Refining our prose takes lots of time and won\u2019t happen overnight. The first thing to do is to actually re-read your work. Don\u2019t rely solely on spell checker\u2026it ain\u2019t<\/em> that good. We will go over Chapter 4 in Tebeaux and Dragga as well as the Revising Prose<\/a><\/strong> document (also on Canvas) over the next few two weeks. Our lessons won’t follow any order from your textbook, but here’s a tentative order below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This week and next week will make more sense if you’ve read Ch. 4 and 7 in Tebeaux and Dragga as well as the<\/font> Revising Prose<\/a> document.<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m curious to know if you’ve heard of “Doublespeak” or “Gobbledygook” or “Political Rhetoric.” The overall goal for our revising prose lessons is to make your communication clearer for audiences. How many of you have read George Orwell’s 1984<\/em>? I highly recommend it, and I even assigned it in my “Rhetoric of Fear” class this semester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next section on plain language attempts to get you to think about clarity first. Your readers will probably never know you, so you can’t expect them to get a hold of you for clarification. Aim to be efficient yet clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But isn\u2019t plain language just that\u2014plain? Well, yes. But being plain in the sense of clear and concise is a good thing. Don\u2019t think of plain as dumbed down or unsophisticated. Writing in a plain style means you write in a reader-oriented way\u2014you communicate your ideas effectively, so the reader doesn\u2019t have to do all the work or guess at your meanings; language, after all, can be ambiguous. As a disclaimer, I will tell you that my dissertation advisors would have loved for me to follow this advice. It is difficult to write efficiently and in a plain style. But that\u2019s why we revise\u2014to clean up our prose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember, no one writes because they fetishize grammatically correct sentences; writers write to communicate; professional writers write to communicate in their careers. Regardless of the writing context, all writers must write and subsequently revise with the audience and communication purpose in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider the following issues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We will come back to the above questions in a later lesson. Just have those questions in the back of your mind while doing your prose revisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did you know there’s actually an organization call The Plain Language Association International<\/a><\/strong>? Check it out. The English Department’s very own Deborah Bosley (emeritus, so she retired several years ago) is a member of the above group and was interviewed about language and policy making<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, check out what Maxine C. Hairston<\/a><\/strong> found regarding what businesses want from employees regarding communication skills. I question if grammar is the golden ticket, but we’ll get to that in a little bit. The Hairston link is for your further inquiry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This call for efficiency is culturally based to some extent. Although we’ll discuss more about intercultural communication in a few weeks, I want to point out that the lessons on Plain Language that we’re going over are Western-centric ones–they adhere to our “system’s” desire for efficiency and increased productivity. Our concept of efficiency may be very different from another culture’s ideas about efficiency and effective communication. It’s best to have a critical understanding, meaning you don’t just know how to do something–in this case write efficient prose<\/em>–but you also know the reasons why it’s being advocated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We’ll continue with prose revision in the next “class” and over next week. In order for these lessons to be the most beneficial, you should slow down and write or type them. Just looking at the examples isn’t enough: you should compose these sentences yourself. Do these practice sentences tonight<\/a><\/strong>. I’m not collecting them, but try them out, and then compare them to suggestions I’ll post on Wednesday’s page, which I’ll open up tomorrow morning. Go for it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don’t forget that your Cover Letters and R\u00e9sum\u00e9s need to be submitted onto Canvas by 11:00 pm Wednesday, February 1st.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Overview for Revising Prose Refining our prose takes lots of time and won\u2019t happen overnight. The first thing to do is to actually re-read your work. Don\u2019t rely solely on spell checker\u2026it ain\u2019t that good. We will go over Chapter 4 in Tebeaux and Dragga as well as the Revising Prose document (also on Canvas) over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":598,"featured_media":0,"parent":9408,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9554","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P2HAOx-2u6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/598"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9554"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9578,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9554\/revisions\/9578"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/aaron-toscano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Doublespeak<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
Plain Language<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
Homework and Future Work<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n