I found this chapter interesting because of the fact that personal experiences are a form of evidence. Most of the time personal experiences are irrelevant due to the fact that they are sometimes bias and can work against you and your argument if your experiences seem that way. Though the book does mention that if you are going to use a personal experience then you must have evidence to back up that claim. The only downside to using a personal experience is that will not stand as stall as other types of evidence in an argument because there isn't much backing it up if say we were to use an experiment. On the other hand, personal experiences can gather an audience if it is definitely interesting enough and can hold the attention of the readers.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Chapter 16
In Everything's An Argument, Chapter 16 told us about the many different types of evidences we could use when creating an argument. To make it short, the chapter goes on to discuss that, the most effective type of evidence is the evidence that relates most to what your paper is about. Since I am an engineering student and I wanted to write about something in my field, one of the better types of evidence would most likely be experimental evidence. Besides there being experimental evidence there is, personal experience, observations, interviews and many more types of evidence that Chapter 16 goes on to discuss. In this chapter, I found it interesting to know that under the "using evidence effectively" section, you may have the most evidence from interviews, observations and so on, but if you haven't woven it into your argument it just remains as a big pile of data laying around.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Chapter 13: Everything's an Argument
When styling an argument, most can be broken down into three different categories which are:
High: Formal or ornate (formal, high minded,serious)
Middle: Understated and very clear (most ordinary arguments)
Low: Everyday or humorous (informal and colloquial)
Then each of these three categories can be broken down even further into four sub-categories:
Style and word choice
Sentence Structure and Argument
Punctuation and argument
Special Effects
In this chapter, the most recognizable part for me was two of the sub-categories which were "Sentence Structure and Argument" and "Style and Word Choice". I chose these two because, I think they are the most important out of the four. When someone is reading your argument and you have incomplete sentences and are using slang in place of educated words, you can most likely expect a consumer to put down your argument. When developing your argument you want to make sure you are perceived as being confident in your work, not using slang or uneducated words that make you look lazy and uneducated. Just as the book says, you need sentence variety to keep the audience enticed in your argument. For example if you started every sentence of your argument with the subject first, you omit the use of all transitional phrases which can be used to catch the readers attention. Now going back to word choice, like I said before, no one wants to read an argument where the author has written it in terms that are uneducated. Don't get me wrong slang can sometimes be effective but most of the time it bewilders the readers which usually confuses and irritates them. There is nothing that will keep them entertained so that's why we use persuasive and enticing words to keep them interested. It usually represents your style of writing more than anything so you want your words to match the tone you are using in your argument as well as the subject of your argument. Usually for most academic arguments, the type of language used is a formal style.
High: Formal or ornate (formal, high minded,serious)
Middle: Understated and very clear (most ordinary arguments)
Low: Everyday or humorous (informal and colloquial)
Then each of these three categories can be broken down even further into four sub-categories:
Style and word choice
Sentence Structure and Argument
Punctuation and argument
Special Effects
In this chapter, the most recognizable part for me was two of the sub-categories which were "Sentence Structure and Argument" and "Style and Word Choice". I chose these two because, I think they are the most important out of the four. When someone is reading your argument and you have incomplete sentences and are using slang in place of educated words, you can most likely expect a consumer to put down your argument. When developing your argument you want to make sure you are perceived as being confident in your work, not using slang or uneducated words that make you look lazy and uneducated. Just as the book says, you need sentence variety to keep the audience enticed in your argument. For example if you started every sentence of your argument with the subject first, you omit the use of all transitional phrases which can be used to catch the readers attention. Now going back to word choice, like I said before, no one wants to read an argument where the author has written it in terms that are uneducated. Don't get me wrong slang can sometimes be effective but most of the time it bewilders the readers which usually confuses and irritates them. There is nothing that will keep them entertained so that's why we use persuasive and enticing words to keep them interested. It usually represents your style of writing more than anything so you want your words to match the tone you are using in your argument as well as the subject of your argument. Usually for most academic arguments, the type of language used is a formal style.
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