What is Style: Part II

At the beginning of the course I answered the question "What is style?" by saying that "Style refers to the choices a writer makes regarding word choice, phrasing, length of sentences, placement of punctuation, etc." I also added that a writer's style depends on the medium he or she uses.

While I would still agree with that, I think the definition needs to be expanded somewhat. The importance of medium is something we really stressed in this class. Through-out the course we have been looking at various mediums, such as comics and videos, and how they function compared to writing. In both cases the connections between writing and creating a comic or video were very strong; in fact, both seem to be an extension of writing.

But style is more than just enhancements or flourishes. Style is the procedure and guiding principles used to create a work; it is the foundation of any writing, video, art, music, etc. Style is what separates one piece of work from any other; what makes an individual's work his or her own and reflects their personality, culture, society, etc.

Style is the choices one makes when creating a work, whether it's a piece of writing, video, art, etc. Every single decision we make-from the words and images we include to the medium we use-is an element of style. Many of the same principles and concepts are used through-out various mediums and disciplines. For example, the process involved in creating a comic is similar to the process used to create a video.

This course changed the way I think about the choices I make in regards to my writing. My previous view of style was that in entirely depended on the type of work I was writing. This meant there was very little connection between writing I did for school, my journalism work, and my personal writing. I was trying to mimic the style I thought was acceptable for each medium, and thus lost my own sense of individual style. This class has helped me really develop my own sense of style and voice in everything I write.

Peer Review Recap 4

This time peer the peer review process went pretty well. I wrote two drafts of my essay and received helpful criticism for both. I think the quality of the suggestions have improved in general, and many were quite helpful. Personally, I've the comments I gave people were about what they could add as opposed to what they could change with regards to the writing they've already done. I added a few comments, but for the most part people simply had not expanded upon ideas enough.

I feel that the nature of our advice during peer reviews has become much more critical while at the same time has gotten more helpful. At first many people seemed unsure about what they should comment on and felt the need to make changes to other people's writing just to prove that they had done the assignment. After we talked about the peer reviewing process in class halfway through the semester people tended to improve the quality of their comments.

I found that through-out the semester one standard thing was that most of my comments were to encourage people who hadn't written enough to actually write more, or to do the assignment at all. I've tried to include as much constructive criticism as I could, but if people don't write enough to give us something to edit it kind of defeats the point. As I said, this time it went better, but I still felt like I was writing "expand on this" over and over.

In terms of the advice I received, most of it had to do with making statements more clear. This helped me pin-point some paragraphs that I felt weren't quite working or were more confusing than they should have been.