. This leads to some being skeptical about the correctness or reliability of an article. I'm not sure about if William's article can help with this particular problem though. True enough, the mistake ratio between Britannica and Wikipedia are almost dead even, but I believe it's the vandalism possibility of Wikipedia is the reason for the skeptics to criticize. Britannica isn't prone to obvious vandalism, therefore it's given a better reputation.

Intro: Homework 1

This is my blog for 308J English class taught by Matt Vedder. Let's get the intro stuff out of the way...

My name is Eugene Sax: a digital media major from Thornville, OH. Hopefully I will be able to get into the game design business, or take the route of film and be a producer. I'm a man of simple tastes. I like long walks on the beach, smooth Jazz, chronic mastication... You know, what most people like. As for English, I'm more drawn to fiction works than non-fiction.

The last english class I was in was AP English in High School. The most rewarding thing from that class was the introduction to different authors. I was introduced to new authors who gave me new insight to different writing styles. The least rewarding was "speed writing We were trained in that class to write quickly without sacrificing content and grammar. It took me longer than desired, but I was able to get up to the standard needed. Also, "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen was horrible for me. I guess I never really saw anything good in that book and had very little interest in it.

 

Not knowing the college standard for english classes, I'm interested to see how they will compare to the AP class. This course differs from other english courses because of the involvement with technology. Most english classes for me focused on just the writing aspect. I'm interested in how technology will blend with english. From 308J, I'm hoping to improve my writing skills. Also, it will be beneficial to learn about how to better include technology in my writing. I've always been interested in mixed media (writing in movies and theater), so I think the class will be exactly what I need to learn another outlet for that with writing on the internet. True enough, the interwebs are pretty informal, but I'm sure there's still a good way and a bad way to write online.