Writing Center Newsletter - 2016

RC Rust College

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cattered Notes Writing Center Newsletter Volume 13, Number 1

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

TYPES OF WRITING: END OF THE CONFUSION Four Major Types of Essays Distinguishing between types of essays is simply a matter of determining the writer’s goal.

Does the writer want to tell about a personal experience, describe something, explain an issue, or convince the reader to accept a certain viewpoint? The four major types of essays address these purposes: Narrative Essays: Telling a Story In a narrative essay, the writer tells a story about a real-life experience. While telling a story may sound easy to do, the narrative essay challenges students to think and write about themselves. When writing a narrative essay, writers should try to involve the reader by making the story as vivid as possible. The fact that narrative essays are usually written in the first person helps engage the reader. “I” sentences give readers a feeling of being part of the story. A well-crafted narrative essay will also build towards drawing a conclusion or making a personal statement.

Descriptive Essays: Painting a Picture A cousin of the narrative essay, a descriptive essay paints a picture with words. A writer might describe a person, place, object, or even memory of special significance. However, this type of essay is not description for description’s sake. The descriptive essay strives to communicate a deeper meaning through the description. In a descriptive essay, the writer should show, not tell, through the use of colorful words and sensory details. The best descriptive essays appeal to the reader’s emotions, with a result that is highly evocative.

Expository Essays: Just the Facts The expository essay is an informative piece of writing that presents a balanced analysis of a topic. In an expository essay, the writer explains or defines a topic, using facts, statistics, and examples. Expository writing encompasses a wide range of essay variations, such as the comparison and contrast essay, the cause and effect essay, and the “how to” or process essay. Because expository essays are based on facts and not personal feelings, writers don’t reveal their emotions or write in the first person.

Persuasive Essays: Convince Me While like an expository essay in its presentation of facts, the goal of the persuasive essay is to convince the reader to accept the writer’s point of view or recommendation. The writer must build a case using facts and logic, as well as examples, expert opinion, and sound reasoning. The writer should present all sides of the argument, but must be able to communicate clearly and without equivocation why a certain position is correct.

Basic Concepts of Technical Writing

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Purdue OWL

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Writing with My Head in the Cloud

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Grammarly and You

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Creative Writing

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Novels and Historical Books

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The Literacy Advocates and References 6

SPECIAL POINTS OF INTEREST  The Literacy Advocates  Different types of writing  Novel Adaptation This issue is dedicated to creative writing and academic essays.

BASIC CONCEPTS OF TECHNICAL WRITING One of the basic principles of style for effective technical writing is that the style must meet the needs of the reader/audience.

Explanation: Effective writers adjust their style to the needs of their readers and their knowledge of the subject. Effective writers try to predict what style readers expect, the readers' level of comprehension about the subject, and the role readers will play when interacting with the document.

Paragraphs are constructed with a topic sentence followed by logically arranged supporting sentences used to build the writer's message.

Explanation: Concise paragraphs that begin with topic sentences, well-structured sentences of moderate length, and careful use of highlighting create a page that is inviting. Technical writers enumerate points and use lists, bullets, and other style techniques to make their documents easy to read.

Active voice is preferred in technical writing because sentences describing WHO or WHAT performs the ACTION are easier to understand.

Explanation: Passive voice sentences often intentionally do not include the actor or agent doing the action to hide responsibility. The result may produce a sentence that is more verbose and less accurate than an active voice version.

Continued on page 6

“Good writers define the world,: bad ones merely restate it.”—Edward Albee

PURDUE OWL owl.english.prdue.edu apastyle.org youtube.com/user/OWLPurdue The images to the right can be found on the Purdue Online Writing Center, known as the OWL, website and correspond to the APA Manual 6th edition updates.

The links listed above will guide you to the OWL, APA website, and youtube videos produced by Purdue focusing on APA and MLA documentation.

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (APA): 6TH EDITION QUICK REVIEW APA Headings Level

Format

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Centered, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Headings

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Left-aligned, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Heading

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Indented, boldface, lowercase heading with a period.

Begin body text after the period.

Indented, boldface, italicized, lowercase heading with a period.

Begin body text after the period.

Indented, italicized, lowercase heading with a period. Begin body text after the period.

Please see the writing center newsletter Special Edition For more information about using the 6th edition of the APA manual.

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Writing with My Head in The Cloud Alisea W. McLeod These days, I use three tools for writing: physical notebooks, my laptop, and my Android smartphone. I alternate between these for reasons having mostly to do with writing comfort. Trained to write with pen and paper and, not much later, using a typewriter, I sometimes still crave the tactile aspect of writing that a physical notebook provides.

There are other times, however, when I actually do not desire the sensation of touch but, instead, the increased speed with which I can write when thoughts are coming very quickly. On such days or during such moments, I prefer to write with my head in the cloud--on my phone.

For phone-writing, I use three platforms: Google Drive, iAwriter, and Evernote. Of these, I do not have a preference. Rather, I use them for different purposes, and I’d say that I use the first two the most. Google Drive, both for writing for the courses I teach and for my scholarly writing, is lifeblood. My documents have been in the Cloud for about three years, and I would not go back to using flash drives for storage (I am not worried about losing documents). The symbiosis between my mind’s hyperactivity and the always available character of the Google Cloud is reassuring. When I experience a burst of inspiration, I can pick up my phone if it isn’t already in my hand (!) and record the idea before it floats away from me. (It would take a wee bit longer to locate pen and notebook.)

I also appreciate that Google Drive and Evernote, perhaps iAwriter, as well, can be used offline. I have been inspired many times to write while on an airplane flight, and with Drive I have experienced no loss of information (writing) during the time when I was not connected. At the same time, all of these applications can of course be logged into from one’s desktop or laptop, which is good since, every now and then, one wants a bigger screen from which to view one’s text.

I should add that I use yet another Google app for note-taking--Google Keep. I have pretty much abandoned, for the time being anyway, my old method of notetaking for the same reasons I gravitated to The Cloud in the first place--convenience and accessibility. My notes are always with me, and, if I am writing in, say, the Drive or in one of the other apps, I can copy and paste very easily into a document. Needless to say, the sharing feature of all of these applications inspires new connections with other creative people.

GRAMMARLY AND YOU The 21st century college student has many choices of online and offline computer programs to choose from in order to complete written assignments.

Perhaps one of the most accurate and cost effective online programs is GRAMMARLY. This program not only checks grammar and mechanics, but also plagiarism—what is known as an originality report.

The price for access to the program is very small. For the price of two pizzas, a night out at the movies, or a tank of gas you can have thirty days access to all the features the program offers.

For less than the price of an expensive pair of athletic shoes, you can have a full three months worth of access.

Although the program is only around 95% accurate, it is an important tool for evaluating and making corrects to any writing assignment.

Since January of this year, students have averaged over eight-thousand pages scanned by the Grammarly program available on the writing center computers.

To learn more about this powerful editing tool visit: Grammarly.com

On a side note, Drive also provides a link to your documents, which can essentially function as a website of sorts. Having a link to a document means being able to use it in smart ways such as in an electronically-submitted resume or even in a cover letter. This is a direction in which the English program at Rust College is moving students. This is multi-modal writing or composition.

While I have suggested that old forms of writing are more tactile, the cyber or metaphysical quality of phone writing does not displace altogether the sensuality of holding a pen in one’s hand. I mostly swipe, and I find this method to be almost perfectly timed to my pace of thinking although my current phone’s predictive spelling feature (I replaced

by Samsung Note 2 with a Nexus 6) is in my opinion a downgrade. This means I find myself having to go back and correct more. Correcting is easily done, however, so this to me is not a major drawback.

All in all, I would say that the ease of writing in The Cloud and of writing using a smartphone has increased my productivity and even confidence. Because of these super -accessible tools, I definitely write more than I used to. I am writing, in one form or another, all of the time. Moving to The Cloud means I am active in Cyberspace, which can be looked at as a new form of being public or published or, if you prefer, just one step away.

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DECIMA PARCAE After I established the writing center in 2003, I created a literary journal as part of the writing across the curriculum program.

The first literary journal was named The Bearcatz’ Connection as an homage to a previous journal that never was completed by one of my predecessors.

In 2014 I changed the name to Decima Parcae—Latin for Fate.

Decima is the Lover of life and the celebrant of womanhood, as well as practitioner of guided relaxation and meditation. The later of which reading offers us.

Recently, the book, Real Sister: Stereotypes, Respectability and Black Women in Reality TV (Rutgers UP 2015), edited by Jervette Ward, was featured in the April edition of Essence magazine in the “Good Reads” section. One of our own faculty members, LaToya Jefferson-James, contributed a chapter to the book under the Rust College banner. Her chapter, “Selective Reuptake: Perpetuating Misleading Cultural Identities in the Reality TV World,” is being taught on several campuses for its historical and theoretical analysis of African American gender relations in film.

An excerpt of the chapter was also reprinted in the international digital periodical, Vice Magazine. Rutgers has asked for a second book, this time focusing on Black men in reality television. It is slated to come out some time in 2017. This is one of several projects that Jefferson-James will be working on over the summer.

Contributing writer: Dr. Jefferson-James

The literary journal has been converted from a print to an online publication. This allows us to publish a larger full-color document free of charge.

Manuscripts may be submitted for consideration of possible publication throughout the year. You may bring hardcopies or electronic copies to the writing center in BCS 110 during normal operating hours.

Manuscripts are accepted in the following categories: Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Academic Essays.

SHADOW ANGELS: AN ADAPTATION In 2007 I published my first novel, Between Shadows. The following year I worked thirty days straight with almost no sleep to complete The Noble Stories. That same year I began the first draft of the screenplay based on my novels. During the summer of 2015, I scrapped that first draft and began the new version of the screenplay that is now two-thirds complete.

Adapting a novel for the screen, especially a complex mainstream story such as mine, is not an easy task. The stories, once turned into movies, are rarely as linear as the printed forms. Writers must make decisions about what to leave in and what to take out. The novel is written from three points of view, but the movie only focuses on two. Long narrative sequences are broken down into 15 second segments. Writing a screenplay can be difficult but also rewarding.

WEREWOLF HOLLOW: SHORT STORY Although The Noble Stories is not yet published, three of the stories contained within have been. Werewolf Hollow, Dark Trails, and RoChelle have been published in Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society, an international journal with a readership of over 2500.

Werewolf Hollow is a real place located in my home state of Indiana. When my friends and I were 20, we visited the Hollow. It was a night of the full moon. We stood in the headlights of the car looking down the tunnel created by a canopy of trees, listening. That’s where truth and fantasy merge.

That is what mainstream writers do. The stories we write are based on truth, but sprinkled with a liberal amount of social commentary. We are philosophers seeking truth. Escapist fiction, on the other hand, merely takes us away from reality to live in another time, another world, or another reality.

In this story, Michael J. Bear and his best friend are transported into a shadow world where their perceptions of reality are put to the test.

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THE NOBLE STORIES: A NOVEL IN STORIES One of the most difficult forms of writing to master is the Novel-in-Stories. More than merely a collection of short stories that can stand on their own, the Novel-in-Stories form tells a larger story about the people and places depicted in the individual stories. One of the most popular novels using this form is Tim O’Brien’s, The Things they Carried, a collection of stories about the author’s experiences in Vietnam and his encounters with platoon members after the war in their home towns. In many ways, The Noble Stories is like that, yet different.

Meet Michael J. Bear and his friends from small town Indiana during the early and mid-sixties as they discover the mysteries of Life, Love, and the Supernatural. Like most mainstream authors, my stories are taken from actual events with a twist of fantasy known as Magical Realism—where the real and supernatural are indistinguishable. Although Michael and his friends encounter a variety of supernatural events, they remain skeptical. Until one fateful night when the spirt of Michael appears to his last living friend in an isolated cabin on Kentucky Lake. This is where The Noble Stories end and my novel, Between Shadows begins.

If you like mystery, suspense, and the Gothic, then you will like this collection.

“Sometimes friends keep secrets from each.”—from the short story, RoChelle.

IMAGES OF AMERICA: HOLLY SPRINGS, MS Arcadia Press is a small press publisher specializing in local history books. In 2005 my friend Alice Long and I began collecting pictures of Holly Springs and Rust College for our book. It can be purchased at Barnes & Noble in Collierville and online via Amazon.com.

later, I was given a shock—there appeared the image of a Confederate officer in uniform. When I showed the restored picture to the business owner, he was pleased that I had been able to restore the picture that apparently was of his great great grandfather.

How difficult is it to produce such a book?

That depends upon your point of view. I spent many a sleepless night sorting and scanning pictures—over 500 to be exact.

However, the book only contains about 260.

Do you come from an interesting small town? Do you have a story to tell about a n important time in American history? Then contact Arcadia Press and see if they would be interested in helping you compile and publish the story in pictures.

Putting together any book involves making difficult choices. I had the job of deciding which pictures to place in the book and which ones to leave out. The publisher also asked my friend and I to submit several pictures for the cover. The picture you see to the right was my number one choice. The publisher, obviously, agreed.

While collecting pictures from local business owners, I was given a picture from the Civil War era that had no image. I scanned the image into my computer and loaded it in Photoshop. An few minutes

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REFERENCE BOOKS FOR WRITING Also appearing in this book is Rust College’s own Sharron Sarthou, PhD.

Contributors place Faulkner’s work in illuminating conversation with writings by Paul Laurence Dunbar, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, Randall Kenan, Edward P. Jones, and Natasha Trethewey, along with the musical artistry of Mississippi bluesman Charley Patton.

Every scholar, established and novice, needs an arsenal of reference books at her or his disposal. The books posted above all have relevance to Social Work, yet two of them should be considered must haves for any profession. Although many books are now available in eBook formats, it is always a good idea to also own printed editions. Whatever format you choose, three books are a must have: The Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions, Roget’s Thesaurus, and the Oxford English Dictionary.

The technical writer should consider the following when forming sentences: the level of language to use, how many details to include, and how to keep sentences short.

Explanation: Audiences familiar with your subject will expect complex information. However, in routine reports and messages that you want readers to digest quickly, use writing that is less detailed and focuses on the main ideas. Long sentences are more difficult to read.

THE LITERACY ADVOCATES Every year in Professional Writing ENG 337, students work on a variety of projects they can expect to work on during their internships. One of those projects is the creation of Grant Proposal documents.

The Literacy Advocates is a group of English majors who came together as a team to develop a comprehensive tutorial service for Marshall County, Mississippi.

Their grant proposal is designed for one of the special NEH grant programs specifically designated for HBCUs. A short video of their proposal is posted on the WAC site on Blackboard.

Please encourage these students in their pursuit of excellence here at Rust College.