Entry #15

The first grammar error that I struggle with is comma usage. This is the comma splice or the comma fault, which is when you use a comma where a semicolon should be used instead. I struggle a lot with knowing when to include a comma or when not to include a comma. This caused me to fail the grammar portion of a paper in my AP English Literature class once. I plan to edit my papers for this problem by reading through and finding the independent clauses. Once I find them, I will see if any of them are joined using a comma. If they are, I know I need to change it. Another plan with this is to have someone else read my paper to look for the same thing.

The second grammar error I struggle with is unnecessary words. Unnecessary words are words that detract from the clarity of the writing and can be replaced with words that are more direct. An example of this is “due to the fact that,” which can be replaced with “because.” I tend to use this because I think that my writing sound more academic. However, sometimes I catch myself doing this and change it to a more direct form; other times I do not catch it. In order to edit my papers for this error, I plan to begin to learn what are unnecessary words and their replacements so I can change them when I find them. I plan to find them by rereading my papers and looking for the unnecessary words, which Word can help me find with the green squiggly line.

Entry #13

The main argument of the “Rosie the Riverter” poster from World War II is that the women that were filling in jobs left by men going off to fight in Europe and the Pacific can do those jobs. It was designed to recruit more women to the work force as it helped give them a bargaining position for women’s rights. It also was meant to show the American society that women were quite capable of producing airplanes and tanks. In order to build the image of a strong woman worker, the poster shows a women with her hair tied back and flexing her arm muscles in order to show she has the strength to hold her place in the work force. Furthermore, she has a serious look on her face showing that women can be serious workers. The poster also employs clear font so that there is not difficulty in understanding the text. The giant image also draws the attention to the attributes of the working woman, and the voice box shows that she is defending herself and calling other women into the work force during World War II. The color also does this as it is not too bright that it distracts the viewer from the message of the poster, but the blue surrounding the text makes the text, and the woman, stand out against the yellow background, as well as attracting the viewer’s attention. Therefore, I think the designer effectively portrayed the message of the poster to those who viewed it.

Entry #14

· 11:00 a.m. made a to-do list and updated my planner

· 12:00 p.m. wrote my annotated bibliography and edited the letter for Project 3

· 1:15 p.m. posted a comment on Facebook

· 2:30 p.m. edited my lab report draft

· 3:35 p.m. Instant messaged friends

· 5:30 p.m. wrote down directions to the Apple Store in Durham

· 10:47 p.m. added some things to my to-do list

· 2:50 p.m. instant messaged friends

· 4:30 p.m. Wrote my blog entries for English 110

· 6:13 p.m. wrote more for my blog entries

Writing plays an important part in my life because a lot of my time is spent writing, either academically or socially. For the most part, I spend most my time writing on a computer by writing papers or other homework or writing instant messages to my friends or on Facebook. Also, the majority of my writing is informal as I am either updating my planner or other academic homework that does not require the formal tone. In contrast, a lot of my lengthy writing is for academic purposes because I do not find it enjoyable just to start writing a paper or a journal that is not for an assignment. However, since this time period was over the weekend, a good amount of my writing, even though it was on instant messenger, was for personal reasons as I needed to remember directions or things I needed to do.

Entry #12

• Academic inquiry—“the act of identifying shared questions and then seeking reasonable answers about subjects studied in a college or university” (Callaghan 4)
• Question at issue—“questions that have at least two possible, supportable answers” (Callaghan 12)
• Characteristics of inquiry papers—begins with question at issue, suggests several answers, gives supporting reasons for each answer, evaluates the strengths of the answers, ends with a summary of what the writer learned
• Rhetoric—“the art of inquiring about a question at issue, and planning and presenting a good answer to another person” (Callaghan 34)
• Rhetorical strategy—“any decision made by a writer to make a message more effective” (Callaghan 37) “artful, purposeful choices a writer makes in the process of achieving effective communication with an audience” (90).
• Purposes for writing—to raise questions, inform or report, criticize, entertain, share an experience or feeling, challenge, explore, present discoveries, understand, introduce, imagine, support, sell, teach, relate ideas, prove, and persuade (Callaghan 43).
• Characteristics of personal writing—“subjective prospective, an open, exploratory or flexible form, descriptive detail, reflection and interpretation” (Callaghan 50)
• Characteristics of public writing—“authoritative, informed stance, explicit purpose, predictable form, information selected and arranged to facilitate engagement or comprehension” (Callaghan 51)
• Characteristics of academic writing—“a focus on the subject, a general audience within the writer’s discipline, a purpose that involves answering a specific question at issue, a thesis that is the writer’s answer, the voices of other creditable writers, careful reasoning and relevant evidence” (Callaghan 52)
• Conciseness—“summaries are significantly shorter than the original work” (Callaghan 70)
• Rhetorical context—setting or set of circumstances in which communication occurs (Callaghan 98)
• Ethos—ethical appeal; “relies on character of the speaker and appeals to readers’ value systems” (Callaghan 100)
• Pathos—emotional appeal; “relies on the feelings of readers and appeals to their emotions” (Callaghan 100)
• Logos—logical appeal; “appeals to readers’ intellect” (Callaghan 100)

Entry #11

From these comments I have learned that my prose choice is actually strong and helps provide to overall strength of my essays. I usually thought my prose was not all that strong, so I guess this shows that I was wrong. I had already known that my structure and flow of my writings were really strong. The majority of my papers from high school and last semester in my college classes had these comments or brief mention. My teachers and professors thought the organization of my papers were good, which made the papers easy to read and comprehend. I thought I did well with incorporating my two sources and did not see the need to gather anymore than two, especially since I only needed the sources from our Meeting of Minds book, but the comments said that gathering more sources would have been good for this paper. This caught me by surprise as I really did not expect to need more than two sources as I thought for this assignment I was only supposed to use the two case books as sources. One recommendation was to improve my transitions between paragraphs, which I plan to do by rereading my drafts and make sure the paragraphs flow properly. The second comment was to find more sources or incorporate the source material more, which I plan to do by either reading more information from the sources that I can use for evidence or I can do more research into my topics in order to gather more information