What do others think?

After reviewing different blogs, I noticed Michal's comments on Williams and Strunk and White. Michal writes, "About design, Strunk and White emphasize virtually every type of writing must adhere to a shape and that shape must be designed and then followed. What Strunk and White call design, Williams calls coherence. Coherence is distributing topics in a paragraph or longer writing in a way that makes sense to the reader. Williams says “we always have to choose our topics, to design topic strings that focus the reader’s attention on a particular point of view” (82)." I feel this is an excellent summary of coherence. Michal simplified the text on coherence in both books into a neat package. Reading the entry changed my perspective and clarified some lingering doubts about the books. I feel that I misinterpreted sections of the books.

Michal also writes, "One of the more readable chapters in Strunk and White about style and the difficulty of developing style since it is not something that can be explicitly taught." I agree that style is learned through practice and observance. It is not a series of steps, which I iterated in my previous blog entry.

I focused on "good" English elements found in chapter ten of the Williams book. Michal refers to it as well. "He acknowledges that “good” English is often arbitrary and explains how it came to be that way. He does outline the grammar rules that must not be broken in writing, but writes about words only that can easily be misused, not about words that personally irritate him." This is the most useful portion of the Williams book. Analyzing the source of rules given to us through our academic career gives us a better perspective on our writing and what sources to trust.

Comparing Strunk and White with Williams

Style Toward Clarity and Grace focuses on a different aspect of writing than The Elements of Style. The former introduces common sense style guidelines. Struck and White's The Elements of Style covers use cases of the English language. The discussion of style in Struck and White is too concise. It lacks examples of modern writing, and common errors. I previously wrote "Elements of Style includes some useful material. Chapter one covers basic usage of colons, semicolons, hyphens, and other elements. As I have not reviewed basic grammar rules for well over ten years, it was beneficial to review the material." The Williams book does not cover usage of punctuation, but it includes preferred uses of words and phrases as well as recommendations for sentence, paragraph and document structure.

Williams offers excellent advice. Sentence and paragraph structure is covered in great detail. The chapters "Cohesion", "Coherence I" and "Coherence II" diagram sentence structure and the relationship of sentences within paragraphs. Williams offers historical explanations for writing style rules from other texts. My favorite explanation deals with proper rules for "good English" in chapter ten.

3. Finally, some grammarians try to impose on those who already write educated standard English particular items of usage that they think those educated writers should observe--don't split infinitives; use that, not which for restrictive clauses; use fewer, not less for countable nouns; don't use hopefully to mean I hope. These are matters that few speakers and writers of nonstandard English worry about. They are, however, items about which educated writers disagree.

Williams 176

In this section, Williams has a commentary on writers who impose their rules of writing on others. Struck created the text to teach freshmen his rules. Williams essentially argued against Struck's approach. Williams greatest contribution is the idea that the absence of style is recognized; good writing is not detectable because of the application of rules.

Struck and White offer a reference to aid writers in selecting the best words and punctuation. The book uses concise sentences, brief examples, and whitespace to ease readers in finding information much like a dictionary or encyclopedia. It is very useful if one is familiar with English grammar. The book suggests areas to improve in style. "1. Place yourself in the background" (Struck and White 70) Suggestions often take the form of rules with numerals assigned to each. Grammar can be learned by applying rules, but style is an abstract concept; rules do little to help grasp such ideas. Style is not a finite space that can be determined like the proof of a math problem or the source code to a computer program.

COSC Curriculum: Revising with Williams

Original Version
Students completing the curriculum are uniquely equipped to pursue
advanced graduate degrees. Both the applied computer science major and
the computer science curriculum offer a mix of practice and theory that
prepare students for graduate study and for career employment in computer
science fields such as systems programming and analysis, software
development and maintenance as well as applications programming. Strong
industrial ties and an active cooperative education program provide both
practical learning experience and entry into cutting edge job markets such
as network administration, database design and administration and data
hosting and related services. Part-time on-campus employment opportunities
also encourage hands-on learning.

New Version
The applied computer science major and computer science curriculum offer a mix of practice and theory that prepare students for graduate study and for career employment. Students will be able to seek employment in fields such as systems programming and analysis, software development and maintenance, as well as application development. Strong industrial ties and an active cooperative education program provide both practical learning experience and entry into cutting edge job markets such as network administration, database design and administration and data hosting and related services. Part-time on-campus employment opportunities encourage hands-on learning.

Summary of Changes
The first sentence of the original version was redundant. Students interested in the computer science programs may not wish to explore graduate programs. Mentioning graduate programs without any description of the program was rather odd. Williams discusses clarity in chapter 2 of his book Style Toward Clarity and Grace. Sentences were reordered to improve the relationship of subjects with the rest of the sentence. Sentences were simplified to improve legibility. The first sentence uses a psychological subject to focus on the computer science curriculum. Sentences were simplified, and emphasis was added to maintain focus on critical topics. In the old version, a complex introduction was used; it did not seem to flow or connect to the second sentence.

The Elements of Style

Upon reading elements of style, I realize the change in language over time. Many phrases and words in the book are part of everyday speech. In the chapter entitled "Misused words and expressions", White writes about the use of "care less". (42) Often, "I could care less," is used in everyday speech. I have read in the past that the proper phrase is "I couldn't care less." This was a useful example for many writers. Other examples are useless such as "Anticipate. Use expect in the sense of simple expectation." (40) Anticipate and expect are similar words. When I think about anticipate, I assume there is an action associated with the use of the word. White uses an example, "My brother anticipated the upturn in the market." He continues with "In the second example, the word anticipated is ambiguous. It could mean simply that the brother believed the upturn would occur, or it could mean that he acted in advance of the expected upturn -- by buying stock, perhaps." I believe the use of anticipated suggests the brother took advantage of the market conditions and completed stock trades. If not, expected would be the correct choice. Ambiguity does not seem to apply. This is merely one example of selective interpretation in the book.

In chapter five, White writes about style. Rule 6, "Do not overwrite," discusses the disregard for brevity. "When writing with a computer, you must guard against wordiness. The click and flow of a word processor can be seductive, and you may find yourself adding a few unnecessary words or even a whole passage just to experience the pleasure of running your fingers over the keyboard..." The author should consider his own advice. This is a very long sentence about the mysterious powers of a computer. Last I checked, computers do not have mind control software.


Elements of Style includes some useful material. Chapter one covers basic usage of colons, semicolons, hyphens, and other elements. As I have not reviewed basic grammar rules for well over ten years, it was beneficial to review the material. "Use a colon after an independent clause to introduce a list of particulars, an appositive, an amplification, or an illustrative quotation." (7) This rule, for instance, documents the proper use of a colon. It would be helpful to include working definitions of words like appositive. Using the examples allows the reader to grasp meaning, but when descriptive words are used, and not understood, they confuse the reader. One can forget a great number of definitions and rules when they are rarely used over many years.

My project uses raspberries to create letters. They stand out on many surfaces, are fairly easy to read, and the juices can soak in and stain the orignal surface area. Raspberries are fairly portable, although the message is stuck in one place once its written. I found this project to be very difficult. Finding something natural for a process which itself is unnatural was challenging. Manguel's "The Shape of the Book" talks about presentation with writing. Using raspberries allowed me to create a very color message "Today is my birthday". "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies" discusses the evolution of writing tools and the necessity of changes. Using raspberries fit into my needs, but would not work as a general purpose tool like a pen and paper or a computer. With computers, we may not leave a permenent record of events. Perhaps a PC will be dug up in a thousand years and no one will be able to retrive the contents of the disk. Just as my raspberries will deteriorate, so will the remains of our current world.

I prefer to write on a computer. I take course notes on one of my laptops. The legibility of my notes are very important and my handwriting is not the best. I also find that I can control the presentation and size of the content freely on a computer. I can control how it is printed, how it is displayed on the screen and what form I transmit to interested parties. Manguel and Baron's ideas work together on a computer to make the best possible experience.

The common relationship between the history of writing and the ideas of Ong and Plato are in the evolution of the tools to allow humans to express their thoughts in new ways and the necessity of change in cultural evolution.

What is style?

Style is the organization of thoughts onto a medium. The medium could be physical such as a piece of paper, canvas, or piece of clay. It could also be abstract like a website or a piece of music. Often the organization could use colors, sounds, or shape to express meaning. The placement of words, white space, and other elements could also be used.

First Post

My name is Lucas Holt. This is my blog for English 328.

Here is a picture of the first Web Browser called World Wide Web running on my NeXT system.