At the request of Monica G, I'm opening up this week's comments to things you dislike about your writer. If could be the persistent use of dashes. Maybe she starts every sentence off with the same clause (gasp!). Maybe he closes every piece with the same trite saying. Whatever it is, I'm sure there's something you've come to dislike about your write. Of course, if this isn't the case, share something you'd like to see the writer improve.
Keep up the excellent work.
18 comments:
“On the bubble:
5. Missouri: As many of us predicted before the season began, the Tigers are undefeated and the prohibitive favorite to play Bama in the SEC Championship.
6. Baylor: Yes, the strength of schedule smells like something green flies would love.
7. Miami:
8. Stanford: It's hard to ignore Stanford's quality wins (UCLA, Arizona State, Washington)”
I think this is the hardest blog post I have done so far because I love reading Gene Wojchiechowski’s articles about football. I appreciate his simple and clear writing style and I enjoy reading about the football games that were played over the weekend. However, he could work on adding more detail and providing football statistics in a more creative way. Although simply writing a list of the teams that are on the bubble of making this week’s version of a four-team BCS playoff is clear and concise, reading the list was not very captivating and intriguing. He could have added some more metaphors or similes. Yet, I really like Wojchiechowski’s writing.
Like Tessa, I really enjoy reading my blogger's posts. Her writing is really captivating and varies quite a bit. One paragraph that lacked variety, however, was the following.
"I discovered this unexpected treasure earlier this year at the first annual Big Traveling Potluck. I received two bottles – avocado oil and an avocado oil with jalapeno — in our event swag bag. I had never seen avocado oil before — it’s no wonder, Bella Vado is the first avocado oil maker in the US — so I had no idea what to expect."
In this paragraph, she uses a lot of dashes that are rather unnecessary. However, she usually does not write with such repetitive habits, so it doesn't bother me in any extreme way.
I enjoy Maureen Dowd's style, especially her use of humor to engage her readers. However, her content is predictable. I have only read three other opinion pieces by her that are not mainly about politics. I understand that Congress has been in the news a lot recently but for someone like me who doesn't have much interest in the subject, I think it is repetitive and the jokes get old quickly. I would like to see more content variety to spiff things up every once in awhile.
Collins’ writing is engaging, energetic, and opinionated, but it sometimes fails to come together to form a cohesive statement. Her work often comes across as more of a rant than anything else, a frustrated brain-dump concerning political turmoil with an audience. She successfully encompasses her anger but fails to present any solution or call to action. I feel so engaged by her writing that I think I would do anything she would tell me to! So I wish she would tell me to do something.
I originally chose to follow Woody Paige because every time I watched "Around the Horn" when he was on, I'd laugh. From his witty banter with his co-stars to his chalkboard quotes written behind him, he always made sports news exciting. Now, I'm not saying his writing isn't funny, but it is definitely different. As he is writing for the Denver Post and not for ESPN or some random internet blog, his audience is most likely slightly different and his choices in writing and humor are somewhat limited. However, I want to see more of the same puns, and one-liners that I listen to on TV in his writing consistently. He does bring a humorous element, but not as much as I'd hope for.
Here's a link to a website with all his chalkboard quotes:
http://www.woodypaigequotes.com/
I, too, really enjoy my writer's writing. He always has a lot to say, a unique perspective, and some dry humor. After all, he is such a good writer that the New York Times chose him as an op-ed columnist.
However, like Ruby, I think that my writer could try to vary the topics of his pieces. He often talks about what's going on in the White House, and while I appreciate learning about these current political events, I kind of wish that he would expand his repertoire. That being said, he definitely isn't monotonous and I believe he really does try to captivate each one of his readers.
I really enjoy David Brooks opinions, and he is able to set up a rock solid and very interesting argument like very few others. While I don't usually completely agree with him, his writing has made me think differently about a variety of issues. Brooks' writing style leaves something to be desired, though. He writes the way he speaks on the PBS news hour: very clearly and eloquently, but without a lot of spice. Every so often he'll throw in a fancy word (diktats, for example), but more often than not he'll just lay down his argument clearly and concisely without any frill, which is by no means a bad thing, just a little boring.
I really have nothing negative to say about my writer. She is so hilarious, and always extremely entertaining. She makes topics beyond my understanding, like marriage, super accessible. Looking for something I don't like is so hard, for every paragraph opens with something witty or full of images, and every concluding sentence does the same. My favorite thing she does is open every essay with a sentence or two, in bold and separated from the rest of the body, which in a short statement introduces what is to follow. They so often make me burst out laughing! This is the one from the piece I read this week:
"If Rex could have talked, we would have finished each other's sentences."
Maybe its just me, but I laughed out loud imagining this...
So far, I'm enjoying Meghan Daum's writing. Personally, many of her titles are eye catching. Her stories are witty and casual even when the topic can be heavy. At times, I do feel like her articles are too much of a rant. Here's a line that just made me want to give her a chill pill,
"And I know that some people are right now finding me a pitiful and insufferable hater and saying, "Hey, I think Facebook is a fun and useful way to build community and keep up with old friends." To them I say stop reading this column and go post a photo of the "gorgeous salad" you just made."
In the end, I really do like her writing because she stays true to herself. Her writing is honest and bold.
I love reading the content of my writer, but there are a few things about her technique that bug me. First of all she uses the word nostalgia in close to all her posts. I feel like if you use the same word over and over again it loses its’ meaning for the reader. At first I thought it was an interesting word choice, but now, I’m like ‘really? again?’ Another technique she overuses is rhetorical questions. She is a baking blogger and so her posts are very casual. She talks a lot about personal experience and writes in a laid back manner. This does not bother me, it is the rhetorical questions that drive me up the wall. For example she will say something about how she loves fall baking, “don’t you just love the sweet smells of cinnamon coming from the over?’ Rhetorical questions are fine, infact a good way to get the reader involved and make them have imagery. However, the overuse is annoying because I think to myself, stop asking me questions, you are the expert, giving me advice and telling me about you. I, the reader do not really exist in your life, and so why ask me a question that you will never get an answer to.
Although I usually enjoy reading Susan Boyt's articles, there are a few things that I sort of throw me off. First off, she always uses the same format for her essays: A brief random fact in the first paragraph and then a personal experience relating to that random fact. Although this format works, I wish that she could use something that is a little bit more creative or have some more variation in her formatting style. Additionally, sometimes I feel like her writing makes her come off as a little bit of a know it all, like when she wrote about how to handle teenagers (of which she has none of her own) and said, "Whatever you do, you must underreact, the wise ones counsel but, at the same time, you must not tolerate rudeness or cruelty." Even though she wasn't really saying anything bad, it just sort of bugs me that she is trying to give advice on things she doesn't have personal experience with.
I am having the best time reading what Rick Reilly has to say about the events and subjects in sports today. He has so many great and funny ideas that make me actually enjoy reading lol. But sometimes Reilly writes an article that is solely devoted to answering fan mail and fails to write an article on a certain situation in the MLB, NFL or any other sports league. When he does choose to answer his fan mail, I lose some excitement when it comes time to read his writings. The fan mail, just isn't as exciting (as you can probably guess) than reading a funny and quirky piece of writing that makes fun of something or emphasizes the importance of something. When he sticks to real topics; that's when his true potential is shown.
I do enjoy David Brooks writing, so there was not much that I could criticize about it. However, in his article “The Neocon Revival” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/opinion/brooks-the-neocon-revival.html?ref=davidbrooks), he had way too many quotes for my taste. This is something I have noticed in other articles too. He is an opinion writer, and I read him to hear his opinion, not to read quotes from other writers. However, in general his writing is very good, and this is more a habit that irks me, not makes me angry. I also wish he would write something new, as he has not written since August 30th. However, his writing schedule does not and should not revolve around a high-school senior, so I can’t blame him for that.
I find this topic to be very challenging to write on. I really enjoy Slade's style! I know that sailing can occasionally be a very topic to report on, however she always find to make it entertaining. She will throw in little jokes and puns which always make her articles a good, light-hearted read. Occasionally, I will encounter a word choice that I do not approve of, but other than that, she always keeps me wanting more!
"Witnesses claim that Van Persie continued to walk away as Shawcross repeatedly called on the striker to explain what he had said."
The main thing that that I really dislike about Mark Ogden's articles is that they are way too factual for me. He rarely does opinionated and analytical articles. Which is bummer because I like to read articles that make me think and form an opinion. As exemplified in the quote, 90% of his writing is facts and quotes, which can get a little boring.
One thing that really annoys me about my writer is that when he presents a point he doesn't go into much detail about his point. Instead he just has a lot of points but not much evidence to back it all up. One example is when he says, "On the defensive side, Patrick Willis and Co. have been a model of resiliency". He states this in his paragraph but has no information or detail to back it up, which is very frustrating to me because I want to know some big cool facts about our defense.
In Donny O'Neil's latest article in Freeskier online he writes a piece called "Telling the true narrative of Aspen/Snowmass in “Our Story”"
Throughout the article, a longer one than he usually writes, I can tell that he really wants to incorporate direct quotes from the story/short movie itself but does it in a relatively awkward way. Sometimes they are "lonely" quotes that are just kind of there and arnet properly integrated in the article as a whole but just extract information from the piece the author is review, so I think that if he had done a better job with his ways of using direct evidence his article would have been a lot stronger.
I really enjoy Gail Collins's sarcasm, but sometimes I think its a bit much. For example:
"And our moral is: Get your flu shot, people. Cook your chicken well. Cross your fingers and pray."
I find her humor in this quote unnecessary especially because it is involving health. Certain topics are not meant to joked around about. even though she was just trying to liven up her article, for me at least, it made her article seem negative in a way.
Post a Comment