The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Handbook (Second Edition with 2009 MLA Updates)

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SECOND EDITION

The Norton Field Guide to Writing with handbook

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SECOND EDITION

The Norton

Field Guide to Writing with handbook

Richard Bullock WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY

Francine Weinberg

B W. W. NORTON & COMPANY New York • London

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W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People’s Institute, the adult education division of New York City’s Cooper Union. The Nortons soon expanded their program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By mid-century, the two major pillars of Norton’s publishing program — trade books and college texts — were firmly established. In the 1950s, the Norton family transferred control of the company to its employees, and today — with a staff of four hundred and a comparable number of trade, college, and professional titles published each year — W. W. Norton & Company stands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly by its employees. Copyright © 2009, 2008, 2006 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Editor: Marilyn Moller Associate Editor: Erin Granville Editorial Assistant: Ana Cooke Project Editor: Rebecca A. Homiski Copy Editor: Mark Gallaher Managing Editor: Marian Johnson Electronic Media Editor: Eileen Connell Production Manager: Jane Searle Manufacturing: R.R. Donnelley, Crawfordsville Composition: Matrix Publishing Services Text Design: Anna Palchik Cover Design: Debra Morton Hoyt The Library of Congress has cataloged the second edition as follows: Bullock, Richard H. The Norton Field guide to writing : with handbook / Richard Bullock, Francine Weinberg. — 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-393-93247-8 (pbk.) 1. English language—Rhetoric—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. English language— Grammar—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 3. Report writing—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Weinberg, Francine. II. Title. III Title: Field guide to writing, with handbook. PE1408.B8838243 2009 808 .042—dc22 MLA Update edition

ISBN: 978-0-393-93439-7

ISBN: 978-0-393-11637-3 (ebook) W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 www.wwnorton.com W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

2008040628

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Preface

The Norton Field Guide to Writing began as an attempt to offer the kind of writing guidelines found in the best rhetorics in a format as user-friendly as the most popular handbooks, and on top of that to be as brief as could be. It was to be a handy guide to help college students with all their written work. Just as there are field guides for bird watchers and accountants, this would be one for writers. The book touched a chord with many instructors, and it quickly became the most widely used brief rhetoric. At the same time, many instructors asked for more on grammar and punctuation. So we are happy now to offer this second edition of the Field Guide in a version that includes a brief handbook. The Norton Field Guide still aims to offer the guidance new teachers and first-year writers need and the flexibility many experienced teachers want. From our experiences as teachers and WPAs, we know that explicit writing guides work well for students and novice teachers. Many instructors chafe at the structure imposed by such books, however, and students complain about having to buy books that have much more detail than they need. So we’ve tried to provide enough structure without too much detail — to give the information college writers need to know, and to resist the temptation to tell them everything there is to know. Most of all, we’ve tried to keep the book brief and easy to use. To that end, it includes menus, directories, and a glossary / index to make it easy for students to find what they’re looking for — and color-coded links to help them navigate the book. These links are also the key to keeping the book brief: chapters are short, but the links point to pages elsewhere in the book if students need more detail. Students can access much of the Field Guide and the complete handbook on the Web, and a color-coded Writing Toolbar provides online access when students most need it: as they write.

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What’s in the Book The Norton Field Guide covers 15 kinds of writing often assigned to college students. Much of the book is in the form of guidelines, designed to help students consider the choices they have as writers. Most chapters are brief, in response to students’ complaints about books with too much detail — but color-coded links send them to places in the book where they can find more information if they need it. The book has 7 parts: 1. RHETORICAL SITUATIONS. Chapters 1–5 focus on purpose, audience, genre, stance, and media and design. In addition, most chapters include tips to help students focus on their particular rhetorical situation. 2. GENRES. Chapters 6–20 offer guidelines for fifteen kinds of writing, from abstracts to lab reports to memoirs. Literacy narrative, textual analysis, report, and argument are treated in greater detail. 3. PROCESSES. Chapters 21–28 offer advice on generating ideas, drafting, revising, editing, proofreading, compiling portfolios, collaborating, and writing as inquiry. 4. STRATEGIES. Chapters 29–41 cover familiar ways of developing and organizing text — writing effective beginnings and endings, coming up with good titles and developing effective thesis statements, comparing, describing, using dialogue, and other essential writing strategies. Chapters 40–41 offer useful strategies for reading and essay exams. 5. RESEARCH / DOCUMENTATION. Chapters 42–50 offer advice on how to do academic research; work with sources; quote, paraphrase, and summarize source materials; and document sources using MLA and APA styles. 6. MEDIA / DESIGN. Chapters 51– 53 give general guidance on designing and presenting texts for print, spoken, and electronic media. 7. HANDBOOK. At the end of the book is a handbook to help students edit what they write. We’ve organized the handbook around the intuitive categories of sentences, words, and punctuation to make it easy for students to find the help they need.

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What’s on the Website A free and open website provides instant access to much of The Norton Field Guide online. Visit the site at wwnorton.com/write/fieldguide.

The Writing Toolbar, color-coded to match the book, downloads in Word so that students can access parts of the book on screen, as they write. Writing Guides offer guidelines on the 4 most common genres. Hyperlinks pop up more detailed information if students need it. MLA and APA templates help students document sources accurately. A Handbook helps students edit what they write, with 1,000⫹ exercises for practicing sentence-level writing issues.

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Highlights It’s easy to use. Color-coding, menus, directories, and a glossary / index make it easy for students to find what they’re looking for; a minimum of jargon makes it easy to understand. Color-coded templates even make MLA and APA documentation easy. It has just enough detail, with short chapters that include color-coded links sending students to more detail if they need more.

It’s uniquely flexible for teachers, with explicit assignment sequences if you want them — or you can create your own. See the facing page for ways of teaching with this book. A user-friendly handbook, with an intuitive organization around sentences, words, and punctuation to make it easy for students to find what they need. And we go easy on the grammatical terminology, with links to the glossary for students who need detailed definitions. What’s New 11 new readings, from a textual analysis of 24 to a report on the inevitability of air turbulence to a proposal for controlling the prices of textbooks.

Updated 2009 MLA documentation guidelines and documentation maps showing where to look for publication information in common sources.

A new chapter on synthesizing ideas, helping students connect ideas in multiple sources and use them in their own writing. (Chapter 45)

A new chapter on mixing genres, showing how to combine a number of genres in a single text, as is done in much real-world writing. (Chapter 20) A new chapter on writing as inquiry, helping students approach writing projects with curiosity and providing strategies to help them get beyond what they already know about their topic. (Chapter 21) A new chapter on arguing, with strategies for articulating a position, giving good reasons and evidence, considering other positions, and more. (Chapter 32) A new chapter on taking essay exams (Chapter 41)

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Ways of Teaching with The Norton Field Guide to Writing The Norton Field Guide is designed to give you both support and flexibility. It has clear assignment sequences if you want them, or you can create your own. If, for example, you assign a position paper, there’s a full chapter. If you want students to use sources, add the appropriate research chapters. If you want them to submit a topic proposal or an annotated bibliography, add those chapters.

If you’re a new teacher, the genre chapters offer explicit assignment sequences — and the color-coded links will remind you of other detail that you may want to bring in. The Instructor’s Manual is designed for new teachers, with advice on creating a syllabus, responding to writing, balancing graduate work with teaching responsibilities, and more.

If you focus on genres, there are complete chapters on 15 genres college students are often assigned. Color-coded links will help you bring in details about research or other writing strategies as you wish. If you organize your course thematically, you might start with Chapter 23 on generating ideas to get students thinking about a theme. You can also assign them to do research on the theme, starting with Chapter 43 on finding sources, or perhaps with Chapter 21 on writing as inquiry. If they then write in a particular genre, there will be a chapter to guide them. If you want students to do research, there are 8 chapters on the research process, along with guidelines and sample papers demonstrating MLA and APA documentation. If you want them writing particular genres, each genre chapter includes links to the research chapters. If you focus on particular strategies, you’ll find full chapters on narration, description, and so on. The chapters assume these to be strategies that a writer might use for many writing purposes, and each chapter points out genres where that strategy is particularly useful. If you wish to assign essays organized around a particular strategy, each chapter ends with links that lead students through the process of doing so.

If you teach online, much of the book is on the Web, with a Writing Toolbar that downloads into Word to give students access as they write.

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Acknowledgments Writing never takes place in isolation; from start to finish, it is always a collaborative venture. In writing our acknowledgments, we struggled thinking about whom to include and how far back we should go in recognizing the many people who have influenced what we do as writers and teachers, and as authors of this book. Even as we offer our gratitude here by naming those who have most directly contributed to making The Norton Field Guide to Writing, with handbook a reality, we are aware that many others have been instrumental as well. Marilyn Moller, the editor of the Field Guide, tops our list of those we want to thank, for her keen instincts, creative thinking, and unflagging assistance. She is one of the finest editors we’ve had the good fortune to work with. The quality of this book is due in large part to her knowledge of the field of composition, her formidable editing and writing skills, and her sometimes uncanny ability to see the future of the teaching of writing. The second edition has benefited from the steady editorial hand of Erin Granville, who shepherded it (and Rich) through its revisions. Her deft editing and insightful suggestions have been especially valuable for the new parts — and in fact have improved the entire book. Many others have contributed. Thanks to project editor Rebecca Homiski for her energy, patience, and great skill. Ana Cooke has coordinated a flurry of manuscripts and other materials, as did Cat Spencer before her. I thank Anna Palchik for the user-friendly (and award-winning) interior design and Debra Morton Hoyt for the whimsical cover. Jane Searle (and Diane O’Connor before her) transformed a scribbled-over manuscript into a finished product in record time — and to high standards. Mark Gallaher copyedited and Barbara Necol proofread, both with great attention to detail. Megan Jackson cleared text permissions, and Stephanie Romeo researched and cleared permission for the images. Eileen Connell, Jack Lamb, and Cliff Landesman planned, designed, and produced the sensational website. Steve Dunn helped us all keep our eyes on the market, and Mike Wright, Katie Hannah, and now Doug Day have worked enthusiastically and skillfully to introduce the book to the market. Thanks to all, and to Roby Harrington, Drake McFeely, and Julia Reidhead for supporting this project in the first place.

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At Wright State, Rich has many, many people to thank for their support and assistance over the many years he’s been working on the Norton Field Guide; among them Brady Allen, Debbie Bertsch (now at Columbus State Community College), Vicki Burke, Jane Blakelock, Adrienne Cassel (now at Sinclair Community College), Jimmy Chesire, Carol Cornett, Byron Crews, Catherine Crowley, Deborah Crusan, Sally DeThomas, Stephanie Dickie, Scott Geisel, Beth Klaisner, Peggy Lindsey, Nancy Mack, Marty Maner, Cynthia Marshall, Sarah McGinley, Michelle Metzner, Kristie Rowe, Bobby Rubin, Cathy Sayer, David Seitz, Caroline Simmons, Tracy Smith, Rick Strader, Mary Van Loveren, and A.J. Williams. He also thanks Henry Limouze, chair of the English Department, and Lynn Morgan and Becky Traxler, the secretaries to the writing programs. And thanks especially to the more than 200 graduate teaching assistants and 9,000 first-year students who have class-tested, taught, and studied with the various editions of the Field Guide and whose experiences have helped shape it. Thanks to the many teachers across the county who have reviewed various versions and offered valuable input and encouragement: Alan Ainsworth, Houston Community College; Jonathan Alexander, University of California at Irvine; Althea Allard, Community College of Rhode Island; James Allen, College of DuPage; Cathryn Amdahl, Harrisburg Area Community College; Jeff Andelora, Mesa Community College; Anne Beaufort, University of Washington, Tacoma; Sue Beebe, Texas State University; Patrick Bizzaro, East Carolina University; Kevin Brooks, North Dakota State University; Ron Brooks, Oklahoma State University; Cheryl Brown, Towson University; Gina Caison, University of Alabama, Birmingham; Jill Channing, Mitchell Community College; Ron Christiansen, Salt Lake Community College; Susan Cochran-Miller, North Carolina State University at Raleigh Durham; Billye Currie, Samford University; Paul C. Davis, Northland Community and Technical College; Pat Densby, San Jacinto College Central; Marvin Diogenes, Stanford University; Sarah Duerdan, Arizona State University; Russel Durst, University of Cincinnati; Sylvia Edwards, Longview Community College; Karen Fitts, West Chester University; Paul Formisano, University of New Mexico; Lloren A. Foster, Hampton University; Ivonne M. Garcia, Ohio State University; Anne Gervasi, DeVry University; Gregory Glau, Arizona State University; Emily Golson, University of Northern Colorado; Richard Hansen, California State Fresno; Susanmarie Harrington,

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University of Vermont; Lory Hawkes, DeVry Institute of Technology; Gary Hawkins, Warren Wilson College; Paul Heilker, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Hal Hellwig, Idaho State University; Michael Hennessy, Texas State University; Cheryl Huff, Germanna Community College; Maurice Hunt, Baylor University; Teresa James, South Florida Community College; Kim Jameson, Oklahoma City Community College; Peggy Jolly, University of Alabama, Birmingham; Mitzi Walker Jones, University of Arkansas, Fort Smith; Jeanne Kelly, Holmes Community College; Rhonda Kyncl, University of Oklahoma; Sally Lahmon, Sinclair Community College; Erin Lebacqz, University of New Mexico; Paul Lynch, Purdue University; T. Michael Mackey, Community College of Denver; Magdalena Maczynska, Marymount Manhattan College; Leigh A. Martin, Community College of Rhode Island; Deborah McCollister, Dallas Baptist University; Miles McCrimmon, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College; Jeanne McDonald, Waubonsee Community College; Jacqueline McGrath, College of DuPage; Pat McQueeny, Johnson County Community College; Shellie Michael, Volunteer State Community College; Thomas Miller, University of Arizona; Bryan Moore, Arkansas State University; Mary Ellen Muesing, University of North Carolina, Charlotte; Roxanne Munch, Joliet Junior College; Terry Novak, Johnson & Wales University; Peggy Oliver, San Jacinto College; Amy Patrick, Western Illinois University; Ann Pearson, San Jacinto College; Irv Peckham, Louisiana State University; K. J. Peters, Loyola Marymount University; Deirdre Pettipiece, University of the Sciences; Donna Qualley, Western Washington University; Daniela Ragusa, Southern Connecticut State University; Dana Resente, Montgomery County Community College; Nedra Reynolds, University of Rhode Island; Althea Rhodes, University of Arkansas, Fort Smith; Mauricio Rodriguez, El Paso Community College; Gardner Rogers, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Tony Russell, Purdue University; Matthew Samra, Kellogg Community College; Lisa L. Sandoval, Joliet Junior College; Lisa M. Schwerdt, California University of Pennsylvania; Michelle Sidler, Auburn University; William H. Smith, Weatherford College; Leah Sneider, University of New Mexico; Jeffrey Larsen Snodgrass, Prince George’s Community College; Jean Sorensen, Grayson County College; Brady J. Spangenberg, Purdue University; Candace Stewart, Ohio University; Jennifer Stewart, Indiana University–Purdue University, Fort Wayne; Amy Ferdinandt Stolley, Purdue University; Mary

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Stripling, Dallas Baptist University; Martha Swearingen, University of District Columbia; Elyssa Tardiff, Purdue University; Linda Tetzlaff, Normandale Community College; John M. Thomson, Johnson County Community College; Monica Parrish Trent, Montgomery College, Rockville Campus; Griselda Valerio, University of Texas at Brownsville; Jarica Watts, University of Utah; Scott Weeden, Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne; Candice Welhausen, University of New Mexico; Carol Westcamp, University of Arkansas, Fort Smith; Barbara Whitehead, Hampton University; Melissa E. Whiting, University of Arkansas, Fort Smith; and AnneMarie Yerks, University of Michigan. Thanks especially to Avon Crismore’s students at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne for their thoughtful (and well-written) evaluations. The Norton Field Guide has also benefited from the good advice and conversations Rich has had with writing teachers across the country, including (among many others) Maureen Mathison, Susan Miller, Tom Huckin, Gae Lyn Henderson, and Sundy Watanabe at the University of Utah; Christa Albrecht-Crane, Doug Downs, and Brian Whaley at Utah Valley State College; Anne Dvorak and Anya Morrissey at Longview Community University; Jeff Andelora at Mesa Community College; Robin Calitri at Merced College; Lori Gallinger, Rose Hawkins, Jennifer Nelson, Georgia Standish, and John Ziebell at the Community College of Southern Nevada; Stuart Blythe at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne; Janice Kelly at Arizona State University; Jeanne McDonald at Waubonsee Community College; Web Newbold, Mary Clark-Upchurch, Megan Auffart, Matt Balk, Edward James Chambers, Sarah Chavez, Desiree Dighton, Ashley Ellison, Theresa Evans, Keith Heller, Ellie Isenhart, Angela Jackson-Brown, Naoko Kato, Yuanyuan Liao, Claire Lutkewitte, Yeno Matuki, Casey McArdle, Tibor Munkacsi, Dani Nier-Weber, Karen Neubauer, Craig O’Hara, Martha Payne, Sarah Sandman, and Kellie Weiss at Ball State University. I wouldn’t have met most of these people without the help of the Norton travelers, the representatives who spend their days visiting faculty, showing and discussing the Field Guide and Norton’s other fine textbooks. Thanks to Kathy Carlsen, Michelle Church, John Darger, Erin Lizer, Brita Mess, and all the other Norton travelers. And I’d especially like to thank Mike Wright, Katie Hannah, and Doug Day for promoting this book so enthusiastically and professionally.

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It’s customary to conclude by expressing gratitude to one’s spouse and family, and for good reason. Writing and revising The Norton Field Guide over the past several years, we have enjoyed the loving and unconditional support of our spouses, Barb and Larry, who provide the foundation for all we do. Thank you. We couldn’t have done it without you.

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How to Use This Book

There’s no one way to do anything, and writing is no exception. Some people need to do a lot of planning on paper; others write entire drafts in their heads. Some writers compose quickly and loosely, going back later to revise; others work on one sentence until they’re satisfied with it, then move on to the next. And writers’ needs vary from task to task, too: sometimes you know what you’re going to write about and why, but need to figure out how to do it; other times your first job is to come up with a topic. The Norton Field Guide to Writing is designed to allow you to chart your own course as a writer — to offer you guidelines that suit your writing processes and needs. It is organized in seven parts: 1. RHETORICAL SITUATIONS: No matter what you’re writing, it will always have some purpose, audience, genre, stance, and medium and design. This part will help you consider each of these elements. 2. GENRES: Use these chapters for help with specific kinds of writing, from abstracts to lab reports to memoirs and more. You’ll find more detailed guidance for four especially common assignments: literacy narratives, analyzing texts, reporting information, and arguing a position. 3. PROCESSES: These chapters offer general advice for all writing situations — from generating ideas and text to drafting, revising and rewriting, compiling a portfolio — and more. 4. STRATEGIES: Use the advice in this part to develop and organize your writing — to write effective beginnings and endings, to guide readers through your text, and to use comparison, description, dialogue, and other strategies as appropriate.

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HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

5. RESEARCH / DOCUMENTATION: Use this section for advice on how to do research, work with sources, and compose and document researchbased texts using MLA and APA styles. 6. MEDIA / DESIGN: This section offers guidance in designing your work and working with visuals, and in delivering what you write on paper, on screen, or in person. 7. HANDBOOK: Look here for help with sentence-level editing.

Ways into the Book The Norton Field Guide gives you the writing advice you need, along with the flexibility to write in the way that works best for you. Here are some of the ways you can find what you need in the book.

Brief menus. Inside the front cover you’ll find a list of all the chapters; start here if you are looking for a chapter on a certain kind of writing or a general writing issue. Inside the back cover is a menu of all the topics covered in the HANDBOOK. Complete contents.

Pages xix–xxv contain a detailed table of contents. Look here if you need to find a reading or a specific section in a chapter.

Guides to writing. If you know the kind of writing you need to do, you’ll find guides to writing 15 common genres in Part 2. These guides are designed to help you through all the decisions you have to make — from coming up with a topic to organizing your materials to editing and proofreading your final draft. Color-coding.

The parts of this book are color-coded for easy reference: red for RHETORICAL SITUATIONS, green for GENRES, lavender for PROCESSES, orange for STRATEGIES, blue for RESEARCH / DOCUMENTATION, gold for MEDIA / DESIGN, and yellow for the HANDBOOK. You’ll find a key to the colors on the front cover flap and also at the foot of each left-hand page. When you see a word highlighted in a color, that tells you where you can find additional detail on the topic.

Glossary / index.

At the back of the book is a combined glossary and index, where you’ll find full definitions of key terms and topics, along with a list of the pages where everything is covered in detail.

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How to Use This Book

Directories to MLA and APA documentation. A brief directory inside the back cover will lead you to guidelines on citing sources and composing a list of references or works cited. The documentation models are colorcoded so you can easily see the key details. The website. You can also start at wwnorton.com/write/fieldguide. There you’ll find a Writing Toolbar that provides electronic access to some of what’s in the book, including writing guides for several genres, MLA and APA guidelines, the glossary, the complete handbook, exercises, and more.

Ways of Getting Started If you know your genre, simply turn to the appropriate genre chapter. There you’ll find model readings, a description of the genre’s Key Features, and a Guide to Writing that will help you come up with a topic, generate text, organize and write a draft, get response, revise, edit, and proofread. The genre chapters also point out places where you might need to do research, use certain writing strategies (comparison, description, and so on), design your text a certain way—and direct you to the exact pages in the book where you can find help doing so. If you know your topic, you might start with some of the activities in Chapter 23, Generating Ideas and Text. From there, you might turn to Chapter 43, for help Finding Sources on the topic. When it comes time to narrow your topic and come up with a thesis statement, Chapter 30 can help. If you get stuck at any point, you might turn to Chapter 22, Writing as Inquiry; it provides tips that can get you beyond what you already know about your topic. If your assignment or your thesis defines your genre, turn to that chapter; if not, consult Chapter 3 for help determining the appropriate genre, and then turn to that genre chapter. The genre chapters point out places where you might need to do more research, use certain writing strategies, design your text a certain way—and direct you to the exact pages in the book where you can find help doing so.

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Contents

Preface

How to Use This Book

Part 1

Rhetorical Situations

1 Purpose

Identifying your purpose 4 Thinking about purpose 4

2 Audience

Identifying your audience 6 Thinking about audience 7

3 Genre

Identifying your genre 10 Thinking about genre 10

4 Stance

Identifying your stance 13 Thinking about stance 14

5 Media / Design

Identifying your media and design needs Thinking about media 16 Thinking about design 17

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Part 2

Genres

6 Writing a Literacy Narrative

Marjorie Agosín, Always Living in Spanish 21 Richard Bullock, How I Learned about the Power of Writing Shannon Nichols, “Proficiency” 26 KEY FEATURES

A well-told story / Vivid detail / Clear significance

A GUIDE TO WRITING

Choosing a topic 29 Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 30 Organizing 32 Writing out a draft 33 Considering matters of design 34 Getting response and revising 35 Editing and proofreading 36 Taking stock of your work 36

7 Analyzing a Text

Ginia Bellafante, In the 24 World, Family Is the Main Casualty William Safire, A Spirit Reborn 41 Doug Lantry, “Stay Sweet As You Are” 43 KEY FEATURES

A summary of the text / Attention to the context / A clear interpretation / Support for your conclusions

A GUIDE TO WRITING

Choosing a text to analyze 50 Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 51 Organizing 54

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Writing out a draft 55 Considering matters of design 56 Getting response and revising 57 Editing and proofreading 57 Taking stock of your work 58

8 Reporting Information

Susan Stellin, The Inevitability of Bumps James Fallows, Throwing Like a Girl 63 Jeffrey DeRoven, The Greatest Generation KEY FEATURES

59 67

A tightly focused topic / Well-researched information / Various writing strategies / Clear definitions / Appropriate design

A GUIDE TO WRITING

Choosing a topic 73 Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 75 Organizing 76 Writing out a draft 77 Considering matters of design 79 Getting response and revising 80 Editing and proofreading 81 Taking stock of your work 81

9 Arguing a Position

Gary Taubes, What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie? 83 Lawrence Lessig, Some Like It Hot 88 Joanna MacKay, Organ Sales Will Save Lives 92 KEY FEATURES

A clear and arguable position / Background information / Good reasons / Convincing evidence / Appeals to readers / A trustworthy tone / Consideration of other positions

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A GUIDE TO WRITING

Choosing a topic 99 Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 101 Organizing 105 Writing out a draft 106 Considering matters of design 108 Getting response and revising 108 Editing and proofreading 109 Taking stock of your work 110

10 Abstracts

111

INFORMATIVE ABSTRACTS DESCRIPTIVE ABSTRACTS PROPOSAL ABSTRACTS KEY FEATURES

100

111 112

112

113

A summary of basic information / Objective description / Brevity

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING

113

Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 114 Organizing 115

11 Annotated Bibliographies

113

116

Michael Benton, Mark Dolan, Rebecca Zisch, Teen Film$ Jessica Ann Olson, Global Warming 118 KEY FEATURES

116

119

A clear scope / Complete bibliographic information / A concise description of the work / Relevant commentary / Consistent presentation

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING

120

Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 121 Organizing 123

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12 Evaluations

125

Ali Heinekamp, Juno: Not Just Another Teen Movie KEY FEATURES

125

128

A concise description of the subject / Clearly defined criteria / A knowledgeable discussion / A balanced and fair assessment / Well-supported reasons

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING

129

Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 130 Organizing 132

13 Lab Reports

130

133

Sarah Thomas, The Effect of Biofeedback Training KEY FEATURES

133

138

An explicit title / Abstract / Purpose / Methods / Results and discussion / References / Appendices / Appropriate format

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING

140

Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 141 Organizing 142

14 Literary Analyses

140

143

Stephanie Huff, Metaphor and Society in Shelley’s “Sonnet” KEY FEATURES

144

146

An arguable thesis / Careful attention to the language of the text / Attention to patterns or themes / A clear interpretation / MLA style

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING

147

Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 148 Organizing 152

147

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15 Memoirs

153

Rick Bragg, All Over But the Shoutin’ KEY FEATURES

153

157

A good story / Vivid details / Clear significance

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING

158

Choosing an event to write about 158 Considering the rhetorical situation 158 Generating ideas and text 159 Organizing 160

16 Profiles

161

Laura M. Holson, Rural Idaho Town Seeks to Turn Film’s Cult Status into Prosperity 161 KEY FEATURES

165

An interesting subject / Background information / An interesting angle / A firsthand account / Engaging details

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING

167

Choosing a suitable subject 167 Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 168 Organizing 169

17 Proposals

167

171

Michael Granof, Course Requirement: Extortion KEY FEATURES

171

174

A well-defined problem / A recommended solution / A convincing argument for your solution / Possible questions / A call to action / An appropriate tone

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING

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Deciding on a topic 175 Considering the rhetorical situation

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Generating ideas and text Organizing 177 TOPIC PROPOSALS

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177

Jennifer Church, Biodiversity Loss and Its Effect on Medicine KEY FEATURES

178

179

A concise discussion of the subject / A statement of your intended focus / A rationale for the topic / Mention of resources

18 Reflections

180

Jonathan Safran Foer, My Life as a Dog KEY FEATURES

180

183

A topic that intrigues you / Some kind of structure / Specific details / A questioning, speculative tone

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING

185

Deciding on a topic 185 Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 186 Organizing 186

19 Résumés and Job Letters RÉSUMÉS

185

188

KEY FEATURES

191

An organization that suits your goals and experience / Succinct / A design that highlights key information

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING

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Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 192 Organizing 195

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APPLICATION AND THANK-YOU LETTERS KEY FEATURES

195

198

A succinct indication of your qualifications / A reasonable and pleasing tone / A conventional, businesslike format

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING Generating ideas and text Organizing 200

20 Mixing Genres

198 198

201

Anna Quindlen, Write for Your Life KEY FEATURES

201

203

One primary genre / A clear focus / Careful organization / Clear transitions Some typical ways of mixing genres 204

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING

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Considering the rhetorical situation Generating ideas and text 206 Multi-genre projects 207

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Processes

21 Writing as Inquiry Starting with questions Keeping a journal 214 Keeping a blog 214

22 Collaborating

205

209

211 211

215

Some ground rules for working in a group Group writing projects 216

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Online collaboration Writing conferences

217 217

23 Generating Ideas and Text

219

Freewriting 219 Looping 220 Listing 220 Clustering 221 Cubing 222 Questioning 222 Outlining 223 Letter writing 224 Keeping a journal 224 Discovery drafting 225

24 Drafting

226

Establishing a schedule 226 Getting comfortable 226 Starting to write 227 Dealing with writer’s block 228

25 Assessing Your Own Writing

229

Assessing the writing you do for yourself 229 Assessing the writing you do for others 230 Considering the rhetorical situation 230 Examining the text itself 231 For focus / Argument / Organization / Clarity Thinking about your process 234

26 Getting Response and Revising Getting response Revising 236 Rewriting 239

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27 Editing and Proofreading Editing 242 Proofreading

242

245

28 Compiling a Portfolio

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Considering the rhetorical situation A WRITING PORTFOLIO

247

248

What to include 248 Organizing 248 Paper portfolios / Electronic portfolios Reflecting on your portfolio 252 A LITERACY PORTFOLIO

257

What to include 257 Organizing 258 Reflecting on your portfolio

Part 4

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Strategies

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29 Beginning and Ending

261

Beginning 261 Ways of beginning 262 Ending 266 Ways of ending 267 Considering the rhetorical situation

30 Guiding Your Reader Titles 272 Thesis statements 273 Topic sentences 275 Transitions 277

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31 Analyzing Causes and Effects

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Determining plausible causes and effects Arguing for causes or effects 279 Organizing 280 Considering the rhetorical situation 281

32 Arguing

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Reasons for arguing 283 Arguing logically 284 Claims / Reasons / Evidence Convincing readers you’re trustworthy 293 Appealing to readers’ emotions 296 Checking for fallacies 296 Considering the rhetorical situation 298

33 Classifying and Dividing

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Classifying 300 Dividing 301 Creating clear and distinct categories 302 Considering the rhetorical situation 305

34 Comparing and Contrasting

306

Two ways of comparing and contrasting 307 The block method / The point-by-point method Using graphs and images 309 Using figurative language 311 Considering the rhetorical situation 312

35 Defining

314

Formal definitions 314 Extended definitions 316 Stipulative definitions 321 Considering the rhetorical situation

322

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36 Describing

324

Detail 324 Objectivity and subjectivity 327 Vantage point 329 Dominant impression 330 Organizing 331 Considering the rhetorical situation

37 Dialogue

331

333

Why add dialogue? 333 Integrating dialogue into your writing 334 Interviews 335 Considering the rhetorical situation 336

38 Explaining Processes

338

Explaining clearly 338 Explaining how something is done 338 Explaining how to do something 339 Explaining visually 340 Considering the rhetorical situation 341

39 Narrating

343

Sequencing 343 Including pertinent detail 347 Opening and closing with narratives 349 Considering the rhetorical situation 350

40 Reading Strategies

352

Reading strategically 352 Previewing a text 353 Considering the rhetorical situation 353 Thinking about your initial response 354 Annotating 354 Believing and doubting 355 Thinking about how the text works 358

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Summarizing 360 Identifying patterns 361 Analyzing the argument 364 Considering the larger context

41 Taking Essay Exams

365

367

Considering the rhetorical situation 367 Analyzing essay questions 368 Some guidelines for taking essay exams 370 Before the exam / During the exam / After the exam

Part 5

Doing Research

42 Developing a Research Plan

373 375

Establishing a schedule 375 Getting started 375 Considering the rhetorical situation 376 Coming up with a topic 377 Doing some preliminary research 379 Keeping a working bibliography 379 Coming up with a research question 381 Drafting a tentative thesis 381 Creating a rough outline 382 Keeping track of your sources 383

43 Finding Sources

384

Kinds of sources 384 Searching electronically 386 Reference works 388 General / Specialized / Bibliographies Books 389

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Periodicals 390 Print indexes / Electronic indexes and databases The Web 392 Doing field research 394 Interviews / Observation / Questionnaires and surveys

44 Evaluating Sources

400

Considering the reliability of sources 400 Considering whether a source serves your purpose Reading sources with a critical eye 402

45 Synthesizing Ideas

400

404

Reading for patterns and connections 404 Synthesizing to support your ideas 406 Entering the conversation 406

46 Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing Taking notes 408 Deciding whether to quote, paraphrase, or summarize Quoting 410 Paraphrasing 413 Summarizing 416 Incorporating source materials into your text 417 Signal phrases / Verb tenses

408 409

47 Acknowledging Sources, Avoiding Plagiarism Acknowledging sources 420 Avoiding plagiarism 423

48 Documentation

425

Understanding documentation styles MLA style 427 APA style 427

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49 MLA Style

428

A DIRECTORY TO MLA STYLE

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MLA in-text documentation 432 Notes 439 MLA list of works cited 439 Documentation Maps Book 441 / Article in a Journal 449 / Article in a Magazine 450 / Work from a Website 455 / Article in a Database 457

Sample research paper, MLA style

50 APA Style

467

477

A DIRECTORY TO APA STYLE

477

APA in-text documentation Notes 486 APA reference list 486

480

Documentation Maps Book 488 / Article in a Journal 494 / Article in a Magazine 495 / Part of a Website 501 / Article in a Database 503 / Article in a Database with DOI 504

Sample research paper, APA style

Part 6 51 Print Text

508

Media / Design

521

523

Considering the rhetorical situation 523 Some elements of design 524 Type / Layout / Paragraphs / Lists / Headings / White space Visuals 528 Evaluating a design 533

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52 Spoken Text

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Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address Judy Davis, Ours Was a Dad . . . 535 KEY FEATURES

534

537

A clear structure / Signpost language / A suitable tone / Sound / Visual aids

Considering the rhetorical situation Delivering a spoken text 539 Visual aids 540

53 Electronic Text

546

Considering the rhetorical situation KEY FEATURES / EMAIL

538

546

548

An explicit subject line / An appropriate tone / Brevity / Speed and reach

KEY FEATURES / WEBSITES

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A home page / A clear organizational structure / An explicit navigation system / A consistent design / Links

A sample site Blogs 554

Part 7 Sentences S-1 S-2 S-3 S-4 S-5 S-6 S-7

553

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HB-1

HB-3

Complete Sentences HB-4 Sentence Fragments HB-7 Comma Splices and Fused Sentences Verbs HB-11 Subject-Verb Agreement HB-20 Pronouns HB-24 Parallelism HB-28

HB-10

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S-8 S-9

Coordination and Subordination Shifts HB-33

Words W-1 W-2 W-3 W-4 W-5 W-6 W-7

HB-35

Appropriate Words HB-36 Precise Words HB-38 Commonly Confused Words HB-41 Unnecessary Words HB-46 Adjectives and Adverbs HB-48 Articles HB-51 Words That Build Common Ground HB-53

Punctuation / Mechanics P-1 P-2 P-3 P-4 P-5 P-6 P-7 P-8 P-9 P-10 P-11

HB-31

Commas HB-57 Semicolons HB-63 End Punctuation HB-65 Quotation Marks HB-66 Apostrophes HB-71 Other Punctuation Marks Hyphens HB-78 Capitalization HB-80 Italics HB-82 Abbreviations HB-85 Numbers HB-86

Acknowledgments Glossary / Index

A-1 G/I-1

Revision Symbols Directory to MLA Style Directory to APA Style Handbook Menu

HB-56

HB-74

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SECOND EDITION

The Norton Field Guide to Writing with handbook

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part 1

Rhetorical Situations Whenever we write, whether it’s an email to a friend or a toast for a wedding, an English essay or a résumé, we face some kind of rhetorical situation. We have a PURPOSE, a certain AUDIENCE, a particular STANCE, a GENRE, and a MEDIUM to consider — and often as not a DESIGN. All are important elements that we need to think about carefully. The following chapters offer brief discussions of those elements of the rhetorical situation, along with questions that can help you make the choices you need to as you write. See also the fifteen GENRES chapters for guidelines for considering your rhetorical situation in each of these specific kinds of writing.

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PURPOSE

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Purpose

All writing has a purpose. We write to explore our thoughts and emotions, to express ourselves, to entertain; we write to record words and events, to communicate with others, to try to persuade others to believe as we do or to behave in certain ways. In fact, we often have several purposes at the same time. We may write an essay in which we try to persuade an audience of something, but as we write, we may also be exploring our thoughts on the subject. Look, for example, at this passage from a 2002 New York Times Magazine essay by economist and editorial columnist Paul Krugman about the compensation of chief executive officers: Is it news that C.E.O.’s of large American corporations make a lot of money? Actually, it is. They were always well paid compared with the average worker, but there is simply no comparison between what executives got a generation ago and what they are paid today. Over the past 30 years most people have seen only modest salary increases: the average annual salary in America, expressed in 1998 dollars (that is, adjusted for inflation), rose from $32,522 in 1970 to $35,864 in 1999. That’s about a 10 percent increase over 29 years — progress, but not much. Over the same period, however, according to Fortune magazine, the average real annual compensation of the top 100 C.E.O.’s went from $1.3 million — 39 times the pay of an average worker — to $37.5 million, more than 1,000 times the pay of ordinary workers. The explosion in C.E.O. pay over the past 30 years is an amazing story in its own right, and an important one. But it is only the most spectacular indicator of a broader story, the reconcentration of income and wealth in the U.S. The rich have always been different from you and me, but they are far more different now than they were not long ago — indeed, they are as different now as they were when F. Scott Fitzgerald made his famous remark. — Paul Krugman, “For Richer”

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Krugman is reporting information here, outlining how top business executives’ pay has increased over the last thirty years. He is also making an argument, that their pay is far greater than it was not too long ago and that this difference between their income and the average worker’s resembles the disparity that characterized the United States right before the Great Depression. (Krugman, writing for a magazine, is also using a style — dashes, contractions, rhetorical questions that he then answers — that strives to be entertaining while it informs and argues.) Even though our purposes may be many, knowing our primary reason for writing can help us shape that writing and understand how to proceed with it. Our purpose can determine the genre we choose, our audience, even the way we design what we write.

Identify your purpose. While writing often has many purposes, we usually focus on one. When you get an assignment or see a need to write, ask yourself what the primary purpose of the writing task is: to entertain? to inform? to persuade? to demonstrate your knowledge or your writing ability? What are your own goals? What are your audience’s expectations, and do they affect the way you define your purpose?

Thinking about Purpose What do you want your audience to do, think, or feel? How will they use what you tell them?

•

What does this writing task call on you to do? Do you need to show that you have mastered certain content or skills? Do you have an assignment that specifies a particular STRATEGY or GENRE — to compare two things, perhaps, or to argue a position?

•

What are the best ways to achieve your purpose? What kind of STANCE should you take? Should you write in a particular genre? Do you have a choice of MEDIUM, and does your text require any special format or DESIGN elements?

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Audience

Who will read (or hear) what you are writing? A seemingly obvious but crucially important question. Your audience affects your writing in various ways. Consider a piece of writing as simple as a note left on the kitchen table: Jon — Please take the chicken out to thaw, and don’t forget to feed Annye. Remember: Dr. Wong at 4. Love, Mom

On the surface, this brief note is a straightforward reminder to do three things. But in fact it is a complex message filled with compressed information for a specific audience. The writer (Mom) counts on the reader (her son) to know a lot that can be left unsaid. She expects that Jon knows that the chicken is in the freezer and needs to thaw in time to be cooked for dinner; she knows that he knows who Annye is (a pet?), what he or she is fed, and how much; she assumes that Jon knows who (and where) Dr. Wong is. She doesn’t need to spell any of that out because she knows what Jon knows and what he needs to know — and in her note she can be brief. She understands her audience. Think how different such a reminder would be were it written to another audience — a babysitter, perhaps, or a friend helping out while Mom is out of town. What you write, how much you write, how you phrase it, even your choice of GENRE (memo, essay, email, note, speech) — all are influenced by the audience you envision. And your audience will interpret your writing according to their expectations and experiences. When you are a student, your teachers are most often your audience, so you need to be aware of their expectations and know the conventions

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(rules, often unstated) for writing in specific academic fields. You may make statements that seem obvious to you, not realizing that your instructors may consider them assertions that must be proved with evidence of one sort or another. Or you may write more or less formally than teachers expect. Understanding your audience’s expectations — by asking outright, by reading materials in your field of study, by trial and error — is important to your success as a writer. This point is worth dwelling on. You are probably reading this text for a writing course. As a student, you will be expected to produce essays with few or no errors. If as part of your job or among friends you correspond using email, you may question such standards; after all, much of the email you get at work or from friends is not grammatically perfect. But in a writing class, the instructor needs to see your best work. Whatever the rhetorical situation, your writing must meet the expectations of your audience.

Identify your audience.

Audiences may be defined as known, multiple, or unknown. Known audiences can include people with whom you’re familiar as well as people you don’t know personally but whose needs and expectations you do know. You yourself are a known, familiar audience, and you write to and for yourself often. Class notes, to-do lists, reminders, and journals are all written primarily for an audience of one: you. For that reason, they are often in shorthand, full of references and code that you alone understand. Other known, familiar audiences include anyone you actually know — friends, relatives, teachers, classmates — and whose needs and expectations you understand. You can also know what certain readers want and need, even if you’ve never met them personally, if you write for them within a specific shared context. Such a known audience might include computer gamers who read instructions that you have posted on the Internet for beating a game; you don’t know those people, but you know roughly what they know about the game and what they need to know, and you know how to write about it in ways they will understand. You often have to write for multiple audiences. Business memos or reports may be written initially for a supervisor, but he or she may pass them along to others. Grant proposals are a good example: the National Cancer Institute website advises scientists applying for grants to bear in

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mind that the application may have six levels of readers — each, of course, with its own expectations and perspectives. Even writing for a class might involve multiple audiences: your instructor and your classmates. Unknown audiences can be the most difficult to address since you can’t be sure what they know, what they need to know, how they’ll react. Such an audience could be your downstairs neighbor, whom you say hello to but with whom you’ve never had a real conversation. How will she respond to your letter asking her to sponsor you in an upcoming charity walk? Another unknown audience — perhaps surprisingly — might be many of your instructors, who want — and expect! — you to write in ways that are new to you. While you can benefit from analyzing any audience, you need to think most carefully about those you don’t know.

Thinking about Audience •

Whom do you want to reach? To whom are you writing (or speaking)?

•

What is your audience’s background — their education and life experiences? It may be important for you to know, for example, whether your readers attended college, fought in a war, or have young children.

•

What are their interests? What do they like? What motivates them? What do they care about?

•

Is there any demographic information that you should keep in mind? Consider whether race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, occupations, religious beliefs, economic status, and so on should affect what or how you write. For example, writers for Men’s Health, InStyle, and Out must consider the particular interests of each magazine’s readers.

•

What political circ*mstances may affect their reading? What attitudes — opinions, special interests, biases — may affect the way your audience reads your piece? Are your readers conservative, liberal, or middle of the road? Politics may take many other forms as well — retirees on a fixed income may object to increased school taxes, so a letter arguing for such an increase would need to appeal to them differently than would a similar letter sent to parents of young children.

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What does your audience already know — or believe — about your topic? What do you need to tell them? What is the best way to do so? Those retirees who oppose school taxes already know that taxes are a burden for them; they may need to know why schools are justified in asking for more money every few years when other government organizations do not. A good way to explain this may be with a bar graph showing how good schools with adequate funding benefit property values. Consider which STRATEGIES will be effective — narrative, comparison, something else?

•

What’s your relationship with your audience, and how does it affect your language and tone? Do you know them, or not? Are they friends? Colleagues? Mentors? Adversaries? Strangers? Will they likely share your STANCE? In general, you need to write more formally when you’re addressing readers you don’t know, and you may address friends and colleagues more informally than you would a boss.

•

What does your audience need and expect from you? Your history professor, for example, may need to know how well you can discuss the economy of the late Middle Ages in order to assess your learning; that same professor may expect you to write a carefully reasoned argument, drawing conclusions from various sources, with a readily identifiable thesis in the first paragraph. Your boss, on the other hand, may need an informal email that briefly lists your sales contacts for the day; she may expect that you list the contacts in the order in which you saw them, that you clearly identify each one, and that you give a few words about how well each contact went. What GENRE is most appropriate?

•

What kind of response do you want? Do you want to persuade readers to do or believe something? To accept your information on a topic? To understand why an experience you once had matters to you?

•

How can you best appeal to your audience? Is there a particular MEDIUM that will best reach them? Are there any DESIGN requirements? (Elderly readers may need larger type, for instance.)

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Genre

Genres are kinds of writing. Letters, profiles, reports, position papers, poems, Web pages, instructions, parodies — even jokes — are genres. Genres have particular conventions for presenting information that help writers write and readers read. For example, here is the beginning of a PROFILE of a mechanic who repairs a specific kind of automobile:

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Her business card reads Shirley Barnes, M.D., and she’s a doctor, all right — a Metropolitan Doctor. Her passion is the Nash Metropolitan, the little car produced by Austin of England for American Motors between 1954 and 1962. Barnes is a legend among southern California Met lovers — an icon, a beacon, and a font of useful knowledge and freely offered opinions.

A profile offers a written portrait of someone or something that informs and sometimes entertains, often examining its subject from a particular angle — in this case, as a female mechanic who fixes Nash Metropolitans. While the language in this example is informal and lively (“she’s a doctor, all right”), the focus is on the subject, Shirley Barnes, “M.D.” If this same excerpt were presented as a poem, however, the new genre would change our reading: Her business card reads Shirley Barnes, M.D., and she’s a doctor, all right — a Metropolitan Doctor. Her passion is the Nash Metropolitan, the little car produced by Austin of England for American Motors between 1954 and 1962. Barnes is a legend among southern California Met lovers — an icon,

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a beacon, and a font of useful knowledge and freely offered opinions.

The content and words haven’t changed, but the presentation invites us to read not only to learn about Shirley Barnes but also to explore the significance of the words and phrases on each line, to read for deeper meaning and greater appreciation of language. The genre thus determines how we read and how we interpret what we read. Genres help us write by establishing features for conveying certain kinds of information. They give readers clues about what sort of information they’re likely to find and so help them figure out how to read (“Ah! A letter from Brit!” or “Thank goodness! I found the instructions for programming this DVD player”). At the same time, writers sometimes challenge genre conventions, reshaping them as communicative needs and technologies change. For example, computers have enabled us to add visuals to texts that we never before thought to illustrate. 19

▲

Identify your genre. Does your writing situation call for a certain GENRE? A memo? A report? A proposal? A letter? Academic assignments generally specify the genre (“take a position,” “analyze the text”), but if the genre isn’t clear, ask your instructor.

•

Does your genre call for any specific STRATEGIES? Profiles, for example, usually include some narration; LAB REPORTS often explain a process.

•

Does your genre require a certain organization? Most PROPOSALS, for instance, first identify a problem and then offer a solution. Some genres leave room for choice. Business letters delivering good news might be organized differently than those making sales pitches.

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What is your genre, and does it affect what content you can or should include? Objective information? Researched source material? Your own opinions? Personal experience?

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•

Does your genre affect your tone? An abstract of a scholarly paper calls for a different TONE than a memoir. Should your words sound serious and scholarly? Brisk and to the point? Objective? Opinionated? Sometimes your genre affects the way you communicate your STANCE.

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Does the genre require formal (or informal) language? A letter to the mother of a friend asking for a summer job in her bookstore calls for more formal language than does an email to the friend thanking him for the lead.

•

Do you have a choice of medium? Some genres call for print; others for an electronic medium. Sometimes you have a choice: a résumé, for instance, can be mailed (in which case it must be printed), or it may be emailed. Some teachers want reports turned in on paper; others prefer that they be emailed or posted to a class website. If you’re not sure what MEDIUM you can use, ask.

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Does your genre have any design requirements? Some genres call for paragraphs; others require lists. Some require certain kinds of typefaces —you wouldn’t use Impactfor a personal narrative, nor would you likely use DrSeuss for an invitation to Grandma’s sixty-fifth birthday party. Different genres call for different DESIGN elements.

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Stance

Whenever you write, you have a certain stance, an attitude toward your topic. The way you express that stance affects the way you come across as a writer and a person. This email from a college student to his father, for example, shows a thoughtful, reasonable stance for a carefully researched argument: Hi Dad, I’ll get right to the point: I’d like to buy a car. I saved over $2500 from working this summer, and I’ve found three different cars that I can get for under $2000. That’ll leave me $400 to cover the insurance. I can park in Lot J, over behind Monte Hall, for $75 for both semesters. And I can earn gas and repair money by upping my hours at the cafeteria. It won’t cost you any more, and if I have a car, you won’t have to come and pick me up when I want to come home. Love, Michael

While such a stance can’t guarantee that Dad will give permission, it’s more likely to produce results than this version: Hi Dad, I’m buying a car. A guy in my Western Civ course has a cool Chevy he wants to get rid of. I’ve got $2500 saved from working this summer, it’s mine, and I’m going to use it to get some wheels. Mom said you’d blow your top if I did, but I want this car. Michael

The writer of the first email respects his reader and offers reasoned arguments and evidence of research to convince him that buying a car is an action that will benefit them both. The writer of the second, by contrast, seems impulsive, ready to buy the first car that comes along, and

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defiant — he’s picking a fight. Each email reflects a certain stance that shows the writer as a certain kind of person dealing with a situation in a certain way and establishing a certain relationship with his audience.

Identify your stance. What is your attitude about your topic? Objective? Critical? Curious? Opinionated? Passionate? Indifferent? Your stance may be affected by your relationship to your AUDIENCE. How do you want them to see you? As a colleague sharing information? As a good student showing what you can do? As an advocate for a position? Often your stance is affected by your GENRE: for example, lab reports require an objective, unemotional stance that emphasizes the content and minimizes the writer’s own attitudes. Memoir, by comparison, allows you to reveal your feelings about your topic. Your stance is also affected by your PURPOSE, as the two letters about cars show. Your stance in a piece written to entertain will likely differ from the stance you’d adopt to persuade. As a writer, you communicate your stance through your tone. Tone is created through the words you use and the way you approach your subject and audience. For example, in an academic essay you would state your position directly — “America’s Next Top Model reflects the values of American society today” — demonstrating a confident, assertive tone and stance. In contrast, using qualifiers like “might” or “I think” can give your writing a wishy-washy, uncertain tone: “I think America’s Next Top Model might reflect some of the values of American society today.” The following paragraph, from an essay analyzing a text, has a sarcastic tone that might be appropriate for a note to a friend, but that isn’t right for an academic essay: In “Just Be Nice,” Stephen M. Carter complains about a boy who wore his pants too low, showing his underwear. Is that really something people should worry about? We have wars raging and terrorism happening every day, and he wants to talk about how inconsiderate it is for someone to wear his pants too low? If by that boy pulling his pants up, the world would be a better place and the Iraq War would end, I’m sure everyone would buy a belt.

This writer clearly thinks Carter’s example is trivial in comparison with the larger issues of the day, but her sarcastic tone belittles Carter’s argu-

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ment instead of answering it with a serious counterargument. Like every other element of writing, your tone must be appropriate for your rhetorical situation. Just as you likely alter what you say depending on whether you’re speaking to a boss, an instructor, a parent, or a good friend, so you need to make similar adjustments as a writer. It’s a question of appropriateness: we behave in certain ways in various social situations, and writing is a social situation. You might sign an email to a friend with an x and an o, but in an email to your supervisor you’ll likely sign off with a “Many thanks” or “Regards.” To write well, you need to write with integrity, to say what you wish to say; yet you also must understand that in writing, as in speaking, your stance needs to suit your purpose, your relationship to your audience, the way in which you wish your audience to perceive you, and your medium. In writing as in other aspects of life, the Golden Rule applies: “Do unto audiences as you would have them do unto you.” Address readers respectfully if you want them to respond to your words with respect.

Thinking about Stance •

What is your stance, and how can you best present it to achieve your purpose? If you’re writing about something you take very seriously, be sure that your language and even your typeface reflect that seriousness. Make sure your stance is appropriate to your PURPOSE.

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What tone will best convey your stance? Do you want to be seen as reasonable? Angry? Thoughtful? Gentle? Funny? Ironic? What aspects of your personality do you want to project? Check your writing for words that reflect that tone — and for ones that do not (and revise as necessary).

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How is your stance likely to be received by your audience? Your tone and especially your attitude toward your AUDIENCE will affect how willing they are to take your argument seriously.

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Should you openly reveal your stance? Do you want or need to announce your own perspective on your topic? Will doing so help you reach your audience, or would it be better to make your ARGUMENT without saying directly where you’re coming from?

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In its broadest sense, a medium is a go-between: a way for information to be conveyed from one person to another. We communicate through many media, verbal and nonverbal: our bodies (we catch someone’s eye, wave, nod), our voices (we whisper, talk, shout, groan), and various technologies, including handwriting, print, telephone, radio, CD, film, and computer. Each medium has unique characteristics that influence both what and how we communicate. As an example, consider this message: “I haven’t told you this before, but I love you.” Most of the time, we communicate such a message in person, using the medium of voice (with, presumably, help from eye contact and touch). A phone call will do, though most of us would think it a poor second choice, and a handwritten letter or note would be acceptable, if necessary. Few of us would break such news on a website or during a radio call-in program. By contrast, imagine whispering the following sentence in a darkened room: “By the last decades of the nineteenth century, the territorial expansion of the United States had left almost all Indians confined to reservations.” That sentence starts a chapter in a history textbook, and it would be strange indeed to whisper it into someone’s ear. It is available in the medium of print, in the textbook, but it may also be read on a website, in promotional material for the book, or on a PowerPoint slide accompanying an oral presentation. Each medium has different uses and takes different forms, and each has distinctive characteristics. As you can see, we can choose various media depending on our purpose and audience. The Norton Field Guide focuses mostly on three media: PRINT, SPOKEN, and ELECTRONIC. Because we now do most of our writing on computers, we are increasingly expected to pay close attention to the look of the material we write. No matter the medium, a text’s design affects the way it is received and understood. A typed letter on official letterhead sends a different message

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than the same letter handwritten on pastel stationery, whatever the words on the page. Classic type sends a different message than flowery italics. Some genres and media (and audiences) demand PHOTOS, DIAGRAMS, color. Some information is easier to explain—and read—in the form of a PIE CHART or a BAR GRAPH than in the form of a paragraph. Some reports and documents are so long and complex that they need to be divided into sections, which are then best labeled with HEADINGS. Those are some of the elements to consider when you are thinking about how to design what you write.

Identify your media and design needs. Does your writing situation call for a certain medium and design? A printed essay? An oral report with visual aids? A website? Academic assignments often assume a particular medium and design, but if you’re unsure about your options or the degree of flexibility you have, check with your instructor.

Thinking about Media •

What medium are you using— PRINT? SPOKEN? ELECTRONIC?— and how does it affect the way you will write your text? A printed résumé is usually no more than one page long; a scannable résumé sent via email has no length limits. An oral presentation should contain detailed information; accompanying PowerPoint slides should provide only an outline.

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Does your medium affect your organization and STRATEGIES? Long paragraphs are fine on paper but don’t work well on the Web. On PowerPoint slides, phrases or key words work better than sentences. In print, you need to define unfamiliar terms; on the Web, you can sometimes just add a link to a definition found elsewhere.

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How does your medium affect your language? Some print documents require a more formal voice than spoken media; email often invites greater informality.

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Should you use a combination of media? Should you include audio or video in Web text? Do you need PowerPoint slides, handouts, or other visuals to accompany an oral presentation?

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Thinking about Design •

What’s the appropriate look for your RHETORICAL SITUATION? Should your text look serious? Whimsical? Personal? Something else? What design elements will suit your audience, purpose, genre, and medium?

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Does your text have any elements that need to be designed? Is there any information you would like to highlight by putting it in a box? Are there any key terms that should be boldfaced?

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What typeface(s) are appropriate to your audience, purpose, genre, and medium?

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Are you including any illustrations? Should you? Is there any information in your text that would be easier to understand as a chart or graph? Will your AUDIENCE expect or need any?

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part 2

Genres When we make a shopping list, we automatically write each item we need in a single column. When we email a friend, we begin with a salutation: “Hi, Brian.” Whether we are writing a letter, a résumé, a lab report, or a proposal, we know generally what it should contain and what it should look like because we are familiar with each of those genres. Genres are kinds of writing, and texts in any given genre share goals and features — a proposal, for instance, generally starts out by identifying a problem and then suggests a certain solution. The chapters in this part provide guidelines for writing in fifteen common academic genres. First come detailed chapters on four genres often assigned in writing classes: LITERACY NARRATIVES, essays ANALYZING TEXTS, REPORTS, and ARGUMENTS, followed by brief chapters on TEN OTHER GENRES and one on MIXING GENRES. 19

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WRITING A LITERACY NARRATIVE

ANALYZING A TEXT

REPORTING INFORMATION

ARGUING A POSITION

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Writing a Literacy Narrative

Narratives are stories, and we read and tell them for many different purposes. Parents read their children bedtime stories as an evening ritual. Preachers base their Sunday sermons on Bible stories to teach lessons about moral behavior. Grandparents tell how things used to be (sometimes the same stories year after year). Schoolchildren tell teachers that their dog ate their homework. College applicants write about significant moments in their lives. Writing students are often called upon to compose literacy narratives to explore their experiences with reading and writing. This chapter provides detailed guidelines for writing a literacy narrative. We’ll begin with three good examples.

MARJORIE AGOSÍN

Always Living in Spanish: Recovering the Familiar, through Language Marjorie Agosín, a Spanish professor at Wellesley College, wrote this literacy narrative for Poets & Writers magazine in 1999. Originally written in Spanish, it tells of Agosín’s Chilean childhood and her continuing connection to the Spanish language. In the evenings in the northern hemisphere, I repeat the ancient ritual that I observed as a child in the southern hemisphere: going out while the night is still warm and trying to recognize the stars as it begins to grow dark silently. In the sky of my country, Chile, that long and wide stretch of land that the poets blessed and dictators abused, I could eas-

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ily name the stars: the three Marias, the Southern Cross, and the three Lilies, names of beloved and courageous women. But here in the United States, where I have lived since I was a young girl, the solitude of exile makes me feel that so little is mine, that not even the sky has the same constellations, the trees and the fauna the same names or sounds, or the rubbish the same smell. How does one recover the familiar? How does one name the unfamiliar? How can one be another or live in a foreign language? These are the dilemmas of one who writes in Spanish and lives in translation. Since my earliest childhood in Chile I lived with the tempos and the melodies of a multiplicity of tongues: German, Yiddish, Russian, Turkish, and many Latin songs. Because everyone was from somewhere else, my relatives laughed, sang, and fought in a Babylon of languages. Spanish was reserved for matters of extreme seriousness, for commercial transactions, or for illnesses, but everyone’s mother tongue was always associated with the memory of spaces inhabited in the past: the shtetl, the flowering and vast Vienna avenues, the minarets of Turkey, and the Ladino whispers of Toledo. When my paternal grandmother sang old songs in Turkish, her voice and body assumed the passion of one who was there in the city of Istanbul, gazing by turns toward the west and the east. Destiny and the always ambiguous nature of history continued my family’s enforced migration, and because of it I, too, became one who had to live and speak in translation. The disappearances, torture, and clandestine deaths in my country in the early seventies drove us to the United States, that other America that looked with suspicion at those who did not speak English and especially those who came from the supposedly uncivilized regions of Latin America. I had left a dangerous place that was my home, only to arrive in a dangerous place that was not: a high school in the small town of Athens, Georgia, where my poor English and my accent were the cause of ridicule and insult. The only way I could recover my usurped country and my Chilean childhood was by continuing to write in Spanish, the same way my grandparents had sung in their own tongues in diasporic sites. The new and learned English language did not fit with the visceral emotions and themes that my poetry contained, but by writing in Spanish I could recover fragrances, spoken rhythms, and the passion of my own identity. Daily I felt the need to translate myself for the

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strangers living all around me, to tell them why we were in Georgia, why we are different, why we had fled, why my accent was so thick, and why I did not look Hispanic. Only at night, writing poems in Spanish, could I return to my senses, and soothe my own sorrow over what I had left behind. This is how I became a Chilean poet who wrote in Spanish and lived in the southern United States. And then, one day, a poem of mine was translated and published in the English language. Finally, for the first time since I had left Chile, I felt I didn’t have to explain myself. My poem, expressed in another language, spoke for itself . . . and for me. Sometimes the austere sounds of English help me bear the solitude of knowing that I am foreign and so far away from those about whom I write. I must admit I would like more opportunities to read in Spanish to people whose language and culture is also mine, to join in our common heritage and in the feast of our sounds. I would also like readers of English to understand the beauty of the spoken word in Spanish, that constant flow of oxytonic and paraoxytonic syllables (Vérde qué té quiéro vérde),* the joy of writing — of dancing — in another language. I believe that many exiles share the unresolvable torment of not being able to live in the language of their childhood. I miss that undulating and sensuous language of mine, those baroque descriptions, the sense of being and feeling that Spanish gives me. It is perhaps for this reason that I have chosen and will always choose to write in Spanish. Nothing else from my childhood world remains. My country seems to be frozen in gestures of silence and oblivion. My relatives have died, and I have grown up not knowing a young generation of cousins and nieces and nephews. Many of my friends were disappeared, others were tortured, and the most fortunate, like me, became guardians of memory. For us, to write in Spanish is to always be in active pursuit of memory. I seek to recapture a world lost to me on that sorrowful afternoon when the blue electric sky and the * “Vérde qué té quiéro vérde” (“Green, how I want you, green”) is the opening line of a famous Spanish poem that demonstrates the interplay of words with the main stress on the final syllable (oxytonic) and those with the main stress on next-to-last syllable (paroxytonic) in Spanish. [Editor’s note]

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Andean cordillera bade me farewell. On that, my last Chilean day, I carried under my arm my innocence recorded in a little blue notebook I kept even then. Gradually that diary filled with memoranda, poems written in free verse, descriptions of dreams and of the thresholds of my house surrounded by cherry trees and gardenias. To write in Spanish is for me a gesture of survival. And because of translation, my memory has now become a part of the memory of many others. Translators are not traitors, as the proverb says, but rather splendid friends in this great human community of language.

Agosín’s narrative uses vivid detail to bring her childhood in Chile to life for her readers. Her love for her homeland and its people is clear, as is the significance of her narrative — with her childhood home gone, to write in Spanish is a “gesture of survival.”

RICHARD BULLOCK

How I Learned about the Power of Writing I wrote this literacy narrative, about my own experience learning to read, as a model for my students in a first-year writing course. When I was little, my grandmother and grandfather lived with us in a big house on a busy street in Willoughby, Ohio. My grandmother spent a lot of time reading to me. She mostly read the standards, like The Little Engine That Could, over and over and over again. She also let me help her plant African violets (I stood on a chair in her kitchen, carefully placing fuzzy violet leaves into small pots of soil) and taught me to tell time (again in her kitchen, where I watched the minute hand move slowly around the dial and tried in vain to see the hour hand move). All that attention and time spent studying the pages as Grandma read them again and again led me to start reading when I was around three years old. My family was blue-collar, working-class, and — my grandmother excepted — not very interested in books or reading. But my parents took pride in my achievement and told stories about my precocious literacy,

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such as the time at a restaurant when the waitress bent over as I sat in my booster chair and asked, “What would you like, little boy?” I’m told I gave her a withering look and said, “I’d like to see a menu.” There was a more serious aspect to reading so young, however. At that time the murder trial of Dr. Sam Sheppard, a physician whose wife had been bludgeoned to death in their house, was the focus of lurid coverage in the Cleveland newspapers. Daily news stories recounted the grisly details of both the murder and the trial testimony, in which Sheppard maintained his innocence. (The story would serve as the inspiration for both The Fugitive TV series and the Harrison Ford movie of the same name.) Apparently I would get up early in the morning, climb over the side of my crib, go downstairs and fetch the paper, take it back upstairs to my crib, and be found reading about the trial when my parents got up. They learned that they had to beat me to the paper in the morning and remove the offending sections before my youthful eyes could see them. The story of the Sheppard murder had a profound effect on me: it demonstrated the power of writing, for if my parents were so concerned that I not see certain things in print, those things must have had great importance. At the same time, adults’ amazement that I could read was itself an inducement to continue: like any three-yearold, I liked attention, and if reading menus and the Plain Dealer would do it, well then, I’d keep reading. As I got older, I also came to realize the great gift my grandmother had given me. While part of her motivation for spending so much time with me was undoubtedly to keep me entertained in a house isolated from other children at a time when I was too young for nursery school, another part of her motivation was a desire to shape me in a certain way. As the middle child in a large family in rural West Virginia, my grandmother had received a formal education only through the eighth grade, after which she had come alone to Cleveland to make a life for herself, working as a seamstress while reading the ancient Greeks and Etruscans on her own. She had had hopes that her daughter (my mother) would continue her education as she herself hadn’t been able to, but Mom chose instead to marry Dad shortly after graduating from high school, and Dad hadn’t even gotten that far — he had dropped out of school three days before graduation. So Grandma decided that I was going to be different, and she took over much of my preschool

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life to promote the love of learning that she herself had always had. It worked, and at ninety she got to see me graduate from college, the first in our family to do so.

In my literacy narrative, the disconnect between my age and my ability to read provides a frame for several anecdotes. The narrative’s significance comes through in the final paragraph, in which I explore the effects of my grandmother’s motivation for teaching me.

SHANNON NICHOLS

“Proficiency” In the following literacy narrative, Shannon Nichols, a student at Wright State University, describes her experience taking the standardized writing proficiency test that high school students in Ohio must pass to graduate. She wrote this essay for a college writing course, where her audience included her classmates and instructor. The first time I took the ninth-grade proficiency test was in March of eighth grade. The test ultimately determines whether students may receive a high school diploma. After months of preparation and anxiety, the pressure was on. Throughout my elementary and middle school years, I was a strong student, always on the honor roll. I never had a GPA below 3.0. I was smart, and I knew it. That is, until I got the results of the proficiency test. Although the test was challenging, covering reading, writing, math, and citizenship, I was sure I had passed every part. To my surprise, I did pass every part — except writing. “Writing! Yeah right! How did I manage to fail writing, and by half a point, no less?” I thought to myself in disbelief. Seeing my test results brought tears to my eyes. I honestly could not believe it. To make matters worse, most of my classmates, including some who were barely passing eighth-grade English, passed that part. Until that time, I loved writing just as much as I loved math. It was one of my strengths. I was good at it, and I enjoyed it. If anything, I

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thought I might fail citizenship. How could I have screwed up writing? I surely spelled every word correctly, used good grammar, and even used big words in the proper context. How could I have failed? Finally I got over it and decided it was no big deal. Surely I would pass the next time. In my honors English class I worked diligently, passing with an A. By October I’d be ready to conquer that writing test. Well, guess what? I failed the test again, again with only 4.5 of the 5 points needed to pass. That time I did cry, and even went to my English teacher, Mrs. Brown, and asked, “How can I get A’s in all my English classes but fail the writing part of the proficiency test twice?” She couldn’t answer my question. Even my friends and classmates were confused. I felt like a failure. I had disappointed my family and seriously let myself down. Worst of all, I still couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I decided to quit trying so hard. Apparently — I told myself — the people grading the tests didn’t have the slightest clue about what constituted good writing. I continued to excel in class and passed the test on the third try. But I never again felt the same love of reading and writing. This experience showed me just how differently my writing could be judged by various readers. Obviously all my English teachers and many others enjoyed or at least appreciated my writing. A poem I wrote was put on television once. I must have been a pretty good writer. Unfortunately the graders of the ninth-grade proficiency test didn’t feel the same, and when students fail the test, the state of Ohio doesn’t offer any explanation. After I failed the test the first time, I began to hate writing, and I started to doubt myself. I doubted my ability and the ideas I wrote about. Failing the second time made things worse, so perhaps to protect myself from my doubts, I stopped taking English seriously. Perhaps because of that lack of seriousness, I earned a 2 on the Advanced Placement English Exam, barely passed the twelfth-grade proficiency test, and was placed in developmental writing in college. I wish I knew why I failed that test because then I might have written what was expected on the second try, maintained my enthusiasm for writing, and continued to do well.

Nichols’s narrative focuses on her emotional reaction to failing a test that she should have passed easily. The contrast between her demonstrated writing ability and her repeated failures creates a tension that captures readers’ attention. We want to know what will happen to her.

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Key Features / Literacy Narratives A well-told story. As with most narratives, those about literacy often set up some sort of situation that needs to be resolved. That need for resolution makes readers want to keep reading. We want to know whether Nichols ultimately will pass the proficiency test. Some literacy narratives simply explore the role that reading or writing played at some time in someone’s life — assuming, perhaps, that learning to read or write is a challenge to be met. Vivid detail.

Details can bring a narrative to life for readers by giving them vivid mental images of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of the world in which your story takes place. The details you use when describing something can help readers picture places, people, and events; dialogue can help them hear what is being said. We get a picture of Agosín’s Chilean childhood when she writes of the “blue electric sky” and her “little blue notebook” in which she described her “house surrounded by cherry trees and gardenias.” Similarly, we can picture a little boy standing on a stool planting African violets — and hear a three-yearold’s exasperation through his own words: “I’d like to see a menu.” Dialogue can help bring a narrative to life.

Some indication of the narrative’s significance.

By definition, a literacy narrative tells something the writer remembers about learning to read or write. In addition, the writer needs to make clear why the incident matters to him or her. You may reveal its significance in various ways. Nichols does it when she says she no longer loves to read or write. Agosín points out that she writes in Spanish because “nothing else from my childhood world remains . . . To write in Spanish is for me a gesture of survival.” The trick is to avoid tacking onto the end a brief statement about your narrative’s significance as if it were a kind of moral of the story. My narrative would be less effective if, instead of discussing my grandmother’s background and my graduation, I had simply said, “She taught me to be a lifelong reader.”

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A GUIDE TO WRITING LITERACY NARRATIVES Choosing a Topic In general, it’s a good idea to focus on a single event that took place during a relatively brief period of time. For example: •

any early memory about writing or reading that you recall vividly

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someone who taught you to read or write

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a book or other text that has been significant for you in some way

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an event at school that was interesting, humorous, or embarrassing

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a writing or reading task that you found (or still find) especially difficult or challenging

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a memento that represents an important moment in your literacy development (perhaps the start of a LITERACY PORTFOLIO)

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the origins of your current attitudes about writing or reading

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learning to write instant messages, learning to write email appropriately, learning to construct a website, creating and maintaining a Facebook page

Make a list of possible topics, and then choose one that you think will be interesting to you and to others — and that you’re willing to share with others. If several seem promising, try them out on a friend or classmate. Or just choose one and see where it leads; you can switch to another if need be. If you have trouble coming up with a topic, try FREEWRITING, LISTING, CLUSTERING, or LOOPING.

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Why do you want to tell this story? To share a memory with others? To fulfill an assignment? To teach a lesson? To explore your past learning? Think about the reasons for your choice and how they will shape what you write.

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Are your readers likely to have had similar experiences? Would they tell similar stories? How much explaining will you have to do to help them understand your narrative? Can you assume that they will share your attitudes toward your story, or will you have to work at making them see your perspective? How much about your life are you willing to share with this audience?

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What attitude do you want to project? Affectionate? Neutral? Critical? Do you wish to be sincere? serious? humorously detached? self-critical? self-effacing? something else? How do you want your readers to see you?

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Will your narrative be in print? presented orally? on a website? Would photos, charts, or other illustrations help you present your subject? Is there a typeface that conveys the right tone? Do you need headings?

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Generating Ideas and Text

What do you see? If you’re inside, what color are the walls? What’s hanging on them? What can you see out any windows? What else do you see? Books? Lined paper? Red ink? Are there people? Places to sit? A desk or a table?

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Describe the setting. Where does your narrative take place? List the places where your story unfolds. For each place, write informally for a few minutes, DESCRIBING what you remember:

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Good literacy narratives share certain elements that make them interesting and compelling for readers. Remember that your goals are to tell the story as clearly and vividly as you can and to convey the meaning the incident has for you today. Start by writing out what you remember about the setting and those involved, perhaps trying out some of the methods in the chapter on GENERATING IDEAS AND TEXT. You may also want to INTERVIEW a teacher or parent who figures in your narrative.

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What do you hear? A radiator hissing? Leaves rustling? The wind howling? Rain? Someone reading aloud? Shouts? Cheers? Children playing? Music? The zing of an instant message arriving?

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What do you smell? Sweat? Perfume? Incense? Food cooking?

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How and what do you feel? Nervous? Happy? Cold? Hot? A scratchy wool sweater? Tight shoes? Rough wood on a bench?

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What do you taste? Gum? Mints? Graham crackers? Juice? Coffee?

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Write about “what happened.” At the heart of every good NARRATIVE is the answer to the question “What happened?” The action in a literacy narrative may be as dramatic as winning a spelling bee or as subtle as a conversation between two friends; both contain action, movement, or change that the narrative tries to capture for readers. A good story dramatizes the action. Try SUMMARIZING the action in your narrative in a paragraph — try to capture what happened. Use active and specific verbs (pondered, shouted, laughed) to describe the action as vividly as possible.

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Recall (or imagine) some characteristic dialogue. A good way to bring people to life and move a story along is with DIALOGUE, to let readers hear them rather than just hearing about them. Try writing six to ten lines of dialogue between two people in your narrative. If you can’t remember an actual conversation, make up one that could have happened. (After all, you are telling the story, and you get to decide how it is to be told.) Try to remember (and write down) some of the characteristic words or phrases that the people in your narrative used.

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Describe each person in a paragraph or so. What do the people look like? How do they dress? How do they speak? Quickly? Slowly? With an accent? Do they speak clearly, or do they mumble? Do they use any distinctive words or phrases? You might begin by DESCRIBING their movements, their posture, their bearing, their facial expressions. Do they have a distinctive scent?

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Think about the key people. Narratives include people whose actions play an important role in the story. In your literacy narrative, you are probably one of those people. A good way to develop your understanding of the people in your narrative is to write about them:

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Consider the significance of the narrative.

You need to make clear the ways in which any event you are writing about is significant for you now. Write a page or so about the meaning it has for you. How did it change or otherwise affect you? What aspects of your life now can you trace to that event? How might your life have been different if this event had not happened or had turned out differently? Why does this story matter to you?

Ways of Organizing a Literacy Narrative Start by OUTLINING the main events in your narrative. Then think about how you want to tell the story. Don’t assume that the only way to tell your story is just as it happened. That’s one way — starting at the beginning of the action and continuing to the end. But you could also start in the middle — or even at the end. Shannon Nichols, for example, could have begun her narrative by telling how she finally passed the proficiency test and then gone back to tell about the times she tried to pass it, even as she was an A student in an honors English class. Several ways of organizing a narrative follow.

[Chronologically, from beginning to end] Describe the setting and people.

Introduce the story.

Tell about what happened.

Say how the story was resolved.

Say something about the significance.

[Beginning in the middle] Start in the middle of the action, giving enough information to let readers know what was happening.

Make clear how the situation was resolved.

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Say something about the significance.

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[Beginning at the end]

Start at the end of the story: tell how the story ends up, then introduce the subject.

Go back to the beginning of the story, telling what happens chronologically and describing the setting and people.

Conclude by saying something about the story’s significance.

Writing Out a Draft

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Jump right in. Sometimes you may want to get to the main action as quickly as possible. Nichols, for example, begins as she takes the ninth-grade proficiency test for the first time.

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Describe the context. You may want to provide any background information at the start of your narrative, as I decided to do, beginning by explaining how my grandmother taught me to read.

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Describe the setting, especially if it’s important to the narrative. Agosín begins by describing the constellations in her native Chile.

Draft an ending. Think about what you want readers to read last. An effective ENDING helps them understand the meaning of your narrative. Here are some possibilities:

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Draft a beginning. A good narrative grabs readers’ attention right from the start. Here are some ways of beginning; you can find more advice in the chapter on BEGINNING AND ENDING.

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Once you have generated ideas and thought about how you want to organize your narrative, it’s time to begin DRAFTING. Do this quickly —try to write a complete draft in one sitting, concentrating on getting the story on paper or screen and on putting in as much detail as you can. Some writers find it helpful to work on the beginning or ending first. Others write out the main event first and then draft the beginning and ending.

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End where your story ends. It’s up to you to decide where a narrative ends. Mine ends several years after it begins, with my graduation from college.

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Say something about the significance of your narrative. Nichols observes that she no longer loves to write, for example. The trick is to touch upon the narrative’s significance without stating it too directly, like the moral of a fable.

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Refer back to the beginning. My narrative ends with my grandmother watching me graduate from college; Nichols ends by contemplating the negative effects of failing the proficiency test.

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End on a surprising note. Agosín catches our attention when she tells us of the deaths and disappearances of her friends and relatives.

Come up with a title. A good TITLE indicates something about the subject of your narrative — and makes readers want to take a look. Nichols’s title states her subject, “Proficiency,” but she also puts the word in quotes, calling it into question in a way that might make readers wonder — and read on. I focus on the significance of my narrative: “How I Learned about the Power of Writing.” Agosín makes her title an expression of her sense of identity: “Always Living in Spanish.”

Considering Matters of Design You’ll probably write your narrative in paragraph form, but think about the information you’re presenting and how you can design it to enhance your story and appeal to your audience. 524–25

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What would be an appropriate TYPEFACE? Something serious, like

Times Roman? Something whimsical, like Comic Sans? Something else? 526–27

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Would it help your readers if you added HEADINGS in order to divide your narrative into shorter sections?

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Would photographs or other VISUALS show details better than you can describe them with words alone? If you’re writing about learning to

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read, for example, you might scan in an image of one of the first books you read in order to help readers picture it. Or if your topic is learning to write, you could include something you wrote.

Getting Response and Revising

Does the narrative move from beginning to end clearly? Does it flow, and are there effective TRANSITIONS? Does the narrative get sidetracked at any point?

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Is anything confusing?

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Is there enough detail, and is it interesting? Is there enough information about the setting and the people? Can readers picture the characters and sense what they’re like as people? Would it help to add some DIALOGUE, so that readers can “hear” them? Will they be able to imagine the setting?

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Have you made the situation meaningful enough to make readers wonder and care about what will happen?

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Do you narrate any actions clearly? vividly? Does the action keep readers engaged?

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Is the significance of the narrative clear?

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Is the ENDING satisfying? What are readers left thinking?

The preceding questions should identify aspects of your narrative you need to work on. When it’s time to REVISE, make sure your text appeals to your audience and achieves your purpose as successfully as possible.

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Do the TITLE and first few sentences make readers want to read on? If not, how else might you BEGIN?

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The following questions can help you study your draft with a critical eye. GETTING RESPONSE from others is always good, and these questions can guide their reading, too. Make sure they know your purpose and audience.

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Editing and Proofreading

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Readers equate correctness with competence. Once you’ve revised your draft, follow these guidelines for EDITING a narrative: •

Make sure events are NARRATED in a clear order and include appropriate time markers, TRANSITIONS, and summary phrases to link the parts and show the passing of time.

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Be careful that VERB TENSES ARE CONSISTENT throughout. If you write your narrative in the past tense (“he taught me how to use a computer”), be careful not to switch to the present (“So I look at him and say . . . ”) along the way.

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Check to see that VERB TENSES correctly indicate when an action took place. If one action took place before another action in the past, for example, you should use the past perfect tense: “I forgot to dot my i’s, a mistake I had made many times.”

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Punctuate DIALOGUE correctly. Whenever someone speaks, surround the speech with quotation marks (“No way,” I said.). Periods and commas go inside quotation marks; exclamation points and question marks go inside if they’re part of the quotation, outside if they’re part of the whole sentence: Opening the door, Ms. Cordell announced, “Pop quiz!” It wasn’t my intention to announce “I hate to read”!

INSIDE OUTSIDE

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PROOFREAD

your finished narrative carefully before turning it in.

Taking Stock of Your Work •

How well do you think you told the story?

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What did you do especially well?

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What could still be improved?

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How did you go about coming up with ideas and generating text?

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How did you go about drafting your narrative?

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Did you use photographs or any other graphics? What did they add? Can you think of graphics you might have used?

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How did others’ responses influence your writing?

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What would you do differently next time?

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IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See also MEMOIRS (Chapter 15), a kind of narrative that focuses more generally on a significant event from your past, and REFLECTIONS (Chapter 18), a kind of essay for thinking about a topic in writing. See Chapter 28 if you are required to submit your literacy narrative as part of a writing PORTFOLIO.

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Analyzing a Text Both Time and U.S. News and World Report cover the same events, but each magazine interprets them differently. All toothpaste ads claim to make teeth “the whitest.” Saddam Hussein was supporting terrorists — or he wasn’t, depending on which politician is speaking. Those are but three examples that demonstrate why we need to be careful, analytical readers of magazines and newspapers, ads, political documents, even textbooks. Not only does text convey information, but it also influences how and what we think. We need to read, then, to understand not only what texts say but also how they say it. Because understanding how texts say what they say is so crucial, assignments in many disciplines ask you to analyze texts. You may be asked to analyze sensory imagery in James Joyce’s story “Araby” for a literature class or, for an art history course, to analyze the use of color and space in Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks. In a statistics course, you might analyze a set of data — a numerical text — to find the standard deviation from the mean. This chapter offers detailed guidelines for writing an essay that closely examines a text both for what it says and for how it does so, with the goal of demonstrating for readers how — and how well — the text achieves its effects. We’ll begin with three good examples.

GINIA BELLAFANTE

In the 24 World, Family Is the Main Casualty In this 2007 analysis of the TV show 24, Ginia Bellafante, a reporter at the New York Times, explores the show’s depiction of family and relationships. The frenetic, labyrinthine, exhausting counterterrorism drama 24 concludes its sixth year on Monday night with its ratings slipping and its

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fans in revolt. With each season of the series transpiring over a single day, this one, detractors lament, has felt like 70. The producers themselves have acknowledged the challenges of maintaining the story line’s intensity and focus. Recently in his blog on 24, the humorist Dave Barry expressed a wish for Congressional hearings into the show’s crimes against narrative cohesiveness. Until two weeks ago I had included myself among the dissenters, complaining that digressions and strange forays into cold war nostalgia had subsumed the larger plot and proclaiming, to the walls in my living room, that 24 ought to become 12 — or 8 or 6. But during Hour 21, Agent Jack Bauer’s father, Phillip (played by the gifted James Cromwell), re-emerged to subject members of his family to renewed acts of twisted venality. And the effect was intense and chilling, a reminder that 24 has always sustained its tension by operating in two genres, not one, deploying the conventions of domestic horror in the language of an apocalyptic thriller. Since it first appeared in 2001, 24 has successfully woven the terrors of intimate life through its narrative of an America facing potential annihilation. Parents kill children. Husbands abuse wives. Sisters try to kill sisters. Wives fire husbands — or stab them, as Martha Logan, ex-wife of Charles Logan, the former president, did earlier this year, plunging a knife into his shoulder as recompense for his treacheries, both personal and civic. Discussions of 24 have long concentrated on its depiction of torture — elaborate to the point of parody this season — as the source of its controversy. But it is the show’s treatment of family as an impossible and even dangerous illusion that truly challenges our complacency. The anxious gloom of watching 24 comes not from wondering whether the world will blow up (obviously it won’t; Jack Bauer — played by Kiefer Sutherland — is protection against all that) but from knowing that the bonds that hold people together will eventually be imperiled or destroyed, perfidy and neglect so often the forces. The introduction of Phillip Bauer early in the season quickly established that Jack did not inherit his rectitude from his father. Shortly after he appeared, Phillip suffocated his son Graem, forced his daughter-in-law to endanger the lives of federal agents, and threatened Jack. When he reappeared, weeks later, Phillip was kidnapping his grandson, Josh, for the second time in a single day.

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Parenthood, untouchably sacrosanct in so much of our culture, is on 24 a grotesquely compromised institution. During Season 4 we witnessed the show’s defense secretary subject his son to torture for refusing to divulge information that might help track down a terrorist. At the same time we observed the director of the Counter Terrorist Unit labor to thwart a nuclear attack despite the deterioration of her mentally disturbed daughter in a nearby room. That each child was portrayed as a petulant nuisance made it easier to see that the country’s security imperatives had to come first. The perverse brilliance of 24 lies, at least in some part, in its capacity to elicit our sympathies for heinous miscalculations of judgment. In the end we feel less for the troubled girl than we do for her beleaguered mother, who after all has been making sound decisions every step of the way. The most enduring relationships on 24 are not between parents and children, boyfriends and girlfriends, spouses or siblings, but between individuals and their governments and causes. And in this way the show seems committed not to the politics of the left or right, but to a kind of quasi-totalitarianism in which patriotism takes precedence over everything else and private life is eroded, undermined, demeaned. Privacy isn’t even a viable concept in a world in which there is no taco stand, phone booth, laptop, or S.U.V. that isn’t immediately accessible to the advanced surveillance systems of the ever-vigilant Counter Terrorist Unit. Human connection is forever suffocated. Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, wrote, “bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all.” And above and beyond everything else, the universe of 24 is a very lonely place. Friendship can barely be said to exist beyond the parameters of bureaucracy: the offices of the Los Angeles division of the unit and the halls of the White House. And when men and women become involved, it is not only with each other but also with the greater American purpose. Ordinary social intercourse simply doesn’t exist. The idea that two people might sit down for a cup of coffee is as contrary to the show’s internal logic as the idea that polar bears might someday learn to sing. On 24 the choice to forfeit all that and respond to your country’s call is never the wrong choice, no matter how regrettable the personal consequences. Five seasons ago Jack was a married man who played chess with his teenage daughter. Since then he has lost his wife (at the

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hands of a unit mole), his daughter (to his own emotional inattention), and various girlfriends to his unfailing devotion to eradicating the state’s enemies, whatever the cost. He has killed colleagues who have impeded his pursuit of justice, lost his identity, and acquired a heroin addiction combating drug lords. The price of a safe world is considerable, 24 tells us: love and the rest of it mortgaged for some other lifetime.

Bellafante analyzes the depiction of relationships on 24 and concludes that on the show, “human connection is forever suffocated.” She cites several plotlines and events to support this interpretation, painting a bleak picture of the show’s family relationships, and suggests that the show is making a larger statement about what we sacrifice for duty.

WILLIAM SAFIRE

A Spirit Reborn Just before the first anniversary of September 11, 2001, New York Times columnist William Safire analyzed the Gettysburg Address for what it meant to Americans after 9/11. Abraham Lincoln’s words at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery will be the speech repeated at the commemoration of September 11 by the governor of New York and by countless other speakers across the nation. The lips of many listeners will silently form many of the famous phrases. “Four score and seven years ago” — a sonorous way of recalling the founding of the nation eighty-seven years before he spoke — is a phrase many now recite by rote, as is “the last full measure of devotion.” But the selection of this poetic political sermon as the oratorical centerpiece of our observance need not be only an exercise in historical evocation, nonpolitical correctness, and patriotic solemnity. What makes this particular speech so relevant for repetition on this first anniversary of the worst bloodbath on our territory since Antietam Creek’s waters ran red is this: now, as then, a national spirit rose from the ashes of destruction.

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Here is how to listen to Lincoln’s all-too-familiar speech with new ears. In those 236 words, you will hear the word dedicate five times. The first two times refer to the nation’s dedication to two ideals mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, the original ideal of “liberty” and the ideal that became central to the Civil War: “that all men are created equal.” The third, or middle, dedication is directed to the specific consecration of the site of the battle of Gettysburg: “to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place.” The fourth and fifth times Lincoln repeated dedicate reaffirmed those dual ideals for which the dead being honored fought: “to the unfinished work” and then “to the great task remaining before us” of securing freedom and equality. Those five pillars of dedication rested on a fundament of religious metaphor. From a president not known for his piety — indeed, often criticized for his supposed lack of faith — came a speech rooted in the theme of national resurrection. The speech is grounded in conception, birth, death, and rebirth. Consider the barrage of images of birth in the opening sentence. The nation was “conceived in liberty” and “brought forth” — that is, delivered into life — by “our fathers” with all “created” equal. (In the nineteenth century, both “men” and “fathers” were taken to embrace women and mothers.) The nation was born. Then, in the middle dedication, to those who sacrificed themselves, come images of death: “final resting place” and “brave men, living and dead.” Finally, the nation’s spirit rises from this scene of death: “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” Conception, birth, death, rebirth. The nation, purified in this fiery trial of war, is resurrected. Through the sacrifice of its sons, the sundered nation would be reborn as one. An irreverent aside: All speechwriters stand on the shoulders of orators past. Lincoln’s memorable conclusion was taken from a fine oration by the Reverend Theodore Parker at an 1850 Boston antislavery convention. That social reformer defined the transcendental “idea of freedom” to be “a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people.”

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Lincoln, thirteen years later, dropped the “alls” and made the phrase his own. (A little judicious borrowing by presidents from previous orators shall not perish from the earth.) In delivering that final note, the Union’s defender is said to have thrice stressed the noun “people” rather than the prepositions “of,” “by,” and “for.” What is to be emphasized is not rhetorical rhythm but the reminder that our government’s legitimacy springs from America’s citizens; the people, not the rulers, are sovereign. Not all nations have yet grasped that. Do not listen on September 11 only to Lincoln’s famous words and comforting cadences. Think about how Lincoln’s message encompasses but goes beyond paying “fitting and proper” respect to the dead and the bereaved. His sermon at Gettysburg reminds “us the living” of our “unfinished work” and “the great task remaining before us” — to resolve that this generation’s response to the deaths of thousands of our people leads to “a new birth of freedom.”

Safire’s analysis focuses on patterns of specific words and images — he identifies dedicate as a key term and analyzes how its meaning changes and develops each time it is used. He shows how Lincoln shaped his text around images of birth, death, and resurrection to assert that although a nation’s soldiers die, their deaths permit the rebirth of the nation. In doing so, Safire builds an argument linking Lincoln’s words to current circ*mstances.

DOUG LANTRY

“Stay Sweet As You Are”: An Analysis of Change and Continuity in Advertising Aimed at Women Doug Lantry wrote this analysis of three print ads for a first-year writing course at the University of Akron. Magazine advertisem*nts aimed at American women have a long history of pushing things like makeup, mouthwash, soap, and other products that reinforce men’s roles in women’s lives. The concept of personal hygiene has been used to convey the message that “catching” a man or becoming a wife is a woman’s ultimate goal, and in advertisem*nts

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from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1950s this theme can be traced through verbal and visual content. For example, a 1922 ad for Resinol soap urges women to “make that dream come true” by using Resinol (see Fig. 1). The dream is marriage. The premise is that a bad complexion will prevent marriage even if a woman has attributes like wit and grace, which the ad identifies as positive. Blotchy skin, the ad says, will undermine all that. The word repellent is used for emphasis and appears in the same sentence as the words neglected and humiliated, equating the look of the skin with the state of the person within. Of course, Resinol can remedy the condition, and a paragraph of redemption follows the paragraph about being repellent. A treatment program is suggested, and the look and feel of “velvety” skin are only “the first happy effects,” with eventual marriage (fulfillment) implied as the ultimate result of using Resinol soap. Visual content supports the mostly verbal ad. In a darkened room, a lone woman peers dreamily into a fireplace, where she sees an apparition of herself as a bride in a white veil, being fulfilled as a person by marriage to a handsome man. She lounges in a soft chair, where the glow of the image in the fireplace lights her up and warms her as much as the comforting fire itself. A smaller image shows the woman washing with Resinol, contentedly working her way toward clear skin and marriage over a water-filled basin suggestive of a vessel of holy water. This image is reinforced by her closed eyes and serene look and by the ad’s suggestion that “right living” is a source of a good complexion. A somewhat less innocent ad appeared more than a decade later, in 1934 (see Fig. 2). That ad, for Lux soap, like the one for Resinol, prescribes a daily hygiene regimen, but it differs significantly from the Resinol message in that it never mentions marriage and uses a clearskinned movie star as proof of Lux’s effectiveness. Instead of touting marriage, Lux teaches that “a girl who wants to break hearts simply must have a tea-rose complexion.” Romance, not marriage, is the woman’s goal, and competition among women is emphasized because “girls who want to make new conquests . . . [are] sure to win out!” by using Lux. Lux’s pitch is more sophisticated than Resinol’s, appealing to a more emancipated woman than that of the early 1920s and offering a kind of evidence based on science and statistics. The text cites “9 out of 10 glamorous Hollywood stars” and scientists who explain that Lux slows aging, but it declines to cite names, except that of Irene

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Fig. 1.

1922 Resinol soap ad.

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Fig. 2.

1934 Lux soap ad.

Dunne, the ad’s star. The unnamed stars and scientists give the ad an air of untruthfulness, and this sense is deepened by the paradox of the ad’s title: “Girls who know this secret always win out.” If Lux is a secret, why does it appear in a mass-media publication? Like Resinol, Lux urges women to seek love and fulfillment by enhancing their outward beauty and suggests that clear skin means having “the charm men can’t resist.” The Lux ad’s visual content, like Resinol’s, supports its verbal message. Several demure views of Irene Dunne emphasize her “pearly-

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smooth skin,” the top one framed by a large heart shape. In all the photos, Dunne wears a feathery, feminine collar, giving her a birdlike appearance: she is a bird of paradise or an ornament. At the bottom of the ad, we see a happy Dunne being cuddled and admired by a man. The visual and verbal message is that women should strive, through steps actually numbered in the ad, to attain soft, clear skin and hence charm and hence romance. Not surprisingly, the ad uses the language of battle to describe the effects of clear skin: girls who use Lux will “make new conquests!” and “win out!” Similar themes are developed for a younger audience in a 1954 ad for Listerine mouthwash (see Fig. 3). This time the target is no longer grown women but teenage girls: “If you want to win the boys . . . Stay Sweet As You Are!” Because attracting men would be inappropriate for teenagers, boys are the catch of the day in the Listerine ad. The idea of staying sweet means on the surface that girls should have nice breath, but the youthful context of the ad means that for women to be attractive they must stay young and “stay adorable,” preferably with the girlish innocence of a teenager. The consequences of not staying sweet are clear: if you don’t use Listerine every morning, every night, and before every date, “you’re headed for boredom and loneliness.” If you do use Listerine, there are “good times, good friends, and gaiety ahead.” Like Lux, Listerine relies on science as well as sex. With talk of “the bacterial fermentation of proteins,” research, and clinical tests, the mouthwash props up its romantic and sexual claims by proclaiming scientific facts. Listerine is “4 times better than any tooth paste,” the ad proclaims. ”With proof like this, it’s easy to see why Listerine belongs in your home.” Visuals contribute to the message, as in the other ads. The central image is a photo of a perky, seemingly innocent teenage girl playing records on a portable phonograph. A vision of midcentury American femininity, she wears a fitted sweater, a scarf tied at the neck (like a wrapped present?), and a full, long skirt. She sits on the floor, her legs hidden by the skirt; she could be a cake decoration. Leaning forward slightly, she looks toward the reader, suggesting by her broad smile and submissive posture that perhaps kissing will follow when she wins the boys with her sweet breath. The record player affirms the ad’s teenage target. The intended consumers in the Resinol, Lux, and Listerine ads are women, and the message of all three ads is that the product will lead

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Fig. 3.

1954 Listerine mouthwash ad.

to — and is required for — romantic or matrimonial success. Each ad implies that physical traits are paramount in achieving this success, and the ads’ appearance in widely circulated magazines suggests that catching a man (whether or not she marries him) is the ultimate goal of

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every American woman. While there is a kind of progress over time, the ads’ underlying assumptions remain constant. There is evidence of women’s increasing sophistication, illustrated in the later ads’ use of science and “objective” proof of the products’ effectiveness. Women’s development as individuals can also be seen in that marriage is not presupposed in the later ads, and in the case of Lux a single woman has a successful career and apparently has her pick of many partners. Still, one theme remains constant and may be seen as a continuing debilitating factor in women’s struggle for true equality in the world of sex roles: pleasing men is the prerequisite for happiness. Despite apparent advances on other levels, that assumption runs through all three ads and is the main selling point. The consumer of Resinol, Lux, and Listerine is encouraged to objectify herself, to become more physically attractive not for her own sake but for someone else’s. The women in all three ads are beautifying themselves because they assume they must “make new conquests,” “win the boys,” and “make that dream come true.”

Lantry summarizes each ad clearly and focuses his analysis on a theme running through all three ads: the concept that to find happiness, a woman must be physically attractive to men. He describes patterns of images and language in all three ads as evidence.

Key Features / Textual Analysis A summary of the text. Your readers may not know the text you are analyzing, so you need to include it or tell them about it before you can analyze it. Because Safire’s text is so well-known, he describes it only briefly as “Abraham Lincoln’s words at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery.” Texts that are not so well-known require a more detailed summary. Lantry includes the texts — and images — he analyzes and also describes them in detail. Attention to the context.

Texts don’t exist in isolation: they are influenced by and contribute to ongoing conversations, controversies, or debates, so to understand the text, you need to understand the larger context. Bellafante opens by describing fans’ critical response to the sixth sea-

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son of 24. Safire notes the source of the phrase “of the people, by the people, for the people” and is clearly writing in the context of the United States after 9/11.

A clear interpretation or judgment.

Your goal in analyzing a text is to lead readers through careful examination of the text to some kind of interpretation or reasoned judgment, generally announced clearly in a thesis statement. When you interpret something, you explain what you think it means, as Lantry does when he argues that the consumers of the three beauty products are encouraged to “objectify” themselves. He might instead have chosen to judge the effectiveness of the ads, perhaps noting that they promise the impossible, that no mouthwash, soap, or other product can guarantee romantic “success.”

Reasonable support for your conclusions.

Written analysis of a text is generally supported by evidence from the text itself and sometimes from other sources. The writer might support his or her interpretation by quoting words or passages from a written text or referring to images in a visual text. Safire, for example, looks at Lincoln’s repetition of the word “dedicate” in the Gettysburg Address as a way of arguing that the speech was still relevant in 2002, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Lantry examines patterns of both language and images in his analysis of the three ads. Bellafante describes several scenes and plotlines from 24. Note that the support you offer for your interpretation need only be “reasonable” — there is never any one way to interpret something.

A GUIDE TO WRITING TEXTUAL ANALYSES Choosing a Text to Analyze Most of the time, you will be assigned a text or a type of text to analyze: a poem in a literature class, the work of a political philosopher in a political science class, a speech in a history or communications course, a painting or sculpture in an art class, a piece of music in a music the-

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ory course. If you must choose a text to analyze, look for one that suits the demands of the assignment — one that is neither too large or complex to analyze thoroughly (a Dickens novel or a Beethoven symphony is probably too big) nor too brief or limited to generate sufficient material (a ten-second TV news brief or a paragraph from Fast Food Nation would probably be too small). You might also choose to analyze three or four texts by examining elements common to all. Be sure you understand what the assignment asks you to do, and ask your instructor for clarification if you’re not sure.

Considering the Rhetorical Situation PURPOSE

Why are you analyzing this text? To demonstrate that you understand it? To persuade readers that the text demonstrates a certain point? Or are you using the text as a way to make some other point?

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Are your readers likely to know your text? How much detail will you need to supply?

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What interests you about your analysis? Why? What do you know or believe about your topic, and how will your own beliefs affect your analysis?

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Are you writing an essay for a class? To be published in a journal or magazine? Something for the Web? If you are analyzing a visual text, you will probably need to include an image of the text.

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Generating Ideas and Text In analyzing a text, your goal is to understand what it says, how it works, and what it means. To do so, you may find it helpful to follow a certain sequence: read, respond, summarize, analyze, and draw conclusions from your analysis.

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Several demure views of Irene Dunne emphasize her “pearly-smooth skin,” the top one framed by a large heart shape. In all the photos, Dunne wears a feathery, feminine collar, giving her a birdlike appearance: she is a bird of paradise or an ornament. At the bottom of the ad, we see a happy Dunne being cuddled and admired by a man.

Decide what you want to analyze. Having read the text carefully, think about what you find most interesting or intriguing, and why. Does the language interest you? The imagery? The structure? The argument? The larger context? Something else? You might begin your analysis by exploring what attracted your notice. Study how the text works. Texts are made up of several components — words, sentences, images, even punctuation. Visual texts might be made up of images, lines, angles, color, light and shadow, and sometimes words. All these elements can be used in various ways. To analyze them, look for patterns in the way they’re used and try to decide what those patterns

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Start by reading carefully, to get a sense of what it says. This means first skimming to PREVIEW THE TEXT, rereading for the main ideas, then questioning and ANNOTATING. Consider your INITIAL RESPONSE. Once you have a sense of what the text says, what do you think? What’s your reaction to the argument, the tone, the language, the images? Do you find the text difficult? puzzling? Do you agree with what the writer says? Disagree? Agree and disagree? Your reaction to a text can color your analysis, so start by thinking about how you react — and why. Consider both your intellectual and any emotional reactions. Identify places in the text that trigger or account for those reactions. If you think that you have no particular reaction or response, try to articulate why. Whatever your response, think about what accounts for it. Next, consolidate your understanding of the text by SUMMARIZING (or, if it’s a visual text, DESCRIBING) what it says in your own words. You may find it helpful to OUTLINE its main ideas. See, for instance, how Lantry carefully described what a soap ad he was analyzing shows and says. Some of this analysis ended up in his essay.

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Read to see what the text says.

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reveal about the text. How do they affect its message? See the sections on THINKING ABOUT HOW THE TEXT WORKS and IDENTIFYING PATTERNS for specific guidelines on examining patterns this way. Then write a sentence or two describing the patterns you’ve discovered and how they contribute to what the text says.

Analyze the argument. Every text makes an argument. Both verbal and visual texts make certain assertions and provide some kind of support for those claims. An important part of understanding any text is to recognize its argument — what the writer or artist wants the audience to believe, feel, or do. Consider the text’s purpose and audience, identify its thesis, and decide how convincingly it supports that thesis. See the section on ANALYZING THE ARGUMENT for help doing so. Then write a sentence or two summarizing the argument the text makes, along with your reactions to or questions about that argument. Think about the larger context. Texts are always part of larger, ongoing conversations. To analyze a text’s role in its LARGER CONTEXT, you may need to do additional RESEARCH to determine where the text was originally published, what else was happening or being discussed at the time the text was published or created, and whether or not the text responded directly to other ideas or arguments. Then write a sentence or two describing the larger context surrounding the text and how that context affects your understanding of the text.

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Consider what you know about the writer or artist.

What you know about the person who created a text can influence your understanding of that text. His or her CREDENTIALS, other work, reputation, stance, and beliefs are all useful windows into understanding a text. Then write a sentence or two summarizing what you know about the writer and how that information affects your understanding of the text.

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When you analyze a text, you are basically that the text should be read in a certain way. Once you’ve studied the text thoroughly, you need to identify your analytical goal: do you ARGUING

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Come up with a thesis.

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want to show that the text has a certain meaning? Uses certain techniques to achieve its purposes? Tries to influence its audience in particular ways? Relates to some larger context in some significant manner? Should be taken seriously — or not? Something else? Come up with a tentative THESIS to guide your thinking and analyzing — but be aware that your thesis may change as you continue to work.

Ways of Organizing a Textual Analysis

[Thematically] Introduce the text: • summarize or describe • give any necessary context State your thesis.

Analyze the text: • identify a theme or pattern • use examples from the text and appropriate contexts as evidence Continue as needed.

Restate the thesis, relating it to larger issues: • how the text works • what it means

[Part by part, or text by text] Introduce the text: • summarize or describe • give any necessary context State your thesis.

Analyze first section of text.

Analyze next section of text.

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Examine the information you have to see how it supports or complicates your thesis. Look for clusters of related information that you can use to structure an OUTLINE. Your analysis might be structured in at least two ways. You might, as Safire does, discuss patterns or themes that run through the text. Alternatively, you might analyze each text or section of text separately, as Bellafante and Lantry do. Following are graphic representations of some ways of organizing a textual analysis.

Restate the thesis, relating it to larger issues: • how the text works • what the text means

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Writing Out a Draft In drafting your analysis, your goal should be to integrate the various parts into a smoothly flowing, logically organized essay. However, it’s easy to get bogged down in the details. Consider writing one section of the analysis first, then another and another until you’ve drafted the entire middle; then draft your beginning and ending. Alternatively, start by summarizing the text and moving from there to your analysis and then to your ending. However you do it, you need to support your analysis with evidence: from the text itself (as Lantry’s analysis of advertisem*nts and Bellafante’s analysis of 24 do)‚ or from RESEARCH on the larger context of the text (as Safire does).

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Draft a beginning. The beginning of an essay that analyzes a text generally has several tasks: to introduce or summarize the text for your readers, to offer any necessary information on the larger context, and to present your thesis. Summarize the text. If the text is one your readers don’t know, you need to give a brief SUMMARY early on that introduces it to them and shows that you understand it fully. For example, Lantry begins each analysis of a soap advertisem*nt with a brief summary of its content.

•

Provide a context for your analysis. If there is a larger context that is significant for your analysis, you might mention it in your introduction. Safire does this when he frames his analysis of the Gettysburg Address as a “centerpiece” of 9/11 commemorations.

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Introduce a pattern or theme. If your analysis centers on a certain pattern of textual or contextual elements, you might begin by describing it, as Bellafante does when she writes of 24 as “deploying the conventions of domestic horror in the language of an apocalyptic thriller.”

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State your thesis. Lantry ends his first paragraph by stating the THESIS of his analysis: “The concept of personal hygiene has been used to convey the message that ‘catching’ a man or becoming a wife is a woman’s

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ultimate goal, and in advertisem*nts from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1950s this theme can be traced through verbal and visual content.” 261–71

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See Chapter 29 for more advice on BEGINNING AND ENDING.

Draft an ending.

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Think about what you want your readers to take away from your analysis, and end by getting them to focus on those thoughts.

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Restate your thesis — and say why it matters. Lantry, for example, ends by pointing out that “one theme remains constant” in all the ads he analyzes: that “pleasing men is the prerequisite for happiness.”

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Say something about the implications of your findings. If your analysis has any general implications, you might end by stating them as Safire does: “[Lincoln’s] sermon at Gettysburg reminds ‘us the living’ of our ‘unfinished work’ and ‘the great task remaining before us’ — to resolve that this generation’s response to the deaths of thousands of our people leads to ‘a new birth of freedom.’ ”

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See Chapter 29 for more advice on ways of BEGINNING AND ENDING.

Come up with a title. A good TITLE indicates something about the subject of your analysis — and makes readers want to see what you have to say about it. Bellafante’s title makes her point that 24 depicts family relationships as unsustainable. And Lantry’s title uses an eye-catching headline from one ad with a clear statement of his essay’s content: “ ‘Stay Sweet As You Are’: An Analysis of Change and Continuity in Advertising Aimed at Women.”

Considering Matters of Design •

If you cite written text as evidence, be sure to set long quotations and DOCUMENTATION according to the style you’re using.

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If your essay is lengthy, consider whether HEADINGS would make your analysis easier for readers to follow.

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If you’re analyzing a visual text, you may need to include a reproduction, along with a caption identifying it.

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Is the BEGINNING effective? Does it make a reader want to continue?

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Does the introduction provide an overview of your analysis and conclusions? Is your THESIS clear?

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The following questions can help you and others study your draft with a critical eye. Make sure that anyone you ask to read and RESPOND to your text knows your purpose and audience.

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Is the text described or SUMMARIZED clearly and sufficiently?

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Is the analysis well organized and easy to follow? Do the parts fit together coherently? Does it read like an essay rather than a collection of separate bits of analysis?

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Does each part of the analysis relate to the thesis?

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Is anything confusing or in need of more explanation?

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Are all QUOTATIONS accurate and correctly DOCUMENTED?

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Is it clear how the analysis leads to the interpretation? Is there adequate EVIDENCE to support the interpretation?

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Does the ENDING make clear what your findings mean?

Then it’s time to REVISE. Make sure your text appeals to your audience and achieves your purpose as successfully as possible.

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Editing and Proofreading

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Is your THESIS clearly stated?

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Check all QUOTATIONS, PARAPHRASES, and SUMMARIES for accuracy and form. Be sure that each has the required DOCUMENTATION.

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Make sure that your analysis flows clearly from one point to the next and that you use TRANSITIONS to help readers move through your text.

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your finished analysis carefully before turning it in.

Taking Stock of Your Work Take stock of what you’ve written and learned by writing out answers to these questions: •

How did you go about analyzing the text? What methods did you use — and which ones were most helpful?

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How did you go about drafting your essay?

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How well did you organize your written analysis? What, if anything, could you do to make it easier to read?

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Did you provide sufficient evidence to support your analysis?

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What did you do especially well?

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What could still be improved?

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Did you use any visuals, and if so, what did they add? Could you have shown the same thing with words?

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How did other readers’ responses influence your writing?

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What would you do differently next time?

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Are you pleased with your analysis? What did it teach you about the text you analyzed? Did it make you want to study more works by the same writer or artist?

IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See also Chapter 14 on LITERARY ANALYSES if you are analyzing a work of poetry, fiction, or drama. See Chapter 28 if you are required to submit your analysis as part of a writing PORTFOLIO.

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Reporting Information

Many kinds of writing report information. Newspapers report on local and world events; textbooks give information about biology, history, writing; websites provide information about products (jcrew.com), people (johnnydepp.com), institutions (smithsonian.org). We write out a lot of information ourselves, from a note we post on our door saying we’ve gone to choir practice to an essay we’re assigned to write for a history class, reporting what we’ve learned about the state of U.S. diplomacy in the days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This chapter focuses on reports that are written to inform readers about a particular topic. Very often this kind of writing calls for some kind of research: you need to know your subject in order to report on it! When you write to report information, you are the expert. Before offering guidelines for writing essays that inform, we’ll begin with three good examples.

SUSAN STELLIN

The Inevitability of Bumps In this article, which appeared in the New York Times in 2007, reporter and travel writer Susan Stellin explains the causes of turbulence and its effects on airplanes and passengers. People who fly a lot tend to be nonchalant about the experience — until the plane hits a patch of choppy air. Then, as cups start skidding across tray tables and luggage jostles overhead, even some frequent fliers admit to gripping the armrest with fear.

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“Logically and rationally, I know that planes are designed to withstand pretty severe amounts of turbulence before anything bad would happen,” said Lawrence Mosselson, who works for a commercial real estate company in Toronto and flies about 50 times a year. “And yet I find that at the first sign of any turbulence, I’m almost paralyzed in my seat.” Industry experts say turbulence rarely causes substantial damage to an aircraft, especially as systems to detect and respond to it have improved. Most of the injuries caused by turbulence, they say, could have been prevented by a decidedly low-tech measure: a seat belt. “The airplane is designed to take a lot more aggressive maneuvering than we are,” said Nora Marshall, chief of aviation survival factors at the National Transportation Safety Board. “We see people getting injured in turbulent events because they’re not restrained.” Because of the way the safety board defines an accident — an event involving substantial damage to the aircraft, a death, or a serious injury — the agency has officially investigated 94 accidents in the past decade involving turbulence as a cause or factor. Almost all were classified as accidents because 119 people (mostly flight attendants) suffered serious injuries, ranging from broken bones to a ruptured spleen. Only one of the accidents involved substantial damage to the aircraft. The safety board attributed one death to turbulence over that time. In 1997, a Japanese passenger on a United Airlines flight from Tokyo to Honolulu was jolted out of her seat when the plane encountered turbulence; she suffered fatal injuries when she hit the armrest on the way back down. According to Ms. Marshall, who participated in the investigation, the woman was not wearing her seat belt, perhaps because the announcement advising passengers to keep seat belts fastened while the seat belt sign was off was not translated into Japanese. That announcement is required by the Federal Aviation Administration. But Ms. Marshall said most passenger injuries still involve people seated without being buckled in. Including minor injuries, like a cut or a twisted ankle, safety board data indicates that about 50 people a year suffer turbulence-related injuries. But that is only the number of accidents the agency investigates, so the true figure is higher.

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Now for the reassuring part: the plane should be able to handle the turbulence. “People really shouldn’t be too concerned about the airplane having difficulty in turbulence — it’s designed for turbulence,” said Jeff Bland, senior manager for commercial airplane loads and dynamics at Boeing, adding that structural failures because of turbulence are rare. Although there have been airplane crashes where turbulence was a factor, accidents typically involve multiple factors so it is often impossible to say that turbulence caused a crash. Industry and safety officials agree that such accidents have become unlikely as more has been learned about turbulence. According to Mr. Bland, aircraft manufacturers have been collecting data since the 1970s to determine the maximum stress that planes experience in turbulence, and they then design aircraft to withstand one and a half times that. In fact, a video clip available on YouTube shows Boeing’s test of the wing of a 777; using cables, the wing is bent upward about 24 feet at the tip before it breaks. Systems to detect and respond to turbulence have also improved, including the technology that automatically adjusts to lateral gusts of wind. And Boeing’s 787 aircraft will have a new vertical gust suppression system to minimize the stomach-churning sensation of the plane suddenly dropping midair. Pilots say those drops are typically no more than 50 feet — not the hundreds of feet many passengers perceive. They also emphasize that avoiding turbulence is mostly a matter of comfort, not safety. “The mistake that everybody makes is thinking of turbulence as something that’s necessarily abnormal or dangerous,” said Patrick Smith, a commercial pilot who also writes a column called “Ask the Pilot” for Salon.com. “For lack of a better term, turbulence is normal.” A variety of factors can cause turbulence, which is essentially a disturbance in the movement of air. Thunderstorms, the jet stream, and mountains are some of the more common natural culprits, while what is known as wake turbulence is created by another plane. “Clear air turbulence” is the kind that comes up unexpectedly; it is difficult to detect because there is no moisture or particles to reveal the movement of air.

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Pilots rely on radar, weather data, and reports from other aircraft to spot turbulence along their route, then can avoid it or at least minimize its effect by slowing down, changing altitude, or shifting course. But even with advances in technology, it is not always possible to predict rough air. “We still don’t have a really good means in the co*ckpit of seeing turbulence up ahead,” said Terry McVenes, a pilot who serves as executive air safety chairman for the Air Line Pilots Association. “Sometimes we can prepare ourselves; other times it does sneak up on us.” Yet that has not deterred some fearful fliers from trying to gauge whether they are going to have a bumpy ride. Peter Murray, a computer network administrator from Lansing, Michigan, created TurbulenceForecast.com to offer nervous fliers like himself a way to view potential turbulence along their flight path. At the time, he was frequently flying to Baltimore to visit his girlfriend and would sometimes change his flight if it looked as if he would encounter choppy air. “I have never been in anything that could even be considered light turbulence because I could avoid it so well,” he said. But for those unable to avoid a shaky situation, technology also offers more ways to cope. That is why Tim Johnson, a frequent flier who works for a satellite phone company in Washington, posted a question on the forums at Flyertalk.com asking other travelers about their favorite turbulence tunes. (His choice was the “Theme From Rawhide” on The Blues Brothers soundtrack. Other suggestions included “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor and “Free Fallin’ “ by Tom Petty.) “I was on an A340 and it was flying all over the place,” Mr. Johnson said, recalling a particularly bumpy flight. “But something about that song had me laughing out loud.” At least these days, he added, “You’ve got a lot more tools to distract you.” That is, as long as your iPod does not fly out of your hand.

This report focuses on turbulence during airline flights and how it affects passengers. Stellin interviews various authorities — frequent fliers, a researcher at the National Transportation Safety Board, an engineer at Boeing, pilots — and defines several key terms to provide an in-depth account of her subject. Notice how she balances statistical information with anecdotes about passengers’ reactions to turbulence.

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JAMES FALLOWS

Throwing Like a Girl In the following report, Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows explores the art of throwing a baseball and the misconceptions that lead to the phrase “throwing like a girl.” Most people remember the 1994 baseball season for the way it ended — with a strike rather than a World Series. I keep thinking about the way it began. On opening day, April 4, Bill Clinton went to Cleveland and, like many Presidents before him, threw out a ceremonial first pitch. That same day Hillary Rodham Clinton went to Chicago and, like no First Lady before her, also threw out a first ball, at a Cubs game in Wrigley Field. The next day photos of the Clintons in action appeared in newspapers around the country. Many papers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, chose the same two photos to run. The one of Bill Clinton showed him wearing an Indians cap and warm-up jacket. The President, throwing lefty, had turned his shoulders sideways to the plate in preparation for delivery. He was bringing the ball forward from behind his head in a clean-looking throwing action as the photo was snapped. Hillary Clinton was pictured wearing a dark jacket, a scarf, and an oversized Cubs hat. In preparation for her throw she was standing directly facing the plate. A right-hander, she had the elbow of her throwing arm pointed out in front of her. Her forearm was tilted back, toward her shoulder. The ball rested on her upturned palm. As the picture was taken, she was in the middle of an action that can only be described as throwing like a girl. The phrase “throwing like a girl” has become an embattled and offensive one. Feminists smart at its implication that to do something “like a girl” is to do it the wrong way. Recently, on the heels of the O. J. Simpson case, a book appeared in which the phrase was used to help explain why male athletes, especially football players, were involved in so many assaults against women. Having been trained (like most American boys) to dread the accusation of doing anything “like a girl,” athletes were said to grow into the assumption that women were valueless, and natural prey.

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I grant the justice of such complaints. I am attuned to the hurt caused by similar broad-brush stereotypes when they apply to groups I belong to — ”dancing like a white man,” for instance, or “speaking foreign languages like an American,” or “thinking like a Washingtonian.” Still, whatever we want to call it, the difference between the two Clintons in what they were doing that day is real, and it is instantly recognizable. And since seeing those photos I have been wondering, Why, exactly, do so many women throw “like a girl”? If the motion were easy to change, presumably a woman as motivated and selfpossessed as Hillary Clinton would have changed it. (According to her press secretary, Lisa Caputo, Mrs. Clinton spent the weekend before opening day tossing a ball in the Rose Garden with her husband, for practice.) Presumably, too, the answer to the question cannot be anything quite as simple as, Because they are girls. A surprising number of people think that there is a structural difference between male and female arms or shoulders — in the famous “rotator cuff,” perhaps — that dictates different throwing motions. “It’s in the shoulder joint,” a well-educated woman told me recently. “They’re hinged differently.” Someday researchers may find evidence to support a biological theory of throwing actions. For now, what you’ll hear if you ask an orthopedist, an anatomist, or (especially) the coach of a women’s softball team is that there is no structural reason why men and women should throw in different ways. This point will be obvious to any male who grew up around girls who liked to play baseball and became good at it. It should be obvious on a larger scale this summer, in broadcasts of the Olympic Games. This year [1996], for the first time, women’s fast-pitch softball teams will compete in the Olympics. Although the pitchers in these games will deliver the ball underhand, viewers will see female shortstops, center fielders, catchers, and so on pegging the ball to one another at speeds few male viewers could match. Even women’s tennis is a constant if indirect reminder that men’s and women’s shoulders are “hinged” the same way. The serving motion in tennis is like a throw — but more difficult, because it must be coordinated with the toss of the tennis ball. The men in professional tennis serve harder than the women, because they are bigger and stronger. But women pros serve harder than most male amateurs have ever done, and the service motion for good players is the same for men and women

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alike. There is no expectation in college or pro tennis that because of their anatomy female players must “serve like a girl.” “I know many women who can throw a lot harder and better than the normal male,” says Linda Wells, the coach of the highly successful women’s softball team at Arizona State University. “It’s not gender that makes the difference in how they throw.” At a superficial level it’s easy to tick off the traits of an awkwardlooking throw. The fundamental mistake is the one Mrs. Clinton appeared to be making in the photo: trying to throw a ball with your body facing the target, rather than rotating your shoulders and hips ninety degrees away from the target and then swinging them around in order to accelerate the ball. A throw looks bad if your elbow is lower than your shoulder as your arm comes forward (unless you’re throwing sidearm). A throw looks really bad if, as the ball leaves your hand, your wrist is “inside your elbow” — that is, your elbow joint is bent in such a way that your forearm angles back toward your body and your wrist is closer to your head than your elbow is. Slow-motion film of big-league pitchers shows that when they release the ball, the throwing arm is fully extended and straight from shoulder to wrist. The combination of these three elements — head-on stance, dropped elbow, and wrist inside the elbow — mechanically dictates a pushing rather than a hurling motion, creating the familiar pattern of “throwing like a girl.” It is surprisingly hard to find in the literature of baseball a deeper explanation of the mechanics of good and bad throws. Tom Seaver’s pitching for the Mets and the White Sox got him into the Hall of Fame, but his book The Art of Pitching is full of bromides that hardly clarify the process of throwing, even if they might mean something to accomplished pitchers. His chapter “The Absolutes of Pitching Mechanics,” for instance, lays out these four unhelpful principles: “Keep the Front Leg Flexible!” “Rub Up the Baseball!” “Hide the Baseball!” “Get It Out, Get It Up!” (The fourth refers to the need to get the ball out of the glove and into the throwing hand in a quick motion.) A variety of other instructional documents, from Little League’s Official How-to-Play Baseball Book to Softball for Girls & Women, mainly reveal the difficulty of finding words to describe a simple motor activity that everyone can recognize. The challenge, I suppose, is like that of writing a manual on how to ride a bike, or how to kiss. Indeed,

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the most useful description I’ve found of the mechanics of throwing comes from a man whose specialty is another sport: Vic Braden made his name as a tennis coach, but he has attempted to analyze the physics of a wide variety of sports so that they all will be easier to teach. Braden says that an effective throw involves connecting a series of links in a “kinetic chain.” The kinetic chain, which is Braden’s tool for analyzing most sporting activity, operates on a principle like that of crack-the-whip. Momentum builds up in one part of the body. When that part is suddenly stopped, as the end of the “whip” is stopped in crack-the-whip, the momentum is transferred to and concentrated in the next link in the chain. A good throw uses six links of chain, Braden says. The first two links involve the lower body, from feet to waist. The first motion of a throw (after the body has been rotated away from the target) is to rotate the legs and hips back in the direction of the throw, building up momentum as large muscles move body mass. Then those links stop — a pitcher stops turning his hips once they face the plate — and the momentum is transferred to the next link. This is the torso, from waist to shoulders, and since its mass is less than that of the legs, momentum makes it rotate faster than the hips and legs did. The torso stops when it is facing the plate, and the momentum is transferred to the next link — the upper arm. As the upper arm comes past the head, it stops moving forward, and the momentum goes into the final links — the forearm and wrist, which snap forward at tremendous speed. This may sound arcane and jerkily mechanical, but it makes perfect sense when one sees Braden’s slow-mo movies of pitchers in action. And it explains why people do, or don’t, learn how to throw. The implication of Braden’s analysis is that throwing is a perfectly natural action (millions and millions of people can do it), but not at all innate. A successful throw involves an intricate series of actions coordinated among muscle groups, as each link of the chain is timed to interact with the next. Like bike riding or skating, it can be learned by anyone — male or female. No one starts out knowing how to ride a bike or throw a ball. Everyone has to learn.

Fallows describes in detail what distinguishes a successful baseball throw from an awkward-looking one, concluding with the point that throwing a baseball effectively is a learned activity. He draws on various sources — including a

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women’s softball coach, a tennis coach, and his own observations — to support his claim. Notice how he establishes the context for his essay by focusing on the differences between the stances of the Clintons when photographed throwing a baseball.

JEFFREY DEROVEN

The Greatest Generation: The Great Depression and the American South The following essay was written in 2001 by a student for a history course at the Trumbull Campus of Kent State University. It was first published in Etude and Techne, a journal of Ohio college writing. Tom Brokaw called the folks of the mid-twentieth century the greatest generation. So why is the generation of my grandparents seen as this country’s greatest? Perhaps the reason is not what they accomplished but what they endured. Many of the survivors feel people today “don’t have the moral character to withstand a depression like that.”1 This paper will explore the Great Depression through the eyes of ordinary Americans in the most impoverished region in the country, the American South, in order to detail how they endured and how the government assisted them in this difficult era. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) announced in 1938 that the American South “represented the nation’s number one economic problem.” He commissioned the National Emergency Council to investigate and report on the challenges facing the region. Though rich in physical and human resources, the southern states lagged behind other parts of the nation in economic development.2 Poor education in the South was blamed for much of the problem. Young children attending school became too costly for most families. In the Bland family, “when Lucy got to the sixth grade, we had to stop her because there was too much to do.”3 Overcrowding of schools, particularly in rural areas, lowered the educational standards. The short school terms further reduced effectiveness. As Mrs. Aber-

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crombie recalls, “Me and Jon both went to school for a few months but that wa’n’t enough for us to learn anything.”4 Without the proper education, the youth of the South entered the work force unprepared for the challenges before them. Southern industries did not have the investment capital to turn their resources into commodities. Manufacturers were limited to producing goods in the textile and cigarette industries and relied heavily on the cash crops of cotton and tobacco for the economy. Few facilities existed in the South for research that might lead to the development of new industries. Hampered by low wages, low tax revenue, and a high interest rate, Southerners lacked the economic resources to compete with the vast industrial strength of the North. The National Emergency Council report concluded, “Penalized for being rural, and handicapped in its efforts to industrialize, the economic life of the South has been squeezed to a point where the purchasing power of the southern people does not provide an adequate market for its own industries nor an attractive market for those of the rest of the country.”5 The South had an untapped market for production and consumption. However, without adequate capital, it did not have the means to profit from them. Southern industries paid their employees low wages, which led to a low cost of living. “You could live very cheaply because . . . you couldn’t make a great deal of money,” remembers Rita Beline.”6 Most families did not have much left for themselves after bills and living expenses. “Nobody had much money, you know,” recalls June Atchetce. “Everybody kind of lived at home, had gardens and raised their own produce, raised their own meat and had chickens and eggs and such as that.” The needs of the families “were very small as far as purchases were concerned.” What they could not grow, they did not have a need for, except for basic staples such as coffee, flour, sugar, and honey. To save on the cost of clothes, families “had a lot of hand-medowns from the oldest to the baby. We did not throw them away. We patched them up and sent them down the line.”7 Luxury items, like radios, cost too much money, and “only the [aristocrats] had radios because the poor did not stay at home long enough to enjoy them.”8 The fact was that Southerners wanted modern consumer items but did not have the purchasing power to pay for them. “The people of the South need to buy, they want to buy, and they would buy — if they had the money.”9 Without paying laborers a fair wage, industry had

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) Photo from Bettmann / Corbis

forced upon itself a lower living standard, thus perpetuating losses in local revenue resulting in a decline in purchasing power.10 The Federal government had to step in and help, as the National Emergency Council’s report noted: Some of the South’s credit difficulties have been slightly relieved in recent years . . . by the Public Works Administration, . . . the Works Progress Administration, [and] the Soil Conservation Service, [which] have brought desperately needed funds into the South.11 Along with other New Deal projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps [CCC], President Roosevelt was able to prime the pump into a seemingly dead Southern economy. Other ways the federal government primed the pump was with the WPA [Works Progress Administration]. This New Deal measure gave jobs to those who wanted to work. Local governments benefited too. The WPA provided new roads, buildings, hospitals, and schools. Rita Beline remembers her “father came very short of money, . . . took a job with the WPA, in which he helped in building a road across a lagoon.”12 President Roosevelt knew “cheap wages mean low buying power.”13 The WPA ensured a fair wage for good work. Warren Addis remembers that “workers were tickled to death with it because it gave so many people jobs. It started out at eight cents an hour for common labor, and it finally went to thirty cents an hour.”14

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FDR also created the CCC. The concept of putting the American youth to work yielded an economic stimulus by having them send home twenty-five dollars a month. That money worked itself back into local economies as families spent the money on needed goods. Young men across the South “left home to go and do this work. They got paid a little bit of money, which they sent home to their families.”15 The CCC created recreation habitats as well. Jefferson Brock recalls, “They came and built brush poles for the fish to live in the lake near my cottage.”16 The CCC became an outlet for young men who could not find work in their hometowns. Jesse Brooks remembers: They did a great lot of good. For instance, they built Vogel State Park and raised the wall up on the national cemetery. Just put people to work. Gave them their pride back. A man’s not going to feel very good about himself if he can’t feed his family. So, that was the New Deal itself — to put people back to work and get the economy growing again.17 The South did not enjoy the United States’ economic successes in the early part of the twentieth century and in many ways was a third world country within our own nation. The federal action that fueled the Southern economy during the Great Depression changed the way of life for the better and helped Southerners endure a time of great despair. Programs like the TVA, WPA, and CCC planted the seeds for a prosperous future. I still do not know if they were the greatest generation, but they did overcome tremendous obstacles to bring forth other “greatest generations.” Notes 1. Allen Furline in Kenneth J. Bindas, “Oral History Project,” Kent State University, Trumbull Campus, Trumbull, OH. Dr. Bindas has a collection of 476 oral-history interviews from western Georgia and eastern Alabama, from which the information for this paper is derived. (Hereafter cited in Notes as BOHP.) 2. David L. Carlton and Peter A. Coclanis, eds., Confronting Southern Poverty in the Great Depression: The Report on Economic Conditions of the South with Related Documents (New York: Bedford / St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 92. 3. Vera Bland in BOHP.

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4. M. Abercrombie in BOHP. 5. Carlton and Coclanis, Confronting Southern Poverty, 76–78. 6. Rita Beline in BOHP. 7. June Romero Atchetce in BOHP. 8. Ruby Girley in BOHP. 9. Carlton and Coclanis, Confronting Southern Poverty, 78. 10. Ibid., 64–65. 11. Ibid., 73. 12. Rita Beline in BOHP. 13. David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 346. 14. Warren Addis in BOHP. 15. Jane Berry in BOHP. 16. Jefferson Brock in BOHP. 17. Jesse Brooks in BOHP.

DeRoven’s essay reports information about how the American South got through the Great Depression. His information is based on both library research and recorded interviews with people who lived through the period he describes. He documents his sources according to The Chicago Manual of Style, the preferred style in history classes.

Key Features / Reports A tightly focused topic.

The goal of this kind of writing is to inform readers about something without digressing — and without, in general, bringing in the writer’s own opinions. All three examples focus on a particular topic — air turbulence, throwing a baseball, and the Great Depression in the American South — and present information about the topics evenhandedly.

Accurate, well-researched information. Reports usually require some research. The kind of research depends on the topic. Library research to locate scholarly sources may be necessary for some topics — DeRoven, for example, uses an archive available only at his university’s library. Other

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topics may require field research — interviews, observations, and so on. Fallows interviewed two coaches in addition to reading several books on pitching baseballs.

Various writing strategies.

Presenting information usually requires various organizing patterns — defining, comparing, classifying, explaining processes, analyzing causes and effects, and so on. Stellin explains the causes of turbulence and its effects; Fallows explains the process governing throwing a baseball and classifies different ways of throwing. DeRoven analyzes some of the causes of the Great Depression in the South.

Clear definitions.

Reports need to provide clear definitions of any key terms that their audience may not know. Stellin defines three types of air turbulence as well as what constitutes an accident.

Appropriate design.

Reports often combine paragraphs with information presented in lists, tables, diagrams, and other illustrations. When

Wake turbulence was captured in this photo of a British Airways flight descending through thin clouds near London last July.

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you’re presenting information, you need to think carefully about how to design it — numerical data, for instance, can be easier to understand and remember in a table than in a paragraph. Often a photograph can bring a subject to life, as does the photo on page 72, which accompanied “The Inevitability of Bumps.” The caption provides important information that is explained more fully in the essay itself.

A GUIDE TO WRITING REPORTS Choosing a Topic If you are working with an assigned topic, see if you can approach it from an angle that interests you. If you get to choose your topic, the following guidelines should help:

If you get to choose.

What interests you? What do you wish you knew more about? The possible topics for informational reports are limitless, but the topics that you’re most likely to write well on are those that engage you. They may be academic in nature or reflect your personal interests or both. If you’re not sure where to begin, here are some places to start: •

an intriguing technology: hybrid cars, cell phones, roller coasters

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sports: soccer, snowboarding, ultimate Frisbee, basketball

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an important world event: 9/11, the fall of Rome, the Black Death

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a historical period: the African diaspora, the Middle Ages, the Ming dynasty, the Great Depression

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a common object: hooded sweatshirts, gel pens, mascara, Post-it notes

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a significant environmental issue: Arctic oil drilling, the Clean Air Act, mercury and the fish supply

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the arts: hip-hop, outsider art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Savion Glover, Mary Cassatt

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LIST a few possibilities, and then choose one that you’d like to know more about — and that your audience might find interesting, too. You might start out by phrasing your topic as a question that your research will attempt to answer. For example:

How is Google different from Yahoo!? How was the Great Pyramid constructed? Why did the World Trade Center towers collapse on themselves rather than fall sideways? What kind of training do football referees receive?

If your topic is assigned. Some assignments are specific: “Explain the physics of roller coasters.” If, however, your assignment is broad — “Explain some aspect of the U.S. government” — try focusing on a more limited topic within the larger topic: federalism, majority rule, political parties, states’ rights. Even if an assignment seems to offer little flexibility, your task is to decide how to research the topic — and sometimes even narrow topics can be shaped to fit your own interests and those of your audience.

Considering the Rhetorical Situation 3–4

PURPOSE

Why are you presenting this information? To teach readers about the subject? To demonstrate your research and writing skills? For some other reason?

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AUDIENCE

Who will read this report? What do they already know about the topic? What background information do they need in order to understand it? Will you need to define any terms? What do they want or need to know about it? Why should they care? How can you attract their interest?

STANCE

What is your own attitude toward your subject? What interests you most about it? What about it seems important?

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MEDIA / DESIGN

What medium are you using? What is the best way to present the information? Will it all be in paragraph form, or is there information that is best presented as a chart or a table? Do you need headings? Would diagrams, photographs, or other illustrations help you explain the information?

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Generating Ideas and Text Good reports share certain features that make them useful and interesting to readers. Remember that your goal is to present information clearly and accurately. Start by exploring your topic.

Explore what you already know about your topic.

Narrow your topic. To write a good report, you need to narrow your focus — and to narrow your focus, you need to know a fair amount about your subject. If you are assigned to write on a subject like biodiversity, for example, you need to know what it is, what the key issues are, and so on. If you do, you can simply list or brainstorm possibilities, choose one, and start your research. If you don’t know much about the subject, though, you need to do some research to discover focused, workable topics. This research may shape your thinking and change your focus. Start with SOURCES that can give you a general sense of the subject, such as an encyclopedia entry, a magazine article, an Internet site, perhaps an interview with an expert. Your goal at this point is simply to find out what issues your topic might include and then to focus your efforts on an aspect of the topic you will be able to cover. Come up with a tentative thesis. Once you narrow your topic, write out a statement that explains what you plan to report or explain. A good THESIS is potentially interesting (to you and your readers) and limits your

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Write out whatever you know or want to know about your topic, perhaps by FREEWRITING, LISTING, or CLUSTERING. Why are you interested in this topic? What questions do you have about it? Such questions can help you decide what you’d like to focus on and how you need to direct your research efforts.

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topic enough to make it manageable. Stellin presents her thesis, that plane accidents caused by turbulence “have become more unlikely as more has been learned about turbulence,” after establishing a context for passengers’ concern about it. DeRoven lays out exactly what will be discussed, using a format acceptable in some disciplines but frowned on in others: “This paper will explore the Great Depression through the eyes of ordinary Americans in the most impoverished region in the country, the American South, in order to detail how they endured and how the government assisted them in this difficult era.” At this point, however, you need only a tentative thesis that will help focus any research you do.

Do any necessary research, and revise your thesis.

Ways of Organizing a Report Reports can be organized in various ways. Here are three common ones:

[Reports on topics that are unfamiliar to readers] Begin with an anecdote, quote, or other means of interesting readers.

Provide background, and state your thesis.

Describe your topic, defining any key terms.

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To focus your research efforts, OUTLINE the aspects of your topic that you expect to discuss. Identify any aspects that require additional research and DEVELOP A RESEARCH PLAN. Expect to revise your outline as you do your research, since more information will be available for some aspects of your topic than others, some may prove irrelevant to your topic, and some may turn out to be more than you need. You’ll need to revisit your tentative thesis once you’ve done any research, to finalize your statement.

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Explain by comparing, classifying, analyzing causes or effects, explaining processes, and so on.

Conclude by restating your thesis or referring to your beginning.

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[Reports on an event] Introduce the topic; provide any necessary background information; state your thesis.

Narrate the first event or procedure.

Narrate the second event or procedure.

Narrate the third event or procedure.

Repeat as necessary.

Conclude by telling what happened, stating the implications, or some other means.

[Reports that compare and contrast] Introduce the topic; provide any necessary background information; state your thesis.

Describe one item.

Describe the other items, using the same structure used to describe the first.

Conclude by restating your thesis.

Many reports use a combination of organizational structures; don’t be afraid to use whatever method of organization best suits your material and your purpose.

Writing Out a Draft Once you have generated ideas and thought about how you want to organize your report, it’s time to start DRAFTING. Do this quickly — try to write a complete draft in one sitting, concentrating on getting the report on paper or screen and on putting in as much detail as you can.

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Simply state your thesis. DeRoven begins his essay about “the greatest generation” this way. Opening with a thesis works well when you can assume your readers have enough familiarity with your topic that you don’t need to give detailed background information.

•

Start with something that will provoke readers’ interest. Stellin begins by noting that people who fly often can become fearful when their plane hits turbulence, before she moves on to an overview of the actual safety risks involved. She knows that most readers will have experienced air turbulence and will likely want to read on to learn about how pilots and aircraft manufacturers—and other passengers— deal with it.

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Begin with an illustrative example. Fallows uses the contrasting photographs of the Clintons throwing baseballs as a way of defining “throwing like a girl.”

Draft an ending. Think about what you want your readers to read last. An effective ENDING leaves them thinking about your topic. Summarize your main points. This is a good way to end when you’ve presented several key points you want readers to remember. DeRoven ends this way, summarizing the South’s poverty and the government’s successful actions to alleviate it.

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Draft a beginning. Essays that report information often need to begin in a way that will get your audience interested in the topic. Here are a few ways of BEGINNING:

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Writing that reports information often calls for certain writing strategies. The report on throwing a baseball, for example, EXPLAINS THE PROCESS of throwing, whereas the report on turbulence ANALYZES THE CAUSES of turbulence. When you’re reporting on a topic your readers aren’t familiar with, you may wish to COMPARE it with something more familiar; you can find useful advice on these and other writing strategies in Part 4 of this book.

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•

Point out the implications of your report. Although Stellin’s report on turbulence is reassuring, she ends by acknowledging that many air travelers still find rough air unsettling and describes some of their ways of coping.

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Frame your report by referring to its introduction. DeRoven begins and ends his report by mentioning “the greatest generation.”

•

Tell what happened. If you are reporting on an event, you could conclude by telling how it turns out.

Come up with a title. You’ll want a title that tells readers something about your subject — and makes them want to know more. Stellin, for instance, gets our interest in her report on turbulence with the title “The Inevitability of Bumps,” which generates interest first by its ambiguity (Is this about skin? Roads?) and then by its relevance to anyone who flies. See the chapter on GUIDING YOUR READER for tips on coming up with titles that are informative and enticing enough to make readers wish to read on.

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Considering Matters of Design You’ll probably write your report in paragraph form, but think about the information you’re presenting and how you can design and format it to make it as easy as possible for your readers to understand. You might ask yourself these questions: •

What is an appropriate TYPEFACE? Something serious like Times Roman, something traditional like Courier, something else?

•

Would it help your readers if you divided your report into shorter sections and added HEADINGS?

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Is there any information that would be easier to follow in a LIST?

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Could any of your information be summarized in a TABLE?

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Do you have any data that readers would more easily understand in the form of a bar GRAPH, line graph, or pie chart?

•

Would ILLUSTRATIONS — diagrams, photos, drawings, and so on — help you explain anything in your report?

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Getting Response and Revising

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Do the TITLE and opening sentences get readers’ interest? If not, how might they do so?

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What information does this text provide, and for what PURPOSE?

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Does the introduction explain why this information is being presented? Does it place the topic in a larger context?

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Are all key terms defined?

•

Do you have any questions? Is more information or explanation needed? Where might an example help you understand something?

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Is any information presented VISUALLY, with a chart, graph, table, drawing, or photograph? If so, is it clear how these illustrations relate to the larger text? Is there any text that would be more easily understood if it were presented visually?

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Does the organization help make sense of the information? Does the text include description, comparison, or any other writing STRATEGIES? Does the topic or rhetorical situation call for any particular strategies?

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If the report cites any sources, are they QUOTED, PARAPHRASED, or SUMMARIZED effectively (and with appropriate DOCUMENTATION)?

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Does the report END in a satisfying way? What are readers left thinking?

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These questions should identify aspects on your report you need to work on. When it’s time to REVISE, make sure your report appeals to your audience and achieves your purpose as successfully as possible.

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Editing and Proofreading

•

Check your use of key terms. Repeating key words is acceptable in reports; synonyms for unfamiliar words may confuse readers while the repetition of key words or the use of clearly identified PRONOUNS can be genuinely helpful.

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Readers equate correctness with the writer’s competence. Once you’ve revised your draft, follow these guidelines for EDITING a report:

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Check your use of TRANSITIONS to be sure you have them where you need them.

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If you have included HEADINGS, make sure they’re parallel in structure and consistent in design.

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Make sure that any photos or other ILLUSTRATIONS have captions, that charts and graphs have headings — and that all are referred to in the main text. Have you used white space effectively to separate sections of your report and to highlight graphic elements?

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Check any DOCUMENTATION to see that it follows the appropriate style without mistakes.

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PROOFREAD

and spell-check your report carefully.

Taking Stock of Your Work •

How well did you convey the information? Is it complete enough for your audience’s needs?

•

What strategies did you rely on, and how did they help you achieve your purpose?

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•

How well did you organize the report?

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How did you go about researching the information for this piece?

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How did you go about drafting this piece?

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Did you use any tables, graphs, diagrams, photographs, illustrations, or other graphics effectively?

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How did others’ responses influence your writing?

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What did you do especially well?

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What could still be improved?

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What would you do differently next time?

IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See Chapter 28 if you are required to submit your report in a writing PORTFOLIO. See also Chapter 10 on ABSTRACTS if your report requires one; Chapter 13 on LAB REPORTS, a kind of report written in the sciences; and Chapter 16 on PROFILES, a report based on firsthand research.

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Arguing a Position

Everything we say or do presents some kind of argument, takes some kind of position. Often we take overt positions: “Everyone in the United States is entitled to affordable health care.” “The university needs to offer more language courses.” “Sean Combs shouldn’t have gone into acting.” Some scholars claim that everything makes some kind of argument, from yellow ribbons that honor U.S. troops to a yellow smiley face, which might be said to argue for a good day. In college course work, you are constantly called on to argue positions: in an English class, you may argue for a certain interpretation of a poem; in a business course, you may argue for the merits of a flat tax; in a linguistics class, you may argue that English should not be made the official language of the United States. All of those positions are arguable — people of goodwill can agree or disagree with them and present reasons and evidence to support their positions. This chapter provides detailed guidelines for writing an essay that argues a position. We’ll begin with three good examples.

GARY TAUBES

What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie? In this text, science writer Gary Taubes argues that the root of the so-called obesity epidemic is our consumption of carbohydrates. It first appeared in the New York Times in 2002. One of the reasonably reliable facts about the obesity epidemic is that it started around the early 1980s. According to Katherine Flegal, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics, the percentage

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of obese Americans stayed relatively constant through the 1960s and 1970s at 13 percent to 14 percent and then shot up by 8 percentage points in the 1980s. By the end of that decade, nearly one in four Americans was obese. That steep rise, which is consistent through all segments of American society and which continued unabated through the 1990s, is the singular feature of the epidemic. Any theory that tries to explain obesity in America has to account for that. Meanwhile, overweight children nearly tripled in number. And for the first time, physicians began diagnosing Type 2 diabetes in adolescents. Type 2 diabetes often accompanies obesity. It used to be called adult-onset diabetes and now, for the obvious reason, is not. So how did this happen? The orthodox and ubiquitous explanation is that we live in what Kelly Brownell, a Yale psychologist, has called a “toxic food environment” of cheap fatty food, large portions, pervasive food advertising and sedentary lives. By this theory, we are at the Pavlovian mercy of the food industry, which spends nearly $10 billion a year advertising unwholesome junk food and fast food. And because these foods, especially fast food, are so filled with fat, they are both irresistible and uniquely fattening. On top of this, so the theory goes, our modern society has successfully eliminated physical activity from our daily lives. We no longer exercise or walk up stairs, nor do our children bike to school or play outside, because they would prefer to play video games and watch television. And because some of us are obviously predisposed to gain weight while others are not, this explanation also has a genetic component — the thrifty gene. It suggests that storing extra calories as fat was an evolutionary advantage to our Paleolithic ancestors, who had to survive frequent famine. We then inherited these “thrifty” genes, despite their liability in today’s toxic environment. This theory makes perfect sense and plays to our puritanical prejudice that fat, fast food, and television are innately damaging to our humanity. But there are two catches. First, to buy this logic is to accept that the copious negative reinforcement that accompanies obesity — both socially and physically — is easily overcome by the constant bombardment of food advertising and the lure of a supersize bargain meal. And second, as Flegal points out, little data exist to support any of this. Certainly none of it explains what changed so significantly to start the epidemic. Fast-food consumption, for example, continued to grow

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steadily through the 70s and 80s, but it did not take a sudden leap, as obesity did. As far as exercise and physical activity go, there are no reliable data before the mid-80s, according to William Dietz, who runs the division of nutrition and physical activity at the Centers for Disease Control; the 1990s data show obesity rates continuing to climb, while exercise activity remained unchanged. This suggests the two have little in common. Dietz also acknowledged that a culture of physical exercise began in the United States in the 70s — the “leisure exercise mania,” as Robert Levy, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, described it in 1981 — and has continued through the present day. As for the thrifty gene, it provides the kind of evolutionary rationale for human behavior that scientists find comforting but that simply cannot be tested. In other words, if we were living through an anorexia epidemic, the experts would be discussing the equally untestable “spendthrift gene” theory, touting evolutionary advantages of losing weight effortlessly. An overweight hom*o erectus, they’d say, would have been easy prey for predators. It is also undeniable, note students of Endocrinology 101 [the science behind the idea that carbohydrates cause obesity], that mankind never evolved to eat a diet high in starches or sugars. “Grain products and concentrated sugars were essentially absent from human nutrition until the invention of agriculture,” Ludwig says, “which was only 10,000 years ago.” This is discussed frequently in the anthropology texts but is mostly absent from the obesity literature, with the prominent exception of the low-carbohydrate-diet books. What’s forgotten in the current controversy is that the low-fat dogma itself is only about 25 years old. Until the late 70s, the accepted wisdom was that fat and protein protected against overeating by making you sated, and that carbohydrates made you fat. In The Physiology of Taste, for instance, an 1825 discourse considered among the most famous books ever written about food, the French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin says that he could easily identify the causes of obesity after 30 years of listening to one “stout party” after another proclaiming the joys of bread, rice, and (from a “particularly stout party”) potatoes. Brillat-Savarin describes the roots of obesity as a natural predisposition conjuncted with the “floury and feculent substances

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which man makes the prime ingredients of his daily nourishment.” He added that the effects of this fecula — i.e., “potatoes, grain, or any kind of flour” — were seen sooner when sugar was added to the diet. This is what my mother taught me 40 years ago, backed up by the vague observation that Italians tended toward corpulence because they ate so much pasta. This observation was actually documented by Ancel Keys, a University of Minnesota physician who noted that fats “have good staying power,” by which he meant they are slow to be digested and so lead to satiation, and that Italians were among the heaviest populations he had studied. According to Keys, the Neopolitans, for instance, ate only a little lean meat once or twice a week, but ate bread and pasta every day for lunch and dinner. “There was no evidence of nutritional deficiency,” he wrote, “but the working-class women were fat.” By the 70s, you could still find articles in the journals describing high rates of obesity in Africa and the Caribbean where diets contained almost exclusively carbohydrates. The common thinking, wrote a former director of the Nutrition Division of the United Nations, was that the ideal diet, one that prevented obesity, snacking, and excessive sugar consumption, was a diet “with plenty of eggs, beef, mutton, chicken, butter, and well-cooked vegetables.” This was the identical prescription Brillat-Savarin put forth in 1825. Few experts now deny that the low-fat message is radically oversimplified. If nothing else, it effectively ignores the fact that unsaturated fats, like olive oil, are relatively good for you: they tend to elevate your good cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (H.D.L.), and lower your bad cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (L.D.L.), at least in comparison to the effect of carbohydrates. While higher L.D.L. raises your heartdisease risk, higher H.D.L. reduces it. What this means is that even saturated fats — a k a, the bad fats — are not nearly as deleterious as you would think. True, they will elevate your bad cholesterol, but they will also elevate your good cholesterol. In other words, it’s a virtual wash. As Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, explained to me, you will gain little to no health benefit by giving up milk, butter, and cheese and eating bagels instead. But it gets even weirder than that. Foods considered more or less deadly under the low-fat dogma turn out to be comparatively benign

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if you actually look at their fat content. More than two-thirds of the fat in a porterhouse steak, for instance, will definitively improve your cholesterol profile (at least in comparison with the baked potato next to it); it’s true that the remainder will raise your L.D.L., the bad stuff, but it will also boost your H.D.L. The same is true for lard. If you work out the numbers, you come to the surreal conclusion that you can eat lard straight from the can and conceivably reduce your risk of heart disease. . . . After 20 years steeped in a low-fat paradigm, I find it hard to see the nutritional world any other way. I have learned that low-fat diets fail in clinical trials and in real life, and they certainly have failed in my life. I have read the papers suggesting that 20 years of low-fat recommendations have not managed to lower the incidence of heart disease in this country, and may have led instead to the steep increase in obesity and Type 2 diabetes. I have interviewed researchers whose computer models have calculated that cutting back on the saturated fats in my diet to the levels recommended by the American Heart Association would not add more than a few months to my life, if that. I have even lost considerable weight with relative ease by giving up carbohydrates on my test diet, and yet I can look down at my eggs and sausage and still imagine the imminent onset of heart disease and obesity, the latter assuredly to be caused by some biz

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