I've Got Them Moves Like a Writer

            Everybody has a “go-to” plan or a systematic scheme when they are in a particular situation. Whether these actions are planned or unplanned, the comfort of reacting a certain way becomes autonomic for most people. Once they got the hang of things, they tend to repeat their actions again because of the success they had with their prior experiences. It is these “moves” that distinguish one apart from one another and adds a certain “flavor” to the character of an individual.

What is the first thing you think of, when you hear the word, “moves?” Do you think of the legendary Michael Jackson’s moonwalk? Or, do you think of a suave man or desirable woman enticing someone smoothly? All of these are examples of actions one commonly takes to achieve some kind of goal. For instance, even this open paragraph to this entry of my blog is my typical “move” I tend to make every time I begin a writing piece. Instead of jumping straight into the topic, I like to give some background to slowly introduce my readers with what I would like to say.

In order to get a better understanding of the different “moves” a writer makes, I would like to make some comparisons with some of the authors of the articles I have read so far. Today, we are going to compare Peter Elbow’s, “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing,” and Janet Boyd’s, “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking).”

In Peter Elbow’s piece, I observed that he had begun with a personable narrative of his perspective of thinking and writing. Elbow meanders his way around and he slowly seeps in the main point of his essay. He also tends to introduce new ideas, describe them for a bit, and then adds a personal comment. Every once in a while, he would emphasize certain words and phrases by italicizing or by placing quotes. For instance, “Revising is when I use the ‘X-ray’ or ‘skeleton’ exercise…” (Elbow 59). At the end of his work, he sets off a couple of his paragraphs with titles; separating these paragraphs from the rest to prepare the reader for a more specific ideas about what he would like to say. This gives a sense that he is a very descriptive and organized writer when he is analyzing the difference between first and second order thinking.

As for Boyd’s piece, she also started off her work with a personal story that gives her credibility of her background as a college professor. She also organized her article with several different section with their own unique titles. Boyd seems to like to utilize parenthesis to insert her personal thoughts within her points. For example, “In writing up the case (whoops, I have given you a clue)…” (Boyd 88). Like Elbow, Boyd also used italics and quotation marks to emphasize certain words and phrases. Lastly, she had a couple of lists after colons and bullet points to further explain her thoughts.

After analyzing the two pieces, I have noticed that the two authors had the common tendency to write as if they can relate with the reader. The two introductions were both about their own experiences with the topic they wanted to get across. By adding a personal story, this allows the reader to feel as though the writers are opening themselves to the reader. Both were mainly in first person and by adding their personal experiences as examples have only made their points stronger. I felt that this “move” of not only adding personal background but examples of their ideas was one of the successful moves. This only backs up the validity of the author’s point and it also allows a good way to capture the attention of the reader when they read the introductory paragraph.

Another great “move” is the italics, quotation marks; anything that emphasizes a certain point across. After understanding the common punctuations in writing, a piece of writing can get pretty mundane. By understand the usage of italics, dashes, quotations, parenthesis, commas, and so forth, this adds flair to your work. Sure, some quotes here and there are just as good as other fancy punctuations, but by sprinkling the different usage of punctuations can definitely makes the writing more exciting to read.

            The only “move” I did not think was as effective is Boyd’s use of parenthesis to add little comments. I understand this trick may be useful in certain contexts, but for majority of the writing, I do not think it is necessary. If you really wanted to add comments, you might as well write them out in full sentences. I feel that it is unprofessional to use it in any way. Sure, one of the point of her paper is to “relate” with the reader, but in other circumstances I feel that this use of parenthesis can be rude.  

Scholarly Publications and Its Credibility

            Previously, I took a look through the different examples of genre generators that were available on the internet. There was the SCIgen, the comic generator and a meme generator. This time, I plan to put the SCIgen to the test and compare it with an actual scholarly academic publication.

            Personally, I aspire to be a part of the medical field someday, so I decided to find an article that tickled my interests. As a possible immunologist, I am really interested in immunology. Immunology is the study of the immune system and this field can span from dealing with allergies to finding a cure or an inhibitor to slow down the process of a particular disease. With constant changes and discoveries within this field, I am confident that immunology is a field that will always require research.

            The article I selected is from a nonprofit organization, PLOS, which publishes scientific and medical journals. The name of the article is, “Superior Control of HIV-1Replication by CD8+ T Cells Targeting Conserved Epitopes: Implications for HIVVaccine Design.” This particular article discussed how T Cells – cells that mediate adaptive immunity – can be used as a base for a possible vaccine against HIV and how they should start focusing on figuring out how to make it responsive to the various epitopes – the specific detectors of pathogens; each specific to a certain pathogen – of the HIV-1 virus.  

 On the SCIgen website, I was able to generate an article titled, “Analyzing a* Search and the Memory Bus.” To be quite honest, the title does not make any sense at all. As analyzed prior to this blog entry, the context of the generated article does not make any sense at all. Even though the article contains eloquent words, they do not mean anything significant. It has the appearance of an official article, but this does not even compare to the article I was able to find.

            When I compare these two very different articles, there are certain structural qualities that they tend to share. To begin with, there is the matter of format. The two articles have a certain style; pattern to its entry. Both had a title, an abstract, an introduction, methods to an experiment, a graphical and/or numerical data, an analysis, a conclusion and a list of references. In addition, the two had a professional tone to its work. SCIgen, is not a good example of a scholarly publication for the fact that it is just a piece with a bunch of big and fancy words put together, but it did perceive a tone of an authentic article.

            There are many reasons why SCIgen is far from a scholarly article. For an “article,” in general, there is not a lot of details. In order for a publication to earn its noteworthy quality, it has to give a thorough explanation. By the simple looks of SCIgen, it does not seem like the work can be “trusted.” In the article I have chosen, there are pages and pages of explain in depth about their findings in their particular experiments. Additionally, I feel that PLOS article had more credibility due to the numerous references they cited. This signifies that they are not the first ones looking into this particular topic. The main difference between the two is that one is simply generated through a select combination of words in different places, while the other is thoroughly peer reviewed by their fellow colleagues. Anyone can scramble up some kind of essay or research paper about anything, but the work will not mean anything unless others of the same profession feel the same way or differently on the topic. While one may feel that they have put enough information, it is always a good idea to have others to check their work. This is because the reviewer may have some questions or some things to add upon what is there. With combined effort, the work can only get better and polished to its full potential.  

            Overall, I thought that the article I chose was intriguing. Not only was this topic interesting for me, but being able to recognize the familiar terminologies, due to the recent courses I have taken, has made me feel excited in a nerdy way. It was as if my brain was saying, “Hey, I know this!” I do realize and sympathize on how difficult it is to find a generic way to target pathogens. For them to have been able to progress or to have found results, where this is possible, has only made me enthusiastic for the future of immunology. One day, I only hope to contribute through research and maybe even publish articles of my own!

Inspecting Genre Generators

             Generators are generally something that creates some kind of product. Genre generators are useful when you need some assistance in forming something in a short amount of time, and they are usually there for convenience. There is not a lot of work required to utilize these generators. For a typical generator, there is usually a preset of writings and sometimes pictures that are programed to appear at random intervals. These websites seem to understand particular conventions and themes to a certain degree where they are able to manifest random creations. I was able to check out some of the generators that exist online and I thought it was interesting of how these sites were able to form a certain arrangement.

            One of the sites I took a look at was the SCIgen. On this generator, I was able to create an almost realistic scientific journal always somehow relating to the computer sciences. I, myself, am not familiar with anything about this topic, but by allowing me to type in “author” names, the generated article looks as though I have some credibility. As soon as I start to dissect each of the articles I have generated, I soon realize that there is a common pattern to this generator. There was a common set up of an eye-catching title and a typical format of a scientific article; abstract, introduction, experiment, data, analysis, etc. Yet, the only problem with this like any generators, is that when I read it, it does not make any sense. It might have not made sense to me because I do not understand the computer science lingo, but the content does not seem to add up. In a sense, it appears that the article is a legitimate resource with all of the fancy terms and graphs within the text, but in actuality, this generator rarely generates something that makes any sense.

            Another generator’s sole purpose was to generate a three panel comic strip. Unlike the previous generator, all I had to do was to click, “generate” and it created a comic in just seconds! Unfortunately, like any generators, when it is programmed to generate at random intervals, not all of the comics seemed to make any sense. For example, the one I generated below:

 It took time before I was able to generate something that made any sense. After several attempts of trying to find one comic that seemed to make sense, I was able to distinguish a pattern for this particular generator. For the comic strip generator, it seems as though there is a set of pictures for the first, second, and third panel. The first panel generally seems to be something like a greeting or something thought provoking, the second panel would have some kind of ridiculous response and the third panel would be very conclusive or drastic. By having three mini generators within one generator increases the odds of creating a unique comic strip. Here is one of the comic strips that I thought was “successful:"      

                                                      

            There was another generator which was entertaining as the last one, the meme generator. Unlike the other two generators, this generator did not generate random words or pictures at all. Instead, this generator was almost like an assistive tool to create a meme. There was a set of pictures to select from and the option to upload a picture for a desired meme. Then, there was a tool to insert certain texts to support the image. Here’s one that I have created: 

                                                     

            On my own, I was able to find a “MadLib” generator. This generator helps me create a MadLib by allowing me to write about anything and allowing me to select certain “blanks” to put in my piece of writing. There is not a random generator like the first two sites, but like the meme generator, this allows me to have more creative freedom.  

            Through this analysis, I have realized that these websites have some idea of conventions of the creation that is intended to be made. For a computer science article, there is a set formula; pattern of a typical paper and for the comic strip, there is a recurring theme where something unexpected happens. As for the meme generator, it focuses on having a certain guideline where the picture and the texts work together to create a humorous statement and the MadLibs will always have blanks for a certain plot to make it fun and interesting. Each of these have a “theme,” where one can clearly realize what they are and follow the conventions for each type of genre. 

#Twitter

       @MichelleDaPyon    

          For some time, Twitter has been a very popular social network to express thoughts in less than 140 characters. Out of all of the many social medias out there, Twitter is one of the simplest forms. One does not have to put a lot of thought analysis when they are typing these “tweets.” It is instantaneous, mostly informal and often permanent. Because of these features, Twitter has been utilized in many ways and Twitter can convey its messages differently, depending on how the user intends to use this site.

To begin with, the user has the option to decide whether they would like their tweets to appear publically or not. Typically, the “tweets” are public to anyone, who has access to the internet. As a user, they can decide what they would like to post about to whomever they want. For an example, celebrities will typically try to target their fans by updating them about what they are doing. This includes, promoting a new single, concerts, any endorsements they are paid to say something about, and what they believe in (religion, current events, etc). Whereas, political candidates may tweet about what they intend to do in office, their current projects and other campaigning propaganda. The tone for each of these groups of people will be very different. Celebrities may try to relate with their fans, so they might tweet to their fans as if they were their friend. Politicians may also do this, but as a notable person of society, they will most likely tweet more formally than the celebrities.  A tweet’s tone can range from being serious or being comical; formal versus informal. Tweets basically comes down to depend on the content and audience, when it comes to the type of tones.

 To be quite honest, there are no specific boundaries whatsoever when it comes to tweets. Anyone can tweet about whatever they like. Since Twitter is similar to a blog, users can tweet about their life, thoughts, pictures and videos about anything. The only exception to this that most people seem to follow is to not tweet about your personal information online; an obvious rule of thumb when it comes to using a social network. Then, if other people are interested in what you have to say, then they have the option to “follow” you.

 When composing a tweet, one may sometimes put in a “hashtag.” Hashtags were made so that anyone could search certain words or phrases on the site easily. TV shows, like the local news, sometimes uses the concept of hashtags to receive tweets that pertain to what people think about the issues they talk about on the show. Some of the popular hashtags that have been developed over time are the “#ThrowbackThursdays,” “#selfie,” and “#nofilter.” These hashtags would often refer to the content of the tweet. For instance, “#ThrowbackThursdays” are meant to be posted on Thursdays and the user would reflect upon what they have done in the past, usually with a photograph, if available.  With or without hashtags, Twitter has been programmed to pick up on everyone’s tweets and have collected the most commonly used words or phrases on the “trending” part of the site. This informs the user of what is currently trending in the world, around them or wherever they are interested in. 

Personally, I started my own Twitter account to keep up with certain celebrities I was interested in and to use Twitter as an easier way to keep a diary of my life. Knowing that I did not have any followers at the beginning has allowed me to feel as though I could get away with tweeting about anything. Later, I was able to find my own community of people to communicate about our shared interests. Over time, my Twitter account has significantly changed from what I had originally intended to do. My audience changed from myself or for a random passerby to a community where I tweet passionately about what I feel or think about. Instead of tweeting about instances that occur in my life, I am now communicating with all kinds of people, collectively sharing ideas. Although Twitter may not be as eloquent as the diary entries or letters of historical figures of the past, I view Twitter as one of the ways of recording history. This way, we are able to see the different perspectives of an issue from all kinds of people; more collective evidence than the few historians who have recorded history in the past. The tweets may not be as organized or accurately stated, but who is to say what “has happened” is completely accurate from the collection of writings we have analyzed in the past? Twitter, in my opinion, is a great way to find one’s own niche and to explore many people’s ideas in a very convenient way.