WEEK ONE BLOG ENTRY

(a reminder, in this section, you need to write your 250 word blog entry AND respond to two classmates)

Introduce yourself to the class. You might consider some of the following questions: where are you from? What is your major? 
Why are you taking an online course? 
What is your favorite book? 
What is your favorite food? 
What is the farthest you have traveled from home? 
What did you do over Winter Break? 

Respond to any of these questions or anything else to tell us about yourself.

WEEK ONE READING

(a reminder, you need not write anything here--just read.)

READING 1

THE FOLLOWING IS FROM Orwell's essay, “Politics and the English Language” 

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

READING 2

Twain's Rules of Writing

(FROM MARK TWAIN'S SCATHING ESSAY ON THE LITERARY OFFENSES OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER)

    1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.
2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it.
3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.
4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.
5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.
6. When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.
7. When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a Negro minstrel at the end of it.
8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader by either the author or the people in the tale.
9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausably set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.
10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.
11. The characters in tale be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.
An author should
12. _Say_ what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
14. Eschew surplusage.
15. Not omit necessary details.
16. Avoid slovenliness of form.
17. Use good grammar.
18. Employ a simple, straightforward style.

     Reading 3:

       ELMORE LEONARD'S RULES FOR WRITING:

Never open a book with weather.

 Avoid prologues.

Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.

 Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. 

Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

WEEK ONE WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

(a reminder, you do not have to reply to your classmates in this section. This response to the reading should be about a paragraph.)

What do you think of these writing rules? Does one stand out to you? Why? What are your most important rules of writing?

HOW TO GET STARTED IN THIS COURSE.

This was also emailed to you, but just in case, here it is:

Well, this information will help you get started in English 305. The first thing you should do is to go to the blog for the course: Here it is: http://english305winter2014.blogspot.com

We do not use Blackboard for this course.

You will need to access the blog every week. It is sometimes problematic accessing the blog from an ipad, but almost every other method is fine. You should go to the blog to sign in with your yahoo or google or other account. This should not be difficult for you since you chose to take an online course, but if you have trouble, let me know. Once you are signed in, you can click on the comment box to write your entries. Be sure you are signed in before you comment or you may lose your work.

Each week you will accomplish three tasks on this blog.

You will

1. write a short blog entry and respond to your classmates' entries;

2. read a short selection, and

3. respond to what you have read in a slightly longer writing.

That is the bulk of the work for this course. Each week, then, you will see that there is an entry on the blog titled something like this: WEEK ONE BLOG ENTRY. Or , WEEK ONE READING. Or, WEEK ONE RESPONDING TO WHAT YOU READ.

Each week, you must complete these three tasks by Saturday night at midnight. No responses will be counted after that. Also, to get full credit for this writing, you need to respond to what other classmates have written. Do not leave that part until Saturday night. This blog is supposed to form a class dialogue, so if you find yourselves quickly responding just to get it done, think again! Do this writing and reading throughout the week so that you get full credit and so that your classmates get the full weight of your fabulous ideas.

We have a few essays, but the weekly reading and writing and interacting that you do on the blog is the most important factor to keep up on each week.

We also have two books: Tortilla Curtain and The Tipping Point.  Buy those now.

So, for the first week, go to the blog and read the class information, the graded assignments, and other information that is there. Make sure you sign in and get started.

Welcome to English 305. Happy writing!

Dr. Schmoll