As we all know, writing plays an important part in our daily
life that we human beings cannot live without it in every day. There are three
writing styles, official style, creative style and plain style respectively.
Different activity systems use different writing styles are what people usually
do. Why they use writing styles in different way? Why cannot people all write
in a simple way so that every one can understand it and communicate in an easy
way? Why people in different occasions need to use different writing styles? As
a university student, those three writing styles surround my life every day.
On one hand, when I
start my presentation, I use creative style which is a style full of creative
language like funny story and research data to support my perspectives so that
I can both attract people’s attention and support my supporting points in the
same time. On the other hand, when I write letter to my mom, write drama, poem,
common in-class short paper, fiction, I use plain style because plain style
save time and plain style can show your emotion to others in a directly way so
that people can translate their emotion in a fast, direct and strong way.
However, as a low lever member of high educators, we university students need
to read academic article, newspaper, write academic paper and send academic
email to our professor. What we need to do is because of our education, we are
no longer be a low educator, how to broaden our horizons and improve our
writing abilities are our study goal. Writing and reading official styles is
one of the way to recognize our high educators from low educators. As a long
complex sentence, does official style really indeed in our daily life? Why
there is a large number of authors are willing to write articles in using
official style?
Early this semester, we received an email from President Joe
Gow which the content was about cancel class. The email which he sent us was an
official style email which started by prepositional phrases “due to”. The second
sentence and third sentence were made up of passive sentences. This cancel
class activity was made by President Joe. However, during the whole email, he
uses passive voice to announce this news to us in a formal way which was one
kind of official style. Why President Joe used element of the official style in
this case? Formal style is probably true because as the leader of UWL, he
needed to be official to announce news so that students and colleagues will pay
attention to the news that can make President Joe handle affairs in a
controlling way. Besides, the notification is formal, the position of president
is formal. Thus, President Joe needs to send official style email to us.
Another example is in the beginning of this semester in this class, we learned
the character of high grade level articles and read an example of long complex
sentence which average grade level is 45.8. “A policy
decision inexorably enforced upon a depression-prone individual whose posture
in respect to his total psychophysical environment is rendered antagonistic by
apprehension or by inner-motivated disinclination for ongoing participation in
human existence is the necessity for effectuating a positive selection between
two alternative programs of action, namely, (a) the continuance of the
above-mentioned existence irrespective of the dislocations, dissatisfactions,
and disabilities incurred in such a mode, or (b) the voluntary termination of
such existence by self-initiated instrumentality, irrespective in this instance
of the undetermined character of the subsequent environment, if any, in which
the subject may be position as an end result of this irrevocable determination.”
According to this whole long complicated sentence, we can easily find out the
elements of the official style. First, passive voice and impersonal, the
sentence’s subject is a policy decision which did not connect with personal
idea or personal choice. What the author says is very impersonal and based on
physical environment. Second, it is a long complex sentence which full of
technical terms. Third, verbs and nouns in this long complex sentence are
changed into another uncommon using way which is latinate diction and
nominalization. Depress turns to depression, psycho turns to psychophysical,
motivate turns to inner-motivated, participate turns to participation etc.
Fourth, verbose and bureaucratic which in this sentence is very outstanding.
The whole sentence is complex and verbose and filled with explanation. Lastly,
it explains how a policy decision was hold by in a euphemism way which relate
to the ladder of abstraction.
Official style surrounds in our daily life and
we cannot live without it. Although there are many conflicts between official
styles and plain style. People would rather read plain style than official style because plain style is
easy to understand and save people’s time, official writing styles are boring,
complex, wasting time and sometimes makes people feel confuse and unnecessary
to read it. However, every corn has two sides, official style still have his
own advantages which can make people think highly of it so that people can
recognize important information and common information. What is more, official
style is an important way to communicate with high educators which is the way
not only to help to communicate but also help to broaden education career. In a
word, as on of an essential part in writing style, official style cannot live
without ours and we need official style.
Yi Huang
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