How often do you find yourself or your fellow English majors claiming to be grammar nerds? Do you make these claims because you’re all about that grammar skill, or just because you’re all about the image associated with it?

Well, it’s time to take a study break and put your grammar skills to the test with the help of Buzzfeed.

See how you do with How Good Is Your Grammar?

If that’s not enough of a challenge, check out How Much of a Grammar Nerd Are You Actually? 

If you don’t do as well as you hope, maybe it’s time to take ENG205 Grammar with Paula Patch.

If you have questions about the class, email ppatch@elon.edu. Hurry up because registration ends Tuesday!

Hi everyone! My name is Jessica Trinidad and this is my first semester working as a CUPID Associate. I’m currently in my fourth year at Elon and will be graduating this upcoming May with a degree in English Professional Writing & Rhetoric.  Over the summer, I worked for multiple online publications, including CollegeFashionista, Twenty Something Living, and Spoiled NYC, where I wrote content ranging from fitness events and healthful eating practices to fashion trends and photography. Writing and editing at each of these publications allowed me to experiment with different rhetorical contexts; each publication had its own field and style guide that I had to adhere to. While this was occasionally tricking to navigate when shifting between writing styles, I considered it practice for the future, when I’m sure there will be instances in which switching tones between projects is necessary.

In my time as a Professional Writing & Rhetoric major, I have taken an interest in visual design, especially magazine design. In my future, I hope to explore this further, potentially engaging in research or finding a career that engages with this subject. Travel, lifestyle, and fashion writing are also subject I am incredibly passionate about, and are ones that I hope to continue to pursue in the future.
This semester, I will be working in the CUPID lab in Alamance on Mondays from 4pm-6pm. Feel free to come in if you have any questions!

I recently learned how useful LinkedIn is when my supervisor from an internship nearly two years ago reached out to me about a position at her current organization, which is not where I originally interned for her. She saw that I was graduating in January and was interested in nonprofit work and she emailed me to talk about possibilities after reading through my experiences since working with her. Because my LinkedIn profile was up to date and thorough, an opportunity fell into my lap. Use this article as a guide to optimizing your space on LinkedIn so you can find opportunities and connections that lead to employment.

The “Summary” section is the perfect place to describe your interests, especially as a college student who is looking for jobs. Use this section as an opportunity to describe what type of work you are looking for after graduation and how your studies are preparing you for your field of interest.

In the “Experience” section, make sure it looks clean and organized upon first glance at your profile. One way to do this is by keeping the descriptions of each experience roughly the same in length. Make sure you focus on specific duties you had during each experience and how those duties helped you develop or improve upon hard skills. Soft skills will be implied if you describe your hard skills well. For example, if you were an editor and in three months you edited hundreds of documents of various types, it is implied that you are versatile and have the ability to organize and prioritize your work.

Use your LinkedIn profile to include relevant experiences that you had to cut from your résumé to satisfy a page limit. LinkedIn is a place to expand on the wide variety of experiences you have had. Lastly, connect to people at your school, people from your past internships, and people in your field. Widening your network of connections will open opportunities for you to reach out to potential employers and for them to reach out to you.

Anti-Muslim rhetoric and Islamophobia are more prominent in American today than ever before. We live in a society in which a turban or headscarf has justify extensive TSA searches and a Muslim teenager with a clock could be a threat. And although this alone may not come as a surprise, it is when you compare the numbers today with those gathered in the months following 9/11.

In October 2001, a poll taken by ABC News and the Washington Post found that “47% of Americans had a favorable view of Islam.” While the percentage is less than half, it is not horrible considering the traumatic events of the previous month. The country was still in shock.

In 2014, thirteen years later, The Daily Beast reported that the statistic had dropped to “27 percent of Americans” having a favorable view of Islam. The decrease is tolerance and acceptance is curious because there had not been another attack of the magnitude of 9/11.

The chart below, published by the Washington Post shows the unmistakable decrease in terrorist attacks in the United States in the ten years following 9/11. It is clear that incidents of attacks from extremists steadily declined.

And yet, contrary to what one might think, there have been drastic increases in hate crimes and violent acts targeting Muslims in America. There is also an ignorant assumption that anyone wearing a turban is a Muslim and a terrorist. In reality, these fear-based assumptions are nothing more than that. So why has there been an increase in fear and anti-Islamic sentiment when there is not a corresponding threat?

The answer is as simple as it is scary: GOP Candidates. In an interview with the International Business Times, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said “a trend we are seeing is increased crimes directed at Muslims and increased hatred – that is very plain. It is very much in the public sphere where these things often originate. It is people like Ben Carson saying that a Muslim cannot be president. It is no surprise to see those things translate into criminal hate violence.”

He went on to say “[they] found very clearly over the years a connection between the kind of talk we are hearing from Carson and Trump and hate violence. What has really opened the spigot for anti-Muslim hatred are comments from politicians like this. These are men who give permission to Americans to viscerally hate Muslims and the entire religion of Islam. It is increasing fear in order to pander to the extreme elements of a political space and it is costing all of us, particularly the Muslim community in America.”

Realistically, this behavior leads to tragedies like the murders of Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, last February at Chapel Hill.

(left to right) Deah Baraka, Yusor Baraka, Raza Mohammad Abu-Salha (watchingamerica.com)

This hasn’t always been the case of how the Republican Party or our government views or addresses Islam. Following 9/11, former president George W. Bush “made a number of statements disassociating Islam and the general Arab and Muslim population in America from Al-Qaeda. He also visited a mosque, a symbolic gesture that helped build a more positive image of Islam.”

So why and how did this shift take place in the Republican Party? What are the benefits of Muslim rhetoric for the presidential candidates?

Money.

In the twenty-four hours following Dr. Carson’s comments, his campaign received roughly 1 million dollars in donations. And yet, just a few days later, he shifted his perspective slightly, “saying he would support a Muslim president who swore to put the Constitution before religion and disavowed Sharia law.”

These politicians understand that their rhetoric carries weight. Regardless of whether or not they believe their own public statements is almost irrelevant because they are telling uninformed extremists what they want to hear. They are ultimately other-ing roughly 7 million of their fellow Americans for personal political gain. Universally, no good can come of this. Until we come together to talk about the real issues in our country rather than fabricated fears designed to divide us as people, we won’t progress as one people, rhetorically or otherwise.

Is a legitimate question I was asked by a friend upon mentioning that I needed to update my LinkedIn profile after completing my internship. At first it was a great laugh, and my friend did face a fair amount of mockery from the group… but after thinking about what she said a little more, she does make a fair point!

LinkedIn is a place for professionals to “digitally network” — basically allowing Hiring Managers to make a decision on whether or not you are qualified without meeting you in person. So, yes, LinkedIn does function somewhat as a professional online dating service. For this reason, it is very important to represent your best self on your LinkedIn profile, you never know who’s looking!

From a rhetorical standpoint, as a college student or recent graduate using LinkedIn, you are trying to appeal to supervisors, talent acquisition, and hiring managers who are pinched for time and looking for a quick way to follow-up on you before offering up that interview. In today’s job market, it is almost expected that anyone on the job hunt have a LinkedIn, so quality content is absolutely imperative.

You don’t want your page to appear skeletal, but you also don’t want to overload it with irrelevant job/volunteer experiences. Like you would on a dating website, make sure you are highlighting your best self and not just filling it with fluff! Ideally, your profile will show your top 3 most recent and relevant career experiences and links to work samples/blogs that you also maintain. Also, your picture is another “make or break it” aspect of the LinkedIn page… Make sure your picture is appropriate and professional – that Snapchat of you twerking on the wall last Friday night may be funny to your social circle, but most likely won’t be as appealing to your future employer.

Overall, it is so important to your career to maintain a professional, clean LinkedIn page. A little online effort will go a long way in your job search! For an example of my LinkedIn page, check out www.linkedin.com/nicolepetrosino.

If you are approaching graduation, you are probably beginning the daunting task of searching for jobs in the professional writing field. The following is a list of tips that will help any college senior or recent graduate ease their way into the real world.

1. Don’t be afraid to reach out to companies and organizations you are interested in even if they don’t have a position listed that’s right for you. Showing interest will put your name on their radar. You have nothing to lose by sending a professional, succinct email describing your experiences and inquiring about opportunities.
2. Have a quick, polished answer for the question “What do you want to do?” Even if you are not quite sure yet, have some ideas you can mention to anyone you asks. With a degree in professional writing and rhetoric, there are so many paths you can take and you never know who might have connections in your field of interest.
3. Use multiple job search websites, like LinkedIn and the Elon Job Network. Use advanced search options to look for your field of interest, specific positions within that field, and locations where you might want to work.
4. Compare the desired qualifications of entry-level and higher-level jobs in your field of interest. This will help you ensure that you are qualified for an entry-level job now and it will remind you of what experience you need to move up in your field.
5. Tailor your résumé to each job you apply for. Every position will place value on different skills, so be sure to highlight appropriate experiences and place emphasis on the skills the company you are applying to wants to see.

These tips will help you remember different aspects of searching for jobs and prepare you to successfully find your first job as a professional writer following graduation.

What’s appropriate to put in an email? Have you ever spent hours writing and rewriting, obsessing over just what wording to use? Or maybe you fall into a less extreme category where thoughts about writing don’t keep you up at night. Either way, email etiquette is an important skill to have, not just for college but for the rest of your working life. Here are a few tips on how to maintain a professional tone in an email:

The Opener: Make sure to adequately address the reader. There’s a difference between Doctor and Professor; if you don’t know which to use, ask your teacher which title they prefer (or check the syllabus or email signatures from the teacher). If you aren’t exactly sure who your reader is, do some research. For example, if you’re applying to a job, try to find out who reviews the applications. As a last resort, “to whom it may concern” is acceptable.

Punctuation: As a fairly enthusiastic person, my first draft of an email usually contains a hearty dose of exclamation points. However, when trying to maintain professionality, having tons of them can completely change the tone of an email. Before you choose to use an exclamation point, stop and think: if I put a period here, could it change how the message is read? Put yourself on an exclamation point budget and you’ll be in the clear!

General Mechanics: It should go without saying that your email needs to be well edited. Nothing makes a reader question a source’s credibility like a typo. Make sure to turn the spell-check option on and read through your email a few times before sending.

The Content: Don’t assume that the reader knows everything. If you are asking about homework for a class, be sure to provide your full name, the class name, and the section. If you identify yourself fully, it leaves no room for confusion and allows the reader to understand the rest of your message more fully.

The Sign-off: Again, identify yourself. It looks good to attach a set signature to the bottom of all your emails, and it’s an easy way to give the reader all the information they need. In the signature, include important information about yourself, such as university, graduating year, and any titles you have. See the example below:

Abbey Foucart

CUPID Associate

Elon University, Class of ‘17

For more information specifically on writing emails to teachers, check out Purdue OWL’s tips.

That’s it! Now go forth confidently into the internet world and send those emails!

Infographics aren’t easy to design, especially if you’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Here is a great example of an infographic that covers the one-hundred year history of birth control in a way that is easy on the eyes and effectively delivers information that was created by Planned Parenthood.

100 Years of Birth Control

Hateful language and finger pointing are not new to the English language, or any language for that matter. And yet, the rhetoric of hate, is more prominent than it has been in the past in terms of our media. The plethora of republican presidential candidates on national television are a prime example of this. It isn’t that we don’t have a political history of kicking our opponents straight in the shins during election season, but it has been aimed, in the past, at people outside our country, with paranoid assumptions that their allies are hidden among us. The strongest example of this that comes to mind is the Cold War and the Red Scare, Joseph McCarthy’s political witch-hunt. I fear that we have found ourselves in a similar place.

AP Photo/Eric Risberg

Recently Dr. Ben Carson, the same man who as a neurosurgeon has made inaccurate and offensive comments regarding the LGBTQIA community, said that he does not think that someone who is Muslim should be allowed to be the President of the United States of America. The last time someone claimed one’s religion against their potential presidency was JFK, who was a Catholic. The worry, at the time, was that the Pope and the Vatican would influence the way he ran the country, which of course, didn’t happen. In this case, there isn’t even a Muslim presidential candidate; Carson is just making a harmful, blanket statement. This inaccurate and therefore irresponsible rhetoric is incredibly damaging to the future of our country.

According to Public Policy Polling, “sixty-six percent of Trump supporters believe President Obama is a Muslim, as do 54% of all Republican voters.” This is problematic because this is factually incorrect as well as hypocritical. President Obama is a Christian, but should that actually matter? In a country built on separation of church and state, in which Christians have become so adamant about protecting their religious freedoms, why doesn’t that mean protecting all religious freedoms?

Contrary to Dr. Carson’s claim, we do not have a problem with Muslims in this country, but rather we have a problem with bigoted believers who manipulate the rhetoric of their religion to marginalize and discriminate against their fellow Americans. With the election in the future, it’s time that we hold politicians responsible for their rhetoric.

Unless you’ve been boycotting social media, television, and in-person conversation since the summer, it is likely you know that Donald Trump is a front-runner in the 2016 United States Presidential Election. His statements are radical, controversial, and sometimes offensive, but it is no secret that Trump and his advisers are masterful publicists. Trump has zeroed in on an audience to appeal to and knows just the way to structure his messages so they resonate in the hearts and minds of prospective voters.

As with most effective political communication — especially during an election cycle, appealing strongly to one group of people can be extremely alienating toward another. His rash statements and aggressive persona have made him a figure that one either loves or hates (or in Trump’s case, loves to hate). A man notorious for high-level production – whether it is cash, casinos, or toupee memes — has undoubtedly mastered the art of publicity generation.

Regardless of your perspective on The Donald, it is undeniable that he has become a total media sensation. The Big 4 American broadcast and cable networks have provided him with nearly 24/7 coverage. Trump has completely saturated mainstream media and ironically has yet to produce a single paid advertisement. Even his biggest critics have provided him nearly unlimited screen-time. It is this overwhelming and constant press attention that has catapulted him to an early lead – of the 15 Republican presidential candidates; Trump has secured the top spot.

Trump’s “rhetoric of divisiveness” is fueled by charged comments and a boastful, confident persona. His statements are simple and easy to comprehend, making him popular with a large demographic of voters. As for that coveted spot in the Oval – it remains debatable whether or not his distinct tone will continue to strike a cord with the American public, or if it will eventually lead voters to turn on him on both sides of the aisle. Needless to say, Trump’s relentless take-over of traditional and social media is working in his favor, whether or not it intends to.

For more information on Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric, check out the links below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/14/jeb-bush-donald-trump_n_7797786.html

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/rnc-trumps-immigration-rhetoric-not-helpful

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/21/donald-lambro-donald-trumps-reckless-rhetoric/?page=all