Clarity, Part 1

Clarity, Part 1

Every writer has things he or she needs to work on improving. Based on my past writing experiences I have found a few of these topics that I think it would be important to get better at. The following is a synopsis of these subjects. 

North.jvta. "Find your voice. Express yourself. Creative writing." 2/13/14 via Wikimedia Commons.
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• Active Verbs: Although I had learned to use the active voice in high school I always had trouble doing it. It was interesting to read the specified reasons for using active and passive voice. Passive voice is to be used in order to put an emphasis on the person who is having the verb done to them. This puts the focus on the receiver rather than the subject of the sentence. Active voice is more clear and direct and a better form to use in most cases.
• Needed words: I had not really thought about needed words until I read this chapter but it was very insightful as to keeping the sentence on the right track. It is easy to forget to add a word in a sentence because of compound structures of sentences. It was interesting to read that this is only allowed if the word taken out is common to both parts of the compound sentence. For grammatical and logical completion of a sentence specific words are often needed to be added back in. 
• Move awkwardly placed modifiers: This was an interesting section to read because I think making sentences to wordy and with incorrect word order is a common mistake. After writing quite a bit it is easy for an author to get tripped up and put a word in correct order. It was interesting to read that specifically English language doesn't allow an adverb to appear between a verb and object. It is important to ensure that a long adverb phrase doesn't come between a subject and verb. 
• Maintain consistent verb tenses: As a writer continues writing it is common to shift between verb tenses. I often find myself doing this in my own writing. By choosing one verb tense to write in it conveys important details to the reader  while also specifically describing the time of the actions. I was enlightened to hear that this often occurs for writers when they write about literature, a fact I never knew. 

Reflection: 

• After reading my peer's QRG drafts I was able to expand on what I read about regarding topics to improve in writing.   It was nice to know that it is common for writers to sometimes need to work on topics, just like I do. One of Joy's sentence "Common core is a new set of standards for education that each state has the choice to adopt." related back to my topic of needed words. Here she could have added "of whether or not" in between "choice" and "to". I believe this would make the sentence more direct and to the point. It is nice to know that it is common to be so into the writing mode that it is hard to reread and notice what you could improve on in your own writing. Similarly, in Bailey's draft, "This process is used order to be sure that the product is safe for human use without having to test potentially dangerous products on humans themselves." Here she also left out a word, "in" before "order". This is an important addition in order to be correct grammatically and specification in the sentence. Although I only found one of my topics in my peer's drafts I am sure that other people have similar concerns and it is comforting to know that we are all in the same boat in efforts to improve our writing..