Dawkins&Bryson

Dawkins:

Questions for Discussion& Journaling

1. Dawkins seems to be challenging the punctuation rules that are given to us today. The main question that he seems to be wondering is the idea of how commas have such a huge effect on a sentence and how it's structured. The difference of how the different commas set not only how the sentence is structure but the entire tone of the sentence.  

5. Personally I didn't ever realize how punctuation really sets the tone for every sentence, especially when describing,etc. I never realized how important comma placement was, I just kinda forgot and did what I was taught to do. I never realized the importance of where something so small was placed. But it doesn't just stop at comma's, it continues on to the idea of how something like a period and exclamation point can change the entire tone of what you're saying in your writing. 

Applying&Exploring Ideas.

1. 

Dear Mr. Redito,

Even though I did enjoy your Honors American Government class, you gave the most difficult assignment ever. That will forever haunt my life, but seriously. Your rule of not using "is, be, would, were, was, are, and, I" in writing really made me question your sanity. The only explanation for your madness was that this was the type of writing I need to do for writing. Truthfully, It's been 5 weeks in college, I highly doubt as an economic major I will ever need to follow those sickening rules for my future papers. Not only did you make that paper difficult but having certain words in a paper don't make it any less credible. You asked for a research paper, but you completely forgot to make sure students understood the "research" part, as an American Government class that paper was only constricting but 8 pages as well. There is no explanation to your madness, it didn't improve the quality of my writing just my chance of a stroke at an early age. 

Sincerely,

Joy Trinh 

Bryson:

Before You Read

3. Technology has changed many things over the years, from laws to ways of communications. But one of the more noticeable changes that has happened throughout this whole process is the change of english and how we all speak to each other. Typically it's not always considered grammatically correct, from the strange combination of words like "y'all" or "ain't". Sometimes it can be a whole new territory for a generation that has thought of grammar as everything. Personally for me, the change of lingo can be difficult, i often have to rely on urban dictionary to find out the new trends in words. I'm often old fashion when it comes to words, so I don't follow lingo as much as other people my age do. Many new words are "brick", that means 'cold' not something you can build a house with. Another popular word is 'mad', but it usually means "many" not an emotion.

Discussion&Journaling 

1. Bryson is challenging the rules of the english language. He questions the origin and all these rules that we all seem to follow yet don't have an explanation for. Why we use certain words the way we do, and why we consider something incorrect grammatically. He questions the definition of words and the way we use them. The way he challenges these rules is questioning them. He brings up points on how english follows latin so much ,then asks why. He really focuses on questioning more than really answering, maybe because there are no real answers for these questions. These 'traditions' of writing have been in bedded into our systems for awhile. 

3. Prescriptive is when we use these rules into our way of writing and speech. Descriptive is the description of these rules that are given to us. A good example would be how we use commas, and the separation of words in a sentences. It gives us a real example of how we're suppose to compose a sentence. Descriptive is already knowing what the use for certain words are. 

Applying and Exploring Ideas:

1. While reading this article, Bryson constantly brings up the change of the english language. We've used different words for different definitions that sometimes that can be completely random at times. Bryson brings up the idea of how latin is/was such a big part of language now, and now these rules seem to be changing. You see this when people use words like "rofl" or actually say "OMG" in real life. Personally I don't think Bryson is thrilled with the change but he's accepting of it since there is nothing he can do to change it.