ENGL 106

Originally from Yunjung You

What is a style?

something you have or you dont have

flowery language or ornamentation

about sprinkling in a few adjectives to
make dull sentences more interesting or
colorful

A way of expressing your attitude and
feelings about a topic

The quality of your writing




Best
Style
Topic
Genre
Rhetorical
situation
Original
Seven months after our Spring Break trip to Vail in which a
bunch of us travelled around the front range of the Rockies,
my roommatesfond memories of the trip were enough to ignore
the nagging reality that the trip itself had yet to be fully
paid for.

Clarify what or who the sentence is about

Revised
Seven months after our Spring Break trip to Vail,
my roommates and I still have fond memories of travelling
around the front range of the Rockies, which helps us ignore
the nagging reality that we havent paid for the trip yet.


Original
On Monday morning, the report was completed just in time by
Sheila.



Make the doer the Subject of the Sentence



Revised
On Monday morning, Sheila completed the report just in time.

Original
If the Sandia Mountains ecosystem experiences another drought
like the one observed from 200-2009, black bears will suffer
severely from a lack of available food and water.



Put the subject early in the sentence


Revised
Black bears will suffer severly from lack of available food
and water if the Sandia Mountains ecosystem experiences
another drought like the one from 2000-2009.


Original
The detective is the person who conducted an investigation
into the homicide that happened last night on 4
th
Avenue.


State the action in the verb


Revised
The detective investigated last nights homicide on 4t
Avenue.

Original
This years increase in the success of the basketball team
called the Hokies of Virginia Tech offered a demonstration of
the importance of a coach with a national reputation for the
purposes of recruiting.


Boil down the prepositional phrases


Revised
This years successful Virginia Tech Hokies basketball team
demonstrated the importance of a nationally known coach for
recruiting.



Original
We are demanding important, significant changes to university
policies.


Eliminate Redundancies


Revised
We are demanding significant changes to university policies.

Use sentences that are breathing length

Long vs. Short

Then, how to make it better?

Long sentence shorten

Short sentences - combine with others
Similes
Comparison
Ex) She runs like a deer.

Analogies
Similes at two levels
X is like Y, as A is like B.
Ex) Like police keeping order in a city, white blood
cells patrol your bodys blood-stream controlling
viruses and bacteria that want to do you harm.
Metaphors

Simple metaphor
X is Y.
Ex) My bike is now my car because I cant afford gas
anymore.

Cultural metaphor
Ex) Time is money.
Ex) War on drugs
Shape the way people think about issues
Become so standard
Urges us to think of a subject in a certain way.
[ Individual activity]

Come up with two examples of your own simile or
metaphor one for the right example and one for
something absurd.


[ Group talk ]

Share your work with your group.

Does the simile or metaphor give you any new
insights?

At what point does the simile or metaphor become
far-fetched or absurd?
1. On the internet, find a text that you are
interested in.

2. Then, try to analyze the text in terms of
the style.
Plain style? If not, what is the style like?
Pace: Long vs short sentence?
Tropes: similes, analogies, metaphors

3. Post the original text as well as your
analysis on the Blackboard.