Catch of the Week March 27th

I am currently reading a book for my Technical Writing course in which I have found a simple error. The book it entitled "A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future" by Daniel Pink. It is about how analytical Left Brain thinking is slowly become less important than creative Right Brain thinking.

"The sentence goes as follow: Every August my mother would take my brother, sister and me to buy clothes for the new school year." The obvious mistake is that me should be I. This is a second-graders mistake.

Elements of Style Chapter Four

This chapter is entitled "Words and Expressions Commonly Misused." The differences between similar words are explained to help your writing. The first word that I use in my writing is effect. The book says not to use this term is a sentence such as "The blue walls produced a sea-like effect." This word brings about vagueness while a writer must be as specific as possible. Another word that brings about vagueness is factor. Heres a bad example the book provides, "His superior training was the great factor in his winning of the match." Here's the good example, "He won the match by being better trained." The second sentence is more direct and less awkward than the first. I use the word factor in my writing but now I will not. Feature is another word that I often use but is vague just like factor.

I want to be more specific with my writing because I am taking a Technical writing course this semester. Technical writing is all about writing for readers who do not want to read. For example, office workers don't want to read memos and work emails but they must to complete their job. A writer must be specifc as possible in the shortest amount of space.

Another good word that I misuse is however. The book declares that this word must not be used at the beginning of a sentence or clause if the word means nevertheless. I always use this word in the beginning of a sentence.

Elements of Style Chapter Three

This brief chapter was about matters of form such as the use of colloquialisms, margins, headings, hyphens, numerals, quotations and parentheses. One key point that especially applied to my writing was the use of punctuation after parentheses. The book states that punctuation marks must be placed outside the parentheses unless a whole statement is in parentheses. Another point that I learned was that formal citations  are introduced by a colon. I never heard of this before and therefore will apply it to my writing in the future. Additionally, I was not aware of the omitting of A or The from titles if I place the possessive before it. The book uses the example, The Tale of Two Cities would be Dickens's Tale of Two Cities. I was always confused about this when it came up in my writing but now that has been cleared up.

Elements of Style Chapter Two

The biggest issue for me in this chapter is the use of active voice. I use passive voice often while the active is more precise and direct. I did not know exactly what passice voice was until I read this chapter. I heard of it, but no one ever explained it to me. I will have to pay more attention to my writing in order to catch myself from using the passive voice too much. This section also explains that "making a particular word the subject of a sentence will often, determine which voice is to be used." Therefore, I have to be very observant of my own writing.
Another important section is "Omitting needless words." This is particularly important to me at this time because I am taking a Technical writing course. This course demands the writer of shorter sentences and more direct language in order to make my point and clear and precise as possible. Also I must make the reader actually read as little as possible.

Elements of Style Chapter One

The first two rules of this book are fairly straightforward. They describe the usage of possessive " 's" and the use of commas in a list, which I have known for a while now. Also the book describes the use of commas in parenthetic clauses as well as using a comma with and or but introducing an independant clause. One rule that I must learn from is a parcipital phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject. This is important to me becuase my sentences can be awkward. My parcipital phrases might not refer to the right subject grammatically, when I think they do in my own head. Another rule is to divide words at line-ends in accordance with their pronunciation. I would only use this when I have to write in right-justified, but I rarely do that. Regardless, I will have to someday and I have to remeber this rule because it never occured to me to do so.