Editing: Parallels and How They Work For Us When We Get Them To Work

Parallel Structure (Rules for Writers, 116-119)

As the OWL website clarifies, a parallelism is when you have a list or multiple ideas that are presented in the same pattern, same basic syntactical structure.

Here are a few things to consider about your sentences that have lists (or could use a list) or that present multiple ideas:

• verb forms should match (especially in a list)
• clauses should have matching word patterns
• correlative expressions also need to be edited (check the link)

Furthermore, Towson University up in Baltimore has a great breakdown for how to identify and work on parallel structure. 

How can knowing and working on parallel structure help me out?!?

• A strong parallel made within a thesis statement can outline your entire essay body.

• Besides using the structure for thesis statements, the technique is good to use for:

•  outlining multiple reasons or examples within a body paragraph
• reiterating in a conclusion the points made in an essay (especially if you didn't use the same structure in the introduction/thesis)

• Example 1: Being an effective boss includes keeping cool and  solving in-house problems when there are issues between employees.

• Example 2: One's spirituality can be defined through religious beliefs, expressed through artistic views, and nurtured through daily interactions.

• Notice how the verbs match in form, and the objects have the same pattern

• Example 3: Grams' favorite arugula farro rissto can be made in three easy stages: dicing up the tomato and herbs, cooking the farro down in broth, and adding arugula and lemon mixture before serving.  (Each of these stages has steps within to cover, and each stage represents a body paragraph.)

Grammar Aside, How Does Effective Parallelism Impact My Writing?

• You can organize your main idea(s) in a sentence list that gives you directions for each paragraph to follow. Organization!!!

• You can order ideas in a list that emphasizes a certain priority to the list. Which idea is most important or strongest?

• As RR shows in Chapter 14, when you order sentences and you order parallel actions/images, that order impacts understanding. 

"If" and When We Take the Final

For your final, you are going to write an essay centered around the Rudyard Kipling Poem "If--." Over the next few classes, we will break the poem down from different angles, looking at different poetry elements, as well as discussing the applicable actions and themes presented in the poem.


 Before I go through elements with you, let's read "Reading Poems: 20 Strategies" as class.

Layers of Poetry | Word Choice

1. Denotation: the dictionary meaning a word holds; its surface meaning

2. Connotation: extra meaning a word carries, or “suggests”; the meaning may be cultural, thematically related to rest of poem’s content. Also, a word or phrase may depend on reader understanding alternate meanings in dictionary, sound-relations to other words (insure/ensure), context of usage, & other credible connections of the words to the rest of the text. 

• Writers use many figures of speech: they rely on a reader getting (or working to understand) the connotative values of their word choice.   (Look these terms up for further comprehension!)

• Imagery: visual thing, concrete, like a picture or sculpture--you can see thing being described (whether in action or stationary). Images can be literally within the poem or the speaker's own figure of speech (see this definition)
• 
  
• Symbol: an image that is both the literal and figurative thing.
• An eagle in a poem is an eagle, but its usage may also represent other things, like 
• 
  
• Idiom: an expression whose meaning doesn't logically apply to its parts of speech, but has come to have a particular usage.

• "not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as kick the bucket or hangone's head, or from the general grammatical rules of a language, asthe table round for the round table, and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics." (Dictionary.com)

• Personification: giving human qualities to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.
• 
  
• Allusions: words in a piece that refer to people, places, historical events, literary works, works of art, etc.  For instance, what may a "bald eagle" refer to?
• 
  
• Metaphor: comparing a thing to another thing that it is normally unassociated with. Key to seeing: "____ is ______."
• 
  
• Similes: comparing specific qualities of a thing to an unlike thing, using "like" or "as."

• Hyperbole: a gross exaggeration to make a point (see "To His Coy Mistress").
• 
  
• & many more
• 
  

3. Precision versus Accuracy: Why a Write Chooses Words From Synonyms

• Accurate word=meets denotative meaning
• Precise word= connotations, and also situational à slice: knife, not slice: ax    (If word doesn’t fit the situation in a published piece – we should look into why they’ve used an imprecise word.)

• Writers, especially many poets, seek out the best word possible, based on a word’s accuracy and precision. 
• *Precision may also be based off of rhyme scheme, too. 
• Or off of other sound qualities, which we will cover next week. 

HW for Thursday, 11/6

Read Chapter 14 of Rules for Writers. Read and answer, too, the Breaking Down Metaphor handout available in the files section of our MyMC course page. 

Continue working on your concision issues in your Essays 1, 2 and Midterm. 

Editing: Working on Concision & Emphasizing Idea

Go through your Midterm Essay--and if you don't have it, then choose one of your other Essays 1, 2 or, as a last resort, 3--and work on improving each sentence with:

1. Concise in phrases and words (cutting out wordiness)

2. Most effective ordering of ideas (coordination and subordination)


This means you better:

1. Start with one paragraph. Separate each sentence from its paragraph form. List them like lines in a poem:

Sentence one on its own line

Sentence two on its own line

Sentence three on its own line

2. Use the concision handout to look for different wordiness issues.

3. Additionally, after fixing each sentence separately, work on combining sentences IF two sentences are in need of a clearer relationship.

• Use the coordination and subordination techniques/fixing run-on techniques. Chapter 14 in Rules for Writers demonstrates ways for reorganizing sentences to emphasize key eyes, which further helps with concision. 

HW for Tuesday, Nov. 4:

1. Complete Essay 3 and hand in your typed draft. Seriously, do it. Stop being late!

• Attach all pre-writing strategies to the back of the draft (essay on top).

2. For your Midterm revision: continue reading We, the Drowned while using the Organizing Character chart for your own idea organization. 

3. Read Rules for Writers chapter 16 on Wordy Sentence (156-161). We will review a handout on Tuesday.

Essay 3: Outline One Body Paragraph, Then...

Again, before trying to answer everything in essay or in paragraphs, focus on each smaller part that an outline has. In other words, FOLLOW DIRECTIONS and don't jump ahead.


Open up a new Word Document. Put your name at the top left hand side. Label this Essay 3 Body Paragraph Outline. Then go step by step in answering each of the questions. (Don't waste time rewriting these questions, just place the answers in your outline.)


II.  Body Paragraphs

A. Topic Sentence Claim (answer the question to get the claim):  What is one illogical belief/stereotype against your subject group, and what is the biggest reason the belief is illogical?  [use sentence combining techniques to answer both what and why]

Answer:



1. What is further reason that develops from, or relates to, that main reason? (answer in one sentence)

Answer:

• Who/what is an example that fits your reason? Explain how the example fits.
• Answer:

2. What is another reason that your topic sentence claim is valid? (answer in one sentence)

Answer:

• Who/what is an example that fits your reason? Explain how the example fits.
• Answer:

Reverse Outline

Pull out the thesis statement and subtopics from your from your Midterm or Midterm revised introduction.

I.  Introduction:

A. Thesis Statement:

1. Subtopic claim 1:

2. Subtopic claim 2:

3. Subtopic claim 3:


After you outline these points, you are going to work on making them more coherent, more specific, more concise, and more insightful. We are going to critique these as a class, on the overhead, so that we can go through different, directly relevant rhetorical strategies in order to improve these sentences (ideas) based on their individual issues.