In reading Josh Bernoff's post the following quote really stuck out to me "If you’re writing something that has to fit in a box, forget the box. Think about the reader. What does she want to know? What would thrill her and get her thinking? What research would it take to convince her? Concentrate on that. If you’ve got something interesting to say, you can probably figure out a way to fit it in the box. But you won’t write something brilliant if you worry about the box, rather than the goodies inside." This really is some good advice that I could have used when writing my Doc 2 and any of my writing for that matter. When assigned a writing assignment and you get that standardized format you must adhere to, I tend to focus on making sure I have that as I go along. If I focused more on gathering useful information and using the outline method, I could help my writing process with valuable researched information. In Lynch's essay it is said "Third of all—damn . . . I still cannot get out of the habit of offering three reasons—the good old five paragrapher does feature the basics. Academic writing should make an argument; arguments should have reasons; reasons should be based on evidence. But as you can see, the form tends to straitjacket writing: it fits everyone, but once you’re in it, you can’t really move." This is referring to that standardized form again. The "5 paragraphs" form is the introduction, three supporting details paragraphs, and the conclusion. Which typically could make the writing to one seem dull and boring. But if we use the advice, we learn of from Bernoff and Lynch we can see how we can make the writing our own and it be an interesting read while still following the format requested. We can see the ways to accomplish both!
Writing in general is already a daunting task for myself. When you start to have guidelines added in such as having to use a certain format like MLA style it becomes even more so then. Forming Proper MLA style for academic documents is an area I know that I need more work in. When it comes to the MLA format within my academic paper my biggest weakest is forming the cite page. I know that I must give the sources the proper credit. I know that when adding the citations, I need to make sure I put the author, the title, the publisher, the published date, the URL, the accessed date. The part I struggle with the most though is knowing what parts need to italic and which parts should not. I double guess myself and then I am at a point of uncertainty preventing me from finishing a correct work cited page. I intend to clarify my struggles with the work cited page in MLA format for my academic papers by doing thorough research on how a proper citation is formed and the aspects of it. I can also ...
The supporting paragraphs are the most interesting (typically!) to the reader as well, which definitely encourages me to try to focus more on them and not on just churning out 3 for my 5 paragraph plan. Plus, research can be fun once you get into it! You find out more information on your topic than you expect sometimes.
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