Summary: The Principle Of Poor Writing

Ballenger, Bruce. “The Importance of Writing Badly.” The Curious Writer. Custom Publishing. 2008. pp. 45–47.

Many people have a habit of writing differently and it can be good or bad. In the essay “The Importance of Writing Badly,” Bruce Ballenger encourages students to write spontaneously without any rules or “error-free sentences.” He believes that there are no wrong way to express how a person feel. It may not be the correct way to write it but it still allows a person to write continuously. Ballenger allows students to write badly because he is more interested in encouraged thinking.

The Importance of Writing Badly was written by Bruce Ballenger. His intended audience are students who are victims of strict English teachers as well as the strict English teachers, themselves. In his essay, Ballenger portrays that students are more focused on being grammatically correct than the message in their essays. This is because of teachers who grade strictly on grammar errors and punctuation. Ballenger says, “A colleague of mine, an Ivy League graduate, is among the self-appointed grammar police, complaining often about the dumb mistakes his students make in their papers. I don’t remember him ever talking about what his students are trying to say in those papers.” (Page 74). Bruce Ballenger has effectively argued and persuaded his intended audience with his use of ethos, pathos, and logos.

It is essential to understand that classes taken in grade school do not give students a full understanding of each subject. With the topic of writing, there will always be a new lesson to learn, an aspect to improve, or a differing way to explain. Author Craig Vetter states in Bonehead Writing, “This is your enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper. Nothing will ever happen here except what you make happen.” Each story, essay, or response comes from a writer’s experiences. With each attempt at a new piece comes an underlying story of emotions the writer is facing. Each person’s writing is unique and the ideas people have are related to their past experiences and what they believe to be familiar with when deciding which writing style to use. As a high school student, I have learned many things about writing that helped me become the improved writer I am today, but the most essential advice I have received is practice makes perfect. Although there is no actual perfect way of writing, I have discovered that each essay I write, my writing improves. It is easier to spot mistakes, find areas to improve, and ponder elevated word choice to use.

1. Sommers’ article follows the CARS model very well, which in return makes the introduction very effective. First, Sommers “establishes a territory” when she introduces the two linear writing processes. The first processes being Gordon Rohman’s and the second being James Britton’s model. She grants right off the bat that research on writing strategies is lacking to say the least. This statement allows Sommers to create a niche that she will further explain throughout the paper based on her own research. She informs the reader with generalizations about writing strategies and revisions. This allows the reader to be informed about what the paper will be discussing in detail, as well as, keep the reader on track to understand the article to the

In the article “ Writer-Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing,” Linda Flower explains the differences between writer - based prose and reader - based prose, in other words, styles of writing. She describes the characteristics of the writer -based style of writing as a way for a writer to write for himself, where the author reflects on his or her own thoughts concerning a certain topic and not about the actual reader of the text and if they could understand it or not.

7. I. The author put an anecdote about general misconceptions of familiar writing style on line 1-3. By criticizing the ideas which are opposite to his statement, his thesis can gain more power. This skill is the reduction to absurdity.

Writing varies from a text message to a novel. Writers often have a difficult task in creating a piece of work that truly identifies the meaning of good writing. Every good writer usually starts with the basics such as genre, audience, rhetorical situation, and reflection of the piece. Throughout this semester, we have gone through all of these key terms in great detail with each new assignment that has come our way. In doing this, not only as students but also as writers, we have come to create our own theory of writing. Every writer has a different theory of writing though most are very similar. Now, at this point in the semester after doing countless journals, in-class exercises, and final assignments, I think I have figured out my own

Prior to entering class, I deemed myself a competent writer. However, I quickly discovered that my writing involved mediocre writing precepts. In contrast to the principles of scholarly discourse, my writing held the tenets of conversational writing and failed to meet academic standards. Furthermore, much of my poor writing was akin to a deep-rooted habit that I found humbling to admit and challenging to correct. Passive voice, unneeded words, long sentences, were a few of the obstacles that impeded my journey to effective writing. However, using peer reviews and an editing checklist I slowly began improving my skills as a competent writer. I also found that reading concerning writing provided supplementary methods to improve my skills as a scholarly writer. Implementing these innovative techniques, I slowly began to

1.Why should business writers strive to use short, familiar, simple words? Does this "dumb down" business messages?

I found “Shitty First Draft” interesting due to humorous tone remains throughout the essay. After reading this paper, I realized how important to convey different tones of writing in accordance with the situation or the story you are telling; it is reflective of your writing style, current mood and even your point of view towards certain subject matters. For example, in “Shitty First Draft”, the author reveals some facet of writers in face of challenging themselves to finish writing. Instead of being calm and relaxed, those writers are anxious and worrisome as the author states, “It is not like you don't have a choice---because you do---you can either type or kill yourself.” By telling the readers a few writing stories in an amusing way, the author successfully makes the difficulty of writing understandable to the readers. It is like telling yes, I understand your pain because I went through it before and everyone did. By doing so, the author makes herself approachable to the students who struggle with writing and those potential readers are now more willing to listen to her advice.

When I was reading Writing is Easy by Steve Martin, I was thinking if writing was actually that easy. Then I finished the article and realized that writing will never be easy. Mr. Martin examples on how to make writing easier make no sense. His tip to getting over writers block gets the writer nowhere. He says “got to an already published novel and find a sentence that you absolutely adore. Copy it down into your manuscript” (Martin). What he is saying is plagiarism. If I was to use this method to overcome writer block I would be thrown out of college. I still believe that writer block is real because even the greatest authors struggle with writers block.

In Rachel Shteir’s essay, “Failure, Writing’s Constant Companion” Shteir states that “Failure in writing is not like failure in business” meaning that when writing you have to be able to recognize you strengths and weakness also that writers have to write every day to exercise their writing muscle and implement the ability to have coherent ideas into their writing. Admittedly when writers feel that there work is less than up to par to what they are capable of writing it’s not the end of the world, everyone gets stuck and its okay just to write anything that comes to you that will eventually inspire your work and get you back on track. However when you think of others peoples approval of your work this can distract you from on writing your best

It is hard to believe Foundations of Writing is already over, but as I reflect on the past semester, I realize how beneficial this class has been. Not only has my writing improved, but my confidence in my abilities to write have grown as well. I’ve become more aware of how much writing will impact my future, and after this class, I feel like I will be able to handle it. There is still room for improvement, but Foundations of Writing has pushed me to become the best writer I can possibly be.

Writing is not just as simple as putting words down on a document or a piece of paper, it is a process. Within this intricate process are steps that involve more than just writing, such as critical thinking, planning, and editing. Using these steps has not only helped me when planning an essay but also when composing one. Throughout this course, I have managed to improve many skills and gain a lot of strengths, but I still possess some weaknesses. Overall, I believe my strengths have definitely outgrown these weaknesses and have led to a better, more high-quality writing process which leads to improved essays.