Sunday, October 18, 2009
Week 9
Try to find a moment or a phrase or something that didn't work. I know this is quite subjective, but that just means you need to argue your point well. Being a good writer means knowing when something doesn't flow or fit with the rest of the piece. Good writing also comes from good editing. So, what piece would you edit out of this week's reading?
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"Because when you are mounting a counterinsurgency campaign, the local government is the critical bridge between your troops and your goals. If that government is rotten, your whole enterprise is doomed."
After reading this paragraph (near the beginning of Friedman's article), I had to stop to re-read the first sentence about three times before continuing, since I couldn't figure out its structure. I do understand the point he was trying to make here, and I think his next sentence is a nice, punchy way to end the thought, but trying to figure out the form of this sentence really took my mind out of the article. The placement of the phrase beginning with "because," maybe even just the word "because," made me wonder where the main emphasis in the sentence should be placed. It made me realize, however, how important the flow of writing is. In my own writing, I don't want the reader to get distracted and stop thinking about the content of what I have written, for if that happens, all the momentum I am building to my final point will be lost.
"My first impulse was the little bloodshot eyeballs.
At least a bag or two of them, maybe 100 tiny plastic eyeball toys that were actually little bottles of bubble-blowing soap (hey neat!), but then I realized I bought some of those for my Halloween party last year and they weren't all that great, a bit of a dud really; the tiny bubble-blowing ring thing didn't really work, the soapy goop leaked all over and you pretty much had to give up after a few tries and go back to your drink, as you thought, "Dammit, why can't someone make a decent, tiny, bloody eyeball bubble-blowing toy in this modern day and age?" Which is, when you think about it, sort of weird."
This is the beginning of Mark Morford's latest article and if this isn't a run-on sentence I don't know what is. Like Jessica I had to read it over a few times before I got it. Although I like the intention was good, splitting it up into a few more sentences would have made it more effective and less of a hassle to read and understand. Also, beginning the second sentence with "at least" just threw me off from the start. Although I like the rest of the article, I doubt I would have kept reading after this first part if I wasn't required to.
"A truth of today’s parenting is that saying 'when I was your age' is often irrelevant. Kids do so many things at younger ages than their parents did (watch 'inappropriate' movies, start worrying about college), except for the things they don’t do until they are older (drink legally, stay home alone without parents hovering). Many of the choices we make as parents did not even exist when we were kids (computer okay in the bedroom? How many hours a day playing the Facebook game Farmville?)"
Although I like the fact that the author has tried to use examples in order to strengthen her argument, I can't help but be really distracted by the structure of the paragraph. It's really disorienting to read all of the different examples in the parentheses, and for a lot of them, I was confused as to what exactly she was trying to say when she was referencing them. In order to improve the paragraph, I would have used semi-colons in order to reinforce my argument; the parentheses just detract and dilute what the author is trying to put across.
In general, I thought Caitlin Flanagan’s article this week was quite effective. However, amidst an interesting article about online predators, there was something that didn’t seem to fit.
“Not many people are as ill-served by having their natterings subjected to instantaneous, global transmission as adolescent girls.”
It was not only this sentence that didn’t fit, but an entire section of the essay about cyber-bullying. Flanagan settled back into what I might call her rant about how teenage girls need privacy to create their own identity and how their ability to foster self-confidence is being eroded by modern society. Not only is this topic present in many of her articles, but in this case it did not contribute or even really relate to the point of the article. Without this section, I think the article would have been much stronger.
"Maybe next time the system will crash a lot harder."
This is the article's ending sentence, and I just wish that it was punchier, more in your face. The article talks about having emails erased and feeling good about it, and I loved the article, expecting the ending to be somewhat sarcastic and humorous but really strong. While this end sentence is funny, it is not strong to me AT ALL. I think Brotman just needed to change the end sentence in some way and the article would have been stellar.
I wanted to add looking at it again that i think what bugs me about the sentence is the " a lot harder" portion of the sentence. I did expect Brotman to revert back to the computer crash, but in a more in your face way, and so the "a lot harder" is somewhat vague to me, and I wish she could have used something else, more detailed and concrete to make the last sentence pop.
"In April 1999, her son, Dylan, along with his classmate, Eric Harris, killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves in a massacre that would thereafter be known simply as Columbine, the deadliest high school shooting in the nation's history."
All in all i thought it was a good article, but this sentence from the opening paragraph just strikes me as too much information, and, too, many, commas.
That seems a little weak though, so i also want to point out these final sentences:
"Besides, as Dylan himself demonstrated in a video he and Harris made just before they started shooting, attempts at closure can be appallingly hollow. 'I just wanted to apologize to you guys for any crap this might instigate,' he said to his parents.
Closure? Not even close."
A good ending, yes, but the structure nags at me a little. Why did she put the striking quote first, and then insert the indirect object to dampen the effect? I would move the "he said to his parents" to the beginning of that sentence.
The accuracy of those applications has garnered mixed reviews from users.
This line does not fit well in the article because the article was about the uses of the application and not the reviews from users. Also, garnered to me, is usually associated with a good thing, but it is used negatively in this case.
"Mussa pointed out that a funny thing happens when countries move from fixed to floating exchange rates: the nominal exchange rate becomes much more variable, of course, but so does the real exchange rate — the exchange rate adjusted for price levels."
To me, this is just too much. The article is good because it narrows down ways on how to improve the economy. This sentence, I think, should have been narrowed down as well or put into a couple of sentences. I had to read it a few times before I understood it. Also, not only was the length distracting but the repetition of words. Especially the word "exchange", it was used four times in the same sentence... too much.
"When they returned, she had her bag, and so we clapped. Then she announced, “My wallet’s gone.” From the bus window I saw Mr. Lee squatting on the ground with his head in his hands, obviously having a very bad day."
This is very clear to understand, but reads rather choppy and uninteresting. This moment is the turning point in the whole story, and it definitely deserves more attention and nice description than what is given here. There is too much "she did this so we did this, she did this so he did this;" it simply is boring sentence structure that does not explain the event thoroughly enough.
"Today, elders are half as likely to be poor as are children."
When I first read this sentence I did not understand what she was trying to say. Then after contemplating what she meant I concluded that she meant that children as well as seniors are half as likely to be poor. But she could also be saying that seniors are half as more likely to be poor than children. I don't know..
Besides ruining the flow of the paragraph, this sentence does not make sense and there is to much ambiguity for an opinion column.
"Anybody who wonders why the league even needs such a rule should look no further than Lewis. The rule didn't benefit him directly; at 67, Lewis, is 30 years older than Tomlin is now. But the first person I think of when somebody mentions the rule is Sherm Lewis."
This phrase didn't work out so well because it doesn't fit in with the context of the article. HE brings up this case about the rule and his age but never goes back to it. It's almost as if it is an irrelevant statement. It doesn't fit contextually with the subject of the article.
"His decision to let Congress write a health-care bill may yield at least the appearance of victory. And if Mr. Obama isn't twisting arms like LBJ, and then giving just an extra little jerk to snap the rotator cuff just for fun, the case can be made that day by day he's moving the Democrats of Congress in the historic direction he desires. All his adult life he's played the long game, which takes patience and skill."
I just simply did not understand what was going on here. The paragraph is judging Obama's character, that he is solid in that respect. This section apparently is meant to transition into the point that his policies and judgement are flawed. Honestly though, I could barely read it. It's cryptic, off-point, and downright frustrating.
Sorry I'm late - I dropped the ball on this one.
"Menino doesn't mumble those words, and he says them with pride."
This was the last line of Dionne's article, which I had thoroughly enjoyed up to that point. Unfortunately, he tried to end it with a touching moment that wasn't captured by his sentence, or the sentence that Menino said. Also, the addition of "and" into the sentence makes it awkward. I would have preferred "Menino doesn't mumble that sentence: he speaks it with pride." Or, perhaps, a semicolon.
"I also understand that global utopianism notwithstanding, sovereign states are the guarantors of our rights and that, by definition, these states are obliged to decide who can and cannot claim membership."
This is a clunker of a sentence. It is trying to express a paragraph's worth of ideas within one sentence.
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