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Category Archives: Outside the Classroom

Grammar Tips: Passive Voice & Collective Nouns

By mbryant | Published April 29, 2015

We’re back with our second edition of Grammar Tips; brought to you by the ENG205 Grammar students, Professor Paula Patch, and the Cupid Studio. Last week our Grammar Tips highlighted who vs. whom and comma splices.

This week our tips will focus on passive voice and collective nouns. If you’re ever unsure whether your voice is passive or you can’t quite remember what a collective noun is, these tips may be just what you need. With finals just around the corner it’s never a bad idea to brush up on your grammar skills! Are there any tips you use? Let us know and check out #elongrammar too!

PASSIVE VOICE

COLLECTIVE NOUNS

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Guest Post: Jamie Rice On Gender, Grammar, and Rhetoric

By mbryant | Published April 28, 2015

Jamie Rice ’16, English Literature.

English is a magnificent language because it appears to lack gendered nouns. Unlike

French or Spanish, English speakers never have an awkward moment where they have to stop themselves and think, “Wait, is lamp female or male?” In that sense, English is gender neutral. But that does not mean that the issue of sexism in writing is not present. For example, a study published in 1996 asked readers to assess the quality of two essays in which the author’s gender is never specified. These students were interviewed and asked what gender the author was. Two thirds of the respondents offered a gender, and about half of their gender guesses were incorrect. In contrast to the neutrality in these papers, people feel like writing voices are gendered even if there is no actual evidence. They had a feeling, and the only reason these students even felt qualified to answer the question was because of said feeling.

In addition, despite the glowing gender neutrality of the English language, there are still people who use it in sexist ways. This is a problem to the extent that the purdue owl has an entire page of their website, typically utilized for guidelines revolving around citation and grammar, that tells readers how to avoid using stereotypes and gender bias in their writing. One example of an improper usage is “Although she was blonde, Mary was still intelligent.” The page goes to show numerous examples of words that appropriate to use in the place of “man.” My favorite part of the page is when they specify that instead of referring to someone as a “male nurse” or a “woman doctor,” these professions should be used without the gender modifier–I find the fact that anyone would write male or female in front of a word fascinating just because of how wordy it is.

Furthermore, even in my personal experience writing essays, I have encountered multiple instances where someone assumed the gender, typically as male, when citing for a scholarly article. It’s been such a problem that I have had professors explicitly state that they should never assume gender because most people cited a female scholar, with a stereotypically female name, as a male because they only memorized her last name and assumed she was a he. The gendered nature of English as a language becomes even more pronounced when we attempt to correct for this issue. For example, let’s write a sentence. We don’t know who started the fire, but he or she will be held responsible. Okay. Now imagine instead of writing that you wrote this. We don’t know who started the fire, but she or he will be held responsible. That is a very political change. That sentence reads like a subversion of patriarchal tendencies in language, rightly so, because of the switch. “He,” the normally preferenced pronoun, is demoted to second status. Overall, both of these configurations are problematic. Not only do they preference one gender over the other, they preference the gender binary, in general.

Basically, even though it is very easy when looking at the differences between English and other romance languages to call the former gender-neutral, that is not the case in practice. And despite small victories like the acceptance of “‘they” as a singular pronoun to be used in the place of “he or she,” there is still a long way to go within culture itself before grammar and language will reflect what could become a society that promotes lived gender equality.

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PWR from a Dance major’s perspective

By cbraganca | Published April 23, 2015

Carolyn Braganca- LIT ’15

Currently, Quinn Czejkowski is enrolled in Dr. Li’s Introduction to Professional Writing and Rhetoric. As a senior dance and arts administration double major, she provides a different and interesting perspective on how some basic PWR principles can be applied in settings and contexts other than writing. Below is an interview with Quinn, exploring how her brief PWR experience has affected her outlook on dance.

Carolyn: When choreographing, how much do you consider your audience?

Quinn: Personally, I am not very aware of my audience when I create dance. Of course this is not an absolute thing and is not often a strongly conscious choice, but I tend to create dances that I don’t attach a lot of meaning to. I am more interested to hear peoples’ interpretations than I am to see if I can communicate a specific message with the movement I create. The audience is not consciously why I create pieces, but I know that they are subconsciously affecting certain things that I do. I think that when a piece of choreography tackles some sort of societal issue or observation, knowing the viewing audience is very important. The desire is never to offend, but if anything, to make people think in a new or different way. But controversiality is at times necessary, and so efforts to not offend may not be successful. One of the things that I love about art is that it is open to calling people out, challenging systems, pointing out problematic things, and that can never and never should be taken away.

How do you consider your audience?

When I do think about my audience, I tend to think of them in two ways – the dancers and the non-dancers. It is a divide that is critical because I hope to please both, but I know that in attempting to do that, I may appear to “talk down” to the dancers in the audience but also over shoot my non-dancing audience. For me, there is always a concern that dancers who watch it can see right through the structure I have created and may have a value judgment based on that.

Another interesting part of dance and the choreographic process is that it is important to remember that you, as the creator, have seen the piece tens or hundreds of times more than your audience has or will. Their experience with a piece is rarely extended for more than a few days, even if it is longer than the singular performance that they get to see. This is something unique to dance because it is a form bound by space and time. It does not continue to exist like a painting does, but it is fleeting. Videos don’t do justice to live performance, and so dance grapples with the challenge of some sort of immediacy for its audience. What the audience is left with is not something tangible, and so impressions have to be significant but not overdone.

Has your experience in your PWR class changed how you consider the rhetorical situation of your dancing?

This class has made me more aware of the interaction that I have with my audience, planned or unplanned, conscious or unconscious. I am more conscious of the disparity that exists within my audience and therefore more active in trying to temper things for both sets of eyes. Though rhetoric (in terms of specific end results) doesn’t come directly into my process, as I don’t often try to communicate a specific message with my choreography, rhetoric as a structural idea is very applicable. In the same way that a story needs a beginning, middle, and end; an argument needs an opening, body, and conclusion; a dance needs to start, continue, and finish. The structure of anything is arguably infinitely variable, but art and dance are different in that a piece could not follow the logical chronology of time, or be abstract and be successful. Whereas, a professionally written document is written with a purpose in mind and it’s success is evaluated based on its achievement of the purpose or failure.

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Rhetoric at Research Conferences

By cbraganca | Published April 21, 2015

Carolyn Braganca ’15.

To present at an undergraduate research conference is actually a very realistic opportunity for many Elon University students—one that is not very common at many other universities. This past weekend (Wednesday – Saturday) I attended the National Council for Undergraduate Research (NCUR), which was hosted at Eastern Washington University just outside Spokane, Washington. With more than 50 students presenting, Elon University was one of the most represented schools in attendance. I highly recommend anyone interested to apply to be one of those Elon students at next year’s conference (in the beautiful Asheville, North Carolina).

What better way to practice rhetorical strategies than to present at a conference?

For anyone interested at possibly presenting at a conference (be it NCUR or a professional conference), here are some rhetorical decisions to consider.

At a research conference, the major and obvious rhetorical decision you will have to make is how to present your research effectively and clearly. First, you have to consider what content to include in the presentation: how much background information is it safe to assume your audience will have? Depending on the conference, your audience may have a very solid foundation of knowledge, a relatively solid foundation, or even no foundation at all. At NCUR, for example, I attended presentations on topics of which I had only a wobbly idea. Likewise, I know I also presented my research on Sherlock Holmes to people whose only knowledge of Sherlock Holmes came from BBC’s Sherlock. Some conferences, however, may be biology conferences, at which it will be safe to assume your audience has a stable but broad understanding on basic biology.

In any scenario, you will likely have to present some background information, but you need to determine how much time in your presentation—remember, you will likely be given a small time slot—you want to devote to explain exposition.

Along with the oral aspect of your presentation, you need to consider the visual aspect of your presentation. Unless you are specifically told not to by the conference, always include a visual! People want to look at something, so give them something eye-catching but informational to absorb visually. When designing you PowerPoint, Prezi, poster, or whatever visual aid you decide to use, be sure to keep visual design and visual rhetoric in mind. Your research may be the coolest topic in the world, but if you present it using a PowerPoint presentation with a blank white background and default black words, your audience will likely not remember much about your research. Your visual should reflect your research in some way, so even if your audience does not pay much attention to the words you speak, they will remember the words you or ideas you wrote.

For more information on visual design, check out these websites to get you started: Web Style Guide, Visual Mess, and Usability.

Finally, an often not-fully-realized rhetorical decision you need to make at a conference is what to wear—you need to carefully consider how you present yourself. Most conferences have a business casual dress policy, but when presenting people often dress more business formal. Within those parameters, however, there are several choices you can make—particularly if you have the privilege of being a woman. Does the blue suit or the gray better represent you? The slimmer fitting pants or the looser ones? Do pants even suit you? Maybe you are more comfortable in a skirt? Heels or flats? Red or purple? Collared blouse or cardigan?

Standing in front of people with whom you are unfamiliar is often an uncomfortable experience, so counteract the discomfort of the situation with comfortable clothes. Yes, you should aim to look formal and nice, but if you feel more comfortable in your older black pants instead of your new gray pants, then wear your black pants! Or if you feel more confident in your flats than in your heels, then wear your flats! Remember: while looking formal is a priority, you can sacrifice degrees of formality for the sake of comfort and confidence. What you look like on the outside is an important rhetorical decision, but what is more important is how what’s on the outside affects the inside—if you are enthusiastic about your research and personable, and if that enthusiasm and personality shows in your presentation, that is what your audience will focus on and remember.

And for the love of all things good and beautiful in this world, don’t read from your paper!

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Brianna Duff on Her Novel and Her Audience

By cbraganca | Published April 2, 2015

Carolyn Braganca ’15

In honor of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s visit to campus today, this post will highlight a brilliant Elon student who also seeks to make science more interesting and understandable to the general population.

Brianna Duff is a senior creative writing and physics double major, an Elon College Fellow, and a Lumen Scholar. Not content with the traditional collection of short stories, Brianna tasked herself with writing a novel for her research project. As if the prospect of writing a novel wasn’t already ambitious enough, she also decided to write a story centered around advanced physics concepts. And just because she is that kind of visionary, Brianna also decided on a young adult audience—one that had little to no knowledge of such concepts.

Brianna Duff and her research mentor, Drew Perry

The following is an interview with Brianna, focusing in particular on why she chose her audience and how the audience affected her writing.

Carolyn: Could you provide a quick synopsis of your novel?

Brianna: My novel, titled I Travel Light tells of a world where the laws of modern physics have stopped applying only to the micro or the macro and have moved to operate on our everyday scale. While the physical situations themselves are impossible, the science behind them is honest and works to explain real theories and phenomena in the fictional context. The novel revolves around four stories: there’s Kate, who can communicate with herself in a parallel world; Hadley, who can run at the speed of light; Sam, who’s town has been plagued with an anti-matter disease that’s causing people to disappear; and Claire, who starts her story standing at the edge of a black hole that’s opened up in the middle of her college campus. The novel nests and builds like a series of equations, moving first in reverse chronological order to reveal each character’s beginnings and then going forward in time to reveal their ends. It explores the complex human responses to a world gone strange and unfamiliar, and it works to merge together the scientific world and the literary sphere.

What made you choose a young adult audience as opposed to an adult audience?

Physics often seems unattainable to younger students, particularly female students. It is a primarily male-driven field, and young girls are often inadvertently discouraged from pursing it beyond the high school level. I wanted to write a novel that would help challenge this slow-changing status quo. I wanted to expose young readers, particularly the female readers that currently dominate the young adult genre, to the beauty of physics. I wanted to encourage them to be curious and to ask questions and to see the world in a new way, and, maybe, to put the book down mid-way through to research just exactly how relativity works. It would be amazing to have someone read my book and be interested enough to call me out on the fact that running at the speed of light really is impossible and explain to me exactly why. I also wanted the opportunity to write a female character who was interested in pursing physics and who was smart and aware. There weren’t any in the books I was reading, and I hoped I could change that and help other young women see the potential for something similar.

How did you research your audience and the conventions of young adult literature? What did you find?

My research consists mostly of reading all the time. I make it a goal to read a book a week and I always try to keep up with what is current in the YA genre. There is so much that can be learned by simply paying attention to the big names out on the shelves. John Green, for example, was (and still is) a big voice in YA literature when I started the novel a few years ago, and his voice has been a big influence on how I write. There are some great sci-fi writers I’ve read who build wonderful dystopian worlds that I try to emulate (Beth Revis, for example, and Marissa Meyer). I also read literary fiction meant for older age groups because I think most young readers are aware of these books, and I don’t want to patronize my readers (David Mitchell, for instance, has been a massive influence on this book). Reading constantly reminds me not to fall into the trap of “dumbing down” my characters just because I’m writing for people younger than me. It’s easy to do, but I’ve found characters mean so much more when you let them breathe on the page and just say what they want to say, regardless of stereotypes or expectations.

How did you consider your audience while writing about advanced physics concepts?

This was, I think, the key point to my research. I talked to a number of science writers and science outreach professionals about what it looked like to write science for a general audience. It wasn’t so much that I was considering my YA audience particularly; it was more just an understanding that I was writing for a group of people who would likely not have any basis on what I was talking about. When I interviewed with Dr. Alan Lightman, a physicist and author of Einstein’s Dreams, he told me to put as little science in as possible; he said he wrote books he thought had barely any science in them and they were critiqued for being science-heavy. So I made it my policy to focus on just a few concepts in the story I was telling. I couldn’t fit the entirely of black hole physics into 60 pages, for example, so I chose my battles. I chose what interested me—event horizons and spaghettification and time dilation—and I built the world around those. For me, that’s what its all about: finding the few basic concepts that would get people intrigued and letting them delve into the rest on their own.

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Culture Shock in the Workplace

By mbryant | Published March 12, 2015

Kaitlyn Stahl – Class of 2015

Screen Shot 2014-06-22 at 1.05.21 AM (1) This semester, I have been working as an editorial intern at Cultureshock Media in London. Cultureshock is a company that specializes in both print and online publishing, and their clients typically pertain to culture such as museums, music venues, or fashion companies. The first half of my semester in the United Kingdom was spent taking classes, but as soon as November came, my schedule shifted into working three full days out of the week. Since then I have worked with clients like British Airways, the British Council, and Sotheby’s magazine. I’ve written newsletter and magazine content, researched cultural events, and created posts for Cultureshock’s art review website (http://www.culturecritic.co.uk). As someone who wants to go into the publishing industry, this internship felt like the perfect placement.

Still, there were challenges in the beginning as I adjusted to a British workplace. Although everyone speaks English, it still might be hard to interpret what someone really means. If you’ll excuse the wordplay, I definitely experienced culture shock at Cultureshock.

I’ve narrowed my experience to a few aspects that stood out the most to me – both because I wasn’t expecting them and because they’re so prominent.

Food and Drink: Both are very important in British culture. It’s often a topic of conversation and is essential to bonding. First, if someone asks if you want the last biscuit*, you say no. By asking other people in this manner, the person is actually saying that they want it. Knowing this helped me understand their politeness and roundabout way of asking for things, which would definitely help me later. More stereotypically, the British love tea. Instead of the clichéd ‘interns fetching coffee’, you should anticipate learning how to make tea. Whenever someone gets up to make a hot drink, they are expected to ask everyone else if they’d like something as well. Both food and drink come into play at the pub, where the entire office might head on Friday nights. This is a great place to get to know your coworkers on a friendly level and ends up strengthening your working relationship as well.

Office Layout: I’ve been at Cultureshock for a few weeks and I’m still confused as to the company’s hierarchy. This is because the office has an open layout. In a British office, the CEO could be sitting next to an intern, and everyone mingles with each other casually. Our office is an old apartment building, so aside from a separation between upstairs and downstairs, there aren’t any divisions between departments. Making it even harder to differentiate hierarchy, British offices tend to be very young. Age doesn’t necessarily denote seniority.

Receiving Direction: If your supervisor casually suggests you do something by saying “Oh, you might see if you can work on this before tomorrow” or “perhaps it would be a good idea to work on this before tomorrow,” it actually means you need to do it before tomorrow. Similar to the indirect way of asking for the biscuit, the British don’t tend to give specific direction. It is up to the employee to interpret what they want and manage their time well enough to get it done.

Writing: Surprisingly, writing hasn’t been that different. The biggest thing I’ve come across is spelling. In British English, many words with an ‘or’ at the end have a ‘u’ in it, such as humour, rumour, or colour. Also, words with the suffix in ‘ize’ or ‘izing’ are spelled with an ‘s,’ such as traumatising or capitalise. Working with culture, I personally need to remember theater is spelled theatre over here.

These are only a few of the cultural aspects of an international workplace. Although seemingly random, understanding each helped me understand my coworkers better and thus get more out of my internship. By building a relationship through food and drink, I felt more comfortable asking questions to people I wouldn’t have spoken with otherwise. They then became more willing to share some of their expertise with me. The open office also helped foster relationship building and department integration. I am lucky enough to sit next to my supervisor so if I am ever in need of specific direction, I can ask her face-to-face. Furthermore, I’ve been able to improve my communication skills by learning how to interpret her indirectness. Overall, it’s been interesting to see both the differences and the similarities.

*Biscuit is cookie over here.

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Resurrecting the Business Card: How an Unconventional Design Can Up Your Potential in the Post-Graduate Career World

By jmoore | Published March 10, 2015

Jessica Trinidad ‘16

As a young professional attempting to break into the ever-challenging post-graduate job network, it is extremely important to develop a sophisticated professional identity that will be distinctly recognized by potential employers. This identity should be clear in your resume (check out Taylor Logeman’s article on resume design here) the language you use when interacting with potential employers or members of your professional network, and your business cards. Yes, I did say business cards, and no, they are not extinct. Business cards are still an extremely important part of building your professional network and your ability to share it with others.

Since business cards are such an integral part of your professional identity, it is important to ensure the information and design of your card parallels both your skills and your personal marketing. While it is considered practical to design your business card in a conventional way, designing an unconventional, but professional, business card will give you an edge above the rest of the applicant pool, for your unique design or approach will hopefully be remembered and admired by your potential employer. Although, before you begin to develop a personal brand on your business card, it is important to understand the necessary information to be included on the card. One of the most important factors in designing a business card is providing the information that would be useful to a potential employer, including your name, career label, email address, and business phone number, allowing the individual to have a method to contact you.

Since you have considered this information, it is important to contemplate font and text sizing and location. While there are multiple ways to present information on a business card, the most used method is to present all the information on one side of the card, leaving one side either blank or with minimal design. In order to stand out from the conventional design template, it is important to consider using two sides to present information on your business card. In the example above, it is clear the creator used the space on both sides to convey her skills and information. The creativity displayed on the card presents the individual’s skills in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or another creative medium used to design the card. It also demonstrates the individual’s knowledge of design, text placement, and color scheme.

When incorporating text, it is necessary to decide whether you would like to use a left, center, or right text alignment. When working with related text, it is best to keep them within the same text alignment and group related elements in close proximity with one another. Once again, in the example provided above, the company name, as well as the below information, is center aligned, although they are grouped separately: the company’s contact information is grouped distinctly from the name, whose larger text denotes it as the most important information on the card. Typically, it is best to make your name, or your company’s name, the largest text on the card. It may also be best to experiment with bolding your name, as well.

Knowing the basics to developing a creative, but professional, business card is one of the first steps to creating a personal brand, as well as increasing your professional development. Now that you know the essentials, it’s time to begin designing your own business card! Good luck!

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Digital Portfolios and the Best Platforms for You

By adysch | Published December 30, 2014

Brittany Wenner ’15, Strategic Communications Major and PWS Minor

When summer gets into swing, new graduates are seeking employment, and underclassmen are beginning their pursuit of internships. Unfortunately, it has become abundantly clear that the job market is not only limited, but also full of highly competitive and qualified college students and postgrads. It becomes exponentially more important, then, to establish your academic and professional footprint, as well as set yourself a part from other applicants, by creating a polished, personalized digital portfolio.

This includes making rhetorical choices with respect to your intended audience (internships versus professional work), your content (visual versus written), and your personal and professional identity (how you want to portray yourself as a person and professional). Thus, depending on your area of study and intended career path, different Web platforms may be better suited for you than for fellow classmates and job seekers in other disciplines. This post will review four popular websites—Digication, Weebly, Wix, and WordPress—with consideration to features and resources on each that can determine which platform is easiest and most effective for you.

Having changed majors and career goals over my four years at Elon thus far, I have explored and worked with all of these platforms and have accumulated three separate digital portfolios. Because I journalism major my sophomore year, I found that the majority of the work I wanted to showcase was writing-based, so I dabbled in both Digication and WordPress when assembling my first online portfolio. Ultimately, I opted for WordPress because I had prior experience working with the blog-style site. Because of its diverse readership and users, as well as its relatively easy navigation and allowance for customization, WordPress can accommodate almost any user, in any concentration or discipline, in setting up a personal site.

Now, I should stress that Digication is by no means better or worse than WordPress or any other e-portfolio resource. In fact, it can be an essential tool, especially for those whose work is particularly writing-based; Elon English majors, especially those concentrating in Professional Writing and Rhetoric, are actually required to have a complete Digication e-portfolio before they graduate. This requirement speaks not only to the merit of Digication as an e-portfolio platform, but also to its popularity and capability of drawing traffic (site visitors and potential employers).

During my Digital Media Convergence course, I was introduced Weebly when assigned to create an online portfolio for my work with design and multimedia. While all of the platforms mentioned in this article support multimedia presentations and portfolio pieces, Weebly is especially useful in creating appealing and dynamic galleries and subpages for your work. With respect to your personal tastes and visual rhetoric, Weebly provides a variety of themes for layouts and color schemes, making it easy to transform an existing template into your personalized creation. It also allows you to customize your site name without purchasing a domain name, which can optimize your presence on search engines—i.e., Google, Yahoo, etc. Overall, Weebly is best suited for those who may not necessarily have the creativity and time to design and customize a personal portfolio site from the ground-up, but its flexibility and relative easy will support work that is writing, photography, design, and video-based.

When tasked with creating and/or renovating my existing portfolio work this past Spring semester, I opted to try a new Web platform, Wix, to showcase my academic and professional work. At first, I was a bit overwhelmed by the plethora of theme options and customization tools; a huge pro of this resource is that it is incredibly flexible and supportive in terms of customization, while a potential con presents a substantial amount of time and effort in editing, organizing, and polishing your site. Despite the fact that this site perhaps took much longer for me to set up and make adjustments to my digital portfolio, I ultimately found that the array of gallery, slideshow, design, and format options were (arguably) the best out of all four platforms mentioned in this article. If you have the time and drive to showcase your work in the most individualized, personal way possible, regardless of your concentration (I was able to feature both written and visual work), Wix is definitely a great choice.

Regardless of your class standing, major concentration, personal interests, or variety of works, any of these platforms are worth a first, and even second or third, look; the links for Digication, Weebly, Wix, and WordPress are below. As with rhetoric, one must always consider the audience, the goal, and the delivery of the message you are trying to send, and in this case, the message is a resounding, “You should hire ME!” So, without further ado, I urge you to check out each of these resources as soon as possible and establish your digital footprint in the academic and professional world. Go out, be great, and be you.

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Rhetoric in Operation: An Atlanta Newspaper Operations Internship (Part 2)

By adysch | Published December 23, 2014

Hannah Silvers ‘17 – ENG, PWR and CRW Major

Hello all! I’m Hannah Silvers, a rising sophomore English major with concentrations in PWR and Creative Writing and a minor in Economics. I’m an Honors Fellow at Elon and a copy editor for The Pendulum, our student newspaper. This summer, I worked as the operations intern for Creative Loafing, a multimedia company whose alternative newsweekly paper boasts the second-widest circulation in Georgia. I worked with former operations editor and current managing editor of Creative Loafing, Alicia, and my internship mentor, Dr. Rebecca Pope-Ruark. “Operations” entails a host of different responsibilities, among them event database management, fact checking, copy editing, and even a little bit of writing. In this blog post, I’ll run you through two of the typical work assignments for a Creative Loafing operations intern and the rhetorical skills that come along with them. For a discussion of two more, please feel free to consult last week’s Part 1.

Copy editing

Here’s an example from my time at CL. Alicia gave me three articles from the Food section to copy edit. As I read the first one, I realized that I was making a lot of comments about the negative and overly critical tone that the author used to describe the three restaurants in the article. The author used patronizing language to describe the furnishings, the live entertainment, and even the food. The tone made it difficult for me to sympathize with the writer’s point of view or appreciate the review.

I brought up my concern to Alicia, telling her that I didn’t know if it was my place to suggest a change in tone the day before the paper went to press but that the style of the article was more than a little off-putting. After reading it, she told me that she agreed with me but didn’t think the writer would have time to redo the entire article in time. So we decided to publish it without changing the tone. The readers who left paragraph-length comments on the online version of the article are all we needed to know that we were right. Alicia and I scanned a few of his other articles and saw the same tone creep into more than one. Alicia decided to bring up the issue to the section editor, who took care of the issue. This episode was a reminder that the copy editor’s job is to make sure that the company is represented properly.

Writing

Writing is a smaller part of my internship than these others, but I have had a few bylines in the paper and on the Fresh Loaf blog. With the kind of writing I do at CL – mostly blurbs, nothing more than 200 words – my main focus is matching the style of my writing to the examples that Alicia gives me. If that’s not a rhetorical exercise, I don’t know what is.

The longest piece of writing I’ve completed so far was a 200-word blurb that accompanied a full page of July 4th events. Since I entered dozens of them in the database, I had a solid foundation on which to write. The blurb introduced the spirit of the holiday and a few of the major events that happened all around the city.

To put this blurb together, I got last year’s 4th of July blurb from the archives. She wrote it last year “in about two seconds,” according to her, but she said that she wanted something similar. I made a bulleted list of the things I noticed in last year’s blurb as a way to guide what I did this year: colloquial language (using “you,” “bless ya,” and a few curse words); started with a catchy idea (besides the terribleness of the humidity of Atlantan summer, Atlantans can all agree on one thing: that we all like to blow shit up); mentioned several different kinds of events like parades, neighborhood festivals, and barbecues, but focused on public fireworks shows; ended on a punchy note (“God bless ya, America”); long sentences with lots of punctuation (especially commas and dashes). I tried to match the general tone and structure as noted above in that list as well as the types of events that were mentioned last year. My hours of entering events into the database really paid off when I needed to look up restaurants hosting barbecues or lakes with fireworks shows.

In conclusion…

Unlike with database management and fact checking (which I talked about in Part 1), I had substantial experience with copy editing and writing under my belt before I interned at Creative Loafing. So, instead of just learning how to write or edit, I was learning how to write and edit specifically for Creative Loafing. Knowing how to write for a greater organization is a skill that every professional writer needs, one that I think any PWR majors or PWS minors in my position should learn as quickly as possible. From my experience, by performing a quick rhetorical analysis of the first few assignments I was given went a long way, I was able to establish the tone, style, and audience with a little hard work at the beginning, which made the rest of my assignments much easier. I’d say that learning the audience, purpose, tone and style of the organization early on will help any professional writing intern successfully complete the writing projects she’s assigned over the course of her internship.

Thanks for sticking around ‘til the end of my blog post!

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Rhetoric in Operation: An Atlanta Newspaper Operations Internship (Part 1)

By adysch | Published December 16, 2014

Hannah Silvers ‘17 – ENG, PWR and CRW Major

Event database management

My biggest responsibility as operations intern is the events database. Creative Loafing (I’ll just refer to the company as “CL” from now on) has a reputation as a source for Atlantans to keep up to date on the diverse happenings of the city, both in the print edition and on the massive events section of the website. In order for CL to keep its followers in the loop, someone has to keep track of all the events going down in Atlanta and enter them into a giant online database that connects to the back end of the website. That’s the job of the operations editor and, this summer, me.

Hosts and sponsors of events email their press releases to Alicia. She then forwards me the ones that aren’t spam for me to enter into the database. Data entry is pretty simple, although it requires patience, attention to detail, and resourcefulness. I have to make sure that all the relevant information makes its way into the event entry. That means scrutinizing the press releases and often researching to fill in missing information. The tone, content, order, and format of the information in each entry has to match the others, which entails a rhetorical analysis of each.

Fact checking

After event database management, the next biggest responsibility of a CL operations intern is fact checking. Fact checking is important to any publication that doesn’t want to get in trouble for reporting false information or being careless. In the course of my internship so far, I have fact checked articles, blurbs, location profiles in our database, and parts of special projects like the CL City Guide (a kind of encyclopedia of what you need to do when you visit Atlanta: music festivals, Atlanta food, special bed and breakfasts, quirky boutique shopping… everything).

Fact checking can be tedious, especially when faced with a list of thirty hotel entries for the Lodging section of the City Guide that require address, phone number, price range, URL, a paragraph of description, and a host of other information. It can seem like mindless work. But when something goes wonky, fact checking turns into a rhetorical exercise.

My work with the Lodging section of the City Guide turned into rhetorical exercise. I ran into a problem almost immediately after starting on the project. Although Alicia told me that each of the entries was complete and only needed to be checked for accuracy, I quickly discovered that most of the entries were far from complete. All of them were missing any kind of information about price, and most of them were missing the paragraph of description that will feature as their blurbs in the City Guide. This isn’t too uncommon though as the editors tend to work a couple of weeks ahead of the staff; I just happened to be the first one to need the information that wasn’t there yet.

After realizing that the entries were incomplete, I decided to go straight to Alicia, let her know what the problem was, and offer to take on some extra responsibility with the Lodging section. I offered to help compose the descriptions and fill out the empty boxes, instead of just emailing her a list of missing information for someone else to compile. The decision to go to her and say what I did was rhetorically informed: I knew that she had given me a fairly specific task and I was asking to do something different, but I also knew that she is always eager to let me contribute because it helps me learn. Had the situation or person been different, a different approach would have been more appropriate.

In conclusion…

As someone who came from an English background, not a journalism background, database management and this scale of fact checking were new for me. I had experience with writing and copy editing (which I will discuss in Part 2), but I had limited experience with fact checking and no experience managing an online database. I didn’t really know what to expect with that sort of work. Luckily, I figured out early on that admitting my inexperience and being unafraid to ask lots of questions went a long way in helping me adjust to the new work. Alicia and the rest of the editorial staff were happy to help me navigate the database and give me tips on how to expedite my research when fact checking. Part of being a professional writer is knowing when and how to ask for help. I would advise any PWR majors or PWS minors who find themselves faced with brand new types of work to reach out to their supervisors. Chances are they’ll be happy to help.

Thanks for sticking around ‘til the end of my blog post!

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