July 10th: More on Plain Language

Overview for Revising Prose

Refining our prose takes lots of time and won’t happen overnight. The first thing to do is to actually re-read your work. Don't try to edit right away; instead, try to figure out what the sentence (or paragraph) is about. What is the author trying to communicate.

Back to Prose Revision

We are going to begin our sentence-level exercises.  These “lessons” are for you to carry with you for the rest of the semester.

Revising Prose Lessons

Practice sentences (start here)

Sentence Clarity Fun

Other related discussions on Euphemisms and Topic Sentences.

Word Choice 'Fun'

Is "Funner" a word?

How do we determine if something is a word or not? The reading (Tebeaux & Dragga Ch. 4) gives you some do's and don't's for word choice (pp. 59- 61), but why do some words work and others don't?

Don't ever let theory get in the way of real world contexts and your own common sense. Click below for the scanned dictionary entries:

• Fun

• Funner and Funnest

• Syllabuses

• How about concision instead of conscieness?

Words scanned from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1999. p. 472 and p. 1194, respectively.

For an in-depth discussion on the "proper" usage of fun, check out World Wide Words or Grammar Girl's Discussion. Remember, when it comes to word usage, it's not who says it, it's who hears it.

Chapters 4 and 7 Tebeaux and Dragga

These two chapters are foundational chapters--they have basic information on revision and types of documents used for communication. Obviously, we'll refer to Ch. 4 over the next few days, but Ch. 7 is one that should be in your minds throughout the semester. We won't go page-by-page (unless I think there wasn't enough reading...), but we will address the concerns Ch. 7 brings up throughout the term.

Homework and Future Work

We'll continue these lessons if we haven't finished them tomorrow. Read Ch. 5 & 10 in Tebeaux & Dragga.

Your Prose Revision assignment (three paragraphs) is due on Monday (7/15).