MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Happy Monday. Tonight, your ER REVIEWING TASK is due.  You WILL gain knowledge as you help each other. As in the case of the rain garden memo, you will see two things:

• level of detail (just right! Not too much, not too little, aka the Goldilocks sweet spot)
• where to place details(which paragraph showcases the detail best?)

This, just above, shows how to do a block quote (option for you re your life cycle assessment (LCA) paragraph. Paraphrase is fine. USE THE FOUNDER definition from EPA. Please. 

We are still working off WEEK 5's guidance below, especially the flow chart (pale yellow-green large image).  I have resources on framing/thinking:

• Focus on difference between description and analysis (key critical thinking skill) in this linked google doc (skim the embedded links, please)
• Metadiscourse (counting out is a metadiscourse strategy) and voice propel the complexity forward with flow (science examples in this short google doc)
• Note that description, combined with analysis, supports recommendations

New writing craft skill: Empty subjects, in the four-page google doc

A coder speaks about how to link skillfully in hypertext documents (long but worthy blog post by an expert). Skim this, please.  You can focus on the list of "rules" midway through the post.

Review (from k-12 re paragraphs with a focus on transitions--> First, begin by looking at this OWL PURDUE exhibit on useful transition words and phrases.  Back to paragraphs:  

• look at the last sentence of each paragraph; 
• then look at the first sentence in the next paragraph.

Do you see connection between content, including a reasonable pivot to new information?  The paragraphs, although they stand alone in topic and content, should CONNECT or TRANSITION with the surrounding paragraphs.  

Paragraph check: Ask

• What is the paragraph doing in the document?  What type of paragraph serves this purpose? For example, a narrative paragraph can tell a brief story or present a case or example.  An illustrative paragraph – cousin to descriptive paragraphs - paints a picture.
• Is the paragraph cohesive?  Does the content “hang” together?  Do the sentence choices achieve cohesion?  Look at the transition words and phrases in the OWL link above.  You can use them to achieve cohesion and flow between sentences. This focus is called local coherence, which is key to achieving flow.

Finally, paragraphs do not truly stand alone in most documents. Paragraphs combine to provide coherent content in a document for a reader.  Ask this:  do the paragraphs fit and support the arrangement or structure of the document?  Focus on transitions between paragraphs, which help with cohesion in the document.  Local coherence (within a paragraph) + global coherence (between paragraphs and within a document) create overall flow.

Cheap! Way To achieve cohesion between paragraphs try "chaining" by transitions. Place the  topic of the next paragraph in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph. The first sentence of the new paragraph must include that topic also. Doing this knits or binds the paragraphs to each other.  Here is how a math person would say this: 

Let ParaA be the preceding paragraph. 

Let ParaB be the following paragraph.  

Let T be the topic that should appear in both paragraphs.  

• the last sentence of ParaA and the 
• first sentence of ParaB. 

In reality, ParaA and ParaB exist in a document with an arrangement of many paragraphs.

ParaA relates to ParaB through the last sentence of ParaA AND SIMULTANEOUSLY through the first sentence of ParaB. The relating elements is a topic, T;  T can be a repeated word or a phrase.  Some variation on T makes for good style.  

Tight transitions pivot on repetition of key word or short phrase. Loose transitions allow a topic substitution or phrase (selected with care for reader knowledge/background).

Food for thought: You also can use the transition space to punt or jump to another subtopic in the memo. Phrases:

Having reminded you of the central emergency of climate change, let's turn now to...

Now that you have more details on the emerging problem of ocean plastic, we can look at...

Recall that this memo is a short back-of-the-envelope analysis for our purposes. We can reconsider these frames more carefully but would face the incommensurability problem.

Helpful short video to think about the complexity here of the linked problems of pollution (CO2, single use plastic) and depletion (stress upon a resource: climate system and ocean/water system. Think cycles: carbon and water).  From UMD genius Herman Daly.