For Monday 8:30

Hello all,

Today we started our day with a little exercise about blue and yellow people to find out our opinions of others. Themes from this discussion connected to Professor Ryan's exploration of the "The Ordinary World" and the "Call to Adventure." Prof. Ryan discussed the importance of titles and how they communicate with the audience. Sarah suggested that she was motivated by a book titled _You Must Steal this Book_. Check out this site http://blog.myfinebooks.com/2007/03/worst_titles_ev.html for some interesting book titles.

Professor Ryan also explored ideas of the opening images and ideas which Sharon connected to the quality of the story. The discussion was then guided to an exploration of identification with the hero or the connection of the audience to the hero equally. Matt suggested that the _Wizard of Oz_ examples really assisted with understanding the text's ideas.

We then shifted to thinking about writing in relation to our drafts. We listed a few areas where this project differs from other writing situations in our past, and we established one area that we felt we still needed to work on as we move to the final stages of revision and into editing. Reflecting on the process of writing is a very important stage of writing and writing well. You should always attempt to spend a few moments after writing to think and to reflect on the writing situation. This type of reflection helps you to create a personal writing style and to continue improving your writing.

As the class continued, we shifted to discussing style and conventions in relation to academic writing. Remember, you need to know how to "use" proper style and conventions to communicate to your readers in an appropriate fashion. Don't get stuck on memorizing the rules; instead, focus on understanding the usage and application of style/conventions. Here are some of the overviews from class with links to help clarify usage.

*Punctuation-http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/punct.html
We discussed the comma, the semi-colon, the colon, and the period.
Remember-punctuation are just the instructions you give your reader for understanding the organization of the text and the text's ideas.

*Sentence Structure-http://www.towson.edu/ows/sentencestruct.htm
Remember, variety is the spice of life and is also the spice of good texts.

*Style-http://www.bartleby.com/141/
Strunk and White---One of the best sources for learning and using style. Check it out...Lots of good stuff in the text.

Remember, you need to make sure that I have access to your latest revision, as I will be making comments today and tomorrow to help you as you work to revise and to edit for the polished draft submission on Friday.

For Weds.

Read: Book 1 Kafka Metamorphosis

Write: Work on revision and editing of your drafts

Do: Make sure that I have access to your revised draft.

Take care, and thanks,

Prof. Kat