MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Lots to do. Writing is truly revising. Let's look a bit at the evaluation/policy stasis step (between 4 and 5). Here is a recent meta-analysis article on exercise. We can also look at the strong policy quality of the Pope's letter on the environment (released this AM).  We can speak a bit about science reluctance to go to policy stages, although engineers, by training, do move to this step as part of problem solving.

Citation:  in class, we will talk about the conventions of citation in a close read of an article.  Basically, the steps are:

1. first mention, full name (in the ethos paragraph that also introduces the article).
   • (author, date)
2. last name throughout
3. Example:  Marybeth Shea is a professor of technical writing at the University of Maryland. She studies stasis theory in environmental policymaking.  Her research article appears in the Journal of Conservation Biology and is the subject of this review (Shea, 2014).

Here is a checklist for the article review.

Back to that/which: That-which: which takes a comma; that does not! See this  handout on choosing which and that.

Let's review some conventions of standard written English (take notes from our work on the board).  I do want to mention a few new ones:

1. punctuation with quote marks (nice summary  here at Grammar Monster)
2. colon and semi colon use (start here with The Oatmeal's take)
3. that/which distinction
4. hyphens are little and used with words; dashes are longer and used between words (See this guide from DOOK)
   1. setting off appositives (dashes)
   2. some words where hyphens are helpful
      • fast-sailing ship and fast sailing ship

Empty subjects DRAFT HANDOUT.

Please, focus particularly on your sentences.  A good approach is to write short, clear direct sentences at the beginning and ends of paragraphs.  Why in these positions?  The brain is attending carefully to

• the topic sentence position, where the main idea of the paragraph is announced
• in the transition position BETWEEN the two paragraphs

• tight (best for most documents; allows the audience to skim)
• loose

 

 

One of Aristotle's canons for writing is ARRANGEMENT.  The order and "chunking" of information matters very much for reader cognition and receptivity to what you write.  This care in arranging information for the audience is also part of the cognitive wedge strategy.  Another way to think about this is the given-new contract to help ensure clarity and coherence for readers.  Look at this discussion on Given-New. (read three pages of this).

Citation in paragraphs, here.