What are we writing?
At the moment I am writing a research paper. I don't really want to, but you all know how school is. In this paper I have to use a minimum of 4 semicolons, and I'll be honest with you, I'm not very good with them. I have browsed around the internet looking for a clear guide on how to use them but I have come up short. Can any of the english majors or teachers here help me out? I would really appreciate this.
Secondly, does anyone here on AI write on a regular basis? If so, would you mind sharing some of your work? Since we have threads covering music, and books I figured writing would be a nice addition.
Secondly, does anyone here on AI write on a regular basis? If so, would you mind sharing some of your work? Since we have threads covering music, and books I figured writing would be a nice addition.
Comments
At the moment I am writing a research paper. I don't really want to, but you all know how school is. In this paper I have to use a minimum of 4 semicolons, and I'll be honest with you, I'm not very good with them. I have browsed around the internet looking for a clear guide on how to use them but I have come up short. Can any of the english majors or teachers here help me out? I would really appreciate this.
Secondly, does anyone write regularly here on AI? If so, would you mind sharing some of your work? Since we have threads covering music, and books I figured writing would be a nice addition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolons
English usage
In English, the semicolon has two main purposes:
It binds two sentences more closely than they would be if separated by a full stop/period. It often replaces a conjunction such as and or but. Writers might consider this appropriate where they are trying to indicate a close relationship between two sentences, or a 'run-on' in meaning from one to the next; they do not want the connection to be broken by the abrupt use of a full stop.
It is used as a stronger division than a comma, or a "super comma" to make meaning clear in a sentence where commas are already being used for other purposes. A common example of this use is to separate the items of a list when some of the items themselves contain commas.
There are several rules that govern semicolon placement:
Use a semicolon between closely related independent clauses not joined by a coordinating conjunction: "I went to the pool; it was closed."
Use a semicolon between independent clauses linked with a transitional phrase or conjunctive adverb: "I like to ride horses; however, they don't like to be ridden by me."
Use a semicolon between items in a series containing internal punctuation: "There are several Waffle Houses in Atlanta, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; Pensacola, Florida; and Mobile, Alabama."
A semicolon can be used to separate independent clauses that are joined by coordinating conjunctions when the clauses have internal commas that might lead to misreading: "After the game, I won a red beanie baby, four edible ingots, and a certificate of excellence; but when the storm came, I lost it all in a torrent of sleet, snow, and profanity."
Semicolons are always followed by a lower case letter, unless that letter begins a proper noun. Semicolons are placed after closing quotation marks.
Examples:
I am alone; my wife left me.
I travelled to London, England; Tijuana, Mexico; and ReykjavÃ*k, Iceland.
Lisa scored 2,845,770 points; Marcia, 2,312,860; and Jeff, 1,726,640.
(Note that the last semicolon in sentence 2 and 3 is acting as a serial comma.)
Hope the above helps.
Oh, and in the sentence: "Secondly, does anyone write regularly here on AI?", did you mean "Does anyone here on AI write regularly?"?
Can any of the english majors or teachers here help me out? I would really appreciate this.
I took remedial writing in college. Being a science major, I'd ignored written communications as long as possible. Since then I've found writing to be very important. I have worked to improve for years, and personally it was worth the effort. Today I enjoy writing. Years ago, I never thought I would ever say that.
Check out a book from the library. I'd suggest On Writing Well, by William Zinsser.
Enjoy.
At the moment I am writing a research paper. I don't really want to, but you all know how school is. In this paper I have to use a minimum of 4 semicolons, and I'll be honest with you, I'm not very good with them. I have browsed around the internet looking for a clear guide on how to use them but I have come up short. Can any of the english majors or teachers here help me out? I would really appreciate this.
Secondly, does anyone write regularly here on AI? If so, would you mind sharing some of your work? Since we have threads covering music, and books I figured writing would be a nice addition.
I am working on several writing projects at the moment and have several submissions awaiting final review by short fiction editors. You can listen to the stories that I've sold to Escape Pod, the online science fiction podcast, at my MySpace page.. The podcasts are on the left side and play in an embedded Flash player.
I am waiting to hear back from Escape Pod on another Union Dues submission, from Shimmer magazine for Ronin on the High Seas and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for Projects Giant Arachnid.
I am still shipping out my historical novel, Tears of Amaterasu, to publishers and agents.
I am writing more Union Dues stories, more Burden of Bushido stories, and a short untitled novel that mirrors the Zatoichi series of films in plot and tone.
In my day job I write and edit telecommunications training materials for e-Learning and Instructor-based courses.
What are you writing?
Good times.
A research project on the rules of appellate procedure for the 3d Circuit Court of Appeals.
Good times.
You should make certain that your writing isn't one-dimensional, considering the subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolons
Hope the above helps.
Oh, and in the sentence: "Secondly, does anyone write regularly here on AI?", did you mean "Does anyone here on AI write regularly?"?
Yes thank you. I didn't think to look at Wikipedia since I'm not allowed to use as an information source for my paper.
I am working on several writing projects at the moment and have several submissions awaiting final review by short fiction editors. You can listen to the stories that I've sold to Escape Pod, the online science fiction podcast, at my MySpace page.. The podcasts are on the left side and play in an embedded Flash player.
I am waiting to hear back from Escape Pod on another Union Dues submission, from Shimmer magazine for Ronin on the High Seas and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for Projects Giant Arachnid.
I am still shipping out my historical novel, Tears of Amaterasu, to publishers and agents.
I am writing more Union Dues stories, more Burden of Bushido stories, and a short untitled novel that mirrors the Zatoichi series of films in plot and tone.
In my day job I write and edit telecommunications training materials for e-Learning and Instructor-based courses.
What are you writing?
I'll be honest, you're day job sounds kind of blah, but your other works are intriguing. I'll look more into them when I have more time which will be next week. I hope that you hear back on your submissions soon. This semester, I am taking a writing composition class and so I have to write whatever the teachers asks and I don't have much of a choice. Most recently I've had to write a paper without using the letter R. It was interesting.
A research project on the rules of appellate procedure for the 3d Circuit Court of Appeals.
Good times.
I'm sorry.
. . . I didn't think to look at Wikipedia since I'm not allowed to use as an information source for my paper.
In that case, try some of these:
http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/...r/grammar.html
http://www.informatics.susx.ac.uk/do...on/node00.html
http://www.sparknotes.com/writing/style/
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/
In that case, try some of these:
http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/...r/grammar.html
http://www.informatics.susx.ac.uk/do...on/node00.html
http://www.sparknotes.com/writing/style/
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/
Hey thanks! Especially for the Purdue one. That is the one that I have used before, but I could not for the life of me find anything about semicolons. Guess I just didn't look hard enough.
1) Revising an essay on the cognitive dissonance that occurs when volunteer workers trying to get prostitutes off the street in mid-Victorian London were forced to reconcile their preconceptions about these women with what they found when they actually worked with them. It got rejected from the first journal I submitted it to. It's with a colleague now because I can't see the forest for the trees in it anymore and needed a fresh pair of eyes on it and some of the reader comments I got from the journal were pretty good. Some were stupid. But some were good.
2) A letter of recommendation for a student who wants to transfer to a small, Christian, liberal arts school. She'll likely hate it at one of them, but she won't know until she tries.
3) Beginning stages of an essay about privacy and class in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone that is part of a larger project. See #4
4) A large (i.e. book-length) project about the history of privacy in the 19th century. Just gathering info and reading and taking notes at this point.
5) Beginning stages of revision of my dissertation into a book, so I'm poking around at presses and gathering info on what they want in their book proposals.
6) Policies for MA theses. Policies for MA projects. Proposals for designating courses as "writing-intensive." Grant proposals for travel to London this summer. Grant proposals for some tech we need in our department. Proposals for curriculum changes to force students to take certain "core" courses at more reasonable stages in their education.
7) Discussion forum posts.
On semi-colons:
Carol's got it covered, but here's a good rule of thumb: semi-colons typically join closely-related ideas that are expressed in complete sentences (i.e. independent clauses). If you're going to use a semi-colon, make sure that the parts on either side of it are complete sentences.
-A play.
-A philosophy article.
-My physics honors thesis.
What am I writing?
1) Revising an essay on the cognitive dissonance that occurs when volunteer workers trying to get prostitutes off the street in mid-Victorian London were forced to reconcile their preconceptions about these women with what they found when they actually worked with them.
Does your paper go into dissonance theory? The reason I ask is that it's one of those theories that, whenever I hear it referenced, is almost always misunderstood. The odd thing about Cognitive Dissonance theory is that the theory says people don't really ever experience dissonance, at least not for long. We immediately rationalize in order to reduce dissonance. It ought to really be called Dissonance Reduction theory instead. It probably doesn't matter for the purposes of your paper, but it might be worth looking into if it does matter.
Does your paper go into dissonance theory? The reason I ask is that it's one of those theories that, whenever I hear it referenced, is almost always misunderstood. The odd thing about Cognitive Dissonance theory is that the theory says people don't really ever experience dissonance, at least not for long. We immediately rationalize in order to reduce dissonance. It ought to really be called Dissonance Reduction theory instead. It probably doesn't matter for the purposes of your paper, but it might be worth looking into if it does matter.
BRussell: Thanks for that distinction. I think I'm actually using the term properly in this situation. What I'm actually describing are a set of narratives (economic, moral, religious) that describe prostitutes that are widely held by the middle classes. Prostitutes are morally reprehensible. They came to their trade because of personal, religious, or moral weakness, love of finery, etc. Their path is inevitably downward and leading to eventual, unavoidable disease, isolation, and death. Large parts of this narrative are relatively stable from about 1740 upwards, although it doesn't really take hold until about the 1840s in England.
Now, here's where the dissonance comes in. There were tons and tons of treatises on prostitution in the 19th century, and most of them were delivered by clergymen and deploy the narratives I described above. In the 1840s, however, some of this starts to change. Middling classes start to see the prostitute as "reclaimable" spiritually/morally, if not physically (although this could be accomplished by a name change and transportation to Australia...POOF! She's a fine, upstanding woman again!) and they start to wander the streets at night trying to get these women to enter a house of reclamation (a kind of rehab clinic, really). Now, these guys go out in the streets with those earlier narratives in their heads. They're looking for dolled up hookers with nice clothes and jewels OR they're looking for waifs in rags contemplating jumping off London Bridge.
What they find are thousands and thousands of girls between 16 and 24 who had worked as domestic servants but had been fired for stunningly minor infractions. They were fired because there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 750,000 women looking for work, and so it was easy to replace domestics (this was BY FAR the chief employment of women...I don't have the 1851 Census on me, but I believe it's about a quarter million women making a living this way).
So. These guys go out expecting one thing and find another. And as they interact with them, they begin to see how the narratives they have don't really hold up. So what do they do? They vacillate WILDLY between these two competing narratives—one moral, one economic—when they write about it. When they describe roomfulls of prostitutes at reclamation gatherings who were overwhelmingly teenagers who'd been fired from good jobs, they say "Wow! Isn't it a shame that we didn't get any of the high class women?" and more or less ignore the economic dimension of it all.
Sometimes, they'll do both. In 1857, William Acton published a study of prostitution in England aptly titled, um, Prostitution. This is THE landmark study, because in it he challenges the core of the original myth by showing, statistically, that prostitution is usually a means of supplemental income for working class women. It is rarely, if ever, a long-term means of employment. And then, in the next sentence, he'll go on and on about how prostitutes are immmoral, immodest women who got there through laziness and love of finery and because of their own individual moral failings.
So what I'm tracking are these kinds of things, these moments where a challenge to the narrative is witnessed and the observer muddles about trying to resolve the tension.
Whew. Can you tell my head's been all in this for a few years?