Chapter 16-Writing with Style

Chapter 16 teaches us how to write with style. Understanding your writing situation is key to having good style. Some ways you can write with style are by writing concisely. If your writing is to difficult to understand your readers won't be interested and get frustrated and stop reading.  Make sure to write clearly and most of the time the shorter the better. Some ways to do this are things like getting rid of words that you don't actually need such as really and sort of. Also you want to get rid of little phrases that are also unneeded such as it goes without saying or it is obvious that. Lastly the chapter suggests to eliminate stock phrases. These are "phrases that you can replace with on or two words" (265). Another way to write with style is to use active and passive voice effectively. These are two different ways you can write a sentence. Active voice specifies a person or thing that they have done. But with passive you are specifying what that action was without saying who did it. The next step to write with style is to adopt a consistent point of view. A point of view comes in 3 types, first person, second person, and third person. Stick with one point of view throughout the entire paper or things will get confusing for you and your reader. The last step to write with style is choosing your words carefully. Think about the formality of your writing and make sure it fits with you as a writer and with the project that's been assigned. Also pay attention to specialized language also known as jargon to make sure you know your readers will understand if you decide to use such language. And lastly, use a variety of words. Things start to get boring when you are repeating yourself over and over again, make it more interesting and spice it up a bit.

The second part to this chapter is teaching us the ways to polish your style. First step you can take is varying your sentence structure. Use a question, a statement, a command, or even an exclamation. You want to have a mix of sentences and structures so your readers stay interested and don't get bored with what they are reading. Another step to take is creating effective transitions. When sentences go from talking to one thing to suddenly changing to a different subject readers can become confused. You can use words such as first, second, however, as a result, etc. The next step is introducing authors effectively. Most people introduce an author by using "The author wrote..." why not use something like "The author expressed the opinion that..." Also try to avoid using sexist language. Even though it may be technically right to use male pronouns when you don't know the gender, go for using plurals to avoid being sexist. The last two steps you can take to polish your style is to consult a handbook and read widely. I think that this chapter will be very helpful in writing my final paper!