Class, Thurs, 10/20

Planning Your Second Essay

Thoughts on e2 plans from Joe

Try to move from specific to general, not vice versa. Make your cases and examples the center of your essay, and use your research to understand them better. That is, don’t write about “repairing communities after natural disasters”; write instead about the effects of Hurricane Matthew on North Carolina and how this case shows some of the challenges of responding to natural disaters.

Groups

• Read aloud the sections of your plans in which you describe the project of repair you intend to write about. As a group, come up with a new source for each writer that they can use in their essay. Try to come up with specific examples and cases—versions of Willie, Fred, or Louise. At the end of this discussion each of you should be able to write a convincing version of the following fastwrite.

Fastwrite

• Think of yourself as offering a story about a project of repair in e2d1. Who is the main character in this story? Who are the supporting characters? Where will you get information about them? What is the principal setting of your story? Where will you get information about it?  Please email me your response.

Documenting Sources

The point is to allow your readers to easily access the texts you are writing about. The key information they need to do so responds to four basic questions.

Who? When? What? Where?

Chicago Style of Documentation [pdf]

To Do

1. Mon, 10/24, 4:00 pm: Post e2d1, a 1,000-word description of a project of repair, to your group Google Drive folder. Title your document “lastname e2d1.docx”
2. Tues, 10/25, class: Read your group members’ e2d1s before class. I will ask each group to choose one piece to be presented to and discussed by the the class a a whole on Thursday.
3. Tues, 10/25, class: Read the first three essays (Dawson, DiUbialdi, McNulty) in the 2016 issue of Arak Journal. Be read to talk about (a) how the writer describes a particular topic they want to write about, and (b) the stance they take toward that topic.

Class, Tues, 10/11

Essay Two

Project, Materials, Adding to Spelman

Trade drafts with a partner. Read through the essay. When you are done, write the author a note in which you complete the following three sentences:

• “Your project in this essay is to . . .”
• “The materials you work with include . . .”
• “You add to Spelman’s ideas about repair by . . .”

When you have completed your note, go back to the essay and mark those moments in the text where the author (a) articulates her project in the essay, and (b) states what she is adding to Spelman’s ideas. If you can’t identify those moments in the text, point to where you would expect to find them.

Copy Editing (Lite)

Go back through the essay you’re working once more, this time with a pen in your hand. Circle or draw a squiggly line by

• Typos, misspellings, repeated words, missing words
• Things that look odd (extra white space, changes in font, ¶s that seem too long, etc.)

Make sure that

• All quotations have a page reference
• The titles of books, movies, magazines, and websites are italicized

Formatting

• Document: 1.25″ margins, different first page
• Paratext: title info and running head, sans serif
• ¶s: 0.25 or 0.5 indent, 1.5 spacing, 6 points between ¶s, serif
• References: alphabetical by author, hanging indent, serif

Writing Geek

Pilcrow

Pilcrow

¶ (option + 7): Paragraph break (now marked by an indent or extra space between lines). See Wichary, “First In, First Out”.

To Do

Our next class on Thurs, 10/13, will meet in 116A Morris Library. Bring your UD One card so you can get into the library!

1. Wed, 10/12, 4:00 pm: Email me the final draft of your first essay, saved as a Microsoft Word document. Name your document: <lastname e1.docx>.
2. Thurs, 10/13, class: Have two good ideas for a “project of repair” that you’d like to write about in your second essay. Be ready to spend time in class locating texts that you might discuss in your writing.