I discovered today that this website is going to be invaluable to me in my Freshmen Comp class. Our first assignment was to read pages 3-30something and write a narrative in the style of Mark Twain. In any case, as I started reading, I realized that what I was "learning" was already things I'd learned here!
The first page discusses subject matter and audience of your writing. I've already learned about this by posting both in Mirth (often) and Books (less often, recently). In Mirth, things are far more loose and the writing is often directed to a younger (or at least goofier
) audience. We learn to play with words, to write with tone, to even use well-placed one liners. In Books, we've learned to write in a way that can prove
davem wrong.
Which brought me to page four of the reading: research.
How many of us have learned the best ways to cite quotations or ideas? Who here learned that if you are quoting your own book, you should supply not just the title, but the page number, and most importantly, the edition? How many of us have reread what inspired us, just to make sure we've got our facts right? Checked up on ourselves with alternate sources?
How many of us have written posts that are either compelling, clever, or at least organized... occasionally for the sole purpose of trying to impress some of the oldsters? I know that I have, and I know that learning how to write a good post in Books is already helping me with writing a good paper in Comp.
And how many of us have learned that the edit button is our best friend?
So though we may be crazy to some... they are the ones that are going to miserably fail their writing, literature, analyzation, public speaking, and philosophy classes.
