Writing: April 2006 Archive Page

When I find significant errors in student writing, I chalk it up to one of three reasons: they don't care, they don?t know, or they didn't see it. And I believe that the first and last are the most frequent causes of error. In other words, when push comes to shove, I've found that most students really do know how to write -- that is, if we can help them learn to value and care about what they are writing and then help them manage the time they need to compose effectively. --Laurence Musgrove --The Real Reasons Students Can't Write (Inside Higher Ed)

I've had some difficulty with this last paper, no doubt, but I finally think I'm on the right track. However in my oral presentation, I wanted to include some goals, not only for this paper, but also to outline what I hoped to take from this class, once it's over. --Matthew Hampton --Achievable goals for Paper III (MatthewHampton)

Matt is a student in my writing-intensive American Lit II class. I've been impressed by the quality of work all the students are producing in the class, but this list of goals (part of a handout he created for an oral presentation) really impressed me. One of my favorite is "To be able to look at a series of work by an author, analyze and remove the ideas I need, assess that information and then possess the ability to recognize a critical perspective from which I can write." That goal is so much more advanced than "remember key quotes" or "summarize the stories we read" or "apply the stories to my own life."

"We cannot determine whether the addition to the letter was made by someone within the office or by someone with access to the office, but it is on my letterhead and the responsibility for it lies with me. A valuable lesson has been learned and new procedures will be adopted as a result." --Lawmaker Puzzled by Obscenity in Letter (AP|Yahoo!)

Passive verbs are loved by people who are found (by someone) to have been involved in actions that are considered (by some) undesirable.

Emphasis was added (by me).

McClure said that some students seem to feel "that e-mail is a casual form of communication, where professional relationships somehow do not exist as they do in the classroom -- students feel comfortable saying things in an email that they would never say to you in person." --David Epstein --Be Polite, E-Polite (Inside Higher Ed)

Nothing terribly ground-breaking in this article, but I'm blogging it because the examples are all university-related, and it might make a good discussion starter in this fall's "Writing for the Internet class."

According to the nonprofit Electronic Literature Organization, within the broad category of electronic literature are several forms and threads of practice, including hypertext fiction and poetry, on and off the Web; kinetic poetry presented in Flash and using other platforms; computer art installations, which ask viewers to read them or otherwise have literary aspects; conversational characters, also known as chatterbots; interactive fiction; novels that take the form of e-mails, SMS messages or blogs; poems and stories that are generated by computers, either interactively or based on parameters given at the beginning; collaborative writing projects that allow readers to contribute to the text of a work; and literary performances online that develop new ways of writing. --Digital writing gives new meaning to a good read (My San Antonio)

--Evolution of the Latin Alphabet (Evolution of Alphabets Page)

A very interesting animated GIF that shows how the Latin alphabet (which is basically the modern English alphabet) developed from the Phonecial alphabet.

Email as a collaboration tool sucks. Everyone knows this. Everyone says it. Everyone writes about it.

And everyone agrees that its inefficient, it's chaotic, its silo'ed and its full of spam. Yet, in spite of these shortcomings, we can assume with confidence that email is still the preferred method of "collaborating" and sharing information with others. --The Good In Email (or Why Email Is Still The Most Adopted Collaboration Tool) (Central Desktop Blog)

I was recently invited to join an IM discussion for a collaborative project, but I declined. I can see how it would be useful for brainstorming, but at that point in the project we had already shared ideas and were approaching a "getting things done" mode, and I didn't feel like that was the right time to switch to chat.

I'm not a total dinosaur. I think Wikis are great collaborative tools, because they keep a track of changes, which means I feel more comfortable making wild changes, since someone else can always moderate it if I've made too drastic a change.

Andrew Swinand, executive vice president at Starcom Worldwide, a major advertising-buying agency, said during a panel discussion that newspapers could do more to harness their presence online, such as getting more participation from audiences.

Swinand also said his firm would like to buy advertising across newspaper websites but had difficulty doing so, and had to go through third-party vendors. He also said it was difficult to buy both print and online advertising through newspapers, and that the process for fulfilling newspaper ad sales was cumbersome and less automated than in other media.

Swinand did say afterward that he was still "bullish" on newspapers' online advertising potential, but added that newspapers should do more to personalize and localize their online content, in ways such as the social networking site MySpace does. -- --Stop the Presses ... Go Online (Wired | AP)

The job market for traditional journalism jobs is drying up. No question about it.