English 5365 Week Eleven Post

Topic: What is the dark side of the Web, and how does it play into your paper about style and technology?

According to Baron, the dark side of the web is "a space where pedophiles, misogynists, racists, anti-Semites, white supremacists, skinheads, holocaust deniers, Ku Klux Klan members, survivalists, violent opponents of abortion, and antigovernment militias gather to promote their particular brands of evil" (pp 207-208). We can add Internet fraud, child pornography, and a host of other things to that list. While Internet fraud and child pornography are subject to laws that enact punishments because they are illegal, many other things on that list are protected by the First Amendment. Baron does not advocate banning these sites. If he did, it would be a bit hypocritical since he adds censorship of the web by governments, such as China, to his description of the dark side of the web. We cannot censor it, but we should be aware of how to combat its influences on our children, by education and rational discussion.

Unless one counts someone hacking into a publisher's system and stealing unpublished work or authors assuming that anything downloaded from the web in the in the public domain, the dark side of the web had little impact on my job or even my daily life. I know to delete phishing e-mails and I have virus and spam filters. My employer has an extremely annoying program to block dangerous sites that will more often than not block useful sites as well. It once blocked Merriam-Webster's site. Imagine how annoyed an office full of technical editors were to find that they could not access the "approved" dictionary for our business.

I may need to install some kind of blocking software at home because my 6 year-old stepson stumbled onto some sites that he should not have. I asked him, "What are you looking at?" He says, with a panicked, confused expression, "I don't know!"

I also don't yet see the dark side of the web playing into my paper; though, that may change as I get farther in my research and exploration.

English 5365 Week 9/10 Blog Post

I have been struggling between two topics for my paper.

The first was a vague idea of the impact of graphics on the text. The easier production of quality graphics should cause authors to chose graphics over words more often than in the past.

The second topic revolves around the improvement in fast communication technologies resulting in more team-authored papers. For this one, I have done some research during the past week. John Hudson published a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives (Vol. 10, issue 3, pp 153-158) titled "Trends in Multi-Authored Papers in Economics." In the Abstract, Hudson notes, "Several decades ago, the overwhelming majority of papers appearing in leading journals of economics had a single author. In 1950, for example, only 6 percent of the papers published in the Journal of Political Economy, and just 8 percent of the papers published in the American Economic Review, were written by more than one author. These figures have changed dramatically. By 1993, the proportion of multi-authored papers in these two journals had risen to 39.6 percent and 54.9 percent, respectively."

In a paper that I wrote in my first class, I looked at changes in the style of writing in papers published in Journal of the American Chemical Society over the last 120 years. I noticed that papers written in the early days of the journal were published by at most one or two authors. Now, I see papers written not only by multiple authors but also by authors from multiple locations. People from different countries collaborate on these works. Imagine how long it would take for authors from St. Jude's Children's Hospital in the U.S. to collaborate with authors in China in the days of paper proofs sent through the mail.

How does this impact style? I would think that it would have to impact style. Different author's within the same country write differently; how can we expect author's from different parts of the same country, let alone different countries to write the same. Yet, we expect team-authored papers to have cohesion and coherence. I believe that authors writing as a team must use a more generic style to achieve cohesion and coherence; if they do not, their papers lack this critical trait and become difficult to read.

Therefore, I will state that the increase speed and convenience of modern communication technology has led to an increase in the number of multi-authored papers with authors from different institution, which in turn should lead to a more generic style or, alternatively, to a lack of coherence and cohesion when the disparate styles are expressed.

English 5365 Week Eight Post

Topic: Think about all you've read in Baron, Lanham, and Williams--as well as the presentations and discussions you've seen. Define style (again). And, list out as many elements of style as you can. Feel free to borrow from peers' ideas in their blogs, too. You might indicate which are hardest for your to see in your own writing.

In my week 2 blog post, I defined style as, "the specific presentation chosen for a particular audience for a specific topic or field of study." My definition still holds up in part, but style overall is more complex in that authors have very specific reasons for the stylistic choices that they make, even if the reason is simply emulating the style most often seen their fields.

Williams does not clearly define style in his book, despite the title. The ten lessons come together to present one ideal of style, but no simple, concrete definition is given. Williams states, "We are ethical writers when we would willingly put ourselves in the place of our readers and experience what they do as they read what we have written" (p. 150). Williams lessons lead us toward a style that complies with his idea of ethical writing.

However, I think that style goes beyond ethical writing. Lawyers and politicians write in a manner that could not be called ethical by the definition given above, yet they still have style. It is a dense, cumbersome, and often painful style, but it is still a style. And, it is the style considered to be appropriate for their field and purpose. The purpose sometimes seems to be to ensure job security by writing in a manner than no one else can understand, but that is beside the point.

Clarity, Brevity, and Sincerity are not always that hallmarks of appropriate style. Lanham writes, "What proves to be really practical in the practical real world is a full and shrewd conception of why people behave as they do. Whether you are trying to sell them an automobile or get them to save electricity, you'll find that appeals to plain purpose seldom do the trick. The really persuasive people have an instinctive grasp of the radical diversity of human motives, of the ever-changing mixture of purpose, game, and play" (p. 8).

Style then is the specific presentation, chosen by the author to serve his or her chosen purpose, for a specific audience. That purpose could be the ethical writing imagined by Williams or it could be to confuse, impress, copy, etc.

Elements of style include: elegance, balance, symmetry, rhythm, shape, cohesion, coherence, emphasis, concision, correctness or grammar, punctuation, word choice, voice, point of view, actors/characters/actions, opacity, transparency, and audience awareness. I often find myself focusing on concision to the detriment of other parts. I find that, if I focus too hard on any of them, I cannot write at all.

English 5365 Week Seven Post

Topic: Baron provides examples of "a better pencil." What does he mean by the concept, and how might that impact style? Consider what your approach to your final course paper might be and how Baron's ideas relate to it.


Baron describes clay tablets, styluses, quills, pencils, steel-tipped pens, typewriters, computers, etc., as writing technologies. I would include the alphabet itself as a writing technology. At some point in time, it was created to allow us to write down words that had only previously been spoken. What then, is a better pencil?

I believe that Baron's better pencil is the result of our continual interest in speeding up the production and dissemination of the written word. The quill pen was leaps ahead of the clay tablet and stylus. Pointing quills and compounding inks had to be easier than pressing characters into wet clay and allowing it to dry. The pencil was a vast leap from the quill pen and ink pot providing portability that had not previously been available.

Recently, I watched PBS's version of Jane Austen's Persuasion. In the opening act, we see a young woman running through the house scribbling things on a bit of paper. Then we see her stop by a servant standing in the hallway to dip the pen into the pot of ink on the servant's little silver tray. This was an interesting example of the lack of portability of pen and ink. Imagine carrying that ink pot around. The pencil would be a vast improvement.

From pencils, we moved through assorted varieties of pens and even to pencils with refillable leads. We also started using typewriters, word processor, and computers. Today, we can sit outside and type on a laptop computer if we have one, where once upon a time, it was not even convenient to write outside because of the tribulations of quill and ink pot.