One notable difficulty was turning sentences inside out in order to make them gender-neutral. I was able to substitute the proper name “_____” for some cases, but it was troublesome to discover how pronouns are so fundamental to sentence structure. When writing about a specific person, this problem would not have arisen.
I am perfectly content to adhere to tradition by referring to an unspecified person in general as “he”/“his”, and abstract forces and anthropomorphized objects as “she”/“her”, but in this instance I was leaving a blank that was intended to be filled in with any name and so the text needed to read properly with either gender. (I dread the "he or she" - is the subject a hermaphrodite?)
1) I looked back at a serious and highly complimentary recommendation I had officially submitted on behalf of a very worthy colleague and, to my horror, I found the following sentence: "His present level of professional achievement is direct evidence of his ability to succeed in his chosen field." :-P
So, my first lesson learned is to watch out for empty sentences that have no meaning of their own apart from that imparted to them by their context - this can only be characterized as weak writing.
2) Although it was intentional, it appears I made a mistake by de-personalizing the entry to make it a "form letter". I thought this would suit the form of the Challenge, but doing so seems to have taken away from the reader's impression of the subject, leaving a collection of good "lines" but one that failed to characterize a whole person the reader could identify.
So, my second lession learned is that readers are engaged by character, not by cleverness.
4 comments:
Heh heh.
One notable difficulty was turning sentences inside out in order to make them gender-neutral. I was able to substitute the proper name “_____” for some cases, but it was troublesome to discover how pronouns are so fundamental to sentence structure. When writing about a specific person, this problem would not have arisen.
I am perfectly content to adhere to tradition by referring to an unspecified person in general as “he”/“his”, and abstract forces and anthropomorphized objects as “she”/“her”, but in this instance I was leaving a blank that was intended to be filled in with any name and so the text needed to read properly with either gender. (I dread the "he or she" - is the subject a hermaphrodite?)
I loved this. Great work.
However, I found the _____ instead of a specific name a little distracting.
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1) I looked back at a serious and highly complimentary recommendation I had officially submitted on behalf of a very worthy colleague and, to my horror, I found the following sentence: "His present level of professional achievement is direct evidence of his ability to succeed in his chosen field." :-P
So, my first lesson learned is to watch out for empty sentences that have no meaning of their own apart from that imparted to them by their context - this can only be characterized as weak writing.
2) Although it was intentional, it appears I made a mistake by de-personalizing the entry to make it a "form letter". I thought this would suit the form of the Challenge, but doing so seems to have taken away from the reader's impression of the subject, leaving a collection of good "lines" but one that failed to characterize a whole person the reader could identify.
So, my second lession learned is that readers are engaged by character, not by cleverness.
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