Lively Art Of Writing An Essay
Emma Watson
AP Language and Composition
Mrs. Luebbehusen
3 August 2015
The Lively Art of Writing Summer Assignment
Chapter 1 The difference between an opinion and fact is that an opinion is a judgement made by a person on a fact, while a fact is a piece of knowledge that can be proven to be true or is accepted as common knowledge. Facts are needed in an essay so that the author can form an opinion on the facts. The subject of an essay is an opinion on a certain fact or set of facts and facts are then needed within the essay itself to bolster the opinion of the author. One opinion is not always as good as another. If a person writes a paper based on something he or she is familiar with, he or she will most likely have enough …show more content…
information to form an opinion. However, that opinion will often be much more generalized than the opinion of a person who is well versed in the subject he or she is writing about. If a person bases his or her opinion off of facts rather than common experiences, he or she is more likely to form an informed opinion.
Even if the writer has adequate background in the subject of American foreign policy, it would not make a good general subject for an essay. The reason it would not make a satisfactory subject is because all essays have to start with an opinion on a topic to serve as the subject of the paper. Otherwise, one would not truly be writing an essay. American foreign policy would make a good overall topic for the essay if the writer has adequate knowledge of the subject, but the writer must take a stance on the topic and form an opinion on it to create a subject for the essay.
Chapter 2 The difference between an opinion and a thesis is that an opinion is just a statement on what a person believes of a certain topic, but a thesis is an opinion that is a single statement that can be argued by the author to be true. To narrow a subject down to a thesis, one must first think about what he or she knows about the subject. Then, the writer needs to ask questions to find a more specific topic that he or she can form an opinion on. When that is done, the writer can look for connections to begin to think about the answer to the question. After that, the writer can ask a question that can be answered by either yes or no to further solidify the answer to the question into an opinion on the matter. Lastly, the writer must limit the thesis to the part that he or she can easily defend. The yes-or-no question allows the writer to take a firm stance on an opinion and, therefore, allows the writer to choose what he or she believes in before qualifying the statement to create a proper thesis.
Chapter 3 A full thesis must include the thesis itself, points in favor of the thesis, and points that go against the thesis. The full thesis is the same as the psychology of argument in that both use the same template of thesis, points against the thesis, and points in favor of the thesis to convince the person reading the writing or the person listening to one side of the argument to consider what the person is saying. The writer should keep the full thesis statement in view when writing the essay so that he or she does not lose sight of the purpose of the essay or forget a fundamental part of the essay when caught up in writing the essay. When a writer is writing an essay, he or she should use the full thesis as a reference to guide his or her writing. However, he or she may expand upon original ideas and can move away from the full thesis slightly.
Chapter Four An introduction paragraph introduces the subject of the essay and narrows it down to the point of the essay as a whole. The introductory paragraph is much like a triangle sitting on its point because the paragraph starts off broadly introducing the subject and, as it goes on, it narrows down into the point of the essay and the actual thesis itself. Opening an introductory paragraph with a broad, general idea allows the author to introduce the subject to the reader without forcing an opinion onto the reader in the beginning of the essay. The psychological principle behind this practice is that the subject is your opinion and a reader is more likely to read on and consider your side of the argument if you introduce the subject and then give your thesis. When writing the first sentence of an introduction, the writer needs to make a general statement about the subject without yet taking a stance on the subject so he or she will have a chance to narrow it down later in the introduction.
Chapter 4 (cont.) The middle section of the paper is where the argument for your thesis lies, therefore making it the driving force of the essay. This middle section is the place for the writer to put all of his or her reasons to persuade the reader to believe the thesis. When the writer is preparing the middle section, he or she can use the full thesis where all of the pros and cons of the thesis are written as a guide to what the middle section needs to be written about. In a short essay, opposition can be handled by making a concession at the beginning of the middle section of the piece and going on to counteract it with a pro and focusing the rest of the essay’s paragraphs on pros. However, if there is more opposition, the writer might find that a longer essay is necessary. In a long essay, more than one concession will need to be made to handle the opposition. Much like in the shorter essay, the middle section needs to start out with a concession followed by a related pro that is more fully developed and obviously outweighs the con. From there, that process can be repeated for the other concession that need to be made. After the concessions are made and are outweighed by the pros, the rest of the paragraphs need to be solely focused on the pros. The writer should make the strongest point last in the argument. He or she should do this so that all of the other paragraphs lead up to that point.
Chapter 4 (cont.) An essay needs a concluding paragraph to tie together all of the parts of the essay and to help to exit the piece in a way that does not seem sudden or abrupt to the reader. It is necessary to look to the introduction to construct the conclusion to make the essay feel completed. First, the writer must repeat the thesis with a few variations to begin the conclusion. From there, the writer should tie in ideas from the introduction to make the reader feel that the essay is complete and has an ending. It is likely that the writer needs to rewrite the introduction before writing the conclusion because, through the process of writing the middle section, new ideas may come up or the essay may take a slightly different direction than the writer initially planned. If so, the writer needs to go back to the introduction, revise it, and then plan the conclusion with the guide of the introduction to ensure that the essay feels complete. The conclusion has a structure like the introduction, but it is reversed. The conclusion starts out narrow with the thesis, gets broader by restating points in the middle section in a way that does not sound directly copied, and, finally, ends with a statement that relates the thesis to a broader background. When the reader reads certain words or phrases in the writer’s conclusion that were in the introduction and middle section, the reader recognizes those tie ins subconsciously and this creates a feeling of the essay being complete. Much like hearing a responding echo, the conclusion is answering the introduction and middle section.
Chapter 5 2. It is important for the writer to learn what not to do in writing so he or she will not become secure in writing with the wrong techniques. For example, in marching band, it is important to know not to halt every time we run through a certain move and stop to check to make sure it is right. If someone new to marching halts every time the band stops while practicing the new sets, when the band runs through all of the moves, the new marcher may have become secure in the habit of stopping at the end of each move making it harder for the marcher to take the next step and keep going. 3. While writing, the two rules that the writer is to observe are do not use first person and do not use the word “there”.
4. The use of the first person oftens weakens a person’s statement because it makes the statement sound defensive and weak, whereas not using the first person to state an opinion makes the opinion sound more forceful and authoritative. Examples of this would be if a customer in a store asks an employee, “Where are the towels?” and the employee answers with, “I think the towels are this way.” The employee’s way of stating his or her opinion sounds unsure and weak and the employee would sound much more sure of his or herself if he or she said, “The towels are this way.” Another example of how first person can weaken an opinion is if a student, rather than answering a question with, “The answer is…”, answers with, “I think the answer is…” Both statements are opinions, but the student sounds more sure of the answer if it is not preceded by the first person.
6. When the word “there” is eliminated, it forces writers to use more effective verbs as it is often paired with “was” making for a weak verb phrase. When “there was” is taken out of a sentence, it forces the writer to use more involved verbs with more feeling to express what happened.
Chapter 6 The structure of the middle section is much like blocks. Unlike the introduction paragraph, the middle section does not start out generally and get more precise. It is just an area to uniformly represent the points to support your thesis. The same is true in comparing the middle section with the conclusion but in reverse. While the conclusion starts with the thesis and gets broader, the middle section just supports the thesis and provides material to pull together in the conclusion. The main purpose of paragraphing is to separate ideas in the middle section. Each idea should have its own paragraph to develop independently of the other ideas. When learning how to write an essay, students are advised to think in “big’ paragraphs to encourage the students to fully develop one idea before moving onto the next. After using this method for a while, the student will then learn when it is needed to use bigger paragraphs and when it would be more effective to use smaller paragraphs. The structure of a paragraph is much like the structure of the essay in that it has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Each paragraph starts out with a topic sentence, has a middle that lists points to support the topic sentence, and has a conclusion sentence that pulls the paragraph together. The first sentence of the paragraph announces what the paragraph is going to be focusing in on. This sentence is called the topic sentence because it sets in place the topic for the rest of the paragraph. The purpose the middle section of the paragraph fulfills is to convey the point in the topic sentence and expound upon it. When the writer uses the three-part paragraph, the “one point, one paragraph” rule will already be in use. When the writer uses a topic sentence, expounds upon that topic, and comes to a conclusion there is only one point to that paragraph. The structure of an essay is similar to the structure of conversation in that, both when speaking and writing, a person naturally starts with a topic sentence to tell the person listening or reading what the following information is going to be about. An example of this in a conversation would be, “You would never believe how much summer work I have to do!” After the topic is stated in the topic sentence, the writer or speaker will explain and illustrate that point. The example for this would be the speaker saying, “I have to read two books, write an essay, answer questions, fill out a packet, and memorize polyatomic ions.” The speaker or writer will conclude the thought with a conclusion sentence. The example for this conversation would be, “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to finish all of the work before the summer is over!” While there are similarities in the structure of a conversation and an essay, in an essay the writer will need to be slightly more formal and will have to abstain from using slang. The “picture-frame paragraph” is a way of writing the paragraph that uses specific details to create a picture in the reader’s mind.
The “picture-frame paragraph”, while a different way of looking at the construction of a paragraph, still uses the same basic paragraph structure. A “picture-frame” paragraph in an argumentative essay differs from one that is primarily descriptive in that it will have to lean more heavily on concrete facts and has to tell why instead of just using descriptions.
Chapter 7 A paragraph, while it can stand alone, still needs to be linked to the other paragraphs because it is only one part of the subject of the essay. The essay is like a train in that the introduction states, or announces, the topic much like a locomotive. Each paragraph in the middle section is like a freight car in that each pulls its own weight by illustrating a topic and having a conclusion, but it is also connected to the other cars, or paragraphs. The conclusion is the caboose in that it pulls everything together and gives a view of the completed idea. Standard devices, paragraph hooks, and a combination of the two are the three types of transitions that can be used in an …show more content…
essay. Certain words or phrases are used as standard devices such as in fact, nevertheless, and no doubt. The best position for however in a sentence is in the middle between commas to aide the flow of the idea. A tucked-in however must be punctuated with a comma on either side.
Chapter 8 I active voice, the subject is doing something, while in passive voice , the subject is having something done to it. An example of active voice is, “The girl danced with the boy all night. This sentence in passive voice is, “The girl was dancing with the boy all night.” 6. A writer can apply the Chinese proverb, “One picture is worth more than ten thousand words,” to writing in that, when a subject does something, it is much stronger than adding words and having something done to a subject.
Chapter 9 3. Written sentences should sound like natural speech, but cannot be natural speech as natural speech is accompanied with facial expressions, fluctuations in tone, hand movements, etc. Written speech must be embellished to match the tone of natural speech. 4. The principle of rhythm in writing is variation of sentence length. 9. To add details to a verb, the writer just needs to add how or when it happens to another part of the sentence to add more weight to it.
Chapter 10 The best way for a writer to learn parallel structure is by listening to
it. Parallelism is the “repetition of structure” in that a certain part of the sequence in the sentence is repeated as the sentence goes on. Such as the past tense in, “... had started, had progressed, and had finished.” An example of a balanced sentence is, “To dance is one thing; to feel the music is another.”
Chapter 11 4. She was as cool and graceful as a very elegant cat. She leaped from foot to foot with the calm look of accomplishment in her eyes. The ballerina twirled with a sureness that her tail would balance her through the whirlwind of movement. Her eyes took in the stage in a few glances and told her all she needed to know. As the last notes of the music faded out, she began to stalk them, gliding across the stage. When the final not struck, the ballerina pounced upon the finishing move and landed perfectly balanced, purring contentedly as the audience erupted into applause. 5. Ecstatic, Tommy leaped from his seat at the dinner table after hearing the mailman drop off the mail. He tears down the hallway in anticipation of the piece of mail arriving for him from Uncle Roy. Roy came into a fortune when Tommy’s Grandpa Alex died and Alex had since then dreamed of going to live in a wealth alongside his uncle. As he plucked the postcard from the mail, it seemed as if all of his great expectations were dashed.
Chapter 12 The title of the chapter, “Odds and Ends and Means”, is a play on words relevant to the chapter’s content in that it leaves out the commas and the conjunction “and” needed to make the phrase grammatically correct. This directly relates to the chapter’s subject of leaving small things out of your writing and how small mistakes can add up. 4. “Fabulous” is a poor word to use in writing because it is overused. 9. A trite expression is one that is overused and have become tiresome for readers. Examples of some are violence is never the answer and bury the hatchet.
Chapter 13 For an essay about a personal experience, the writer can come up with the thesis by telling a story. The development of this thesis differs from the development of a thesis for an argumentative essay in that the writer starts with a story instead of a question based off of the topic.
A colorful description of a city scene using first person throughout the scene is an essay because essays can be anecdotal and it could be a story of a time a person went through the city. The use of the word “I” is largely paradoxical because the writer is not writing about his or herself, rather, the writer is writing about a memory. “I” would not be paradoxical in the thesis where the writer is stating an opinion. A “moral tag” is put on the end of an essay to label the moral of the story. On an essay of racial prejudice, the moral tag might be, “... the experience taught me to never judge a person by the color of his or her skin.”
AP Language and Composition
Mrs. Luebbehusen
3 August 2015
The Lively Art of Writing Summer Assignment
Chapter 1 The difference between an opinion and fact is that an opinion is a judgement made by a person on a fact, while a fact is a piece of knowledge that can be proven to be true or is accepted as common knowledge. Facts are needed in an essay so that the author can form an opinion on the facts. The subject of an essay is an opinion on a certain fact or set of facts and facts are then needed within the essay itself to bolster the opinion of the author. One opinion is not always as good as another. If a person writes a paper based on something he or she is familiar with, he or she will most likely have enough …show more content…
information to form an opinion. However, that opinion will often be much more generalized than the opinion of a person who is well versed in the subject he or she is writing about. If a person bases his or her opinion off of facts rather than common experiences, he or she is more likely to form an informed opinion.
Even if the writer has adequate background in the subject of American foreign policy, it would not make a good general subject for an essay. The reason it would not make a satisfactory subject is because all essays have to start with an opinion on a topic to serve as the subject of the paper. Otherwise, one would not truly be writing an essay. American foreign policy would make a good overall topic for the essay if the writer has adequate knowledge of the subject, but the writer must take a stance on the topic and form an opinion on it to create a subject for the essay.
Chapter 2 The difference between an opinion and a thesis is that an opinion is just a statement on what a person believes of a certain topic, but a thesis is an opinion that is a single statement that can be argued by the author to be true. To narrow a subject down to a thesis, one must first think about what he or she knows about the subject. Then, the writer needs to ask questions to find a more specific topic that he or she can form an opinion on. When that is done, the writer can look for connections to begin to think about the answer to the question. After that, the writer can ask a question that can be answered by either yes or no to further solidify the answer to the question into an opinion on the matter. Lastly, the writer must limit the thesis to the part that he or she can easily defend. The yes-or-no question allows the writer to take a firm stance on an opinion and, therefore, allows the writer to choose what he or she believes in before qualifying the statement to create a proper thesis.
Chapter 3 A full thesis must include the thesis itself, points in favor of the thesis, and points that go against the thesis. The full thesis is the same as the psychology of argument in that both use the same template of thesis, points against the thesis, and points in favor of the thesis to convince the person reading the writing or the person listening to one side of the argument to consider what the person is saying. The writer should keep the full thesis statement in view when writing the essay so that he or she does not lose sight of the purpose of the essay or forget a fundamental part of the essay when caught up in writing the essay. When a writer is writing an essay, he or she should use the full thesis as a reference to guide his or her writing. However, he or she may expand upon original ideas and can move away from the full thesis slightly.
Chapter Four An introduction paragraph introduces the subject of the essay and narrows it down to the point of the essay as a whole. The introductory paragraph is much like a triangle sitting on its point because the paragraph starts off broadly introducing the subject and, as it goes on, it narrows down into the point of the essay and the actual thesis itself. Opening an introductory paragraph with a broad, general idea allows the author to introduce the subject to the reader without forcing an opinion onto the reader in the beginning of the essay. The psychological principle behind this practice is that the subject is your opinion and a reader is more likely to read on and consider your side of the argument if you introduce the subject and then give your thesis. When writing the first sentence of an introduction, the writer needs to make a general statement about the subject without yet taking a stance on the subject so he or she will have a chance to narrow it down later in the introduction.
Chapter 4 (cont.) The middle section of the paper is where the argument for your thesis lies, therefore making it the driving force of the essay. This middle section is the place for the writer to put all of his or her reasons to persuade the reader to believe the thesis. When the writer is preparing the middle section, he or she can use the full thesis where all of the pros and cons of the thesis are written as a guide to what the middle section needs to be written about. In a short essay, opposition can be handled by making a concession at the beginning of the middle section of the piece and going on to counteract it with a pro and focusing the rest of the essay’s paragraphs on pros. However, if there is more opposition, the writer might find that a longer essay is necessary. In a long essay, more than one concession will need to be made to handle the opposition. Much like in the shorter essay, the middle section needs to start out with a concession followed by a related pro that is more fully developed and obviously outweighs the con. From there, that process can be repeated for the other concession that need to be made. After the concessions are made and are outweighed by the pros, the rest of the paragraphs need to be solely focused on the pros. The writer should make the strongest point last in the argument. He or she should do this so that all of the other paragraphs lead up to that point.
Chapter 4 (cont.) An essay needs a concluding paragraph to tie together all of the parts of the essay and to help to exit the piece in a way that does not seem sudden or abrupt to the reader. It is necessary to look to the introduction to construct the conclusion to make the essay feel completed. First, the writer must repeat the thesis with a few variations to begin the conclusion. From there, the writer should tie in ideas from the introduction to make the reader feel that the essay is complete and has an ending. It is likely that the writer needs to rewrite the introduction before writing the conclusion because, through the process of writing the middle section, new ideas may come up or the essay may take a slightly different direction than the writer initially planned. If so, the writer needs to go back to the introduction, revise it, and then plan the conclusion with the guide of the introduction to ensure that the essay feels complete. The conclusion has a structure like the introduction, but it is reversed. The conclusion starts out narrow with the thesis, gets broader by restating points in the middle section in a way that does not sound directly copied, and, finally, ends with a statement that relates the thesis to a broader background. When the reader reads certain words or phrases in the writer’s conclusion that were in the introduction and middle section, the reader recognizes those tie ins subconsciously and this creates a feeling of the essay being complete. Much like hearing a responding echo, the conclusion is answering the introduction and middle section.
Chapter 5 2. It is important for the writer to learn what not to do in writing so he or she will not become secure in writing with the wrong techniques. For example, in marching band, it is important to know not to halt every time we run through a certain move and stop to check to make sure it is right. If someone new to marching halts every time the band stops while practicing the new sets, when the band runs through all of the moves, the new marcher may have become secure in the habit of stopping at the end of each move making it harder for the marcher to take the next step and keep going. 3. While writing, the two rules that the writer is to observe are do not use first person and do not use the word “there”.
4. The use of the first person oftens weakens a person’s statement because it makes the statement sound defensive and weak, whereas not using the first person to state an opinion makes the opinion sound more forceful and authoritative. Examples of this would be if a customer in a store asks an employee, “Where are the towels?” and the employee answers with, “I think the towels are this way.” The employee’s way of stating his or her opinion sounds unsure and weak and the employee would sound much more sure of his or herself if he or she said, “The towels are this way.” Another example of how first person can weaken an opinion is if a student, rather than answering a question with, “The answer is…”, answers with, “I think the answer is…” Both statements are opinions, but the student sounds more sure of the answer if it is not preceded by the first person.
6. When the word “there” is eliminated, it forces writers to use more effective verbs as it is often paired with “was” making for a weak verb phrase. When “there was” is taken out of a sentence, it forces the writer to use more involved verbs with more feeling to express what happened.
Chapter 6 The structure of the middle section is much like blocks. Unlike the introduction paragraph, the middle section does not start out generally and get more precise. It is just an area to uniformly represent the points to support your thesis. The same is true in comparing the middle section with the conclusion but in reverse. While the conclusion starts with the thesis and gets broader, the middle section just supports the thesis and provides material to pull together in the conclusion. The main purpose of paragraphing is to separate ideas in the middle section. Each idea should have its own paragraph to develop independently of the other ideas. When learning how to write an essay, students are advised to think in “big’ paragraphs to encourage the students to fully develop one idea before moving onto the next. After using this method for a while, the student will then learn when it is needed to use bigger paragraphs and when it would be more effective to use smaller paragraphs. The structure of a paragraph is much like the structure of the essay in that it has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Each paragraph starts out with a topic sentence, has a middle that lists points to support the topic sentence, and has a conclusion sentence that pulls the paragraph together. The first sentence of the paragraph announces what the paragraph is going to be focusing in on. This sentence is called the topic sentence because it sets in place the topic for the rest of the paragraph. The purpose the middle section of the paragraph fulfills is to convey the point in the topic sentence and expound upon it. When the writer uses the three-part paragraph, the “one point, one paragraph” rule will already be in use. When the writer uses a topic sentence, expounds upon that topic, and comes to a conclusion there is only one point to that paragraph. The structure of an essay is similar to the structure of conversation in that, both when speaking and writing, a person naturally starts with a topic sentence to tell the person listening or reading what the following information is going to be about. An example of this in a conversation would be, “You would never believe how much summer work I have to do!” After the topic is stated in the topic sentence, the writer or speaker will explain and illustrate that point. The example for this would be the speaker saying, “I have to read two books, write an essay, answer questions, fill out a packet, and memorize polyatomic ions.” The speaker or writer will conclude the thought with a conclusion sentence. The example for this conversation would be, “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to finish all of the work before the summer is over!” While there are similarities in the structure of a conversation and an essay, in an essay the writer will need to be slightly more formal and will have to abstain from using slang. The “picture-frame paragraph” is a way of writing the paragraph that uses specific details to create a picture in the reader’s mind.
The “picture-frame paragraph”, while a different way of looking at the construction of a paragraph, still uses the same basic paragraph structure. A “picture-frame” paragraph in an argumentative essay differs from one that is primarily descriptive in that it will have to lean more heavily on concrete facts and has to tell why instead of just using descriptions.
Chapter 7 A paragraph, while it can stand alone, still needs to be linked to the other paragraphs because it is only one part of the subject of the essay. The essay is like a train in that the introduction states, or announces, the topic much like a locomotive. Each paragraph in the middle section is like a freight car in that each pulls its own weight by illustrating a topic and having a conclusion, but it is also connected to the other cars, or paragraphs. The conclusion is the caboose in that it pulls everything together and gives a view of the completed idea. Standard devices, paragraph hooks, and a combination of the two are the three types of transitions that can be used in an …show more content…
essay. Certain words or phrases are used as standard devices such as in fact, nevertheless, and no doubt. The best position for however in a sentence is in the middle between commas to aide the flow of the idea. A tucked-in however must be punctuated with a comma on either side.
Chapter 8 I active voice, the subject is doing something, while in passive voice , the subject is having something done to it. An example of active voice is, “The girl danced with the boy all night. This sentence in passive voice is, “The girl was dancing with the boy all night.” 6. A writer can apply the Chinese proverb, “One picture is worth more than ten thousand words,” to writing in that, when a subject does something, it is much stronger than adding words and having something done to a subject.
Chapter 9 3. Written sentences should sound like natural speech, but cannot be natural speech as natural speech is accompanied with facial expressions, fluctuations in tone, hand movements, etc. Written speech must be embellished to match the tone of natural speech. 4. The principle of rhythm in writing is variation of sentence length. 9. To add details to a verb, the writer just needs to add how or when it happens to another part of the sentence to add more weight to it.
Chapter 10 The best way for a writer to learn parallel structure is by listening to
it. Parallelism is the “repetition of structure” in that a certain part of the sequence in the sentence is repeated as the sentence goes on. Such as the past tense in, “... had started, had progressed, and had finished.” An example of a balanced sentence is, “To dance is one thing; to feel the music is another.”
Chapter 11 4. She was as cool and graceful as a very elegant cat. She leaped from foot to foot with the calm look of accomplishment in her eyes. The ballerina twirled with a sureness that her tail would balance her through the whirlwind of movement. Her eyes took in the stage in a few glances and told her all she needed to know. As the last notes of the music faded out, she began to stalk them, gliding across the stage. When the final not struck, the ballerina pounced upon the finishing move and landed perfectly balanced, purring contentedly as the audience erupted into applause. 5. Ecstatic, Tommy leaped from his seat at the dinner table after hearing the mailman drop off the mail. He tears down the hallway in anticipation of the piece of mail arriving for him from Uncle Roy. Roy came into a fortune when Tommy’s Grandpa Alex died and Alex had since then dreamed of going to live in a wealth alongside his uncle. As he plucked the postcard from the mail, it seemed as if all of his great expectations were dashed.
Chapter 12 The title of the chapter, “Odds and Ends and Means”, is a play on words relevant to the chapter’s content in that it leaves out the commas and the conjunction “and” needed to make the phrase grammatically correct. This directly relates to the chapter’s subject of leaving small things out of your writing and how small mistakes can add up. 4. “Fabulous” is a poor word to use in writing because it is overused. 9. A trite expression is one that is overused and have become tiresome for readers. Examples of some are violence is never the answer and bury the hatchet.
Chapter 13 For an essay about a personal experience, the writer can come up with the thesis by telling a story. The development of this thesis differs from the development of a thesis for an argumentative essay in that the writer starts with a story instead of a question based off of the topic.
A colorful description of a city scene using first person throughout the scene is an essay because essays can be anecdotal and it could be a story of a time a person went through the city. The use of the word “I” is largely paradoxical because the writer is not writing about his or herself, rather, the writer is writing about a memory. “I” would not be paradoxical in the thesis where the writer is stating an opinion. A “moral tag” is put on the end of an essay to label the moral of the story. On an essay of racial prejudice, the moral tag might be, “... the experience taught me to never judge a person by the color of his or her skin.”