Anyway, now that you have gotten the movie making process well-underway and/or almost finished (hopefully!) and now that you have read the essays (hopefully!) by Alexandra Juhasz, “Why Not (To) Teach On YouTube”  and Daniel Anderson, “The Low Bridge to High Benefits: Entry-Level Multimedia, Literacies, and Motivation,” after all that, I think we now probably have a better opportunity to discuss these essays.  So that’s what this post is about.

I’m guessing that the first part of Anderson’s essay is a little rough-going for many of you since he’s talking about some pretty theory-heavy sort of stuff.  I guess what I want to get you to focus on is how the idea of technology as being an “interchange” between people more than being about “tools” and “stuff,” and also about how the reason why you want to include stuff like “low-bridge” technologies in writing classes is to get students to see literacy differently.  The second half of the article has some interesting examples of how he has used technology to “transform” his own teaching.

I include Juhasz specifically for a couple of reasons.  First, she’s almost directly responding to the claims Wesch made in his video about the positive possibilities and potentials of YouTube, and that’s based in part on her own experiences.  As she notes in her chapter, she actually taught a class about and on YouTube a few years ago, and she received a fair amount of press about it.  I believe she made one of those lists that occasionally pop up in the popular media where people are flabbergasted that there is an actual college course about something.

Second, as she notes, her experiences with YouTube were not “great.”  Now, I don’t completely agree that the only two extremes on YouTube are amateurish junk and commercialist pap for the masses, and I am not exactly “coming from” the same place in terms of critically reading media.  I think it’s fair to say that Juhasz sees herself as a radical, avant garde, and activist filmmaker.  I suspect she is as critical of most things in the mainstream media as she is with YouTube.

Still, she has a point.  YouTube does seems to have a way of replicating popular culture in rather uncritical ways, and, given that it is owned by Google, it seems likely to me that the poor searchability of the site is on purpose.

In the meantime, watch this YouTube video by Michael Wesch (and be aware that it is about an hour long):

This is one of those things I have returned to quite a few times the last couple years, and it generally is “a hit” with students.  I think this is fairly straight-forward, well-done, and very interesting video that covers a lot of territory about teaching and about some of the implications of YouTube.  Among other things, he discusses the culture of YouTube (not just what but who is YouTube?), community, authenticity, and viral video.  Wesch is actually an anthropologist, but I think the sorts of things he’s talking about here are important to think about as we expand the places and means of writing.

If the link above doesn’t work, try this link to the YouTube page.

I think they’re pretty straight-forward and fun to browse through.  All I’ll say is that a couple of these use “naughty” and/or “potty-mouthed” language and exmaples– probably nothing you haven’t heard before, but still, just to let you know.

This book is similar to the de Sade parody in that it is trying to present some grammar and style rules in some very unusual ways– something you should be contemplating for part 2 of the style project– though it isn’t quite as direct a parody of Strunk and White.  As the introduction suggests, the “narrator” of this style guide happens to be a vampire.

Now, it is very possible to read the book (and the selections here) as simply what they pre-port to be, grammar rules.  But if you read through the examples, you get a sense that they are coming from a rather particular (vampire-like?) source.  They’re mostly funny of course, but they do seem to rather indirectly tell a “story” of sorts.

I think it’s also interesting to think back to both Strunk and White and Williams after these examples (not to mention the ones from Sade):  what sort of “story” were those authors trying to tell with the examples in their books?

Now, I’m going to assume that most of you have heard of the Marquis de Sade; for those who haven’t, take a look at that wikipedia link.  I haven’t read any of Sade stuff, but as I understand it, the late 18th/early 19th century books Justine and Juliette are about as pornographic as anything else you can read nowadays.  His name is the basis for the term “sadism.”

Personally, I think this parody is fun and funny in at least two different ways.  First, it is drawing on some of the actual writings of Sade to point out the virtue of different style rules, which is kind of odd and funny (there is that great quote from the famous French critic Roland Barthes about how Sade’s sentences were so “pure” they could serve as grammatical models). Second, it’s poking fun at Strunk and White, who have been accused of being grammatical/metaphorical Sadists of a sort with their rules.  I especially like the “misused words and expressions” part.

Now, in my mind, this is a good (albeit a bit extreme, I will admit) example of the sort of thing that I think would work really well for the style remake assignment.  What I see that part of the assignment as an opportunity where some parody and some “fun” would make a lot of sense,  In this case, the joke for me is the idea of what it would be like to learn about writing from these sadists, and I guess it works in part because you could argue pretty effectively that Strunk and White were kind of sadistic with their rules, too.

Remember:  your “part 1″ revision is due at the end of the day on October 31!

But this is where we’ll start shifting into part 2 of the using style guides, and we’ll start by discussing  “‘Style’ Gets New Elements,” Jeremy Eichler in the New York Times, and listen to this NPR story, “‘Elements of Style’ Goes Beyond Words.”

Because Strunk and White’s book is so iconic, it has been the main subject (target?) of remakes, parodies, and re-seeing the “style manual” in different ways.  One of the first examples we’re talking about here, the edition illustrated by Maria Kalman, is the version that I know that many of you are reading, which means that your “first encounter” with The Elements of Style is quite a bit different than mine!

The article  “‘Style’ Gets New Elements,” Jeremy Eichler in the New York Times and the  NPR story, “‘Elements of Style’ Goes Beyond Words,” are about this new(ish) illustrated version and an opera based on the book.  (Be sure to listen to the audio selections from the opera based on The Elements of Style on the NPR web site– they’re a hoot!)

I think these texts are pretty self-explanatory, but I will add/mention two things:  first, what Kalman did for me is to really see the humor that is in this book, and the number of times that the sly/dry humor was clearly intentional.  At the same time, Kalman does this strange and kind of surreal thing where some of her illustrations take the example in a completely different direction.  My favorite incident of this is this one (which she talks about a bit in the NPR interview):

Now, maybe this means I have a sick sense of humor, but Kalman’s illustration clearly takes this example in a pretty dramatic new direction, don’t you think?

But let me say first that I realize that there’s a lot of stuff going on right now with getting the ancient style and YouTube projects finished (remember– those are due on Monday by midnight!) so if this conversation doesn’t get going until Tuesday, I’m okay with that.

I’m glad that folks seem to like Williams for the most part, though I have to say that I am not as crazy about the last part, as you’ll see with some of my notes after the “continued” part.

Chapter 6: Coherence II

• Gotta have a point. Pages 98 and 99.  And let me say that the conversation that Williams has with that mythical writer on the bottom of page 98/top of page 99 is one I have with students all the time.  Writers often think things are “obvious” that readers don’t think are obvious at all, which is why as a writer, you want to make sure you have a point.
• Points are typically in “Issues” (99-102), sometimes at the end of a discussion (page 102-103), and are troubled with Introductions.  Williams talks about introductions a bit on page 103, though there’s probably a lot more to be said about writing an effective introduction.
• I think the discussion about “points in whole documents” on page 107 is quite interesting.  Here Williams acknowledges that he’s talking about writing “in our culture,” and how different cultures have different ideas/concepts of directness and stating points in writing.  Besides being right, I find it fascinating because this is of course not at all on the radar for Strunk and White.
• “The Model Entire” on page 108-09, if you like the charts.  Also, a good point on page 109:  it’s better to have paragraphs (for this kind of writing, at least) that are “clear” than “works of art.”
• Again, he closes the chapter with revision ideas.

Chapter 7: Concision

• This is the point in the book where things get a little less specific for me.  While the first six chapters– chapters 2 through 6 in particular– offer really concrete advice for making writing more clear, here we start to venture into territory that is quite a bit more abstract and subjective, IMO.
• 115: Be clear and concise, which is pretty much what this chapter is getting at.
• Of course, one of the problems is that in school, we aren’t really taught to be “concise.”
• Pages 118-119: The difference between “Pompous Diction” and using the right word, even if it is a “big word.”  I particularly like his discussion at the top of page 119 of “intransigent.”
• Excessive detail on 120; being a member of a community on page 121.
• Page 122 and the danger of summarizing too much.  I can tell you this is a pretty common problem in student writing, particularly when students are not familiar with a topic.  It seems to me that they then often have a need to summarize and not analyze because they don’t understand something well enough to analyze it.
• Page 125 and metadiscourse again (this came up before in chapter 2).
• And, as is the case throughout the book, a lot of good tips at the end here:  hedges (126), attributors and narrators (which kind of has to do with the use of “I” too– see 128), and not the negative (which Strunk and White agree with– see page 130).

Chapter 8: Length

• Unlike S&W, who are basically saying you should always have simple and short sentences, Williams is trying to show how to write a long one that does not “sprawl.”
• Lots of great tips. However, by page 143, and things start to get a bit more vague:  note phrases like “its us take a breath at reasonable intervals” or “the first forces us to hold our breath,” and so forth.
• But lots more good tips throughout this chapter though on how to manage longer sentences.

Chapter 9: Elegance

• For me, this chapter is a real departure from the previous chapters because he’s “showing” something that not everyone can master if they follow a series of steps.  Take a look at what he has to say on page 153, for example.
• And again, it gets more vague for me.  For example, on page 157 he talks about arranging sentences based on our “mind’s ear…”  Huh?!  I don’t know about that….
• The examples are good and interesting, but again, this is more about the “art” of writing that can’t really be taught but that can be learned.

Chapter 10: Usage

• Just what is “grammar,” anyway? A descriptive system, for Williams…though there are “rules” that ought to be considered for “standard English.” See pages 171-173.
• Page 176: “Three Kinds of Rules.” Which leads to four groups of rules as he sees it:
  • “Real Rules,” page 180.
  • “Folklore,” pages 181-186 (and Williams is trying to be cheeky here….).
  • “Optional Rules,” 186-190.
  • Betes Noires (or “pet peeves”), 192.
• Sexism and language, 192-195. Note how Williams talks about this “he/she/they” issue quite differently than Strunk and White.

My notes/thoughts after the “continued” part.

Chapter 3: Cohesion

• Clarity is about “good style” within sentences; Cohesion is about “good style” between sentences– that is, how different sentences relate to each other. We don’t read sentences individually; we read sentences together.
• To sort of sum-up the rule (as he does at the end of the chapter on page 64), you generally want to begin a sentence with “old information” and then introduce “new information” at the end of a sentence.
• But as Williams points out on page 48, cohesion requires a bit of a balancing act with other rules.
• Pages 50-51 introduce the idea of psychological subjects, which are potentially different than grammatical subjects.
• Some good ideas and examples on managing you subjects and Topics on page 54; and again, really solid advice on the top of 56 with “Two Principles.”
• “Audience as Topic” on pages 57-59 interesting, and again, notice how different this is from S&W.  While Strunk and White seem to have in mind a sort of “universal” style, Williams is pointing out that you have to tailor it to an audience.
• I don’t want to dwell on the examples from Lincoln and Jefferson on pages 60 through 64, but worthwhile reading carefully.
• Finally, the concluding bits about the chapter.  The example on the top of page 65 is one of my favorite in the book because it clearly demonstrates how a writer can control the “meaning” of a paragraph by controlling the topic of a paragraph.  If you are the doctor being sued for malpractice, you would probably write the first paragraph to defend yourself.  If you were the patient doing the suing, you would probably write the second paragraph.

Chapter 4: Emphasis

• Basically, this chapter talks about how the emphasis of most sentences tends to be at the end, which is where you should put the more important information of a sentence.
• The “managing endings” section in pages 68 through 73 pretty key, and I personally find myself using some of the “tricks” Williams talks about on the bottom of page 72 about repeating phrases.
• Good example on pages 74 and 75.  I know they are complicated and long, but they do point out how to emphasize complicated information depending on your audience.  And then at the top of page 75, Williams sums up (emphasizes?) his strategies for revision.
• Personally, I’ve never really understood the example from Joan Didion on pages 76-77.
• “Clarity as a system” on page 78 (and if the charts work for you, that’s great!)
• I completely agree with Williams’ last paragraph in this chapter, about how we all speak in many voices, all of which are equally “authentic.”  Somehow, I think Strunk and White assume a single and unified authentic voice….

Chapter 5: Coherence I

• Bottom of 81/top of 82 outline the 5 principles of coherence, which is really about the organization of paragraphs and also of complete documents.
• “Thematic Strings” are tricky to understand, but Williams kind of explains it on 84 and 85, based on the previous examples.  They are more or less “topics” in paragraphs, kind of like “topic sentences,” but not quite.
• Another good example on 86 and 87. Again, it’s kind of long, but if you compare the paragraph on page 86 with the one on 87 that has been revised to be “more explicit” in terms of a “topic string,” I think you can see where Williams is going.  Also on page 87, Williams has an interesting take on the advice about “vary your word choice.”
• Where to put the string? Good point on 89, but Williams talks about the thematic string going elsewhere, too.
• Page 92: Paragraph = Issue + Discussion (great point)
• Page 94 and 95 actually offers some good advice on revising paragraphs– something we haven’t seen yet in Williams and which we didn’t see much of at all in the S&W book.

• A warning:  Williams is much more difficult and complex reading than Strunk and White. While Williams has the advantage of actually being “readable” like a book– that is, it isn’t the same kind of “reference” book as Strunk and White– he is much more complex and sophisticated in his approach.  Because of this, I like Williams better than Strunk and White (we’ll get to that in a moment).  But while Strunk and White is an easily skimmable/read in 90 minutes kind of book, Williams is not.  So plan on spending more time with this one!
• I am not going to disguise the fact that I really REALLY like this book, and I’ve always thought the advice he offers here for the advanced writer is so smart, detailed, thoughtful, useful, etc.  Much more so than Strunk and White, in my opinion, because Williams is not trying to give watered-down advice.  Just the opposite!  And because of that….
• …. Williams does go into quite a bit of detail.  And I will admit that sometimes that detail can get confusing and a little excessive.  So if you don’t get each and every example or it doesn’t all make perfect sense on first reading, that’s okay.  Just do the best you can with it, and recognize that this is a book that does merit a second or third reading.

Getting Started

• Williams was a Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Chicago. He died in February 2008, unfortunately.
• Pages ix-x: Williams establishes his purpose and his audience; it’s quite a bit different than the purpose and audience of Strunk and White’s book.
• Page xv: There’s a balance between one’s ability to understand “bad writing” and one’s prior knowledge of a subject; note here Williams’ early emphasis on audience, which is already quite a bit more nuanced than Strunk and White.

Chapter 1: Causes

• Pages 1 and 2: Note how Williams opens this book by marking the differences between his purposes and S&W’s purposes. And notice the difference between the way Williams begins versus the way that S&W begin. The passage on the bottom of page 1 and top of page 2 is also useful.
• History is important of course and I think the examples of different writers (Orwell, Cooper, etc.) in this chapter are interesting, but I think the most important causes to consider are more personal, such as the ones he discusses on page 11.  In my own experience as a writing teacher, I can tell you there are a lot of students who come to college freshman composition traumatized by high school English teachers obsessed with grammar and errors.  So if you are going to be a high school teacher, do me a favor and don’t do that.  Thanks in advance.

Chapter 2: Clarity

• Williams favorite word: turgid?  It actually is a useful word here; it means “Excessively ornate or complex in style or language,” and also “swollen or distended.”  Icky.
• What makes a sentence feel “unclear” or turgid: page 19.
• The First Two Principles of Clear Writing (or the best part of the book, IMO). See pages 21, 20, and 23.
• Clear sentences are not necessarily simple ones. Page 25.
• A bit about nominalizations on pages 30 through 33.  This can be kind of tricky, but as Williams says, “turgid prose typically uses a verb not to express action but merely to state that an action exists.”  Thus the nominalization, which is a noun derived from a verb or adjective.  Most of the time, these make for good writing; but he explains on pages 32 and 33 that there are good uses of nominalizations too.
• The beginning of passive on pages 36 through 40. Note the difference between the way Williams explains this and the way that S&W explain things– or rather, don’t explain them, really. The use of passive will come back in the next chapter, too.
• Metadiscourse (or writing about writing), pages 40-41.
• Too many nouns– a good tip on 42.
• The charts (see page 43, for example): I have never really gotten these things before.  So if they work for you, that’s great; but if they don’t work for you, that’s okay too.

Now it’s time to start talking about the readings with the next unit, and we’re starting with Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Be sure to write your own impressions about Strunk and White in blog post #7, too!

William Strunk and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style is more or less the “grand-daddy” of style and grammar books of the 20th and 21st century. I would contend that every writing and grammar handbook used in a composition/rhetoric course for the last 50 or so years owes its origins to Strunk and White’s “little book.” Or, another way of looking at it, Strunk and White’s book has managed to inflict itself on writing and style in ways that are hard to escape.

Who was E.B. White and William Strunk? And where did this book come from, anyway?

• E.B. White is probably best known for Charlotte’s Web, but he wrote many other things and worked for The New Yorker magazine for years. In a lot of ways, he revitalized the genre of “the personal essay.” In short, he was very much a professional writer. White died in 1985, fifteen years before the fourth edition of the book was published.
• William Strunk Jr. was a professor at Cornell University. White took a class from him in 1919 that was probably sort of like first year composition. Back then, we learn from White’s introduction, Strunk self-published The Elements of Style, and it seems to have been sort of like a coursepack that focused on “rules of usage.” See this link, which is to the original 1919 version of the book.
• Strunk seems to have been a bit of a, well, “character.” Note White’s description at the bottom of pages xvi and the top of xvii (in the fourth edition).
• Strunk died in 1947, and, after a popular article in The New Yorker, White came out with an edition in 1959. The rest, as they say, is history.

A few highlights for me as a reader

I don’t want to bias you too much in your blog post thoughts, but here are a few highlights from my own notes about Strunk and White:

• Starting with page 1: it’s always seemed odd to me that Strunk and White start with this rule, possessive s. For one thing, S&W’s interpretation is perhaps debatable– is it Charles’s house or Charles’ house? But beyond that, it seems to me that a book like this is arranged (at least in part) according to priority. Is possessive s that big of a deal?
• Rule #5 on page 5: To me, this is such a commonly broken rule that I suspect it is no longer as much of a “rule” as it once was. I agree with S&W that it should be a rule, but I see a lot of advertisements and signs that break this rule all the time.
• One of my favorite rules (yes, I do have favorite S&W rules! doesn’t everyone?!) is on page 34 in part 3 about exclamation points. I can’t remember who said it, but you can’t make a piece of writing exciting with punctuation. So be careful! About using! Exclamation! Points!
• A lot of the advice offered in Part IV, “Words and Expressions Commonly Misused” strikes me as kind of odd in a way. True, S&W encourage readers on page 39 to seek interpretations and advice from other sources if they have questions about the rules offered here, but S&W offer their rules with such certainty, they seem hard to question. And yet, a lot of these things in this chapter strike me as more about “pet peeves” as opposed to “rules” of “style.” For examples, see:
  • “contact”
  • “each and every one”
  • “flammable” (they seem especially cranky here about this)
  • “like”
• The rule for “they, he, or she” is, for me, the most telling of the book. If you have the fourth edition (which most of you probably have), read the rules as described on pages 60 and 61 and compare them with the rules from the third edition of the book (which was published in 1979 and is available via eReserves; look for the file “Selections from The Elements of Style, 3rd Ed.”) and you will notice some significant differences. In the third edition, “He has lost all suggestions of maleness in these circumstances.” However, in the fourth edition, we are told that “many writers find the use of the generic he or his to rename indefinite antecedents limiting or offensive.” Curiously, these words were added long after both Strunk and White were dead.
• A little more comparison between the different editions of the book and some critical examination of some the examples I’ve included will reveal some other telling differences between the current and past editions:
  • Note on page 29 that the author example is Wordsworth in the 3rd edition (British Romantic poet); it’s Toni Morrison (contemporary American African-American Woman novelist) in the 4th.
  • Page 51 the use of “they” (4th ed) versus “he” (3rd ed) in the example on “less.”
  • Also on page 51, the example of “like:” The 4th edition has the sentence “Chloë smells good, as a baby should.” This is sexist enough– why not “Jimmy smells good, as a baby should,” for example. But compare that to the 3rd edition: “Chloë smells good, as a pretty girl should.”
  • Finally, on page 54, the examples for the rule on “Noun used as a verb” are quite a bit different. The most notable for me is the last one under this heading. In the 4th edition, the last example is “The theatre troupe made its debut last fall.” In the 3rd edition, this example is “She made her debut last fall.” This is a quite different definition of the word “debut!”
• Finally, there’s the last section of the book, “V. An Approach to Style.” Sure, in a sense, S&W are offering good advice here; but in another sense, it seems awfully vague here. And, as we’ll see when we read Williams, this vague advice doesn’t necessarily get us too far. As Williams writes on page 1 of his book, “Telling me to ‘Be clear’ is like telling me to ‘Hit the ball squarely.’ I know that. What I don’t know is how to do it.”