This week I found the readings to be enjoyable. I really need to stop confessing this, especially as a Writing major, but I am the worst at grammar. Although, the articles were not directly related to grammar, I feel that grammar is a huge part of designing, and constructing writing. I think what I enjoyed the most was the confirmation that writing is not easy, and that it is actually very difficult to make something an easy read for others. Even with my grammatical short-comings, I do think that I am a good writer, and it has been something that I have been told on occasion, I still feel like people do not understand what it actually takes to write something good.
I am at times guilty of the same judgment because there are things that one can read and immediately think that anyone could've written it. I always in the end come back to reality and acknowledge that in no way is writing ever "easy," even with the use of templates/style guides.
Although it may not cure all writing issues in companies, I do agree that style guides should be the first thing created. In fact my co-workers and I were discussing a similiar topic this morning. We are posting positions for departments and we want to ensure that all degree spellings are the same. This resulted in a discussion about the spelling of the BA and MA degrees. Is it Bachelors or Bachelor's and Masters or Master's? Granted both are acceptable, but to keep uniformity we needed to discuss which one to use.
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If you ever teach writing, you'll run into the attitude that English classes should be easier. Students allow that the sciences get increasingly complex and difficult, but they often assume that writing classes should not--that the teacher is making it too difficult or reading too much in to the texts being looked at.
ReplyDeleteSurely, the products of our writing need not be complex to be effective, but the process that produces them cannot avoid being so, especially as one becomes increasingly aware of the various constraints imposed upon us by the communities in which and for which we write (See Lloyd Bitzer's essay, "The Rhetorical Situation" for the idea that constraints are a key element of real rhetorical situations).