Clarity, Part 2

Clarity, Part 2

In this post, I will explore four more/different topics/chapters, and I will cover what I learned that was new or surprising. I chose this picture of a knife switch below because it suited the fact that the topics that I covered involve improper usage of words that require "switching". After going back to my QRG to make the revisions involving the topics below, I will make a reflection about what I learned from revising.

Ayl~commonswiki. "Open Knife Switch.jpg" 11/25/10 via Wikimedia Commons.
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Needed Words (119)

I learned that many people decide to omit words in their writing. However, this could cause confusion for the reader and make the sentences have improper grammar. First, it is important to add words needed to complete compound structures. Second, it is important to add the word that if there is any danger of misreading without it. Third, you need to add words to make comparisons make more sense, such as, the words like or as. Fourth, you need to incorporate the articles a, an, and the when needed for "grammatical completeness". I found it surprising that some words lack their full meaning without these articles. For instance, the book uses, "We bought a computer and antivirus program." It makes more sense if the word "an" was placed in from of "antivirus" because these articles can be removed in directions or recipes, but they are necessary for readers.

Mixed Constructions (123)

Mixed constructions are made out of sentence parts that do not make sense together. This could be either involved with grammar or logic. It is recommended to contemplate the function of your sentence and rethink it if you switch grammatical plans. In addition, the subject and predicate needs to be comprehensible as a whole. For example, the book stated, "When the country elects a president is the most important." The book crossed off "When...elects" and changed it to "electing". In this example, the correction replaces the adverb clause with a gerund phrase which is a word group that can serve as a subject. It makes more sense because the part they replaced cannot be the subject of the sentence. In my QRG, I do not think that I did anything wrong with my sentence constructions, but I will definitely revise my draft to review over this.

Shifts (135)

Unnecessary shifts could confuse the reader. These shifts include: shifts in point of view, in verb tense, in mood or voice, or from indirect to direction questions or quotations. The part that stood out to me the most was perspective. I learned that first person uses I or we; second person uses you, or third person is he, she, it, one, they, or any noun. It is important to keep these consistent because it could confuse the reader if you switch. From personal experience, I said, "I was talking to my dad and he said that you could do this instead," I meant you to refer to my boyfriend and not to me. However, my boyfriend thought that my dad was referring the you to me because he thought I was directly quoting him. I unnecessarily switched perspectives unintentionally. Therefore, there was a misunderstanding. In other words, small mistakes like this could occur and confuse the reader to think something totally different than you had meant. In the book it uses the example of our and your. If we began with saying our, we need to continue to say our and not talk to the reader by saying you and our. It is also important to maintain verb tense. If you are talking in past or present tense, it is necessary for the writer to continue to write in this same tense throughout their writing and not switch. Also, it could be better to say "She also did this" instead of "Also, she did this" because it could be distracting to the reader. In my QRG, I need to go back and make sure I kept my verb tenses consistent throughout.

Emphasis (141)

To emphasize the importance of your topic, begin sentences with the subject and verb of the independent clause. It is important to use more prose to bring attention to the important ideas through adding an element of surprise or a twist. For instance it is important to coordinate independent clauses. More specifically connect the two ideas by using words, such as, "but" or "and" to extend the idea. I learned that it is possible to have a semi-colon and a conjunction adverb after it like "however" or "moreover". When I look back at my QRG, I know that I can make some changes to better emphasize the ideas.

Reflection

After revising my QRG, I learned that I needed to add semi-colons and a conjunction adverb like "however" and "moreover" for emphasis. For instance, I did this in the sentence "...a program where students are restricted to eating certain amounts of foods and receiving a specific amount of fruits and vegetables; however, students are not purchasing school lunches due to their limited food options." I  thought this did a good job of creating better emphasis in my QRG because it gave the reader more information on the topic. By linking the sentences together, it created a smoother connection betwen the two different but related ideas.

I also learned that I needed to fix some shifts. For example, I switched from beginning the sentence with "Also" to "Many children are also suffering due to their parents poor meal decisions for them, but children tend to spend most of their day at school." I did this because I thought it made the ideas flow better from the previous sentence and would confuse the reader less.

However, there were not any spots that I thought my work needed any words added. Also, my work did not need me to focus on mixed constructions because my sentences make sense. I think I did not need to work on these because I feel like previous teachers drilled these ideas into my head. I unconsciously knew to do enforce them.