Bad Sentence Habits

Old:
Weimann also brings in an interesting post-colonial perspective to the idea of identification of the other; he asserts, via Cheyfutz, that instruction is colonization, colonization instruction (53). He refers specifically to the direction given to Adam and Eve by the angels before they leave Eden, but I think this reading is also relevant to Eve as the Other to Adam. Walker points out that Eve is unaware of the gendered terms which we recognize as feminine (being post-Fall humans); she is instructed, indoctrinated into understanding her role by God (519). Instruction is given freely throughout Paradise Lost, but is most powerful when teaching Eve her identity within the hierarchy of the Garden.

New:
Weimann introduces an interesting post-colonial perspective to the theory of Other-ing. He asserts, via Cheyfutz, that instruction is colonization, colonization instruction (53). Although Weimann refers specifically to the angels’ directions to the fallen couple upon their dismissal from Eden, this reading is relevant to Eve as the Other to Adam. Instructed and indoctrinated in understanding her role by God, Eve is unaware of the gendered terms that we recognize as feminine (Walker, 519). Given freely throughout Paradise Lost, instruction is powerful when teaching Eve the details of her identity within the hierarchy of the Garden.

Commentary:
I usually have some misgivings about my personal punctuation system. This is mostly because I am prone to concocting long sentences abounding with proliferating prepositional phrases and adverbials/adjectival phrases. First, I tried to identify strangely yoked sentences, highlighted in pink. The structure of this paragraph was striking once I had done my highlighting; the paragraph involves four sentences, 1 and 3 are linked together with a semi-colon and 2 and 4 are linked with a comma and then the conjunction but. I started by putting a period at the end of the sentence in place of the semi-colon because the following information could stand alone more effectively. In sentence 3, I noticed another which phrase, and changed the vague which to the determiner that. I also used a movable adjectival phrase to replace the semi-colon that I would normally have used. The most useful revisions were done in sentences 2 and 4, where I tried to emphasize my point about Adam and Eve with the use of the first person. After our discussion yesterday in class, I have become more aware my pronoun use affects my authority, so I changed the but-plus-I sentence to use the passive voice and tried to break up some of the prepositional phrases. I’m not sure this reads the way I want yet, although substituting a few referents helped. I also tried to apply some power verbs from our last reading, but couldn’t think of a way to change all of those is linking verbs. Again, I love this book.