Go with the Flow

The two tasks I chose to participate in for the shorter task and longer task are very different, but each for a specific reason.  

For the shorter task I chose an article which needed editing in the spelling and grammar department, because that is my forte, I believe, when it comes to editing. I edited an article about an annual rap competition in Tanzania.  The misspelled words weren’t of any discriminate abundance, but the flow of the article was awful.  After rewording, rearranging, and re-punctuating almost every sentence, I realized how important it is to have “graceful movements” in an article, essay, or any composition in order to bring “order and coherence to writing and…guide the reader from one idea to the next” (Kessler 97).

For the longer task, I chose an article out of the category of articles that needed a stronger lead, because that is my task for our Wikipedia project, so I figured this could only benefit me.  I wrote a lead for an article about the characters of “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide.”  Although it is not as sophisticated or difficult to write about as our topic of “multimodality” is, it was interesting in the lengths it took to write a lead for even a topic as simple as a Nickelodeon television show.  Like the shorter assignment, it was very important that the lead have “cohesion and coherence.”  An important factor in holding a reader’s attention, which is the very purpose of a lead, is to establish familiarity.  The great thing about this lead was that I could “start with characters [from the television show],” so the names automatically “became familiar to the reader” (Williams 39).

Even after I finished Short Assignment #6, I did not know if I could make a connection between the two tasks in my analysis, but the answer was clear: cohesion and flow.  A reader can only make sense and retain their attention of what he or she is reading if they are familiar with what they are reading, which is why it is important to “start with the subject and make that subject the topic of the next sentence” (Williams 44).  Punctuation and arrangement of sentences is important, so an essay, or simply a lead, can avoid being “choppy” and make the reader feel comfortable and familiar with what he or she is reading.  

Works Cited 

Kessler, Lauren, and Duncan McDonald. When Words Collide: A Media Writerʼs Guide to Grammar and Style. Belmont: Wadworth Pub., 1996. Print.

Williams, Joseph Marek., and Gregory Gerard. Colomb. Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace. Boston: Longman, 2012. Print.