Writing Fundamentals: Part 7

Office of Graduate Studies Author

12/19/2016 Added

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Part 7 of a 10-part Research Writing Fundamentals workshop presented by Dr. Rick Lombardo

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[00:00:00.123]You know what left brain is?
[00:00:01.984]Right brain?
[00:00:03.307]Left brain is logical, right brain is conceptual.
[00:00:08.906]What is writing?
[00:00:10.689]Is it left brain or right brain?
[00:00:15.431]Is it logical or is it more conceptual and free flowing?
[00:00:21.070]How many think it's logical, raise your hands.
[00:00:25.447]How many think it's conceptual, right brain?
[00:00:28.832]And you guys don't care?
[00:00:31.187]Both?
[00:00:32.850]Alright.
[00:00:34.307]Alright.
[00:00:36.232]Writing is left brain.
[00:00:37.640]We're not talking about creative writing, now.
[00:00:40.175]We're talking about writing, it's left brain.
[00:00:42.816]Logical.
[00:00:45.045]Don't forget that.
[00:00:47.611]Maybe some of you think you're not good writers
[00:00:49.459]because you think, I'm not creative enough.
[00:00:53.224]It is the same as trigonometry.
[00:00:55.709]It's the same as algebra.
[00:00:58.002]A sentence is a mathematical formula;
[00:01:01.206]subject, verb, object.
[00:01:04.722]If you missing adjectives, if you're missing some of that,
[00:01:08.816]the sentence isn't going to make sense.
[00:01:10.632]Just like your equation might not make any sense.
[00:01:15.323]It's left brain.
[00:01:16.156]Let's get your left brains in.
[00:01:18.934]Let's get your left brains in gear.
[00:01:22.215]Would you, would you read that first one?
[00:01:25.204]Stand up, please.
[00:01:30.985]A man built a house with four sides to it.
[00:01:33.459]House is rectangular in shape, each side
[00:01:36.805]has a southern exposure.
[00:01:38.972]A bear walks by the house.
[00:01:40.407]What color is the bear?
[00:01:42.282]Thank you.
[00:01:43.581]Anybody know what color the bear is?
[00:01:45.349]Is this a logical puzzle?
[00:01:50.014]Yes, no?
[00:01:52.674]You say yes, why?
[00:01:59.007]Okay, what is the answer?
[00:02:00.730]White.
[00:02:01.563]The bear is?
[00:02:02.396]White.
[00:02:03.229]The bear is white.
[00:02:04.207]How did you come to that conclusion?
[00:02:06.471]If each window on the rectangular house has a southern
[00:02:09.376]exposure it has to be at the North Pole or in the north.
[00:02:14.420]Let's give her a round of applause.
[00:02:16.027](classroom applauds)
[00:02:19.296]Absolutely.
[00:02:21.943]How about this one.
[00:02:23.240]Given, all whales are mammals.
[00:02:26.325]That's a given.
[00:02:27.602]We say, Moby is a whale, what can we conclude?
[00:02:33.606]Moby is a mammal.
[00:02:34.930]Mabel is not a whale, what can we conclude?
[00:02:41.291]Anybody?
[00:02:42.650]Pardon me.
[00:02:44.704]What else can we conclude?
[00:02:47.002]She may or may not be a mammal, right?
[00:02:50.290]How about Manford is a mammal.
[00:02:53.971]Manford may or may not be a whale.
[00:02:57.270]Myrtle is not a mammal, therefore,
[00:03:01.239]she's not a whale.
[00:03:02.998]Let's go all the way down the bottom,
[00:03:04.043]this is a little tougher.
[00:03:05.712]I'm getting your logic neurons fire here.
[00:03:09.331]If I am guilty then I was at the scene of the crime.
[00:03:12.442]I was at the scene of the crime.
[00:03:15.586]What can you conclude?
[00:03:19.629]Huh? Huh?
[00:03:23.514]I may or may not be guilty.
[00:03:27.299]I was not at the scene of the crime.
[00:03:30.480]I'm not guilty.
[00:03:32.289]How about this, I am guilty.
[00:03:34.973]I was at the scene of the crime.
[00:03:37.185]Last but not least, I am not guilty.
[00:03:42.867]I may or may not have been at the scene of the crime.
[00:03:46.719]Alright, let's turn the page,
[00:03:47.888]now that your neurons, your logic neurons are firing,
[00:03:51.064]paragraph pattern.
[00:03:53.090]This, if some of you don't know how a paragraph is developed
[00:03:57.423]please take a look at this, I'm not gonna
[00:03:59.633]spend time reading it.
[00:04:01.088]But I've got a paragraph at the top
[00:04:04.016]that's very well put together.
[00:04:08.206]Notice the topic sentence is what?
[00:04:10.262]Employees in both business and industry
[00:04:12.493]should receive pay raises to cope
[00:04:15.016]with the rising costs of necessities.
[00:04:17.968]Now readers are gonna say to themselves,
[00:04:20.018]why do you say that?
[00:04:22.155]And here's where you provide details.
[00:04:25.708]Now, I wanna point out, for example, food costs
[00:04:29.700]about twice as much as it did five to 10 years ago.
[00:04:33.875]Then, he the writer explains what they mean by that.
[00:04:37.649]Now please take your pen,
[00:04:41.915]draw a curved arrow from two to one.
[00:04:45.740]Draw a curved arrow from three to two.
[00:04:48.272]From both threes to two.
[00:04:52.858]So you're getting, these are called levels of generality,
[00:04:55.082]it doesn't matter whether you remember that or not,
[00:04:57.182]but notice, two says something about one,
[00:05:00.722]three says something about two, in a more specific detail.
[00:05:04.951]And three, the second three, does as well,
[00:05:06.986]gives another example.
[00:05:08.595]Notice how this concludes.
[00:05:10.469]Unless wages match rising prices,
[00:05:12.943]people will have difficulty buying necessities such as food.
[00:05:16.309]What is the next paragraph gonna be about?
[00:05:21.970]That's a concluding sentence that serves as a what?
[00:05:25.290]Transition to the next paragraph.
[00:05:26.770]And what does it tell the reader?
[00:05:28.382]What's the next paragraph gonna be about?
[00:05:34.111]Unless wages match rising prices,
[00:05:35.766]they're gonna have to say something about that.
[00:05:37.979]So, this is how transparent your communication needs to be.
[00:05:42.679]It's not a mystery, it's not a puzzle, right?
[00:05:44.806]It is nothing more than making sense.
[00:05:47.183]Clearly making your meaning accessible to the reader.
[00:05:52.349]Alright, let's move to, diving into paragraphs.
[00:05:57.061]I want you to read these three paragraphs.
[00:06:02.139]Each has the same topic sentence.
[00:06:04.759]And I'm gonna call for a show of hands
[00:06:06.818]which paragraph is the most readable, go.
[00:06:12.976]Okay, how many of you thought number one was most readable?
[00:06:20.063]One?
[00:06:20.956]How many thought paragraph two was most readable?
[00:06:24.970]How many thought paragraph three?
[00:06:27.699]There's your answer in terms of readability.
[00:06:30.788]It was easier for more people to read paragraph three.
[00:06:36.284]What's wrong with paragraph one?
[00:06:39.251]Anybody?
[00:06:42.212]What's that?
[00:06:46.668]Transitions?
[00:06:48.365]No transitions.
[00:06:49.524]Well, there is one, for example.
[00:06:53.341]Precision.
[00:06:55.862]Procedure.
[00:06:58.192]Precision, I said that, yeah.
[00:07:09.341]Okay, you're saying that the wording.
[00:07:14.208]It does what?
[00:07:15.326]It does not fit with the,
[00:07:16.487]it does not fit with the topic sentence.
[00:07:18.177]Could you give us, as an example of that?
[00:07:20.269]Yeah, so the topic sentence is talking about
[00:07:21.802]its intelligence, and then it goes down to talk
[00:07:23.818]about its food and its lack of--
[00:07:25.873]Search for food, what's wrong with that?
[00:07:29.276]Doesn't fit.
[00:07:30.277]Why?
[00:07:31.333]Cause it doesn't fit with the topic sentence,
[00:07:32.920]it doesn't have to do with their intelligence.
[00:07:34.405]So, searching for food doesn't have anything
[00:07:36.254]to do with intelligence.
[00:07:37.744]Amoebas search for food.
[00:07:41.480]Right?
[00:07:42.945]So, all of a sudden, the reader's going,
[00:07:44.938]thank you, that was very good,
[00:07:47.056]the reader's going off in the Caribbean
[00:07:48.829]because you've lost sight of what you're,
[00:07:51.009]you didn't keep your contract.
[00:07:53.546]The topic sentence is a contract with the reader.
[00:07:55.902]I'm going to talk about this specifically.
[00:07:59.717]And all of a sudden he's talking about searching for food.
[00:08:02.777]That sends the reader into the Caribbean.
[00:08:05.626]What's wrong with the second one?
[00:08:11.369]What's that?
[00:08:18.577]... and then they return to talking about
[00:08:20.672]the intelligence of whales.
[00:08:23.188]Okay, so right in the middle of that paragraph
[00:08:29.565]they talk about, the whaling industry ignores the whale's
[00:08:33.549]intelligence and threatens them with extinction, very good.
[00:08:36.898]That's a topic for another paragraph, isn't it?
[00:08:40.228]But he sticks, she or he sticks that in the middle
[00:08:42.189]of his paragraph, and it doesn't fit with what
[00:08:45.352]the topic sentence said you were gonna talk about.
[00:08:48.369]Now, let me ask you this.
[00:08:51.108]That same sentence occurs in the third paragraph,
[00:08:54.095]but where is it placed?
[00:08:57.218]At the end, so it serves as a what?
[00:09:00.289]To the next paragraph.
[00:09:02.713]It tells the reader what the next
[00:09:03.900]paragraph's going to be about.
[00:09:07.168]This is really intentional, clear writing is clear thinking.
[00:09:14.052]Please stand.
[00:09:15.738]If I could just raise a quick observation on the second
[00:09:17.739]page, when you take a quick look at it as
[00:09:20.061]a requirement base, the second one is about 10% longer,
[00:09:24.960]but the third one is actually 30% longer.
[00:09:28.037]Shouldn't we be brief?
[00:09:29.318]The opposite side of being long winded is to be brief.
[00:09:33.170]Well, that email I showed you, she was way too brief.
[00:09:37.789]She was so brief that it wasn't understandable.
[00:09:40.250]So she should have written more words
[00:09:43.588]to make her sentence.
[00:09:47.405]Now, in that, the two paragraphs, there were 30 more words
[00:09:52.036]in that gone to the Caribbean paragraph about volcanic ash.
[00:09:56.173]There were 30 more words in the good one.
[00:09:58.555]So the answer is, sometimes you're gonna have to use
[00:10:01.317]transitions, and it's gonna lengthen the paragraph a bit,
[00:10:04.931]but it's worth it in terms of readability.

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Writing Fundamentals: Part 7

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