This Semester there are a
few grammatical areas I would like to focus on and experiment with.
1. 1. As a writer, my
whole life I have grappled with making my sentences too long. I want to focus
on both making my sentences varying in length as well as shorter in general. I
tend to string my words along like a train with no end. An example might look
like, “The late 19th and early 20th centuries brought about many radical
changes for the American people, reconstruction in the South had ended and the
nation was ushered into an era of relative economic prosperity, this prosperity
was a product of technological advancements, the consolidation of resources and
the rise of social and political movements such as labor unions.” While I feel
that the content of my writing is excellent, my delivery is missing the mark. My
punctuation may also play a role in this, which leads to the second area of my
writing that I would like to mold.
2. 2. I want to
experiment with using more creative punctuation. In class we have talked about
dashes and colons and semi colons, and while I have been taught in earlier
English classes what all of those are, I don’t really know what they are used
for. When I see a sentence that has a dash or a colon in a book that I am
reading, it really grabs my eye and makes the writing so much more intriguing
for me, (the reader). I want to try and get away from just using simple grammar
such as commas and focus on trying to be more elaborate and deliberate with how
I punctuate my sentences. Hopefully, by the end of the semester I will have a
more fluid style of writing that piques my readers interest through the use of grammatical
flourishes.
3. 3. Lastly, I want to
really try and use my pre-existing and vast knowledge of the English vocabulary
to make my writing more stimulating. Just in the last three paragraphs I have
tried to not use words like “tried” and instead use something such as strained.
Not only does it make the thoughts and sentences so much sturdier but it makes
the words flow without the use of connector words. I already have a strong
understanding of the English language and many of its words are never used
because a simpler word will suffice, but why use the word better when describing
something when superior or advantageous drastically improves the quality of my
writing. I think the reason I haven’t done this in the past even though I
already possess the tools to do it, is because I am a lazy writer. I have
become complacent and as a result of that the creativity and quality of my
writing has declined. My papers have begun to look like I don’t care what I am
writing about or who will read it. How can I ask my readers to care about my
writing If I don’t?
