Williams 'Style: Lessons In Clarity And Grace'

Walter Williams, the founder of the University of Missouri’s Journalism School, believed that unless journalists were trained as professionals, they would never earn the public’s trust. Journalists needed to be held accountable professionally and personally in order for the profession to endure. In 1914, Williams wrote the Journalist’s creed. The creed was an affirmation of the ethics of journalism. Although the creed still is the clearest definition of the principles, standards, and values of journalists, the world is changing, and that includes journalism.

Wayne Williams was charged with murdering two people in Atlanta, Georgia. Shockingly enough, he was also linked to the killing of ten other boys. The way the evidence effected this trial is what makes the case so well known. There were 28 different types of fibers linking Williams to the murder victims. That can be an overwhelming amount of evidence. This case happened in the 1980s and the evidence presented in the case was crucial to proving Williams guilt.

Punctuation is a major part of writing because it creates meaning within sentences. And John Irving uses it liberally. Throughout the book, many words

Stanley Tookie Williams III was born on December 29, 1953 in New Orleans, Louisiana. At the age of six he moved to South Central's West Side neighborhood in Los Angeles. He was known as a fighter and running the streets of South Central's Westside. He attended John C. Freemont High School but was expelled and never graduated.

According to employers interviewed by the NCW, students writing skills are possibly less effective now than they were 15 to 20 years ago. This drives me to conclude that the context based approach alone is not an effective way to teach grammar and punctuation. Perhaps the modified sentence combining approach as suggested by Quible & Griffin (p.34) will improve students writing skills. For an approach to be effective, it must address teaching grammar in two folds. Firstly, the rules of punctuation and instruction on grammar must be introduced. Once the student has that basic understanding, an approach such as in-context writing, sentence combining, glossing or error labeling can be presented to help students learn to eliminate sentence level errors. It is absolutely imperative for educators to adopt a new direction in order to resolve the current dilemma Employers are facing.

For this writing I must defend some of my comma usage. There are some oddities comma wise, but there are some added for dramatic effect. Some of the short sentences are also used for dramatic

As a non-English native speaker, writing an essay with my basic knowledge mostly cause some confusion, because the alphabet format and word choice may sound strange for my audience. Sometimes my words order makes a lot of confusion as many readers gave me the feedback, likewise my writing10 professor. Therefore, she recommends me to check in with Belinda Braunstein, an assistor for a non-English native speaker. I went to her office around 3-4 times throughout the spring semester, in order to check in with my grammar. Honestly, I have learned a lot of thing such as using all of which, some of which, and also using a period, extra information need extra punctuation. If I talked about Ms. Ayik, who is my professor, I know she is my writing10 professor, therefore, I need a period to indicate she is my professor. Otherwise, if I don’t know who I am talking about, then I don’t need a period because it is the information that I don’t know.

Unlike spoken English where it is possible to pause within speech, in writing it is much more important to provide the appropriate punctuation. This allows the reader to better understand the meaning the author is trying to convey through his or her words. It is important to use punctuation, either a comma or semicolon, to properly break up the parts of a sentence. This is an area I sometimes find myself struggling to perform correctly.

Yusaf has tried hard to improve his writing and is now using resources in class to help him create more exciting vocabulary. He has written some good stories and non-fiction pieces but needs to ensure he is using the correct structure. Yusaf is using basic punctuation but this now needs to be used

Punctuation: For the two writing samples, Reading Log and Quickwrites, Nadia used a period at the end of her sentences about 50% of the time. She was told to use paragraph format and complete sentences before completing the task. Nadia used apostrophes for stay’s and want’s when it wasn’t needed. She did use an apostrophe correctly when she wrote Ben’s

Iyer uses comparisons, personification, metaphors, and imagery, to stress the value of punctuation. Iyer uses different kind of comparisons to underline the necessity of punctuation. He compares the comma to small things such as jewelry and to large thing such as God, to show the significance of it in everyday life. Iyer implies that punctuation is the most important part of language, without actually stating it.

Punctuation is used to convey deeper meaning in writing. Commas are one of the most frequently misused punctuation marks. Generally, amateur authors do not comprehend the rules of comma placement. Many will use commas too often or too little. When commas are used correctly, they help the reader better understand the passage by forcing them to mentally break it into smaller parts. Conversely, dashes are designed to speed the reader’s thoughts by throwing the thought forward. Similar to the comma, semicolons can improve an essay, but are easy to misunderstand. Semicolons separate a complete sentence into two closely related parts, with a whole sentence on either side. Colons, when used correctly, will show information as a direct result of the

Commas are one of the most widely used pieces of punctuation in the english language. Although most people only know a few of the functions these can be used for or maybe not at all. You can usually notice them when you speak because they are usually where there are natural breaks in a sentence that makes speaking more natural. Some of the ways one might use them is when there is additional information in a sentence that is not essential to it. Commas can also be used to open a sentence. Introductory information opens the sentence and comes before the real message of it. This can make your writing a bit more varied as well as give some context. Implementing these characteristics of commas can make one's writing better to read and make it more natural in a reader's mind.

After you have read enough of Strunk & White to feel somewhat confident (or even frustrated) by the rules that you already knew or forgot, examine Style by Joseph M. Williams. Mr. Williams is a professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Chicago. You may have already encountered another book published by the University on the subject. Fear not; Williams book is not an immense conundrum of rules in the same vein as The Chicago Manual of Style. I prefer to think of it as a response to Strunk & White; Williams will address many of the same rules of writing from a refreshingly unique viewpoint. Some readers may find his work incredibly dull and prefer The Elements of Style for its short and simple guidelines. Or you may find yourself enjoying a newfound sense of freedom from the rather liberal suggestion of Williams that some rules are, in fact, meant to be broken. If you are of an analytical or logical frame of mind you may enjoy the many diagrams and trees he created as examples of his statements. If you do not fit into this group, do not let these examples get in the way of the underlying message. Writing, Williams appears to suggest, is not about rules and

Jokes aside, those are some very real problems I have in my writing and over the course of three pages I have comma splices mentioned 6 times. For example in the sentence, “Isolation is so often compared with negative emotions that we have come to acknowledge it as negative, however sometimes by choosing to isolate yourself from the world, you can find a personal liberation that is far from being negative,” I could have easily broken it up into two sentences and made it the whole idea more readable by taking out some commas. Most of the time when I’m writing, I feel like I have more to say than can be confined in a single paragraph. Using commas gives the illusion that I’m are saying more because the idea keeps going but in reality, I could (and should) be less afraid of using periods. Something about the finality of a period at the end of a sentence makes me afraid to use it until I am confident that I’ve fully expressed my idea. This is a problem that can be easily fixed with a greater confidence of where to properly place punctuation. I’m sure that over time and with practice I’ll be able to use commas more efficiently.