I am Extremely Embarrassed

So, as you can see, this post is ridiculously late. I was under the impression that I had posted my blog on the designated Sunday. I woke up on Sunday, wrote a short passage, copied it to the blog typing space thingy, and...well I am not sure what I did. I am assuming that I did not hit post, but instead just hit the red x in the corner of the web browser and went on to do whatever it is I do with my time. Until today, when I decided to do some "productive procrastination" by reading the blog, I thought my post was up for all to see. Little did I know that when Laura said "a few of you had forgotten to post" she was referring to me. Well, here is my post, for whatever it is worth:

After reading Kolln's chapter 9, I decided to evaluate my use of adverbial prepositional phrases. As Kolln points out, my use of prepositional phrases is sometimes unnecessary and confusing.

Old Version:
The fictional autobiography aims to have an immediate impact on the reader by dealing with a real person in a fictional disguise. The proletarian initiation novel takes a naïve protagonist into the utopian world of communism that is preferrrable. Proletarian social novels delineate both labor woes of the common worker and shows how the lowest classes of society lives in a day to day basis.

In this version, my use of prepositonal phrases obscure the focus of the sentences and makes my writing difficult to understand. In order to alleviate this problem, I replaced these phrases with prenoun modifiers.

New Version:
The fictional autobiography aims to immediately impact the reader by dealing with a fictionally disguised real person. The proletarian initiation novel takes a naive protagonist into the prefferable communist utopian world. Proletarain social novels delineate both labor woes of the common worker and reveals the day to day lives of the lowest class of society.

Changing the prepositional phrases to prenoun modifiers makes my writing a little more focused and a lot less confusing.

Fashionably late.

Sorry for the tardiness, again. As this is the last go round, I can say with 100% confidence that it won't happen again. This is from the opening to a paper on Coleridge, which I think is much better with appositives.

Original:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge died on July 25th, 1834, and was interred in a family vault at London's Highgate cemetery. This cemetery features other literary and philosophical superstars such as George Eliot and Karl Marx. Coleridge's remains were kept in this company until the 6th of June, 1961, when they were transferred into the crypt of the nearby Parish Church of St Michael’s.

Now containing appositive-y goodness:
Following hus death on July 25th, 1834, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was interred in a family vault at the Highgate cemetery in London--a cemetery that in the following half-century would see the addition of such other notable figures as George Eliot and Karl Marx. This eclectic triumvirate of entombed literary and philosophical superstars was broken up on the 6th of June, 1961, when Coleridge’s remains were transferred into the crypt of the nearby Parish Church of St Michael’s.

Oops. I forgot, too.

BEFORE: The period spanning the Victorian Era and the early part of the Jazz Age was brief in historic terms: roughly eighty years. These decades represent, however, an epic shift in women’s self-perception: from that of passive dependents who responded and adapted to events in life, to strong beings who seized opportunities and set events into motion. Considering that America is a “self-made” country, it is fitting that this shift to a more “Self-Made” Woman took place on American soil, with inspiration coming from vastly different women: as different as Irish domestic workers and upper middle-class “New Women.” …

The first sentence shows the proper use of a colon in following a complete sentence. Considering that I use three colons in this paragraph, however, the first sentence begs for revision. This sentence also contains a pronoun modifier that is modified with an –ly adverb. I’ve used these modifiers properly—without a hyphen—but the sentence is clumsy. The second sentence also poses a problem by containing nine prepositional phrases that obscure the focus of the paragraph. Kolln suggests turning some of these prepositional phrases into pronoun modifiers or more precise words.

AFTER: Women’s self-perception dramatically shifted during the period spanning the Victorian Era and the early part of the Jazz Age. During this time, passive and reactive women embraced opportunities for self-motivated action. These “Self-Made” Women were as diverse as the American melting pot: as different as Irish domestic workers and upper middle-class “New Women.” …

For my blog today, I'm playing with the movable participle. Here are some changes:

OLD
Researchers have studied ballads and haint tales, poetry and belief statements to find conventions and trends which lead to better understandings of Appalachian culture.

NEW
Through studying haint tales and belief statements, researchers have developed better understandings of Appalachian culture.

OLD
The ways such narratives take shape in Appalachia is as diverse as its geography and its people.

NEW
Shaping Appalachia are its narratives, which are as diverse as its geography and its people.

I'm playing particular attention to how the NEW sentences change the focus/attention of the line. Although they seem less natural (maybe because they are new to me, or maybe because they defy traditional structure), moving the participle does seem to allow you to re-focus your reader's attention.

To hyphenate, or not to hyphenate?

When I read in Chapter 9 that "[w]hen the first modifier is an -ly adverb, [...] we do not connect it with a hyphen" (176), I finally got an answer to a question I'd long been wondering--when do I connect modifiers with hyphens? I then thought that I probably needed to remove some hyphens in my Colbert paper, and as I scanned it, I realized I was right.

Here are some of the original lines in paper:

For the next twenty minutes, Stephen Colbert, leader of the self-created “Colbert Nation,” skewers a wide cross-section of politically-related people and issues.

By creating a rhetorical presence in so many different discourse communities, Stephen Colbert has made certain that his rhetorical influence cannot be categorized into a single, easily-definable social role, such as a stand-up comedian or partisan political pundit.

In the study, Heather LaMarre, Kristen Landreville and Michael A. Beam asked 322 participants with widely-varying political views to view a three-minute clip.

I realized that in some cases, I'd used the hyphen correctly, but in other cases (sometimes even in the same sentence), I hadn't. Here's how I corrected them:

For the next twenty minutes, Stephen Colbert, leader of the self-created “Colbert Nation,” skewers a wide cross-section of politically related people and issues.

By creating a rhetorical presence in so many different discourse communities, Stephen Colbert has made certain that his rhetorical influence cannot be categorized into a single, easily definable social role, such as a stand-up comedian or partisan political pundit.

In the study, Heather LaMarre, Kristen Landreville and Michael A. Beam asked 322 participants with widely varying political views to view a three-minute clip.

a starship captain must have nerves of steel, good interpersonal skills, and the ability to use superfluous commas

Indoctrinated early in my schooling with the casual rule that a comma goes where you would naturally pause or take a breath, I need only confess that I became an avid Star Trek fan at age 7 for you to imagine the havoc wreaked by this well-intended advice. I have written papers that William Shatner would have delivered with glee. In the "Punctuation of Phrases and Clauses" section of Kolln, I experienced a sharp and unpleasant desire to find and double-check the worksheet I made for my students about the usage of commas and semicolons. To my great relief, the examples I gave them do not betray my weakness. With this exception:

My brother, Zachary, a barista, doesn’t like his coworkers.

I wanted to make sure they understood that when I said a comma sets off inessential (or nonrestrictive) information, I meant from the sentence’s perspective and not theirs. However, this sentence stands alone. Who knows how many brothers the writer has? Especially in a sentence used to illustrate something, I feel like the extra comma just clutters things up and encourages extra commas. 

My brother Zachary, a barista, doesn’t like his coworkers. 

Not the prettiest sentence, but cleaner. If I *am* just dying to have that third comma in there, it might look something like this: 

One of my brothers, Zachary, who works as a barista, doesn’t like his coworkers.

BONUS!

Far more upsetting that steering a bunch of freshmen –who probably ignored me anyway- slightly wrong, was this sentence that I included in a paper I delivered at the Louisville Conference (Nick, can you ever forgive me?): 

Old: Even after Florence dies, Dowell is not unhappy, free of his invalid wife, and looking forward to the possibility of remarrying. 

New: Even after Florence dies, Dowell is not unhappy; free of his invalid wife, he looks forward to the possibility of remarrying.

A Final Reading from the Book of John

I have always had a tendency to be longwinded, especially in my writing.  My sentences tend to have lots of clauses so that what could have been two or three short sentences often gets crammed into one.  (In part, I blame my addiction to the semi-colon, which lets me get away with this much more than commas do.)  Below we find two sentences of particularly massive proportions.

Fielding’s ire is particularly aroused by those writers (particularly stage dramatists), who in the final act of a play will spontaneously reform characters who have hitherto been “notorious Rogues” and “abandoned Jades” with no other reason than that the end of the play is approaching (307-308).  It might be argued that Tom Jones himself is reformed over the course of the novel, but Fielding is at pains to make the transformation as gradual as possible so that although the Tom Jones of Book II and the Tom Jones of Book XVIII differ, we do not witness any shift from notorious rogue (if that title can appropriately be bestowed on Tom) to noble gentleman.  

First, there's a bone-headed comma mistake in the first sentence. I blame the parantheses for not making me notice it right away.  Second, I have a relative clause within a relative clause, which is just plain ridiculous.  The second sentence seems to be in good shape but is overly long because I've linked two theoretically independent sentences with a "so that."

Fielding’s ire is particularly aroused by those writers (particularly stage dramatists) who in the final act of a play will spontaneously reform “notorious Rogues” and “abandoned Jades," justifying it only by the approaching end of the play (307-308).  It might be argued that Tom Jones himself is reformed over the course of the novel, but Fielding is at pains to make the transformation as gradual as possible.  Although the Tom Jones of Book II and the Tom Jones of Book XVIII differ, we do not witness any shift from notorious rogue (if that title can appropriately be bestowed on Tom) to noble gentleman.  

I fixed the comma mistake and ditched the "who have hitherto been," thus turning what was a relative clause within a relative clause into a single relative clause.  In the interests of economy, I have also used a participle phrase at the end of the sentence to tighten up the structure at the end.  I've also chopped up that second sentence into two sentences, which makes it easier to digest than it would be in one big chunk.

I think that these changes make the text flow better.  In the future, I'm going to try to avoid cramming so much stuff into each individual sentence.  One major step will be breaking my addiction to semi-colons; although I didn't use any in this selection, they lead me unconsciously towards large, unwieldy sentences.  (And yes, I am well aware of the irony of using a semi-colon in a sentence about not using semi-colons.  It worked well there.)