ch. 11

Questions of choosing a design, font, color and style for your paper are all in fact rhetorical questions. When deciding these things, one should take into consideration who the audience is that they are writing for, what ideas they are trying to convey, and also what medium they plan to use to deliver these ideas.

For example, a person writing an academic paper for their English professor would not want to include any of the fancy and pretty fonts such as ‘Curlz MT’, ‘Bradley Hand’, ‘Chiller’, etc. Even though these fonts are cool and nice to look at you would not often choose these fonts for an academic paper because they will not help better convey your idea to your teacher. Most times, a  teacher will require   a paper to be in a particular font so you would need your paper in that specific font to please your teacher. In contrast, If you are choosing a font for an advertisement, you may want to include a different font depending on the audience you are trying to reach or the idea you are trying to relay to the audience.

The fundamental design principles of alignment, proximity, repetition and contrast are important things to keep in mind when you are trying to convey an idea to other people. Alignment is the way thing are lined up horizontally and vertically within the paper and can play a role in the overall flow of your paper or text. Proximity is making sure the text, headings and picture all relate to one another. This can help the reader, or audience better understand and focus on your overall idea. Repetition can help the audience understand what is important about the idea and lets them know what they need to focus in on. Contrast is effectively employed when the design attract the reader eye. This , I feel is the most important because if no one is attracted to whatever medium you are using to convey your idea, no one will learn of your idea.

Fallacies of argument

The author talks of arguments that can considered legitimate or fallacious and makes some interesting point on each.  In some instances the fallacious argument can make any productive argument more difficult to understand or make sense of by the persons in the discussion.  Some persons use tactics to make the argument more difficult to understand in an effort to get the discussion to lean in their favor.

I think that the use of ‘either-or’ is most commonly used in home and school situations for many different reasons.  It simplifies an argument by limiting the choices of the discussion to one or the other.  This can be limiting and not always in a good way, but can also be to the users advantage.  Parents use the either-or in many situations to get a positive action from their children.  The child must make good grades or they cannot play sports or  be in the band.  The author does not approve of this type of argument when there really are other choices that are not given a chance, but in raising children, I think this is the proper argument to use.

The slippery-slope  fallacy indicates that your actions today may cause your downfall in the future.  I think that is probably not legitimate since the future can be changed by many different actions still to come.  In the bandwagon,  I think that some of the slippery-slope is used by trying to get people to agree with this argument because it is the way it was done previously and this result will probably be the same as in the past.  Of all the types, I think that the general population is more driven by the faulty analogies.  People do tend to respond more to comparisons that use the things that are familiar with them.

Amazon

The article, “Amazon’s Troubling Reach”, by David L. Ulin discusses an event involving Amazon that took place in 2009. Amazon.com used their wireless competencies to delete two books from customers’ kindles after learning that electronic publisher of the books did not really have any rights to the books. The two books Amazon deleted were “Animal Farm” and “1984”, by George Orwell.

In the book “1984”, George Orwell talked about how the government wanted control over the common people. They monitored everything the people said, did and watched using big computer screens called, Big Brother.  In “Amazon’s Troubling Reach”, David L. Ulin states that “The issue isn’t that Amazon has erased material from people’s Kindles, or de-ranked gay and lesbian writers, but that it can.” I agree with David Ulin’s statement. The fact that Amazon, if they want to, can delete or alter anything from someone’s personal Kindle without notifying the customers of the Kindle can present many problems and concerns. In the book “1984” David L. Ulin tells us how in the future the government will control the information that people receive and delete the information and memories of accounts that the government did not want the people to know about. Amazon in a way is playing the role of Big Brother, or could potentially do so. They have the ability to delete information and memory from Kindle’s customer accounts. This frightens many people because no one wants to live in a land where the government controls their mind and memory.

 

Ch. 12

My final portfolio for this English 1001 class must be as close to perfect as I can possibly get it. Therefore, revision is highly necessary. Before I do anything to revise my papers, I will go over the peer review letters for each one. I will consider the suggestions and inputs of my peers and make a few changes based on what the letters read. I will then take each of the papers, the rhetorical analysis, literacy narrative, textual analysis and the issue paper that we recently started to our teacher, Ms. Aimee Davis. After I talk about my paper with her, I will go back to drafting my paper and find ways to include the things that she tells me to include.

After I include the things that our teacher suggests, I will read my story again and do a reverse outline. I will re-read the story to evaluate how well my paper is structured. Does it transition smoothly throughout the paper? Most importantly I will reread to make sure I stay on topic and committed to my thesis statement especially since staying on topic seems to be a hard thing for me to do. I would like to have someone, like my mom and my roommate, or a fellow classmate, read my story and do a reverse outline on my papers, because sometimes we don’t notice the mistakes in our own writing the way someone else does. After considering the second opinions of someone else, I will take the paper back to our teacher so that she can give me any additional help.

The Seventh Sense

The Seventh Sense by Lynne Truss is about the importance of the correct use of punctuation. Truss begins the introduction by talking about how a stickler for punctuation notices things that most people don’t notice. They notice the incorrect usage of commas, apostrophes and sentence ending punctuations, such as question marks and apostrophes. Many people, including myself, would not have noticed the grammar and punctuation errors on the different signs that many of us see every day. Even while reading the examples in The Seventh Sense, I did not notice some of the incorrect usage of punctuations.

Truss goes on to tell the reader about how the placement of punctuation can change the entire meaning and argument of a story or a letter. In The Seventh Sense, Truss says “The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.”(Truss p.20) I completely agree with Truss and her reason why to stand up for punctuation. I think that it is very interesting how the placement or misplacement of one small punctuation mark, like a comma, an apostrophe or a period, can make a story mean something totally different than what was the intended meaning.

After reading this story by Lynne Truss, and realizing what a difference the correct usage of punctuation can make in portraying the meaning of a certain text, I will probably start being more aware of the usage and misuse of punctuations on the signs, posters and even newspapers that I read daily.

The Charm of Wikipedia by Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker’s, The Charms of Wikipedia, talks about the things that make Wikipedia such a great web site and source.

The things that most people, including our teachers, would agree make Wikipedia a web site of no value and no credibility, Baker disagrees and says these things make it better. Many people don’t like Wikipedia because anyone can edit an article. Because any person can contribute to the web site, there may sometimes be too much information in an article with too many different accounts. Some people will be more knowledgeable in some things than others. Information may or may not be correct or informative.

 Baker talks about the exact opposite of what you normally hear about Wikipedia from most people and your teachers. Baker argues that the many different accounts of different people are what make the web site a great tool. He talks about how Wikipedia is a great medium for people who have a lot of informative things to say about particular article, events , and people, who are shy or do not have any other way to communicate to put their ideas and information on the internet and to begin putting their name out and build networks. Baker also discusses how participating in Wikipedia you meet people from all over and also gain knowledge from others as you contribute the things you alreasy know or think that you already know.

I agree with Nicholson’s Baker view of Wikipedia because in my sociology class we learned haw different accounts can help you learn about a situation, so the many inputs posted to an article,in my opinion helps give credit to the article. I also agree that to many inputs and edits to an article can also take away from the creditability of the article only because any person can edit them and not everyone knows what they are talking about.

Textual Analysis

I have a few ideas for the textual analysis paper. I have two ads in mind right now. Both ads discuss smoking. One ad is a video discussing second hand smoke and how it affects others around you, more importantly how second hand smoke affects your children. The other is a print ad talking about the effects of smoking to your personal health.

I will write about how the ad relates to Aristotle’s three appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos refers to the credibility of the sources. Pathos is what appeals to the readers or viewers emotions and logos refers to the logical information in including facts and statistics.

In the advertisement video referring to secondhand smoke all three appeals are evident. Pathos would be the young girl talking about how after learning about the harmfulness of smoking and smoke she is scared to be around the smoke. Ethos or the credibility of this ad would be the source, Southern Nevada Health District, because it is a health district discussing the health effects of second hand smoking. Logos, the logical information, would be the side effects of second hand smoking that the young girl discusses throughout the video. In the print ad about the effects of smoking on your health I can only two appeals, ethos and logos are evident. Logos would be the statistics and rates of death associated with smoking .The credibility ethos, also comes from the source, a national organization that deals with health and addictions.

Hopefully by the end of this week my ideas will be more exact because I will have made my decision on which advertisement I will choose to write my textual analysis over.

Chapter 3 and 4

I could easily relate to “Understanding Your Audience” because when I write it is usually for class assignments so my audience is almost always the teacher. My thought as I type is always what is the teacher looking for? Each teacher is looking for something different, depending on the class. For example, in sociology, the teacher is looking for certain concepts and ideas not necessarily structure and details unlike in English where I write to include elaborate details about a specific topic or event. I think it is important when I write that I understand who I am writing for so that I have an idea of what they expect to see in my writing, so that I can be sure to include those things in my writing assignment.

One particular paper I remember writing for a particular audience, was a paper and presentation about music that was to be presented to my teacher and class. I remember how hard it was trying to write in a way to please the teacher, obviously since she was the one who would be giving me the grade, but also in a way that my peers could relate to and understand. I had to be sure I included all the details that the teacher was looking for and include some style and terminology that my friends and I use. Writing for two completely different audiences proved to be a difficult a task but the concept of writing in a way that would please the audience and that the audience would understand was the same.

Literacy Narratives

A literacy narrative is a reflective account of one’s own development as a reader or writer.

Learning to Read by Frederick Douglass is a literacy narrative because it tells how Frederick Douglass, a once enslaved African-American, learned to read and write. In his narrative Frederick Douglass talks about learning to read and write during a time when it was very deviant and also very dangerous for enslaved African-Americans to be educated in reading and writing. “Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent him from taking the ell” (Douglass p.192)This quote from Douglass describes his determination and commitment to learning theses skills.

Tongue Tied by Maxine Hong Kingston is a literacy narrative because it is her reflective account of growing up as a young Asian American learning in American and Chinese schools. Kingston describes how she and other Chinese children were uncomfortable talking and reading in the American school, but was more comfortable and more outgoing at the Chinese school. “The boys who were so well-behaved in the American school played tricks on [the teachers] and talked back to them. The girls were not mute.” (Kingston p.239)

In One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty describes to us how she learned to read and how she fell in love with books at a young age. She tells us “[she] learned from the age two or three that any room in [their] house, at any time of day, was there to read in or be read to”(Welty p.565). Welty started reading young and still loves reading as well as writing.

All three of the above stories are good literacy narratives that share individual stories of learning to read and write, but in different environments and circumstances.

Steven King is a well known author and therefore a creditable source for writing tips and help to understand writing. I think that he takes a rhetoric approach to writing in “What Writing Is”, because he considered all of the four elements of his situation. Stephen King is a known author communicating to readers about what he believes writing is and how it is a form of telepathy, because as the reader reads his thoughts they share the same thoughts for that moment, although you may picture them differently. He tells us that writing is something that should be approached in a serious and aggressive way when he says “you must not come lightly to the blank page” and “if you can’t or won’t” take it serious then you should “do something else” (king p.107).
He considers his readers as he writes this because he acknowledges that his readers would not be reading the story until the year two thousand although he wrote it in nineteen ninety seven. Stephen King also makes references to people and things that most people know of such as stories by Robert McCammon ,Dickens and Shakespeare.
King uses a print text as a medium to communicate with his audience. Because he used a print text he does not use any special text fonts in his writing with the exception of italics that he used to bring attention to different points. There are not any images in the writing because the images are created through King’s words.