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!
We see in the article Navigating Genres by Kerry Dirk the statement of "Let’s consider a genre with which you are surely familiar: the thesis statement." So, to start let us identify if there even is a thesis statement of the professional blog article post. If so, what is the thesis statement? We in the blog post by Sarah Cruzan "It would be nearly impossible to write about the many things I do during my 12-hour shift, but I will try to describe a typical day as a postpartum nurse:" Clearly the blog post does have a thesis statement. It explicitly states that she will be describing a typical day as a postpartum nurse. We also see in the article from Dirk "When approaching a genre for the first time, you likely view it as more than a simple form: “Picking up a text, readers not only classify it and expect a certain form, but also make assumptions about the text’s purposes, its subject matter, its writer, and its expected reader” (Devitt, Writing 12). With the bl...
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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