Since Dustin Heap did not publish his reading summary, here's one from another section. The comments are due this Friday, Jan. 23rd.
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Hi! It’s my turn to do the summary for the day, so here we go. “Sharpening”, the selection we had to read was from the same book we read about Engfish from, Telling Writing by Ken Marcrorie.
A lot of what Marcrorie discusses in this section expands on what he started mentioning in Engfish. Remember how Marcrorie talked about how we tried to make overly wordy sentences that didn’t really mean anything? Marcrorie discusses in this section ways to “sharpen” our sentences, or to make them sound better, and this process really will make our sentences sound less “Engfishy”.
One of the main points Marcrorie makes is using active verbs instead of passive verbs. Instead of using a lot of linking verbs like ‘is’, we should try to use action verbs that suit what we’re saying instead.
Example:-- Reading this section is assisting us in becoming better writers. (Passive verb phrase is assisting.)Versus-- Reading this section improves our writing style.
Clearly, the second one sounds a lot more convincing. It also cuts down on the number of unnecessary words, which was one of the main aspects of Engfish.
The other main point that Macrorie brings up is all the use of unnecessary words and the overuse of the pronoun ‘it’. Rather than beating around the bush by saying things like ‘It seems that reading this will help me’, Macrorie argues that we should just get to the point and say ‘Reading this will help me’. By avoiding all the extra words, we sound a little more authoritative, don’t you think? We also sound a lot more convincing, or at least that’s how it seems to me, and I can’t really think of any situation where we wouldn’t want to sound convincing in our writing.
Obviously, passive verbs and ‘it’ can’t always be avoided, but we should always try to avoid them in situations where we could be using better and more colorful words!
For discussion:What did you think about the article? Have you had any experience with writing that needs a little sharpening, or maybe have you seen instances in which you’ve used a lot of “its”, “seems”, and passive verbs yourself? (I know I’m guilty of it!) What do you think is the best way to try to avoid this? (Since these aren’t really errors, I know it’s a lot harder for me to catch myself doing it. I mean, I just used the word ‘it’ and ‘is’ in that sentence!) If you have any other thoughts, too, you can just put them here.
Thanks!--Laura Treat
