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How Zombies Can Help

Step-by-Step for Identifying Passive Voice

Syntax and grammatical rules are in flux and debatable. Below are a few examples.

First, some background:

The comma as we know it was invented by Aldo Manuzio, a printer working in Venice, circa 1500. It was intended to prevent confusion by separating things. In the Greek, komma means “something cut off,” a segment. (Aldo was printing Greek classics during the High Renaissance. The comma was a Renaissance invention.) As the comma proliferated, it started generating confusion. Basically, there are two schools of thought: One plays by ear, using the comma to mark a pause, like dynamics in music; if you were reading aloud, the comma would suggest when to take a breath. The other uses punctuation to clarify the meaning of a sentence by illuminating its underlying structure. Each school believes that the other gets carried away. It can be tense and kind of silly, like the argument among theologians about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

Written by Mary Norris, found in the most recent issue of The New Yorker. You can read more here.

Second, this is a classic image illustrating the debate over the Oxford comma (or serial comma).

Lastly, here is a snippet from an interview with experimental psychologist/linguist Steven Pinker, from December 30th 2014 in The Atlantic. 

Porch: Does the comma go inside the closed quotation mark or outside?

Pinker: If I ruled the world, it would go outside.

Porch: That’s terrible. It looks terrible!

Pinker: Our British cousins don’t find it that ugly.

Porch: It looks untidy. It looks like a bedroom with clothes all over the floor.

Pinker: Your aesthetics may have been shaped by a lifetime of seeing it in the American pattern, but this would be a case in which any aesthetic reaction should be trumped by logic. Messing up the order of delimiters in a way that doesn’t reflect the logical nesting of their content is just an affront to an orderly mind.

Read more of the interview here.

Next week we will have individual conferences – we will NOT be meeting in the classroom.

Conferences will be held in my office, Student Success Center room 2018. The Student Success Center is behind the library, #187 on this map. My office is on the 2nd floor, down the hallway to right from the top of the stairs.

During our conferences, we’ll review your Editing Checklist from your last journal entry, you can ask any questions about your work, and we can address any problems with WordPress or Google docs. Make sure that we can view your Editing Checklist either on your WordPress site or in another form if you are having trouble with WordPress (hard copy, Microsoft Word, Google doc).

You can sign up for a conference time here. Please make sure you are on time – you might need to give yourself a few extra minutes to find my office.

We are peer reviewing the second essay this Tuesday, Feb 3. Almost everyone has their WordPress set up, so we’ll go ahead with posting the link to your essay on your WordPress page. If you have problems with this, you can email me the link instead. Remember, essays should be Google docs that your classmates can comment on. Just as a reminder, here are the steps.

Here are the steps for creating the link to your essay:

1. Create the link by clicking on the blue “Share” button in the upper right hand corner of the Google Doc screen.
2. A pop-up window will appear. In the upper right of that window, click “Get Shareable Link.”
3. In the first drop down box, select the option that says: “People with the link at Old Dominion University can can comment.”
4. Copy the link that appears, and paste it onto your WordPress page. Make sure to “publish” the page to save your work.
5. *Optional*: If you want to make the link “live” (so that it can be clicked), highlight the text and then click the chainlink symbol to make a hyperlink.

Your essays should be posted by 9:30am. If you’re worried about the tech, go ahead and post the link to your essay now; you can keep on working on it until 9:30am. You should spend about 20-25 minutes reviewing each essay, and you should leave at least 5 specific comments. Reviewing should be finished by noon. Please do not delete or resolve these comments.

I’ll send an email reminder on Monday about group assignments. You are not required to come to the classroom on Tuesday, but you are welcome to use that space to work if you’d like. I will not be there.

You can turn in Essay #1 by creating a new Google doc or by scrolling down in the previous doc – just don’t delete or “resolve” your peer review comments. After you’re finished, you will share the link on your WordPress site (you should have an e-portfolio page where you will link your essays). Here are the steps for creating the link to your essay:

1. Create the link by clicking on the blue “Share” button in the upper right hand corner of the Google Doc screen.
2. A pop-up window will appear. In the upper right of that window, click “Get Shareable Link.”
3. In the first drop down box, select the option that says: “People with the link at Old Dominion University can can comment.”
4. Copy the link that appears, and paste it onto your WordPress page. Make sure to “publish” the page to save your work.
5. *Optional*: If you want to make the link “live” (so that it can be clicked), highlight the text and then click the chainlink symbol to make a hyperlink.

If you are struggling with WordPress, or there are technical problems, you can also email me the link to your Essay #1.

Welcome to Writing for College Success! This website will be the central site for organizing UNIV 150 CRN 29033, with me, Sarah Moseley. This page, “Home,” will be where you can find updates and announcements. I will supplement this site as needed with Blackboard.

We’ll go over all the basics during our first meeting on Jan. 13, but in the meantime here’s what you need to know:

1. Our course meets Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30am-10:45am in CONST 1008 (it’s #118, by the Webb Center, on this map).
2. You need to purchase The Transition to College Writing, 2^nd edition, by Keith Hjortshoi. It comes with The Everyday Writer x-book as part of Writer’s Help package when purchased from the bookstore. Total cost is $30.
3. You need the textbook for a reading due in the first week. This is your heads up.