Writing: November 2005 Archive Page

--MLA citation style: quick guide (PDF) (Cal State University, San Marcos LIbrary)

A handy two-page reference sheet.

I was pleasantly surprised to see what example this guide uses for how to cite a website. Perhaps there's a text-adventure fan on the CSUSM staff.

Framing a story is like building a house. Just as you determine how many rooms the house should have, you focus on the main idea of your story and what you want to say. A poorly framed story is vague and pointless, and your writing suffers. Good adjectives cannot make up for a bad story or bad idea.

"This is a tool (not a rule) to get a handle on the story and break it down," Roberts said. "Framing makes the story easier to write. If you lay the foundation, you're free to be a much better writer."

One of the leaders in the training movement across the country, Roberts had conference participants pick a story and find ways to make it better. Focus the story by deciding the main idea and, after reporting, run the information through this checklist: news, context, impact and human dimension.

• News is the event, new information, basic facts; it tells the reader what happened.
• Context is the story's background and history, its relationship to things around the news, the bigger picture; it tells readers what's normal, surprising or how similar things are dealt with elsewhere.
• Impact tells readers what the news affects or changes, now and in the future; it tells readers who benefits, who suffers and what they can do about it.
• Human dimension illustrates or portrays how the story effects the lives of real people; it provides details, textures, emotions, colors to convey experience.

--Michael Roberts --Story Framing: Four Vital Ingredients (Poynter)

I have a Strunk and White. I like having it. And it's clarity has helped me. Not because I necessarily followed the advice or even agree with it now, but because at a more formative time in my writing life, it gave me a simple place to depart from. It made me feel like a writer to have it. When I first read White's advice (far more than Strunk's), it cheered me to have a writer I love talk to me about writing. I keep the book for that feeling more than any other. -- Nick Carbone -- Frankenstrunk is Shrunken Strunk (TechNotes: Teaching Writing in an Online World)

Carbone is commenting on the occasion of a new edition of Strunk & White, this one featuring illustrations.

--2005 IF Comp Results

Vespers, Beyond, and A New Life are the winners of IF Comp 2005. Woo hoo! Free text games!

By studying journalism, you carry with you tools for assessing arguments, and a dogged determination to find the truth in yourself and in others.

I love this work, but it is work. Living up to the standards of this difficult, competitive field is taxing. I have a long, long way to go. --Amanda Cochran --A journalist's lessons (Girl Meets World)

Amanda is a junior journalism major here at SHU. I've asked her to speak to my "News Writing" class today.

Here’s where it gets fun: after students’ small groups put some thoughts up on the board, we read through the Writing Program’s Statement on Plagiarism out loud, and discuss it, making sure everything’s clear about the policy.

And then I hold a plagiarism contest. --Mike Vitia --Let’s Plagiarize! (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I'm home in Greensburg, still coming down from my Serious Games Summit high. This post is a useful reminder that simulation and role-playing doesn't require a computer. Even the fanciest teaching tools may be useless unless they are contextualized effectively (and designed with sound pedagogical principles). I doubt that corporate or military trainers would go for a training exercise that asks learners to perform undesirable actions. The simulators are, of course, designed with the understanding that learners will fail, and the design includes feedback to get the trainee to reach the expected performance level. But the trainee isn't expected to understand all the material. In fact, teaching full comprehension is inefficient, since in many cases the decisions are made elsewhere, and the point of training is to get compliance (and thus save lives or protect valuable assets).

On the other hand, if the point of a simulation is to teach comprehension, situational awareness, or leadership, rather than to teach a particular skill to be performed by those with their boots in the sand, then we're back to Admiral Kirk's Kobayashi Maru -- a training simulation designed to test how a commander performs in a no-win situation.

Not sure where I'm going with this... it's way too late, and the caffeine-and-sugar high that fueled my drive home is starting to fade.