Writing Fundamentals: Part 5

Office of Graduate Studies Author

12/19/2016 Added

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Part 5 of a 10-part Research Writing Fundamentals workshop presented by Dr. Rick Lombardo

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[00:00:01.049]So what do readers do in a simplified way?
[00:00:04.857]Readers don't just read; they interpret.
[00:00:09.239]The make many of their most important interpretive decisions
[00:00:13.207]about the substance of the writing based on clues
[00:00:16.681]they receive from you about its structure at all levels
[00:00:22.103]of the writing.
[00:00:25.770]So you do have an important role, you have one role
[00:00:29.529]is to make sense and make your sense clearly.
[00:00:34.138]Make meaning clear to the reader.
[00:00:39.030]Let's look at a few examples of these clues to the reader
[00:00:42.394]at the simplest level of the sentence.
[00:00:49.176]Here's one for a poem.
[00:00:51.705]And this person wrote, he's seeing a woman walk
[00:00:55.029]into the room, she's so radiant he's saying she came
[00:00:58.253]in softly as in a morning sunrise.
[00:01:07.470]What's the basic problem with this sentence?
[00:01:10.981]It's from a poem it's out of context, don't worry about
[00:01:14.936]should be like instead of as, he's saying she's so beautiful
[00:01:20.764]and she's so radiant when she walked into the room
[00:01:24.518]she's like a sunrise, morning sunrise.
[00:01:28.522]What's basically wrong with this sentence?
[00:01:32.552]What is not very logical about this sentence?
[00:01:36.871](student mumbles)
[00:01:41.672]She says the sunrise always comes in the morning,
[00:01:45.737]why did he write morning sunrise?
[00:01:49.593]Because it's called padding.
[00:01:51.848]It's adding extra words that don't help the readability.
[00:01:54.808]How about this?
[00:01:58.071]What does this literally mean to the reader?
[00:02:02.248](student mumbles)
[00:02:03.249]Huh?
[00:02:04.282]She's what?
[00:02:05.833](student mumbles)
[00:02:08.531](audience laughs)
[00:02:12.905]No it doesn't mean that.
[00:02:16.635]It means she's a pretty tall woman.
[00:02:19.916]So if I hooked you up with a woman for a blind date
[00:02:23.020]and I scribbled a note I said I can't stay long, I can't
[00:02:28.777]tell you about her you're going to see her tonight,
[00:02:31.403]here I scribbled a note it says she's a pretty tall woman.
[00:02:35.316]You as a reader is going to say oh my gosh.
[00:02:38.264](audience laughs)
[00:02:39.704]That's going to be kind of intimidating.
[00:02:42.026]But what happens if I write this?
[00:02:47.669]Now I don't care if we're too old to learn about cumulative
[00:02:52.661]and coordinate adjectives, it doesn't matter.
[00:02:55.435]What matters is punctuation is a road sign for the reader.
[00:03:00.137]So the reader can make sense of what it is you're writing.
[00:03:03.876]If you leave the comma out here, it's going to mean
[00:03:06.775]a totally different thing.
[00:03:08.358]Here's another one.
[00:03:10.872]You had to read that twice didn't you?
[00:03:13.753]Right?
[00:03:15.881]Because you said John left with Ted and Mary, oops,
[00:03:20.232]left soon after, wait well I see the writer meant
[00:03:23.226]John left with Ted and Mary left soon after.
[00:03:27.916]I struggled to read that sentence.
[00:03:30.728]You made it harder on the reader to read that sentence
[00:03:34.503]'cause your meaning isn't clear.
[00:03:37.963]Now all of a sudden this clears it up doesn't it
[00:03:41.191]for the reader.
[00:03:43.431]I don't care about the punctuation rule, punctuation
[00:03:46.969]simply is a road sign for the reader to help
[00:03:51.628]with readability.
[00:03:55.384]Let's see one more.
[00:04:01.900]Did you have to reread this?
[00:04:04.862]Yes because the reader's mind, your mind said William
[00:04:09.287]heard the secretary and you thought say something.
[00:04:14.511]Right?
[00:04:16.251]William heard the secretary and you thought in your mind,
[00:04:18.552]she said something, but that's not what the writer meant.
[00:04:22.743]The writer meant, William heard that the secretary, that
[00:04:27.689]the secretary was going to quit her job.
[00:04:30.684]All of a sudden the reading becomes simpler for me,
[00:04:34.283]it's easier for me the reader.
[00:04:37.227]Here's another example.
[00:04:40.123]He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest,
[00:04:43.568]his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind
[00:04:45.786]blew in the tops of the pine trees.
[00:04:50.172]Maybe just getting to the point where it might be too long
[00:04:52.810]but the writer ends it just at the right time.
[00:04:58.058]I know I've got you all paranoid now.
[00:05:01.387](audience laughs)
[00:05:02.411]This is Ernest Hemingway.
[00:05:05.386]Nobel Prize for Literature, what's the vocabulary level here
[00:05:10.437]what is the vocabulary level?
[00:05:15.436]Fifth, sixth grade?
[00:05:18.284]Sixth grade vocabulary.
[00:05:20.442]So you don't need to use big words to become a Nobel Prize
[00:05:25.339]winner, but look how he puts words together you actually
[00:05:29.036]feel like you're the person in the forest laying
[00:05:31.342]on the pine needles don't you?
[00:05:33.678]You can almost visualize the sky.
[00:05:39.630]That's from For Whom the Bell Tolls, if anybody hasn't
[00:05:41.851]read that just in case.
[00:05:44.186]Now here's another one from Farewell to Arms.
[00:05:48.235]Ernest Hemingway was a soldier in the war, I think he
[00:05:51.568]was a medic, and he saw violence, awful terror.
[00:05:58.234]And he left the army, Farewell to Arms, right?
[00:06:06.443]He falls in love with a woman, at the end of the book
[00:06:09.914]she dies, Farewell to Arms, arms and arms pretty brilliant.
[00:06:18.181]And this is the last line of that novel.
[00:06:21.014]She dies and he leaves the hospital and he writes.
[00:06:25.333]After a while, I went out and left the hospital and walked
[00:06:29.244]back to the hotel in the rain.
[00:06:34.551]There's a lot in that sentence.
[00:06:36.941]When you put it in context with his love dying,
[00:06:41.401]what's the vocabulary of this sentence?
[00:06:44.744]What grade level?
[00:06:47.461]Vocabulary grade level is this?
[00:06:49.851]Huh?
[00:06:50.851](student mumbles)
[00:06:51.897]It's basic vocabulary, but the power in that sentence
[00:06:56.552]is incredible given what happens in the novel.
[00:07:02.264]That's Ernest Hemingway Nobel Prize for Literature.
[00:07:06.327]Basic vocabulary level.
[00:07:09.207]Keep that in mind, what's this?
[00:07:15.046]This is maybe more to your liking.
[00:07:18.007]Isotopes, which were discovered in 1853 are radioactive.
[00:07:22.798]What does that sentence tell the reader?
[00:07:28.779]As written, what does that sentence tell the reader?
[00:07:32.717]It says isotopes, which were all discovered in 1853,
[00:07:38.777]are radioactive.
[00:07:40.585]Let's take a look at how it should've been written.
[00:07:47.624]The isotopes that were discovered in 1853 are radioactive.
[00:07:52.454]It's totally different meaning to the reader, yes?
[00:07:55.514]This is kind of how you need to be careful about what it is
[00:07:57.736]you write.
[00:08:00.011]What do you mean and how will the reader understand it?
[00:08:03.850]So let's look at this one.
[00:08:06.116]Margarines, same thing.
[00:08:10.254]Margarines, which contain yellow dye number 5,
[00:08:13.459]may be dangerous.
[00:08:15.920]Does this say all margarines contain yellow dye number 5?
[00:08:20.724]Yeah it does, now look at this.
[00:08:25.510]Margarines that contain yellows dye number 5
[00:08:29.167]may be dangerous.
[00:08:30.734]So this is a total different meaning here, with a couple
[00:08:32.882]of different words.
[00:08:36.548]This is clear writing, it's clear thinking.
[00:08:42.212]You may say well I understand what this means, well you
[00:08:46.487]misled the reader 'cause you didn't write that.
[00:08:50.675]So clear writing is clear thinking.
[00:08:55.870]Here's one.
[00:08:57.944]This is one of my favorites.
[00:09:00.688]Our models worked well when compared with the calculated
[00:09:02.964]values, which is evidenced by the percent errors.
[00:09:08.453]What does this mean?
[00:09:10.566]Even people with English as a first language
[00:09:13.680]can't understand this.
[00:09:19.542]It's a puzzle.
[00:09:21.444]I have to work too hard as a reader to understand this.
[00:09:26.962]So you by writing this, you made me work too hard.
[00:09:30.932]I'm going to get disinterested and I'm not going to fund
[00:09:33.347]your proposal or I'm not going to accept your dissertation
[00:09:35.700]and you is just out of luck.
[00:09:41.056]If you're writing throughout the whole papers like this,
[00:09:44.133]it's going to be too hard on me.
[00:09:48.498]Watch this.
[00:09:51.523]As the percent errors indicate, our models worked well
[00:09:54.419]when compared with the calculated values.
[00:09:57.345]All of a sudden I'm not in the Caribbean anymore
[00:10:00.979]because you've made your meaning crystal clear.
[00:10:04.439]That is your responsibility and you're all capable
[00:10:06.883]of doing this as long as you think about what it is you mean
[00:10:09.872]and how the reader will interpret it.
[00:10:17.811]Clear writing is clear thinking.
[00:10:20.507]This goes with presentations or writing, audience may vary.
[00:10:25.557]Colleagues with same level of technical expertise,
[00:10:28.355]you have to keep these audience in mind, your reader.
[00:10:31.060]Administrators technically informed but not expert.
[00:10:36.292]Administrators not technically informed.
[00:10:39.327]You have to consider this when you're presenting or writing
[00:10:42.148]who are you writing to, who are you presenting to?
[00:10:46.359]Those outside your field with any one of three levels
[00:10:49.527]of expertise.
[00:10:51.134]And here are the three levels, novice, technically informed,
[00:10:54.275]and expert.
[00:10:57.728]Who is the most difficult to present to or to write to?
[00:11:02.948]Novice, technically informed, or expert?
[00:11:05.878]How many think novice is the most difficult to write to?
[00:11:10.473]How many think technically informed?
[00:11:14.110]How many think expert?
[00:11:16.963]How many don't care?
[00:11:18.519](audience laughs)
[00:11:22.004]The answer is technically informed.
[00:11:25.683]You're becoming experts in your field, you can write
[00:11:27.796]to experts and you certainly can bring that down
[00:11:32.036]to a novice level, but the problem with technically informed
[00:11:36.227]is, let's say you're a physician and you're giving
[00:11:38.851]a presentation or writing a paper to nurses.
[00:11:42.968]You might have 50 nurses in the room, some may have one year
[00:11:46.787]of experience as a nurse, some may have 40.
[00:11:51.909]That's the most difficult to present to or to write to.
[00:11:56.277]It takes very careful planning on your part.

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Writing Fundamentals: Part 5

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