Nominalizations Are Zombie Nouns. Draft is a series about the art and craft of writing. Take an adjective (implacable) or a verb (calibrate) or even another noun (crony) and add a suffix like ity, tion or ism. You’ve created a new noun: implacability, calibration, cronyism. Sounds impressive, right? Nouns formed from other parts of speech are called nominalizations. Academics love them; so do lawyers, bureaucrats and business writers.
I call them “zombie nouns” because they cannibalize active verbs, suck the lifeblood from adjectives and substitute abstract entities for human beings: The proliferation of nominalizations in a discursive formation may be an indication of a tendency toward pomposity and abstraction. The sentence above contains no fewer than seven nominalizations, each formed from a verb or an adjective. Writers who overload their sentences with nominalizations tend to sound pompous and abstract. Only one zombie noun – the key word nominalizations – has been allowed to remain standing. Elena Giavaldi. Exquisite corpse. An exquisite corpse Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver (from the original French term cadavre exquis) or rotating corpse, is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled.
Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun," as in “The green duck sweetly sang the dreadful dirge”) or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed. History[edit] In a variant now known as picture consequences, instead of sentences, portions of a person were drawn.[3] Later the game was adapted to drawing and collage, producing a result similar to children's books in which the pages were cut into thirds, the top third pages showing the head of a person or animal, the middle third the torso, and the bottom third the legs, with children having the ability to "mix and match" by turning pages. Modern examples[edit] William S. See also[edit] Notes[edit] Guide to Literary and Critical Theory. Paragraphs and Topic Sentences. A paragraph is a series of sentences that are organized and coherent, and are all related to a single topic.
Almost every piece of writing you do that is longer than a few sentences should be organized into paragraphs. This is because paragraphs show a reader where the subdivisions of an essay begin and end, and thus help the reader see the organization of the essay and grasp its main points. Paragraphs can contain many different kinds of information. A paragraph could contain a series of brief examples or a single long illustration of a general point. It might describe a place, character, or process; narrate a series of events; compare or contrast two or more things; classify items into categories; or describe causes and effects. A well-organized paragraph supports or develops a single controlling idea, which is expressed in a sentence called the topic sentence. Most paragraphs in an essay have a three-part structure—introduction, body, and conclusion. Repeat key words or phrases. LitWeb - The Norton Introduction to Literature: W. W. Norton & Company StudySpace.
When it comes to the study of literature, reading and writing are closely inter-related—even mutually dependent—activities. On the one hand, the quality of whatever we write about a literary text depends entirely upon the quality of our work as readers. On the other hand, our reading isn’t truly complete until we’ve tried to capture our sense of a text in writing. Indeed, we often read a literary work much more actively and attentively when we integrate informal writing into the reading process—pausing periodically to mark especially important or confusing passages, to jot down significant facts, to describe the impressions and responses the text provokes—or when we imagine our reading (and our informal writing) as preparation for writing about the work in a more sustained and formal way. Writing about literature can take any number of forms, ranging from the very informal and personal to the very formal and public.
LitWeb - The Norton Introduction to Literature: W. W. Norton & Company StudySpace. W. W. Norton Home | Help | Contact Us | Site map | Site Credits LitWeb - The Norton Introduction to Literature StudySpace Genres Workshops Writing About Literature Glossary Tutorials Writing about Literature Paraphrase, Summary, Description Quiz Take the quiz about this section. Norton/Write The Norton Gradebook Instructors and students now have an easy way to track online quiz scores with the Norton Gradebook.
Go to the Norton Gradebook American Passages Visit our companion site, American Passages. Back to Top Links Norton Website College Books Professional Books Trade Books Help Desk About W. W. This site and the materials contained herein ©2014 W.W. Winston Churchill's Way With Words. Hide captionWinston Churchill wrote every word of his many speeches — he said he'd spend an hour working on a single minute of a speech. Above, he is shown speaking during the 1945 election campaign.
Express/Getty Images Winston Churchill is best remembered as the British prime minister whose speeches rallied a nation under a relentless Nazi onslaught in World War II. But few people know that he won the Nobel Prize in Literature — in part for his mastery of speechmaking. hide captionThough he went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Churchill didn't always excel in school. His 1884 school report card states young Winston is "very bad ... a constant trouble to everybody," and unable to be "trusted to behave himself anywhere.
" Courtesy of Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge Now, a new exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York City, Churchill: The Power of Words, holds a megaphone to Churchill's extraordinary oratory. The citation, Kiely says, is wonderful. Keystone/Getty Images. EasyBib: Free Bibliography Maker - MLA, APA, Chicago citation styles.
Reading& writing about poetry. Writing About Literature: Explicating a Poem and Symbolism. English Language Arts: Writing Prompts/Journal Topics. What is... What is something you dislike about yourself? What is something you do well? What is your favourite room in your home and why? What is a good neighbour? What if... What would happen if you could fly whenever you wanted?
What do you think... What do you think of 3D movies? What...misc. What do you like most about yourself? How... How do you feel when it's your birthday? I wish... I wish I had a million... When... When you are angry, how do you look? Which... Which quality best describes your life--exciting, organised, dull--and why? Why... Why is it important to be honest? Misc... Do you think there is too much fighting on t.v.
How to Use Commonly Misused Words. Steps Method 1 of 17: "Affect" and "Effect" 1Use “effect” as instructed. "Effect" is a noun referring to something that happens as a result of something else. E.g., "The antibiotic had little effect on the illness. ""Effect" is also a verb meaning to bring something about.
E.g., "I have decided to effect a change in the scope of this article. " Ad 2Use “affect” as instructed.The verb "affect" means to change something in some way. Method 2 of 17: "Anxious" and "Eager" 1Use "anxious” as instructed.When followed by a gerund (the "–ing" verb form), anxiousness refers to anxiety, not pleasant feelings such as enthusiasm or excitement. 2Use “eager” as instructed.Eagerness conveys enthusiasm and is followed with an infinitive.Ex. Method 3 of 17: "Convince" and "Persuade" 1Use “convince” as instructed.Convince a person of the truth or validity of an idea.Follow “convince” with "that" or "of.
" Method 4 of 17: "Could of" and "Could have" 1Use “could” with “have.” 1Use “each other” as instructed. Tips Ad. This Itch of Writing: But can you teach Creative Writing? I get asked this amazingly often, considering that no one ever asks if you can teach the doing of other arts, but, just as I took ages to get on to that other old chestnut, "What is literary fiction? " and my own personal Ancestral Elephant, it's taken me till now to sort out what I think clearly enough to answer the question. My answer, mind you, depends on how long I've got, but it comes from someone who wrote for fifteen years before being taught, (and my thoughts on the pros and cons of writing courses are here) but now teaches, and knows hundreds of writers who have been taught, and hundreds who haven't been taught, and not a few who teach: 1) Yes. 2) Yes, you can teach it, just as you can teach painting or sculpture, or choreography or writing music.
Writing's no different. 3) Yes, you can teach within the limits of what that person has in the way of potential, but it's impossible to know what a student's potential is until you have been teaching them for a bit. What can Diane Arbus teach you about writing? I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse. -- Diane Arbus Diane Arbus (1923-1971) was an American photographer and a student of human diversity, often described as a "photographer of freaks. " Maybe one should admit that freakishness comes from within and 'normal' is a mirage. Join me now, fellow freak, and let us contemplate the normalness of strangehood.* *Or normalhood of strangeness.
Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006), starring Nicole Kidman, paints Diane as little more than a dissatisfied housewife who takes up photography to the detriment of her husband's serious -- if uninspired -- professional efforts. Curiously enough, for a movie that champions the discovery of your true self, Fur is not a little patronizing to the main character. Pfaugh. Diane did not orbit Allan like some apathetic satellite. Who was the real Diane? The year was 1923. 1929. Why “Show, Don’t Tell” Is the Great Lie of Writing Workshops. I’m honored and excited today to be bringing you a guest post by critically acclaimed novelist and writing instructor Joshua Henkin.
I first discovered Henkin’s work years ago when I received an advance copy of his novel Matrimony at Book Expo America, and I later enjoyed having him contribute a thought-provoking essay on the art of storytelling to Writer’s Digest magazine (in fact, two of his writing tips from that piece made our Top 20 Writing Lessons From WD list in 2009). I invited Joshua Henkin to be our guest this week in celebration of the release of his brand-new novel, The World Without You. His topic of choice—a sound argument for breaking the “Show Don’t Tell” rule of writing—is a perfect extension of my post last week about How to Break the Rules of Writing. Joshua Henkin is the author of the novels Matrimony, a New York Times Notable Book, and Swimming Across the Hudson, a Los Angeles Times Notable Book.
Why “Show, Don’t Tell” Is the Great Lie of Writing Workshops. HOW TO WRITE GOOD. Caveat emptor. Carpe diem. O si villi, si ergo, fortibus es in ero. Et tu, brute. by Frank L. Visco My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules: Avoid alliteration. Always. Neil Gaiman's 8 Rules of Writing. By Maria Popova In the winter of 2010, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing published in The New York Times nearly a decade earlier, The Guardian reached out to some of today’s most celebrated authors and asked them to each offer his or her commandments. After Zadie Smith’s 10 rules of writing, here come 8 from the one and only Neil Gaiman: WritePut one word after another.
Find the right word, put it down.Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. Image by Kimberly Butler.