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.