CybWeek Five

Cyberspace and Society
Week Five: October 5 to October 12
Fall 2008

There will be only one try on this week's quiz because it consists of writing questions I must grade by hand. There are eight questions, each of which is a sentence you are asked to rewrite. The sentences are similar to those in the exercises at the bottom of this page. They are based on principles in the "Effective Writing" reading. Once you open the exercise, you have one hour to complete it. You cannot pause it and come back later, pausing it in SAKAI does not extend the hour. It will close on Monday, October 13, at 10 a.m.

To Post a Question for Ted Goertzel, Use the Discussion List for Questions

We will focus on writing this week, including writing specifically for the WEB. This week, we will do writing exercises based on the principles in the Effective Writing reading. The best way to prepare for this is to first study the "Effective Writing" reading, paying special attention to the sample sentences provided. Then practice rewriting the sentences in Writing Exercises from the Penguin Manual. and Writing Exercises from Sociology of Communications.

These writing principles should be incorporated in your Web Page writing assignment that is due October 25. One of the principles of good writing is to start early. When you write your first draft, you are focusing mostly on the ideas, and it can be inhibiting to worry too much about the writing style. In the first draft, you get the ideas and facts and illustrations down. Then you can let it sit awhile and look at again focusing on the writing. This usually involves some cutting, what editors used to do with a blue pencil (now they use track changes in Microsoft Word). Very often the first sentence has to go because it is something you write when you were just beginning to think about the topic. You want a first sentence that hooks people in.

You may want to get some feedback from students in your group or a friend or even from the Learning Center on campus. They have professionals who can take an impartial look at your work. But this takes time. Go to the Learning Center web site, click on "writing assistance" and "scheduler here", Please do not email your draft to me and ask me to review it before you hand it in. I will be glad to answer questions about the substance of your papers, but I expect you to get the writing into shape before you give it to me. Otherwise, I end up rewriting your paper for you. Please submit questions for me to the Discussion List for Questions in SAKAI (not as a private message in SAKAI or as an email). That way everyone can read them and learn from them, and we will build a sense of an online community working together. You can also respond to each other's questions. We can also use the Chat Room for this, as we have been doing, but it is harder to keep track of questions there.

Readings:

Effective Writing. In Sakai/Resources. This is from the manual required for writing courses at Rutgers, so you may have it. It will be vertical on the page when you open it in Adobe Acrobat reader. You can use the "rotate" function to turn the page. Or you can print it.
Writing for the WEB. In Sakai/Resources. This is not so important for this week's assignments, it is relevant to the paper due October 25.
Futurists: The Science of Predicting the Future. This is an example of an especially well written group project page.
Screen Technology for Electronic Books, Magazines and Newspapers. This is a sample of a finished assignment. You should use this as a model, including the citation of sources.

Resources:

Writing Exercises from the Penguin Manual. This is a presentation on Google documents. It presents you some sentences and paragraphs that need to be rewritten using the writing principles in the manual. Try your hand at rewriting them before clicking on to the next slide to see the answer.
Writing Exercises from Sociology of Communications. These are some additional writing slides, some from great literature and speeches, some from classes in previous semesters.