Strunk and White: First Impressions

The whole first chapter of this book was helpful. I had often wondered about certain rules and exceptions but I have never come across a book that explains them so easily as this one does. It was nice finally having some of those questions answered. The use of the semicolon compared to the use of the colon also cleared up some questions, and it turns out that I may have been wrong on some of the ways I have been using it for the past 10 years. I also found it interesting that you can use a comma before the word and in certain cases. When I was a wee boy in school, I remember teachers scolding me about using comma's before and, no matter what the case was, so for many years I have never used it like that. I also learned a new rule about the use of quotations, which finally made me understand what one of my professors was talking about last semester when she took a point off my test for quoting a Shakespeare paragraph. Chapter four was also very fun to read, some of the words I was unsure about, or just never had the real differences in them explained to me, so that was an interesting read. Page 73 explains the use of qualifiers, which I had also never heard of that rule before.
There were a few things in the book that I thought were personally wrong or unhelpful. The use of has or have in a sentence on page 10 was outdated in my mind. I guess I just don't understand the difference in that sentence besides tense. I also think that the word prioritize is a perfectly o.k. word to use. It is used so much in today's language that it's hard to think of another word that would replace that while still using priority as its context. This goes hand in hand with the use of numbers to state where you are in a topic, for example, secondly and thirdly. Those are used just as often in today's language, so I don't really see why they shouldn't be used. Pretty much anyone who reads those words in a paper will understand what it means and not have any problem with it being used.
I would like to make a few brief comments on three of the things in the book. Revise and rewrite is said way too much, everyone that writes seriously knows they should do it, it's just a matter of whether or not they actually do it. There is no reason for anyone to ever say that again, it's annoying to hear it as much as I have to, being an English major and all. Another is the topic of Avoid fancy words. Sometimes fancy words are use way too much, most people like to read out of enjoyment and I find that too many authors feel that they have something to prove and it really just dulls the reading and makes it uninteresting when you have to think about what that word means instead of just enjoying the story or paper. The last of the topics was Avoid foreign languages. Using a foreign language in an English speaking country is extremely annoying. I'm reading a book for another class right now and he uses way too many french words or expressions and NEVER explains them. It's probably the most annoying book I have ever had to read and it is my personal belief that the author should have to buy my book back from me, add in the translations, and then give it to me for free. It takes away from the story when I don't know what half of the characters in the book are even talking about. I'm done ranting.
P.S. - I think I went over 500 words. My bad.
P.S.S. - I also broke all of the rules that I just read in this book, it's going to be hard to break this habit after so long.

Peer Review Recap, Part 1

The whole process worked well for me, I liked how easy the google doc program was to use. It was a new experience, which I would recommend for other people as well. It's also a easy to make corrections and suggestions for people. The only thing that didn't work to well for me was the speed of it, I don't know if there is shortcuts for the commands that you can do, but if there is that would have made the whole process a lot quicker, having to pull down the menu to do a cross out every time or commen was quite annoying. I received all good advice and I liked the suggestions that they made, although there was two comments that I didn't really understand where they were coming from. I do not wish that I gave more advice, I believe I gave adequate advice to my partners.

My Writing Technologies

The writing technologies that I use are obviously the most common ones. Mechanical pencils, pens, markers or my computer. The only reason I mention markers is because I use them every day at work for tracking labels and corrections to system problems and other employee errors. I use pen's on a daily basis because it is more permanent than a pencil. Only certain people at work are allowed to use pens, most people have to use pencils at work so that we know what is actually authorized by other management employees. I try to avoid writing with anything that is not black or blue, other colors tend to just annoy me. I do not like regular wooden pencils, the sharpening and horrible erasers are an incredible waste of time, why spend all the extra time to deal with this when you can write with just a click from a mechanical pencil or a pen. Over the years I developed this annoyance for the wooden pencils, I even draw with mechanical pencils. They are always sharp and to a point, good for drawing or writing clearly. My computer is my other main form of writing, I use it for all of the papers and assignments that I possible can. It is much quicker for me to type than it is to write. Since I was a child I have been on computers, typing and experimenting, so I have excelled in it over the many years. The computer is by far one of the greatest writing technologies invented so far, even better than the new invention of writing that can be converted to typing on your computer. It doesn't always catch the words correctly, and is still slower than typing because of the time it takes for the conversions. These are my writing technologies on a daily basis.

What is style?

Style, in my mind, is a distinctive characteristic of anything; and by anything I mean, a person, place, way of life, object, really anything. It's the special characteristic that sets something apart from any other thing, like the Greek buildings and sculptures, which set them apart from all other societies and forms of buildings. Music is also another good example of style. There are many different forms of style in music, even sub styles of the same type of music, i.e. techno, industrial techno, trance techno, Japanese techno and so on and so forth. All things have style and style is the defining characteristic of all things.

Getting Started

A blonde walks into an appliance store and says I would like to buy that T.V. please. The store clerk replies Im sorry, we dont do business with blondes. So she stormed off back to her house and dyed her hair black. The next day, she went back to the same store and said I would like to buy that T.V. please. The store clerk, once again, replies Sorry, we dont do business with blondes. The blonde replied How did you know I was blonde? The clerk says Because thats a microwave, not a T.V.

What weighs more; a ton of feathers, or a ton of gold?