I felt a greater respect for successful writers as I read chapters nine and 10 this week. It is a great deal of work to be able to write with clarity, consciousness and style. One of my favorite sections in chapter nine was the section on "Euphemisms and Fancy Words." As I was reading it I realized that we are a society full of euphemisms. The educational degree I am pursuing is Public Relations and Advertising. As I read the section on euphemisms I thought to myself that I will most likely be using euphemisms if I ever get a job in the public relations realm. Sometimes euphemisms are comical because of the way we try to cushion bad things.
John Green's book "Looking for Alaska" is chock-full of style. In the paragraph below, he uses a few different style techniques. One is varied sentence length. He also used intensifiers sparingly and avoided redundancies. Throughout the book, he avoids cliches, which I really appreciated. In fact, he almost created new cliches. I have seen people use some of his ideas in their own writing on blogs and Instagram. In the paragraph below I think he did a great job of showing, not telling. He could have easily said "Chuck came from a rough background and now doesn't like to follow rules," but he gave so much more information by showing us what Chuck said.
A writing error I came across this week was subtle, but I felt like the sentence could have been written a lot better. The last sentence is confusing. I think it would make a lot more sense if it said, "To start a visit, you can download our free app from Google Play or the Apple Store. You can also visit horizoncareonline.com and sign in using your email." Does anyone have any better ideas on how to write that sentence?
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