Chapter 5 Principles of Document Design Summary

     Chapter 5 in Diana Hacker's "Rules For Writers" lays out the different forms of document design. Selecting your heading, footer, and font size are three major elements that form your appearance of your documents. Different types of headings like those ending with ing, noun, question, and imperative sentences are described. Using lists to help readers collect information quicker is an effective method. Lists need to be introdused with an independent clause followed by a colon. Adding different types of visuals to your documentaion can help a lot. For example, at my work we write instructions for manufacturing that include pictures that accurately depict the operation being performed, where som paragraphs could not give an operator the same level of detail. Graphs, tables, maps, and charts are shown in the next section. Displaying data accurately is very important as well as displaying it in a method that is chewable for a meeting atmosphere or if its posted in an email it should be bulleted for quick bites of info, with links to the details if needed by the recipient.

"How Do We Forgive Our Fathers?" from "Smoke Signals"

     When I watched the scene in "Smoke Signals" by Chris Eyre and Sherman Alexie where there seems to be an apex of emotions and thought while the poem "How Do We Forgive Our Fathers" is narrated, I felt chills on my arms. I looked up the transcript of the poem and found that the author was Dick Lourie, here it is.
How do we forgive our Fathers?
Maybe in a dream
Do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever
when we were little?
Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.
Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers?
For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?
And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness?
Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?
Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?
If we forgive our Fathers what is left?

     The movie at that point, showing Victor on the bridge yelling out was really intense to put it mildly. We can't know all the harbored pain and resentment that Victor had. It was really interesting how Victor and Thomas were able to stay together so long when they seemed so opposite. It was the tragedy and perhaps the hope that kept them together. This poem speaks volumes for both of them. The line that asks "Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs or their deaths saying it to them or not saying it? If we forgive our Fathers what is left?"

     What is left? Its us. The focus can now be shifted away from that which haunts, or hurts our souls. There are so many people out there who are "Fatherless" either never knowing them or not wanting to know them. This movie would be great for those folks, in my opinion.

     On another level, I was thinking that "Our Fathers" could mean our forefathers, our ancestors. What kind of world have they left us? What kind of "Fathers" will we be? and if we are not able to leave this planet in a kind state, will we be forgiven?

  

Writing Topic: Rules for Writers, chapter 48

In Chapter 48 of Diana Hacker's "Rules for Writers"we learn about the various forms arguments we can present. Diana breaks the different types of arguments into Illogical fallacies such as stereotypes, generalizations, false analogy, post-hoc fallacies, making assumptions, and the omission of the other side of the story, or the lack of weighed options, untrue premise, unfair emotional appeals, and misleading quotations. All of these types of falsehoods can be countered by using the correct evidence or data in our writing when arguing our points. Emotions are harder to gauge but Diana shows a good example of the type of emotional plea that we shouldn't use like justifying something based on the fact that any attempt to argue against it comes from some type of person or group that the writer doesn't like, and even stereotypes possibly.

For me, I personally wish we could make stricter laws against our politicians that we pay for with our tax money. It being close to voting time, I have become dulled to the vagrant slandering and pitiful attempts to persuade me to vote based on one candidates negative views about the other. I know that there are a lot of different groups that use their muscle in the advertising, but any commercial that pops up and ends with "...And I approve this message" should be contested by an independent third party to verify all claims and that the commercial entails the details of both side of the story just like the FDA regulates our drug companies by forcing their commercials to include communication about the negative side effects and possible unsavory outcomes posed by the use of the drugs being sold.

Quote from "Obituary" Lois-Ann Yamanaka

"I think about dying every night. Sometimes I want to die at strange moments in the day. Sometimes every day. My mother says its all those books I read about concentration camps. The arsenic in the heart that I tell her about and the gas chambers with the fingernail scratches on the walls and ceilings." from  "Obituary" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka.

    I chose this quote to write about because I can recall a stage in my childhood when I was fascinated with horror stories and real life gorey massacres and the holocaust. I was more interested in these as historical facts. Lovey seemed to take death as just another happenstance of life. Her mom points out her attitude of desensitization possibly coming from her choice of literature. I found that I had a new appreciation and understanding for life, looking at it like a fleeting moment that one should enjoy as much as you can before it disappears.
    The quote was taken out of the part of the story where Lovey is asked to write her obituary as part of an english or journalism project. Most of the story is directed at Lovey's emotions stemming from people teasing her and bullying, as well as, being ashamed of her culture.
    What I enjoyed about this story was that I was looking for some kind of Crux, or axis that hooked everything together and I didn't find it at first, it seemed like a mish-mash od thoughts and stories all crammed in a few pages. When I read it a second time I read it fast, without stopping to analyze every nook and cranny as I usually do. What a difference, I felt like I was in her shoes, in her head and scattering the same emotions and clips of sentences about. It fekt like when I was in Junior high and I felt like the little bit of understanding that I had was able to make sense of the world in brief fragments of my life.
    The quote I chose also kinda set me back abit because with how she was describing herself I wasn't able to picture her reading books about the holocaust, or much of anything actually. This was a good excercise in making assumptions of how we hear different versions of our language and of the characters that speak them.Great story! Try reading it without stopping.

Extra Credit: Optional Writing Topic Summary

    "Close Reading a Text and Avoiding Pitfalls" by Purdue Owl focuses on techniques for capturing all the themes and meanings of your paper or essay summaries. This can help you organize your writing so there is less time wasted backtracking through paragraphs to keep the main points of your work focused and work collectively.
    Actively highlighting as well as writing marginal notes can help you when you are searching through your work briefly for a subject. It will also show you how your work flows through paragraphs and chapters.
Keeping a notebook to freewrite helps expand your ideas as well as close loose ends or answer the unanswered questions from your marginal notes. Step back from the paper and see if you can place a thesis statement on it, understanding all the nuances that the author has generated in the essay or novel.
   In the "Avoiding Pitfalls" section of this writing we see the consequences of four actions that writers typically come across when focusing too much on just the plot, trying to answer a question that the student thinks the teacher wants answered, assuming that it isn't necessary to focus on the entire picture created by the author but that any piece of the fiction is relevant, and lastly padding your work with extra words to try to meet a word requirement for the assignment. These four things end up hurting the writer more than helping them.
   I need to work on these Ideas more in my writing. I always think I can retain everything I'm reading, but the longer the story the more there is to try and retain. When an author drives us through different scenarios of fiction it is really hard to remember all different things an author is trying to send out. I have done better with using my words sparingly and not "Pad" my work with unnecessary devices.

Rules For Writers Chapter 47 Summary

     Diana Hacker explains the mechanics of reasonable arguments in chapter 47 of "Rules or Writers".
The goal of constructing reasonable arguments is to bring the readers closer to the author's frame of mind. The reasonable argument presents a viewpoint and then supports that viewpoint by asking reasonable questions and presenting facts or data to support the author's argument. The author should focus on the argument from different points of view by adding elements of social and scientific reasoning to the subject.
     It is suggested that the author views the argument from the point of view of many different types of people in the audience such as doctors, lawyers, social workers etc. look at the data, does it prove the argument through answering questions through different areas of expertise? Does it seperate the subject from a path that is still questioned? Or does it leave room for many more questions. Reviewing the answers and delegating them in such a way as to capture all the reasonable minds is imperative for supporting your subject. This can be done by using illustrations or citing expert opinions.
    It is responsible of the author to bring into the argument all the opposition if they can as opposed to alienating readers. Using the right wording or symbols can be powerful in connecting with everyone that will be reading your argument.
    For some reason when I write my essays  first draft I'm not considerate of the audience. When I go back and reflect on the papers I write I spend a lot more time on what evryone will think about my subject, how it is supported and how I can involve everyone in looking at the subject through my eyes.

Sherman Alexie author of “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”

   Comic books aren’t the only things that I have in common with Sherman Alexie. Our childhoods are not the only differences Sherman and I have either. It may be that I can relate to his spirit of rebelliousness and his will to do good things in life that makes me want to compare my life to his, as I’m sure we all tend to do with those we are fond of. I’m not comparing Sherman and I in a way that is competitive but in a way that I can explore how our differences and similarities help us grow into the humans we have become today.                
Sherman was born and raised on an Indian reservation in Spokane Washington and came from what he considered a “Middle Class” family where his folks were able to raise him and his family on minimum wage jobs and government surplus foods. I was born in Santa Rosa to what I guess I considered middle class wage earning parents (A Secretary and a Fisherman), and brought up fairly privileged I guess. I never really wanted for anything that was unreasonable like a Ferrari when I was 16. Sherman mentions that “A smart Indian is a dangerous person widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and Non Indians” so one can imagine the things that went on in school and how hard it must have been for him to succeed through it all. I was also nerdy but not as smart, often ridiculed, but I never felt dangerous in making anyone else look bad. I felt kinda like an outcast in school sometimes because my pops often had me working with him on his fishing boat so all the clothes I got were from ACE hardware. I can relate with some of the feelings that Sherman goes through in school, but for totally different reasons.                                                                                                                       
     I ended up graduating high school, and finishing some college. I’ve been through a few manufacturing jobs and have been through an apprenticeship program when all this time I haven’t really pursued anything as my lifetime career. Sherman on the other hand was voraciously reading and writing since he was three years old. He says in his story that if he weren’t an Indian he would have been considered a prodigy, but since he was an Indian, he is just considered an oddity among his folks. He seemed destined to be involved in the literary world even though he also points out that he can’t believe he became a writer, he says he should have been a pediatrician.  I do good through the charities I support and activities that give back to our community like helping in the Bodega Beach cleaning days. Sherman does good for all his people by teaching kids as a guest teacher and writing interesting stories like “Superman and Me’ that help us think about the cultures and people the main stream may not always shine a light on. Sherman is out there trying to save his people’s lives by helping them to become smarter, and not letting them slip into the forgetful, uneducated stereotypes that are associated with his people.                                                                                                                   Our futures may be as different as our pasts. When I read Sherman’s story I feel like I want to hang out and talk with the guy for awhile about what its going to be like by the end of this century, I’m sure he could enlighten me 10 fold. I don't feel destined to become anything special, and I don't relate specifically to one race or type of people. I like to read about someone who rebelled and didn'tstand with the status quo. I like to hear about the person who went against the odds and won. Sherman's tales are the rare ones that are worth storytelling. In one way his story makes me feel very average, but in another sense I ask myself "Is average O.K. for me or should I be bringing myself to the next level?" I believe that is Sherman Alexie's goal all along.



Note: I lost the formatting on this when it publishes. I'll try to re post when I get it fixed. The preview looks different than what I'm writing now.

Writing Topic: Rules for Writers chapter 4

Building Effective Paragraphs

     In the fourth chapter of "Rules for Writers" by Diana Hacker we receive coaching on how to fill our paragraphs with more powerful matter.

     Diana describes how we should keep our focus on the point of each paragraph, which can be hard sometimes if we have a lot of information we are trying to impart on our audience. She then moves on to our topic sentence. Topic sentences can be placed anywhere in the paragraph, and are sometimes hard to spot. It is a good practice to underline the topic sentences when you spot them. This certainly helps when writing summaries.
     The next section describes the different methods of developement which include: Example and illustration, narration, description, process, comparison and contrast, analogy, cause and effect, classification and division, and definition. These patterns of developement can be mixed and matched throughout an essay to give it flavor and effectiveness.
     Repeating key words to keep focus of the main idea, using parallel structures in sentences to underscore themes, and maintaining consistency of the opinion or subject of the paragraph helps the audience better chew the incoming information.
     Next is providing transitions. I have to say that when I've got all the nuts and bolts of a first draft completed and I'm tuning up the final draft I love to find the perfect segways to connect all the pieces together so it becomes smooth to read (If that is my intent). When you find that right chain of words to lay into your paper you know when it feels right. Its is a really important effect to have seams or remain seamless within your writing.
     Lastly Diana describes when to cut off your paragraph and start a new one. When I'm writing my first draft I run into ths a lot, where I'm trying to pour out information for three paragraphs into one long untidy half page.
     Knowing these different descriptions of paragraphs and learning how to come up with some smooth or comical transitions is critical on our adventure to pick up all the tools we need to complete our essays.