Looking back at past readings, looking forward to the essay about the movie-making process

I think video and writing can be as closely related as the artist wants them to be. They certainly share some characteristics. One naturally precedes the other, like speech came before writing, and video comes after writing. Like writing, video is a very new technology. Both writing and technology are changing, but video is still undergoing extreme changes and slowly becoming a widely used tool as much as writing. I think the advent of YouTube and other viral video sites are a brilliant way to get people to share thoughts and opinions (regardless of how stupid or pointless) in a sort of face to face contact.

Unless we have a script in front of us on camera, we usually speak in our normal everyday dialect and mannerisms. I think this gives video more credibility than writing because you have those facial expressions and mannerisms to base judgments on. Video sort of transcends the barriers of writing by giving you that face and voice with a text (to Plato's disgust, I'm sure).

When making video gets to be as simple as picking up a pencil and jotting down a few notes and is available to everyone as an affordable way to communicate (some of Ong's requirements in a good technology) it won't be long before we see widespread use of webcameras and videophones in everyday situations; in other words, it won't be limited to YouTube, extreme distance communication, newscasts, and the business world. This will bring an entire new set of problems to the market and will be a constant source of inspiration and new technology, much like writing still is today.

YouTube/Low-bridge videos: Are they good? Are they bad? Are they writing?

Michael Wesch seems to think that digital text is the same as written text, but with less of a linear nature. It also transcends distances and can bypass traditional publishers to reach a worldwide audience in mere seconds. As for Anderson's "low-bridge" technology serving as a type of universal education tool, I can see how it would spark interest in students, but keeping the technology simple so as to not discourage students would be more difficult. I believe that creativity is a major part of motivation; Anderson is on the right track with that statement. However, exercising that creativity in a way that promotes learning is the trick.

I think that there is a connection between writing and video, but the connection is only as deep as the writer/director wants it to be. As much as writing can be internalized and the rule memorized, the same can be said of video directing and editing. The level of planning can then vary with individuals. I know that minimal planning beyond basic brainstorming in my own group was used to plan our video. We're sort of flying by the seat of our pants, but at least we know where we're headed.

Reading and Writing About Comics ala McCloud Part Deux

I examined Rebecca's blog post at this location. It described a comic by David Gaddis in which he depicts a man's flirtatious encounter with a woman in a jazzy coffee house. The comic bears no text but tells the story with large panoramic shots of the interior and closeups from the man's point of view. Rebecca calls attention to the difference in coloring, mentioning that when the man is alone, "drab, muted colors are used. When he interacts with a woman the colors are more red and more alive with warmth." The perspectives and frames are also used to give a sense of communication between the two, and she notes that the shape of the panels becomes more inconsistent when the man is alone.

The artistic style of the comic reminded me of other art that I've seen in the past in some English comics and the whole feel of it gave me a pseudo-realistic feeling. One of the panels, in which the woman looks up in horror to meet the man's gaze, it shows his face from her perspective, horribly distorted in a fisheye-type lense. As McCloud describes it, "Expressionism, as it came to be called, didn't start as a scientific art, but rather as an honest expression of the internal turmoil these artist just could not repress" (122). The lines in Gaddis' comic are free-flowing and jazzy, full of warm energy while the characters interact with mixed emotions that play out in their facial expressions and the environment around them. McCloud writes that all lines can carry some expressionistic potential, and even "the most bland 'expressionless' line on earth can't help but characterize their subject in some way" (125).

Reading and Writing about Comics ala McCloud, Part 1

I checked out a comic by Daniel Goodbrey that displays a lot of "MS Paint"-style artistry. It's not that it's bad, but it looks "simple" and grainy. The colors are likewise very simplistic and often in primary hues (easily represented on a 256-color palette). Lines between shading and light are hard and unblended. The entire presentation is very reminiscent of Scott McCloud's pyramid of iconic abstraction, reality, and language (51). Each edge of the triangle represents one of those features, though a comic is not necessarily bounded in one area or another and can change as freely as the artist wishes. Goodbrey's comics are consistently abstract enough to be considered somewhere in the middle of the pyramid, leaning more towards the language border. Goodbrey frequently illustrates commentary from pop culture to abstract ideas about animals and people.

The comic follows a format. There are always 4 frames: the first is the title frame that introduces the topic of the next three. In this particular example, it presents the oxymoron of "recognizing the nondescript." That is, something that shouldn't be describable because of its too common features. The second through fourth frames demonstrate the qualities that a nondescript person has, including "normal" behavior and "typical" clothing. I love the irony of the description.

The frames serve to make one important point or punchline. Using the six transitional descriptions of Scott McCloud, this comic falls into one of three. The unchanging art in the three non-title frames could be considered a part of McCloud's "Moment-to-Moment" transition, in which each frame is a brief moment captured in time, and then slowly drawn out over several frames, much like a motion picture or flip-book animation.

I also feel that this comic has a place in McCloud's "Action-to-Action" category since the panels switch between no action and a sudden or implied action. The particular comic I linked doesn't represent this as well as this one does.

I also include the possibility of "Subject-to-Subject" transition because of the level of reader involvement. "The next type takes us from Subject-to-Subject while staying withing a scene or idea. Note the degree of reader involvement necessary to render these transitions meaningful" (McCloud 71). The action here takes place outside the panel, but there is implied action that the reader is encouraged to imagine happening. The poop joke here is especially powerful in evoking a response from the reader.

Picturing Texts on the Web

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Peer Review Recap, Part Deux

I enjoyed the wiki assignment thoroughly. The concept of easily sharing writing examples with a class should be expanded to more of the education system. I think it would really help students to cooperate and give better constructive criticism through the peer editing format.

I loved the advice that I was given on my paper. There were clear suggestions on what I could do to make my rule more understandable. I had one comment that I hadn't really stated or created my own rule. Maybe I didn't, but I understood that I could rephrase a rule from Williams or Strunk and White. What I did was paraphrase an idea from Williams and condensed it into a simplified rule for organizing paragraphs in (mostly) my own words. The comment made me raise a concerned eyebrow and a little red flag; I'll mostly likely go back and try to edit the essay so that my rule is clearly spelled out. My goal will be to leave no room for doubts as to my intent. I made a few minor comments and corrections on the essays I edited, which were great for the most part. I read some really good papers that had everything organized and was super-easy to follow and then I read some that needed a bit of polishing to finish. I tried to be helpful and offer as many suggestions as I thought appropriate, but the exposure to a variety of writers really brings out the differences. Some of the pages on the wiki hadn't been updated with the student's essay, and some essays had to be hunted down from the wrong locations. It was a good experience, though. Being able to see other students' corrections is great for checking my own opinion against the group's. I can test myself as an outlier or as just going with the flow.

If I were to do this project for another class, I could make a few suggestions to better streamline the process: There should be more uniformity in the naming of the pages, or instead of having the essays under a students own wiki page, just add the essay under the home page with the title of the rule as the page name.

The wetpaint site is fairly intuitive, which is great. The formatting is slightly off, which isn't so great. The feeling of the general wetpaint environment isn't the same as a true wiki website with searchable articles. Wetpaint behaves more like a regular webpage with frames set up for a navigable sidebar of the entire website. This worked fine for what our classes needed, but for larger projects or more people it would just collapse into confusion with so many pages. It did allow for the simple editing of our essays, and the thread posting under the essay is great for long comments and corrections instead of writing them right into the bottom of the essay. Between this and googledocs, I'd still probably use Google because of the realtime updating of the text. Googledocs is more flexible with the editing, and the formatting isn't nearly as messed up.

What are others saying?

Others are saying that Strunk is pedantic, pontificating, and pretentious; I tend to agree with them. His rules lack explanation and are frequently pointless. In his section on 'Misused Words and Expressions' he includes an article on thrust. "This showy noun, suggestive of power, hinting of sex, is the darling of executives, politicos, and speechwriters. Use it sparingly. Save it for specific application." Why should I? Thrust all you like, I say. Let reader decide if it's misused or abused. The book reads like a textbook; all information is the truth and should be accepted at face value.

All the information does find it's place, however. Gordon wrote "The question as to which book is more effective, to me, seems to be the wrong question. I think that the books swim in different waters. I think what I got from Williams will be helpful, but I don't see myself going back to it again and again. It is very dense and it was difficult to get through. For me, the primary function of Strunk & White is as a reference, or a reminder of things easily forgotten; Williams deals with the most basic level of style--clarity, cohesion, emphasis, coherence..."
Gordon's summary of Strunk's role places the book squarely in reference material. Elements of Style is therefore a book that the writer will open to check a usage or a technical question and not a book that will dictate an entire body of prose.

The blogs I reviewed tell me that each book has a different role, which I believe is accurate. There is a consensus that Williams' book is more difficult reading, and that much of his information is more specific and helpful to improving the majority of a written work. Steve's blog frequently comments on the level of detail in Williams' book and often about how much is too much information. The book makes itself confusing by providing too much information in an effort to make writing clear. The fact that the chapter on concision is 15 pages long while the clarity chapter is almost 30 leads me to believe that certain lengths must be taken to cover a topic fully, in a concise manner or not.

Comparing Strunk and White with Williams

Williams doesn't address the plentiful technicalities of English grammar like Strunk and White does; instead, he gives advice on forming complete ideas that have "flow" in a paragraph or whole document. Williams doesn't have the authoritative attitude of Strunk & White, and I think the advice reflects that in its lack of technical examples and punctuation dos and don'ts. Without that 'tude, Williams doesn't use ironic examples that are "wrong" to make his case like Strunk. He generates his own examples that geniunely are helpful to understanding the concept without being condescending to the reader.

Williams is more effective because of the helpful, co-pilot approach, however, the length and depth of the explanations can become a liability. Some passages inspired confusion during my reading, forcing me to backtrack and reread the last passage once, if not twice more. Some of the explanations require background knowledge of the language. An example is the discourse on passive and active voice; if I'm really not sure what the difference is and how to replicate it in a sentence, the book leaves me wondering. The discussion on nominalization was also confusing, but Williams did manage to explain this adequately.

I liked some of the straightforward simplicity in Strunk's handbook. The reference-quality passages were easy to digest. The cut and dried rules with no explanations put me off, but they get the job done and present a basic foundation for components of writing. For more comprehensive writing tips, Williams beats out Strunk hands down. Not only does Williams have the grace and clarity in his own writing to sympathize with a student, he shows how to translate that style to the student's writing. I think that Strunk's advice should be taken with a grain of salt after reading what Williams had to say. I still agree that a firm grasp of the basic rules are Strunk's territory and should be followed, and that once those are implanted the student can then use the strategies in Williams' book to modify Strunk's rules, put them back together, and end with an organized and stylistically superior piece of writing.

Revising with Williams

ENGL 387:
"Employment for pay in a business or industry chosen to provide practical experience in the use of English skills. Work experiences generally are alternated with full-time attendance at the University."

To provide practical experience in the use of English skills, students are employed for pay in a business or industry.

At the University, work experiences generally are alternated with full-time attendance.

The first sentence is ambiguous. I didn't know if 'chosen' refers to the student's choice in a business or industry, or the college's choice in a business or industry 'to provide practical experience'. The structure of the sentence as a description gives it an awkward beginning. My edit has removed the ambiguous nature by adding the subject of 'students' and removing the 'chosen'. The sentence retains its original meaning and the verbs match the subjects.

The second sentence reads better when rephrased to provide emphasis on the action of 'alternating full-time attendance'. Moving the phrase to the end of the sentence is the best course of action. The less important words, 'At the University' are moved to the left, as on page 68 of Williams. The sentence now has a strong ending that emphasizes full-time attendance. No slackers here.

Strunk and White: First Impressions

Elements of Style is an excellent handbook if you're looking for technical information on the proper grammar of commas, semicolons, and other prescriptive rules on English writing style. This book is not a good reference to descriptive grammar and the constant evolution of language through writing.

The book presents itself very precisely and has many suggestions for rephrasing common mistakes and misuses of idioms. It takes a discriminatory opinion on certain changes to the grammar such as "flammable" and "inflammable". The authors write "Unless you are operating such a a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable." Some of the more common practices in writing are condemned by the authors.

At the same time the handbook uses some of the new styles as examples in what not to do and in the explanation after. He has a very comical style when he addresses the grammar in this way and I think it's an effective way to demonstrate a possible use of an irregular style.

The last few paragraphs offer important insight to the purpose of writing. "Your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one." I believe in this completely with few exceptions. I don't agree with the hard rules Strunk puts forward, but I can respect that he sees some elements necessary for variety and why the hard rules should form the foundation of the grammar.

Peer Review Recap Part 1

Generally, I had good things to say about the reviews on my essay. Using Google Docs to edit and share the paper is a really excellent idea. I actually used the application to write another paper online and then print it later from the library for another class.

The paper itself was fairly easy to write. I liked the flexibility of the Works Cited requirements. Most teachers are extremely anal about how you use cite references. Personally, I only feel it necessary to give as much information as you need to find the article, the bare minimum to pin down the original work. Usually this is what citing does anyway, but the whole organized system for doing so is frequently counterintuitive.

Some things on my wish list were more specific comments on the structure of my paper. I only had one comment that said my essay flowed well, but I have my doubts. I also got a lot of 'I wouldn't change a thing' and 'You've probably already got a good final draft here.' I don't blame my peer reviewers for these comments by any stretch, but sometimes I wish I had more to do than rephrase some of my statements. I don't want to be complacent with my work; I feel disbelief in thinking that there's nothing significant to change about my essay.

On the other side, I think I gave some good advice. Sometimes it's hard to read what someone was trying to say and then tell them what they need to hear to make it better, but I believe I came across with some useful tips. As far as flow and restructuring of essays, I'm not sure I gave enough of that advice myself. It really is hard. So I can see where getting that kind of advice back is difficult.

My Writing Technologies

My invented writing technology.

When I was younger my choices of writing technologies was very simple. The teachers usually insisted on pencils because they were easy to erase the frequent mistakes in almost all subjects, notably math and English. Around the time of middle school or junior high my taste switched over to pens for the greater readability and better feel in the grip and texture. Control of the tip was a big issue in those days because they had dramatic effects on my handwriting legibility. The pencil wasn't completely abandoned, but I usually preferred mechanical pencils. They were more consistent on paper and didn't require getting up every 5 minutes to sharpen.

Computers were a growing force even before those grade school days. I was lucky enough to have an older computer in the early '90s that allowed me to practice typing and becoming proficient in developing operating systems. Word processing hadn't quite caught on yet and the experiences I had with printing on that early machine were terrifying to say the least. Nothing came out like it appeared on the screen and the printer itself was loud and unreliable. Technology moved fast after that, and by the mid '90s I could use my PC to print any number of documents using the Microsoft Office tools. Teachers around that time began to recognize the importance of having students use a computer to type reports and essays, or allowing them access to the school computer lab if they didn't have access at home.

Nowadays, I use the computer for almost everything I do in prose. Notes in class or short messages are done with a pen and I take officious tests in No. 2 pencil. Commonly I write on lined paper for my notes or just any scrap of material that can hold text for short messages at work or something I need to remember without holding it in mind. Lined paper really is best for organization and legibility. The only writing technologies that I really shun are certain kinds of pens which leave thick trails of ink, or that don't flow well onto the paper.

What is Style?

Style is an amorphous, changing element of life that manifests itself in the way we see and experience things. I say changing because what is stylish one day may not be so stylish the next. What may seem impressive and stylish could be bland and tasteless all at once.

Style is the visual and emotional appeal of a work in any medium. Not to be confused with attractiveness, artistic merit or grammaticality, style is more subjective to the interpretations of the viewer, listener, or reader. Therefore, impressions of style can vary widely between individuals. In this way, style is hard to predict, though going along with popular trends can assure a certain amount of style points. At the cost of potentially huge risk an artist could create a new trend and magically generate new style. A new style in this manifestation has a much greater impact when it is widely accepted by the mainstream audience.

Frequently, the context of the work in question has as much to do with the style as the work itself. For example, a hood ornament from an early model car has tremendous style value (in this writer's opinion), however, the vehicle on which the ornament rides on can greatly influence how stylish it really is. Indeed, the ornament may be more valuable if taken away from the car and placed on it's own stand or pedestal and displayed as an icon of style from a long-ago era.

In recent history a resurgence of these "kitsch" items and works have become new symbols for style. Old television shows are looked back upon wistfully by people who grew up with them and wish that shows today were made with the same degree of interpreted styles. Retro fashions like bell-bottoms and flared pant legs were the norm a few years ago. Circling around to the automotive angle once more, some notable car designs are borrowing on previous generations' style with new-retro appearances. The most recent generation of Mustang, Challenger, and Camaro, to name a few, are cashing in on this kitsch-style value.

Style is any form that is looking for acceptance from any particular group. It doesn't have to be new or old, radical or conservative. All it needs is an interest group that can nurture and appreciate the work and the contexts it appears in.

Hello world!

First post. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.