Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Tuesday, January 27. 2009

Come writers and critics...

From The Teaching Company. Building Great Sentences: The Writer's Craft along with Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning.


I have listened to the Argumentation series and enjoyed it a great deal. In fact, listening to it persuaded me that structured and rule-bound disputation is an excellent way to get to the heart of things, if not to ultimate Truths.


It is no doubt obvious to readers that I have not yet listened to the Building Great Sentences series.

Posted by Bird Dog in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 16:14 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

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If you have an interest in the topic, The Teaching Company's Peloponnesian War is also excellent. Obama as Alcibiades? Hmmm.
#1 dhmosquito on 2009-01-27 16:44 (Reply)
BD makes a joke on himself. :) haha. Good one.

I love those teaching courses.
`
#2 Meta on 2009-01-27 19:18 (Reply)
Joseph Williams' book, Style, is also great at teaching you how to cast sentences.
#3 ahem on 2009-01-28 09:05 (Reply)
ahem ,,, In the days before the Fall of Rome some 60 years ago, when my husband and I became professional writers, Elements of Style by Strunk and White was considered the 'bible' for those depending on words for money. And none of us, then, would have tackled the job of writing good prose to earn our living without some official 'style book,' like the the Columbia University style book, or the New York Times style book, from the days when it was still a good newspaper.

But I still recommend the influence of a good English teacher, like Meta, in your early years to teach you to pare your prose down to elegant, spare phrases. And you should select parents who love and understand the power of words in our lives.

There... That should be easy. Shouldn't it?

Marianne
#4 Marianne Matthews on 2009-01-28 11:58 (Reply)
While I admire everything good and pure,
there are some things that emanate from
Columbia U that might be deemed just too
tough for us to digest . . . or even
completely comprehend. Who, for example,
can read Dewey (John), from beginning
to end without continuously returning
to the beginning of the sentence/paragraph
and NOT end up asking themselves:
am I just stupid? or am I just lazy in
not possessing an ability to concentrate
as perfectly as this man?

Warning: Reading John Dewey is a kind
of meditation in and of itself. Good
luck to you. And if you fail, you may
know: yer lazy.

And maybe superstitious. Like him.
#4.1 Rogerscottq (Link) on 2009-02-02 09:27 (Reply)

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