Conventions of Literal Writing

Conventions of Literal Writing

By Douglas D. Patterson

Copyright 2011 by Douglas D. Patterson

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

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Introduction

Part I – Literal Conventions

Lesson 1 - Point of View

Lesson 2 – Language

Lesson 3 – Description

Lesson 4 – Reasoning

Lesson 5 – Quotation

Lesson 6 – Organizational Patterns

Lesson 7 – The Writing Process

Part 2 – Publication (Books and Term Papers)

Lesson 8 – Printing Technology

Lesson 9 – Bindings and Preliminary Pages

Lesson 10 – The Text

Lesson 11 – Back Matter

Part 3 – Models and Assignments

Section A – Personal Compositions

Private Composition 1 – Dear Diary

Private Composition 2 – Personal Letters

Private Composition 3 – Journal

Section B – Personal Business Letters

Letter 1 - Inquiry

Letter 2 - Redress

Letter 3 - Application and Resume’

Section C - Literal Reports

Report 1- Personal Narrative

Report 2 - News

Report 3 - Speech

Report 4 - Interview

Report 5 - Survey

Report 6 – Scientific Study

Report 7 - History

Report 8 – Prediction

Second D – Literal Commentaries

Commentary 1 – Personal Essay

Commentary 2 – Biography

Commentary 3 – Literary Criticism

Commentary 4 – Moral Debate

Commentary 5 – Prediction

Commentary 6 – Scientific Debate

Commentary 7 – Social Scientific Debate

Commentary 8 – Lessons of History

Commentary 9 – Instructions

Commentary 10 – Informal Policy Argument

Introduction

Literal writing serves much more mundane purposes than literary writing does. Generally, a writer of literal material wishes to communicate information, to give instructions, to convince his reader of a thesis, or to advance a political cause.

An effective writer expresses himself with clarity but, unlike the poet, he does not agonize over rhetoric. He pays less attention to rhythms and rhymes and the melody lines of his sentences than the poet does, and he uses relatively few rhetorical figures.

Above all, of course, the literal writer deals with real world subjects. He does not create imaginary characters and events and settings. He does not personify animals or breathe life into the inanimate world.

He focuses instead on real people and real events in a real world, and he does his best to show them as they actually exist. The journalist tells his readers about the events of the day. The historian attempts to describe and to interpret the historical past. The scientist explores cause/effect relationships and attempts to describe immutable principles of the universe. The businessman writes letters in which he discusses the ins and outs of his financial transactions.

Writing on a literal level is not as easy as it may sound. One reason is that we often have difficulty disciplining our emotions and our imaginations. Drawing a clear line between thoughts which reflect reality and those that are figments of our imaginations is difficult at best. We are also never totally successful in viewing the world through lenses unclouded by emotion. One who sets out to reflect the unvarnished truth can never succeed entirely; but unlike the literary writer who revels in emotion and flights of fancy, the literal writer holds his emotions and his imagination in check, and he focuses his attention more fully on the world as it actually exists than the literary writer does.

This textbook follows a lead expressed by English philosopher and diplomat Francis Bacon in his brief essay titled On Studies.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. - Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

If you have ever sat staring at an empty page, your problem may be that you have not adequately studied the subject that you are planning to write about. The best writers are people who have lived interesting lives, who are avid readers, and who converse regularly with others about topic(s) of interest. As Bacon suggests, writing about topics refines your thoughts and helps you to establish exactly what you think about a subject.

Furthermore, most successful writers focus on a particular field of interest: sports, science, business, the arts, etc. They steep themselves in the knowledge and the lore of their chosen field so that they become authorities in that area. The more they study their chosen field, the less likely they are to spend much time staring at blank pieces of paper.

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Part 1 – Literal Conventions

The literal writer approaches composition in a fundamentally different way from that of the literary writer. He tends to avoid rather than employ those conventions of writing which give works a literary flair. Instead he disciplines his perceptions, his thoughts, and his emotions in an effort to communicate information, conclusions and imperatives unambiguously.

Students often tend to view literal writing with disdain because it inhibits their creativity. Schools have institutionalized this attitude by naming literary writing courses Creative Writing.

Actually, some of the most creative communication of all is done on the literal level. Scientists and journalists and businessmen and engineers and historians and other professionals have improved our understanding of the world in which we live and have raised our standard of living in this country to a very high level. They could not have accomplished what they have done, had they been unable to communicate information and ideas and directions in accurate and understandable and creative ways.

Examples of highly influential compositions that take a largely literal approach are many and varied. Here are some prominent ones, some of which we will read as models in the lessons that follow. (These books are listed along with the URLs where they may be downloaded at no cost.)

(Hyperlinks are automatic.)

The Histories by Tacitus

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16927.

Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3704

Decline and fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/731

An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus

http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf

The Social Contract by Jon Jacques Rousseau

http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm

The Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson

http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/doi/text.html

Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

http://www.bartleby.com/5/104.html

Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

http://www.transcendentalists.com/civil_disobedience.htm

The Second Inaugural Address by President Abraham Lincoln

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/inaug2.htm

The field of literal writing is so vast and so varied that a small selection such as this cannot be held forth as a representative sample of the entire field. Works such as these are, however, the stuff on which an educated mind nourishes itself.

Writers who can communicate in simple, clearly understood literal language are essential members of the business and the engineering and the scientific and social scientific communities whose concerns are more practical than aesthetic. While literary writing may appeal more to the young writer, his chances of making a living in this much broader field are greater.

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Lesson 1 - Point of View

Literal writers employ much more restricted points of view than literary authors do; but they need not be as restricted as one might think.

Person

First

There is a generally accepted assumption that one loses objectivity when he refers to himself. One of the cannons of journalism is, of course, that a reporter must avoid personalizing his reports by using the pronouns "I" or "we."

While it is true that personalizing experience may tend to warp our perceptions, a reporter who is writing about an event in which he was involved sounds curiously stilted when he refers to himself as this reporter. Scientists and engineers and other people who talk about projects in which they were deeply involved sometimes struggle with this rhetorical straightjacket as well.

Albert Einstein was certainly justified in referring to himself in the first person when talking about his theory of relativity. The rest of us, however, should probably discuss his theory in the third person. To do otherwise might be considered hubris.

Writing in the third person when the first person would be more natural actually does far less to insure objectivity and to guarantee accuracy than other factors do.

Third

Literal writers generally write in the 3rd person, and they are right in distancing themselves from their subjects.

Journalists tell stories; but if they are true to their craft, they recognize that they are seldom part of the story. The reporter’s job is to describe what happened in the affairs of the community. He is generally an observer and not a participant in the events.

Scientists try to avoid becoming ego involved in their research - often without complete success. When a man’s fame and fortune depends on the outcome of an experiment, it may be challenging for him not to take things personally. Thinking and speaking and writing of his work in the third person may aid in that effort; but this rhetorical approach by no means eliminates all personal bias.

The laws of nature are immutable, and they do not bend to the needs of an individual scientist for professional advancement or fame. Scientists, all too often, invest vast energy and many years in projects, only to find that their hypotheses were invalid. Who would not be disappointed when he feels the golden ring slipping from his fingers?

In the end a scientist who does not take other more effective measures for insuring objectivity and balance in his work fools no one by expressing himself from an impersonal point of view. Generally speaking, however, convention requires that he distance himself rhetorically from his subject.

Emotional Control

Literal writer expresses themselves with reserve. They tend not to display love or hatred or fear or any of the other emotions that literary authors are fond of expressing. A literal writer chooses his words more to communicate information than to evoke strong emotional responses in his readers.

At the same time, we humans can never remain totally neutral emotionally. The left and the right lobes of our brains are connected, and they interact constantly. In fact, there is good reason to believe that a healthy interaction of intellect and emotion is essential to sound thought; but we should never allow our right lobe to overpower the left one.

The literal writer certainly wishes to move his reader; but he prefers not to overwhelm him emotionally.

Objectivity

The literal writer, since he is attempting to deal with reality, does not allow his imagination free reign. He describes real people and real events and not fictional characters involved in contrived plots.

Above all he does not invoke the literary writer's powers of omniscience and omnipresence. He does not hold himself forward as an always present, all seeing, all knowing observer. Unlike the literary writer, he reports only what his subjects look like, what they say, and what they do. He does not report their perceptions or thoughts or feelings.

He also does not follow people through time and space and report everything that has ever happened to them. Instead, he works in the much more restricted world of human perception, thought, and understanding. His frame of reference is the real and not an imaginary world.

It is difficult - if not impossible - to draw a sharp line between a literary and a literal point of view, but in an effort to communicate with real people about real events, the writer of literal prose must learn to recognize and to control his emotions and his most flamboyant flights of fancy.

Assignment 1

Select a short story written in the third person. The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte would be a good choice. http://www.online-literature.com/bret-harte/1688/) Examine the point of view from which the story is written. Then look for a report of such an event in your local newspaper and examine how the journalist has reported what happened. Compare and contrast the ways in which the journalist’s treatment differs from that of the short story writer. Using the events described in the short story, write a journalistic report of the same events - for publication, perhaps, in the Poker Flat Gazette.

Assignment 2

Select a short story in which the author describes the events from an omniscient point of view. A Piece of String by the Guy de Maupassant might be a good choice. You will find it at this URL: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/PiecStri.shtml Rewrite a portion of this story on a more objective level. Report the events without weaving them into a dramatic a plot? Avoid reporting the perceptions the thoughts and the feelings of the characters. What impact do these restrictions on the point of view have on the way that a reader experiences the story?

Assignment 3

Find an article which describes a scientific study. A good place to look might be The Scientific American. Read the article and analyze the commentator's point of view. Did he write in the first or the third person?

Did he express himself with emotional reserve? Did he report only those events which were observable to the naked eye – aided perhaps by telescopes or microscopes? Did he employ figurative language or other conventions of imaginative literature? Did he describe in detail the procedures that he followed in conducting his research and in drawing his conclusions? Explain your evaluations!

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Lesson 2 – Language

A writer of literal material is more interested in communicating useful information and conclusions than he is in writing immortal verse or gripping stories. As a result, he is more business-like than the literary writer in the way that he approaches his task.

As Lawrence Perrine puts it (perhaps a bit too universally) in his textbook Sound and Sense, the literal writer focuses primarily on the intellectual dimension of language, whereas the literary writer is intensely interested in the sensuous, the emotional and the imaginative dimensions as well.

Appeals to the Intellect

We can, of course, never disconnect our intellect from our sensory experiences and our emotions and our imaginations; but the literal writer, as Mr. Perrine suggests, does place greater emphasis on the intellectual than on the other three dimensions of language.

Since he is trying to communicate real life experiences and information and ideas, a literal writer focuses less on the art of writing than poet does. He uses figures of speech less frequently, he is less concerned with rhythms and rhymes and other musical values, and he engages less freely in flights of fancy.

Like the literary writer, a composer of prose is often concerned with depicting experiences, but he is more likely to focus on actual rather than imaginary happenings. He also restricts his compositions to observable events and does not report the perceptions, the thoughts and the feelings of others.

The literal writer employs certain language resources much more fully than the literary writer does. Whereas poets and story writers communicate only rarely using numbers and mathematical concepts, writers