Hello everyone,
I hope you're working well in your groups. Remember that the second draft is due Tuesday via email. Send me the rough draft and I'll give you my final notes via email.
I hope you're working well in your groups. Remember that the second draft is due Tuesday via email. Send me the rough draft and I'll give you my final notes via email.
In terms of grades, the most important part of this assignment is the writing itself. So give precedence to grammar, spelling, and transferring online writing to print.
This means:
For the Editorial Pages:
Example of Writing About Writing:
From Margaret Atwood’s Negotiating with the Dead
To record the world as it is. To set down the past before it is all forgotten. To excavate the past because it has been forgotten. To satisfy my desire for revenge. Because I knew I had to keep writing or else I would die. Because to write is to take risks, and it is only by taking risks that we know we are alive. To produce order out of chaos. To delight and instruct (not often found after the early twentieth century, or not in that form). To please myself. To express myself. To express myself beautifully. To create a perfect work of art. To reward the virtuous and punish the guilty; or—the Marquis de Sade defense, used by ironists—vice versa. To hold a mirror up to Nature. To hold a mirror up to the reader. To paint a portrait of society and its ills. To express the unexpressed life of the masses. To name the hitherto unnamed. To defend the human spirit, and human integrity and honor. To thumb my nose at Death. To make money so my children could have shoes.
Tips on the Layout
Be consistent. If your aim is to keep it a simple layout then the entire format should be simple.
Every choice should look deliberate. So the font and size should remain consistent unless there is an obvious purpose (such as a block quote you're enlarging for importance or to hook the reader or fill up white space).
Choose certain parts of the text to enlarge if you want to fill up white space. The text should be significant not just any sentences from the text.
You should all be working together in groups. Remember you are grading each other as well.
This is the point breakdown out of 20:
Let me know if you have questions.
This means:
- No hyperlinks in the magazine layout (remove all those underlined words from the hyperlinks)
- Don't use subheadings unless there is a rhetorical reason for doing so.
- Don't use bullet points.
- DO use transitional phrases where needed to translate bullet points and subheadings seamlessly.
- Include a Works Cited page in MLA format either at the end of each essay or at the end of the magazine as a special APPENDIX section.
For the Editorial Pages:
- These letters to the reader usually appear after the Table of Contents, but I've seen them placed before the Table of Contents as well.
- To write these letters you have two options: Write 4 pages, single spaced, as a cohesive group. Or write 1 page, single spaced, per person.
- The letters to the reader are about writing itself. In other words, write a writing manifesto. You will want to think about your role as a writer:
- Why do you write? Or why is writing important to you?
- What is your writing style?
- What have you discovered about your writing process? E.g., are you someone who edits as you write or do you prefer brainstorming and then writing a draft?
Example of Writing About Writing:
From Margaret Atwood’s Negotiating with the Dead
To record the world as it is. To set down the past before it is all forgotten. To excavate the past because it has been forgotten. To satisfy my desire for revenge. Because I knew I had to keep writing or else I would die. Because to write is to take risks, and it is only by taking risks that we know we are alive. To produce order out of chaos. To delight and instruct (not often found after the early twentieth century, or not in that form). To please myself. To express myself. To express myself beautifully. To create a perfect work of art. To reward the virtuous and punish the guilty; or—the Marquis de Sade defense, used by ironists—vice versa. To hold a mirror up to Nature. To hold a mirror up to the reader. To paint a portrait of society and its ills. To express the unexpressed life of the masses. To name the hitherto unnamed. To defend the human spirit, and human integrity and honor. To thumb my nose at Death. To make money so my children could have shoes.
Tips on the Layout
Be consistent. If your aim is to keep it a simple layout then the entire format should be simple.
Every choice should look deliberate. So the font and size should remain consistent unless there is an obvious purpose (such as a block quote you're enlarging for importance or to hook the reader or fill up white space).
Choose certain parts of the text to enlarge if you want to fill up white space. The text should be significant not just any sentences from the text.
You should all be working together in groups. Remember you are grading each other as well.
This is the point breakdown out of 20:
- 10 points: If someone did not do as much work as they should have. If they disappeared sometime during the process or they are just not contributing. You can even go as low as 0 if they disappeared entirely.
- 15 points: Your peer contributed but not enough. This peer left a lot of the decisions to the rest of the group, and did not provide enough feedback. This peer at least put some effort in the process.
- 20 points: This person was an equal with everyone in the group. They helped make decisions, answered promptly, attended meetings if you met, etc. Worked well with everyone.
- 10 extra points: You can give someone 10 extra points if and only if they went above and beyond what was required of them. They helped those who were struggling with their writing and if there was a problem, this person helped fix things.
Let me know if you have questions.