FOCUS
This course deals
with the processes of editing and the notion of style in connection
with writing. We believe the course is important to you if you plan
to earn your living as a writer, an editor, or a communication specialist.
The course will provide you a basic vocabulary for talking about language
choices and the stylistic habits you observe in your own writing and
the writing of others.
Many writers believe
that one should wrestle with stylistic matters near the end of their
writing process (only after they have paid plenty of attention to
more important rhetorical considerations such as audience, aim, organization,
and development). However, many of these "more important"
considerations are directly reflected in/enacted through stylistic
choices that writers make. So style can be an integral part of rhetorical
planning, writing, and editing.
If you hope to
succeed as an editor, or a communication specialist, you should be
able to talk with others about language choices and to articulate
them to yourself. You will also want to be able to spot and correct
those language patterns and mechanical patterns that many people consider
errors.
We also want you,
by the end of this course, to recognize thatall editing and style
choices are also social and political choices. As you gain additional
control ove rboth your editing and stylisti cchoices, you will find
yourself exercising power—in both formal and informal situations,
with family and friends, on behalf of those who have power and those
who do not. We would like you to understand this fact and encourage
you to let your humanist education influence your decisions as you
work with others on projects involvin glanguage
Students who enroll
in this course should be committed to learning about style and editing
issues, to writing and improving their own writing, to looking carefully
and respectfully at the writing of others.