Journal 4

 
Choose one piece of writing to practice with the style principles we have been studying this week. You are welcome to use your current draft of the contribution paper that you have been working on or something that you have written in the past.
This assignment has three parts:
For each part you will choose a sentence or section from your chosen piece of writing. For parts 1 and 2, include the original and the edited product. Notice how you change each sentence and how it helps the meaning of your writing become more clear, concise, readable, or persuasive.
1. Find two sentences that have nominalizations in them. Use the principles from the video to fix the sentences (take away the nominalizations and add active verbs, etc.)
2. Find one paragraph that is six sentences or longer. Use Chapter 11: “Sentence Variety…” to practice combining sentences using coordination or subordination. Practice varying and changing your sentences in different ways to make your meaning more clear.
Rewrite the paragraph twice each time combining two of the sentences and revising to make your sentences more varied & readable.
3. Read over the piece of writing you have chosen. If it’s really long you can choose one or two pages to read over. Write a few paragraphs on what you notice about your own writing style. Do you use nominalizations often? Is your writing overly wordy and complex? Is it too simple? Do you always use the same sentence structure? Is there something else you do repeatedly that could be improved?