Sentimental Repetition: I Love You Forever

I Love You Forever by Robert Munch is a beloved children’s book published in 1986. The story came to Munch by way of the lullaby that is repeated throughout the story:

I’ll love you forever

            I’ll like you for always

            As long as I’m living

            My baby you’ll be.

Munch used to sing this lullaby to himself after he and his wife had two stillborn babies. According to this interview with Munch, this story emerged quickly as he was performing the lullaby in front of an audience. His publisher refused to publish the story that he wrote because it was too dark for children’s literature, but his distributor decided it was a story worth sharing. This 34-year-old book goes beyond children’s literature and captures the hearts of people of all ages.  But why? It’s interesting why this book reaches an audience beyond the intended one. It’s more than adult children feeling nostalgic. In the same interview, Munch has a hunch as to why. “The book is kind of an ideal, the way we hope things will happen,” he said in the same interview, “ It's the only one of my books that escaped being a children's book." 

“The book is kind of an ideal.” This story is about a mother caring for her growing boy and the love she shows him until the very end. The story speaks about unconditional love, even through difficult teen years and after moving away. So, yes, the content of the story itself is an ideal we all hope to have in our lifetime. But, I think Munch portrays this in an interesting way that can even prompt adults to tear up. And I think it is because of his use of repetition as his main rhetorical device.

Repetition as a rhetorical device is commonly found in children’s literature, along with other devices such as metaphors, similes, personification, hyperbole, alliteration, and onomatopoeia, according to this article. Repetition, according to Susan R. Gannon’s article, repetition creates suspense, rhythm, and gratification for young children in literature, but it also “is also a powerful means of generating meaning in fiction.” This meaning, I would argue, has something to do with a parent’s love for their child; something that impacts every human. The rhetorical use of repetition paints this love as unconditional love as well, which, like Munch notes, is an ideal that we all strive to have and give.

This story is told rather point-blank. The language is simple, the reading level sits just above an 8th-grade level (but with creative works, we know that’s not always an accurate statistic to look at), and many of the phrases are repeated. The frequent repetition creates not just a rhythm to keep the reader or listener interested, but the anaphora and epistrophe tell the story of growing up and of a mother’s love for her son. The mother’s actions are repeated throughout the story, despite the fact that her son is growing into an adult. The recurrent actions of the mother create a sentimental tone. It is through the repetition of specific words and phrases that Munch successfully portrays what it feels like to watch your child grow up and to love (and be loved) unconditionally. It’s in writing about this ideal that Munch was able to reach an audience beyond children.

One phrase that is repeated throughout the book is “He grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew…” This phrase is used at the beginning of every age jump of the son in the story. The little boy jumps from being a newborn to age 2, then to 9, then to his teenage years, then into adulthood. These age gaps get wider and more ambiguous as the pages go on, but the phrase stays the same. I think the repetition of these words shows just how quickly the years go when raising a child. Your newborn turns into a two-year-old a few words later. Then your two-year-old turns into a nine-year-old a few words later. And it continues. But, despite how quickly time seems to be moving in the story, the mom is still present in her son’s life, even into his adulthood.

Her presence is shown through the other instance of anaphora in this book. The mother of the story is seen rocking her son “back and forth, back and forth, back and forth” repeatedly through the years. This specific phrase is found every time the mother sneaks into her son’s room to rock him to sleep. This phrase is more than an action. It repeatedly paints the image of the mother holding her son in the different stages of his life (even if it becomes a bit ridiculous when he’s an adult). It shows the steadfast presence of the mother in the son’s life, holding and supporting him no matter what. Every night, even if the boy was being mischievous or even if he lives across town, the mother was with the boy to tell him she loved him. This, I think, is an ideal we all yearn for: for someone to love us like that, or to love someone like that.

At the end of the story, the roles reverse as the old mother lays in her son’s arms. Instead of the mother rocking him back and forth, it is the son rocking his mother back and forth and sings to her as she passes away. In the story, the words “back and forth” are still repeated during this moment. This simple phrase of “back and forth” shows the impact of the mother’s presence in her son’s life affected him. The phrase is also repeated when the son goes into his daughter’s room to sing her to sleep. The repetition in the new contexts with the boy continues to show the idea of the steadfast presence of the mother in his life, even beyond death. 

Another use of repetition, and the most significant one, is the epistrophe of the lullaby. It is repeated throughout the book at the end of the pages when the boy is asleep. Munch mentioned on his website that the whole idea for the book stemmed from this lullaby he created. Themes of love and growth are found in this short lullaby. As with the rocking back and forth, the repetition of this lullaby throughout the pages shows the steadfastness of the mother. The rocking back and forth showed the mother’s presence in the boy’s life, but it goes beyond that. The repetition of the lullaby shows the constant presence of the mother’s love in the boy’s life as well. The rocking and the lullaby are always repeated together. Again, at the end of the book, when the mother is laying in her son’s arms, he finally sings the song to her. When she passes away, he rocks his daughter and sings her the same song his mother sang to him. This repetition shows that love can stretch beyond generations and is passed down.

Sentimentality is created when something in our lives that we enjoy or love repeats itself. Whether it’s a movie we enjoyed watching again and again or a certain type of bird that keeps popping up to remind us of the loved one we lost, sentimentality occurs when something continues to return that reminds us of something significant. If I Love You Forever didn’t repeat the phrases and the lullaby, what effect would it have on the reader? If the son didn’t repeat the same song at the end of the book, what effect would it have on the reader? The story wouldn’t be the same, and it wouldn’t have the rhythm and consistency we strive to have.

When I think back to the books I was read as a child, I think a lot about There’s a Wocket in My Pocket by Dr. Suess, or Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. I think one main goal of most children’s books is to get the child’s imagination running. To try to get the child to believe there’s a world where weird, mostly-friendly creatures live in the nooks of our houses, or worlds where pigeons can cause human mischief. I think the goal of I Love You Forever is quite the opposite of that. I think the goal of this book is trying to get children to look at those loved ones around them, to appreciate them, and to love them back unconditionally. Instead of trying to get us to look beyond this tactile world, it’s trying to get us to take a step back and look at our world. It’s reminding us to love until the very end. A reminder we all, big or small, need over and over again.

Emily Rux

An Attempt at Plain Style: The Game Overview for Catan

An Attempt at Plain Style: The Game of Catan

One of your friends texts you and asks if you are free that night. You are. You text him back. He replies quickly and asks if you want to come over for a game night. He has this new game and wants to learn how to play it with a few others. You’re down. He tells you his door opens at 6:30 pm. BYOB.

            You’re excited. You love learning new board games. It’s a fun way to share company and conversation while working toward a goal. You go through the rest of your day anticipating the fun. You check your phone. It’s 6:15 PM. You head out to your friend’s place for the night. You stop by Kwik Trip on your way to pick up a beverage and some chips to pass. 

            You knock on his door at 6:32 and are welcomed with open arms. 3 of your other friends are sitting in the living room, and you strike up a conversation as buddies do. You take a seat among them, open the chips, and continue chatting. You notice a bright red box with large yellow writing on it on the coffee table. Catan. Hmm… you’ve never played before. 

            “Is that the game we’re tackling tonight?” you ask.

            “Yup! You played?” You one friend next to you asks. She steals some chips from you.

“Nope.”

“Well, Johnny over there is teaching us cuz none of us have either.” The host chimes in. And with that Johnny takes out the box and begins setting up. The first thing he sees is the rule. He takes them out and sets them aside. As he sets up the board, he explains the game.

The board game of Catan was created and released by Klaus Teuber in 1995 (Germany) and 1996 (USA). According to a New Yorker article, Teuber was a dental technician manufacturing dental prosthetics living in Darmstadt, Germany. He was becoming unhappy with his job. His escape was creating intricate games in his basement. This is where the idea for a game like Catan came to be. Though this idea started in a basement in the middle of Germany, Catan is now a multi-million-dollar business. The bright red box can be found in over 30 languages and there are over 80 spin-offs and additional expansions or formats. 

            Every board game should have a set of instructions to tell players how to play. A game with no instructions would render the game obsolete. It is the most important aspect of the game. Catan’s instruction manual is a 16-page document written mostly in plain style. This game is aimed at people ages 10+. Therefore, the instruction should be aimed at the same level. This makes sense, seeing as a typical template (created by fairway 3 games) for a game suggests writing in “short, declarative sentences.” 

On the last page of Catan’s game instructions, there is a section called “Game Overview.” It uses plain style devices to explain the game to new players. It uses a bulleted list, simple language, pictures to aid the process, and a conversational “you” point of view. While all of these strategies are plain style, it still feels ill-formatted and quickly thrown together. So, while plain style may be easier to understand and the most effective style for the genre of instructions, it needs to be effectively formatted in order to be helpful.

            The most notable device is the list formatting of the entire page. It is laid out into eleven different steps; each one is numbered. The reader then would expect this document to be in chronological order, seeing as games are processes. The government (not that this game is directly under the jurisdiction of the government) even suggests that the processes be organized in a logical order. The overview is not effective in this device. The way to win is in step number 3, while step 11 discusses the strategy of placing settlements (which is something a player should consider at the beginning). Steps 8 and 9 discuss the same process, and step 5 begins with an italicized question when no other step does. 

            Another plain style device this document uses is simple language. This document’s readability statistics put it about at a 10th-grade reading level, which is consistent with plain style. That’s relatively accessible since the age range is 10+, but if the average adult reads at a 7th-grade level, this set of directions may be a bit strenuous to get through. It has to be accessible to most readers and aiming for a middle reading level seems to be the most effective move. It doesn’t quite get there. This document has concise sentences that tell the reader the point. Steps 3 and 4 (refer to picture above) are examples of that. But it also has confusing sentences with parentheticals. Step 7 is an example of that. 

The overview also uses pictures along with the text to aid in the explaining. Arabic numerals are used instead of writing out the names in the text. This allows for quick recognition and goes along with the board game pictured on the page, which has numbers on it. Pictures are nice because they familiarize a new player with the board layout. Though, the pictures affect the sentence format. Referring to the board, as it does in step 7, creates for a lot of confusing eye movement back and forth between the text and the picture. As helpful as it is to see the board, describing specific examples in the text while referring to the picture could make the reader feel lost. I did. The use of pictures for the specific hexes after Step 2, however, is more effective. They don’t interrupt the flow of the sentences and create distracting eye movements; they work along with the text underneath to help the reader understand what they mean.

This document also uses a 2nd person “you” perspective. It stays consistent throughout the piece as well, which is effective. Each bullet in the list keeps the second-person perspective, which allows the reader to stay engaged with the piece; to picture themselves playing the game. 

But I don’t think it matters in the grand scheme of this document.

Plain style is point-blank, and it is the most effective style when writing things that need to be clear, like instructions. But this overview feels more conversational. The writers implement devices like a creative opening and a rhetorical question to help explain the process of playing the game. The inconsistency in organization and the style makes me wonder how thought-through this document was. 

How often this overview actually gets read in full? I don’t think the writers anticipated a close examination of this document. It is located on the back of the document, behind a 15-page in-depth explanation of the rules. I think most people who play this game would be playing with people who already know the game and can explain it to them. Situations similar to the anecdote above come up frequently. I know from personal experience that I learned by explanation. I’ve also taught people by explaining the rules I know and disregarding the written instructions. 

This document is really only a guide, so the poor organization and floppy use of plain style in this document probably aren’t that big of a deal. It doesn’t really matter because this document exists in a realm with so many other tools. YouTube videos, online resources, the knowledge of other players, and the 15 other pages before this document hold greater value to the players than this one page does. This is not meant to exist alone. It’s not organized well for those new players, but it doesn’t really need to be. It uses plain language strategies because it is serving the general public and needs to be accessible, but it’s not precise in the implementation of the strategies. 

            The average sentence length in this overview is about 13 words. Plain style guidelines would want to cut those in half. Make them active “who’s kicking whom” sentences. Cut down unnecessary words. But according to Dancing Giant Games, the introductions or overviews should serve as a “background story/recap on what situation the players are getting themselves into. It sets the scene (thematically, usually) for the entire game.” This makes me wonder. If few people will read the document, and the most important information is in the 15 previous pages, what would this overview look like in a more creative style? What would it look like if it used more rhetorical devices and vivid descriptions to understand the world of Catan rather than the game of Catan? Teuber created this game to escape the stressful reality of his job. This document might be more effective as a hybrid style of plain and creative, so it can effectively tell the reader the basic rules and components, while also immersing them into the experience of the world around the game.

           

            You brush the thought aside and tune into Johnny as he is explaining what the brightly colored hexagons, the numbered circles, the cards, and the gray pawn means.

            “So, what color does everyone want?” Johnny asks.

            Everyone picks. You’re left with orange, which is fine. He passes out the tiny bags of mini colored blocks. Everyone pours them out into a pile and looks inquisitively at everything that lies before them. Everyone smiles and looks at Johnny.

            “Alright, let’s roll to see who goes first.”


Emily Rux

Saving Lives or Sheltering Minds?

Saving Lives or Sheltering Minds?

“Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten” - George Orwell, 1984

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this part of George Orwell’s book “1984”, this quote is discussing a dystopian world’s new language called “newspeak”. Newspeak is a language that is extremely oversimplified and made more plain. This is the required language that the characters working for the government must use. In the book, this is done in order to control the thoughts of the citizens by not allowing them even the vocabulary to challenge the practices of the government. 

This might make you worried when you think about the Plain Writing Act put into place by the US government in 2010. This law states, “An act to enhance citizen access to Government information and services by establishing that Government documents issued to the public must be written clearly, and for other purposes.” 

Having this dystopian governmental censorship shadowing behind a real law put into place by our government today, should make you feel a little uneasy and raise some questions. 

Should we all be cautious of using the Plain Style in our writing?

Furthermore, are there any situations where we should expect the government to communicate by strictly using the Plain Style?

While I can not with a good conscience try to convince you that George Orwell’s dystopian society would never be a possibility for our own world, I do argue that the Plain Style is sometimes a necessity.

The Plain Style is supposed to make writing simple enough for the vast majority of people to be able to understand. This would displace the eliestest complex that we often see used by people in academia or government agencies in order to exclude people. The Plain Style functions on the idea that everyone should be able to understand what they are trying to read, and that the author should be held accountable if they are writing to take advantage of the audience's lack of understanding. With this understanding of the Plain Style of writing, we can acknowledge that there are situations in which we should hold the people in power accountable to provide us with information we can understand. 

 One example where writing in the Plain Style is needed, is when universities were giving safety instructions and guidelines to students during the COVID19 pandemic.

Chancellor Rebecca Blank at the University of Wisconsin Madison was able to use the Plain Style of writing effectively to relay safety measures to her student body about the virus. In her public announcement she uses aspects of the Plain Style such as active voice, personal pronouns, concrete and familiar words, and even breaks up her instructions into short lists.

By following these aspects of the Plain Style, the student body reading her guidelines would be able to not only understand what is being said but also easily follow her safety advice. 

As we can see, this use of the Plain Style is actually used to protect people rather than take advantage of them, as was the idea of Orwell’s “newspeak”. This shows that the Plain Style can do more than just shelter our minds.

Grace Oliver

The Official Style: The Evil Mastermind?

The Official Style: The Evil Mastermind?

Contrary to popular belief, we do not live in a black and white world. The world is filled with so much grey and many different shades of it. This understanding of the world, while it makes everything more complex, adds value and meaning to our lives. When looking at articles written in the Official Style, I think the same grey approach must be taken. The Official Style in many ways has been used as a tool to trick or take advantage of the audience. This is often done by faking an authority and making the audience want to trust the writer without understanding what is being discussed or fact checking them. This, without a doubt, is very dangerous. 

So why is this the preferred style choice by academics and other professionals? 

Can we trust “experts” in a field to actually relay reliable information to us?

Or are people who use the Official Style just evil masterminds?

While you might already have your own answers to those questions, I argue that there is both a good and evil use of the Official Style. I make this claim after analyzing the research paper by Hee Sun Park and Guan Xiaowen titled “The Effects of National Culture and Face Concerns on Intention to Apologize: A Comparison of the USA and China”. The title of this research paper alone should already be setting off some red flags. “Face Concerns”, “Intention to Apologize” what does that even mean and how in the world would you be able to quantify something like that? 

Your intuition is not wrong.

This title alone foreshadows the rest of the paper which overall has a Gunning Fog index of 20.21 and the Flesch Reading Ease score of 15.69. This means that to even have a chance of reading this paper and being able to understand it, would require you to have already completed your PHD. Even if you had a PHD, it would most likely have to be in the field of Communications and Language Studies. While I think that field is pretty neat, that is not the field that most parents are hoping that their child would pursue as a career one day. So why would Park and Guan write a paper that would exclude so many people from being able to understand it? 

You guessed it, they are just pure evil. 

(Joking) 

To understand why they wrote this paper, you have to look at the sphere of human activity that this paper would fall into. To do so, we need to start by understanding who the authors are. Hee Sun Park is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University and has been since the fall of 2008. He got his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara,  in Communications in 2003. His main fields of interests are: Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Communication, Organizational Communication, Social Influence and Health Communication, and Research Methods and Statistics. The other author is Xiaowen Guan who is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Saint Thomas and has been since 2008. She first got her B.A. at Beijing Foreign Studies University in China. She eventually got her PhD from Michigan State University after working with Hee Sun Park on this paper for her doctoral degree. Currently she teaches courses in Intercultural Communication, and also does research focused on “how different individual and social factors influence communicative messages in interpersonal, intercultural and organizational contexts”.

Based on both of these author’s educational backgrounds, we can assume that they are actually experts in this field and know what they are talking about. 

So who was their intended audience? 

Well given the precision of their field and the fact that this research paper was published in the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, which claims to be an international academic publisher that works with “world-class authors” with the goal of helping others enhance their education and job efficiency, we can assume that the paper was intended for people working on their own research or to be used as reference in communication studies classrooms. 

So even if there were no evil intentions behind this research paper, surely academics who study communication would be able to relay the information more simply to the audience, right?

I mean I can’t argue that. That question left me stumped until I really started to question how they were able to conduct this research in the first place. As the title stated this was a comparative study between “China and the US”, therefore there is more that goes into this research than what initially meets the eye. 

Language barriers and mistranslations

For those of you who are unfamiliar with translations of foreign languages and specifically translations between English and Chinese, let me tell you there are many misunderstandings. If you try to translate a normal English sentence into Chinese via google translate for example, you will not succeed. A word that we as native English speakers might believe to be very straight forward could hold multiple different meanings when translated into Chinese. Therefore, if you want to accurately get your meaning across, you must use very precise language. 

And what is known to use extremely precise diction? You guessed it, the Official Style!

 With this in mind, I argue that it was necessary for Park and Guan to write in the Official Style in order to conduct this international study between the US and China. By using the Official Style, they could utilize precise language in order to ensure that their research was conducted the same in both countries. 

 Therefore, Park and Guan might not have had any evil intentions when writing this paper at all!

When taking into consideration everything at play when researchers use the Official Style, we can better see how the Official Style falls into the grey category like most other things in the world. When understanding the sphere of human activity along with international communication, we can see the more positive uses of the Official Style. While the argument can still be made that the final paper could have been written more simply in order to allow for more readers to understand it, we can at least see why the paper was written the way it was initially. 

The Official Style is not simply black or white.

Grace Oliver

Official Style in Scientific Writing

As a science major, the official style seems to be everywhere. I have seen multiple times in each of my science classes in the last four years of school here at UWL. Scientific writing seems to be a major branch of the official style, along with political and law related topics. After reading a variety of scientific texts and writing some of my own, I have come to the conclusion that the official style is necessary in this kind of writing. My argument stems from the fact that technical terms and larger words and phrases must be used to deliver the necessary information to the readers.

I based my Biology Capstone research project on a cancer-causing gene mutation and took the course Biology of Cancer. After these courses, I became interested in cancer research and possible risk factors.  I chose to analyze a scientific article titled “Identification and Management of Women With BRCA Mutation or Hereditary Predisposition for Breast and Ovarian Cancer.” It was published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, a peer reviewed journal focused in general and internal medicine, by Sandhya Pruthi, M.D.  Mayo Clinic Proceedings is an internationally ranked medical journal, number 12 out of 160 journals. According to the Mayo Clinic website, articles can focus on clinical and laboratory medicine, health care policy and economics, medical education and ethics, and other related topics. Dr. Pruthi works as a researcher at the Rochester, Minnesota location of Mayo Clinic. Her research is focused around women at increased risk of breast cancer, the topic of the article that I have chosen. She has led nationwide research several times in attempt to further develop the knowledge of breast cancer and develop possible diagnosis strategies and treatment options. This article has been widely cited by other researchers, specifically 105 times in articles that can be accessed through the Elsevier database.

            We have learned that the official style isn’t just one specific format. There are a multitude of strategies that may or may not be used in the official style. This is a reason that there is a broad variety in subject matter that utilizes the official style. My chosen article includes a variety of key strategies that are typical of official style. This article includes almost all of the nine sentence combining strategies that we have talked about. The few that are most frequently used are relative phrases, appositives, and prepositional phrases. The use of these strategies allows for the lengthening of sentences, one of the key aspects of the official style. This article also includes the use of lists and statistics quite frequently.

“In the United States in 2009, there were approximately 192,370 new cases of breast cancer and 21,550 new cases of ovarian cancer. That year, breast cancer deaths were estimated at 40,170 and ovarian cancer deaths at 14,600. Approximately 80% of breast and 90% of ovarian cancer cases are thought to be sporadic with no associated family history. Multifactorial familial risk accounts for approximately 10% to 15% of breast cancer. In the future, testable panels of genetic variants likely will combine to subtly alter risk. Hereditary breast cancer—cancer attributable to a single hereditary gene mutation in either BRCA1 or BRCA2—accounts for approximately 5% of breast cancer cases, characteristically occurring before age 50 years. Approximately 4% to 11% of ovarian cancer is attributable to a germline mutation, with the greatest proportions in cancers diagnosed before age 50 years.3 An estimated 1 in 300 to 1 in 800 US individuals are BRCA carriers (1 in 50 individuals with Ashkenazi Jewish heritage).”

This passage includes each of the tactics mentioned prior. There is an overload of statistics, enough to make an average person simply skip over the passage. Almost every sentence in this passage has a prepositional phrase. This passage supports the argument the use of technical terms and larger words is necessary. You can also see the use of appositives, which attempts to further explain the important topics that are seen throughout the rest of the article. This author, along with many other scientific authors, does a very good job of including any necessary explanations of techniques or medical diagnoses used throughout the article. According to readability calculators, appositives make the reading more difficult by adding too much length to a sentence, but in this case, I feel that it makes to article more readable. There are very few, if any, terms in this passage that could be simplified or altered to increase readability without jeopardizing the content and message that the author is discussing.

It is very important to understand the audience in any style of writing, but especially in scientific writing. Many of the people that would disagree with my argument would state the fact that an average person may want to understand more about this topic. The specific article that I chose is about a fairly common gene mutation that increases breast and ovarian cancer risk to 80%. Anyone can have the mutation, so the average person should be able to learn about it. I completely agree with this counterargument. I would feel the same way if I had this gene or any other medical condition. I still feel that it is necessary to have all of the correct terminology included in articles. It’s not easy to simplify a medical condition and may seem less credible without the proper terminology. Many of the journal articles are written to inform other scientists and researchers and not for the average layperson. Their intended audience are people with similar levels of education so they don’t need to write in a simpler way. There are many other ways for the average person to access medical information that they can understand.

It is assumed that the official style makes writings unnecessarily difficult to read, hence the relatively low readability scores that most articles receive. This article received a 9.84 Flesch Reading Ease score and requires a person to be educated through about the 20^th grade level to understand it. Obviously, not many people have 20 years of formal education and I certainly don’t, but this article doesn’t seem to be as advanced as the statistics show. Scientific writings would be difficult for anyone to read if you don’t have prior knowledge about the topic at hand. An author doesn’t begin writing an article with the intention of limiting the audience. Nobody sits down to write and thinks, “I am going write this article so the readability is extremely low.” The terminology that must be included in the articles is what lowers readability. Names of diseases or body parts or genes being studied or the techniques used for that research can’t be changed or simplified. They may make an article more difficult to read and more official, but there isn’t anything the author can do to change that. I feel that even scientific articles that are meant to try to simplify a topic still include strategies that fall into the official style. There just isn’t any way to avoid it. There are obviously limitations to writing in the official style, the largest one being limited access to a large audience. This doesn’t make the official style a bad thing. As I have pointed out, it is sometimes unavoidable and necessary in writing. However, there are subjects and articles that can stray away from the bounds of the official style.

Kelsie K.

Playwrights Using Creative Style

When I think of creative writing, I think of something fictional that usually contains a fair amount of dialogue. The first creative style piece that comes to my mind is a two-person play titled “Assault Toast” that I performed in high school Forensics. This piece is extremely easy to read and understand. The Flesch Reading Ease score is 73.88 and only four to five years of education are required for understanding. I think this is because there are a lot of one-word responses and the piece was written as a dialogue between to teenage sisters that are in an argument. The tone of the play would have been lost if it was any more difficult to read and understand. I think that creative writing can vary in its complexity and readability, but for pieces like the one I chose that are reliant on dialogue, simpler content and word choice are necessary.

“Assault Toast” was written by Bradley Walton, a comic book author turned playwright from Virginia. Walton began his career in the creative world by writing and illustrating comic books. This led to little success and he found himself working in the high school library of his alma mater. His love for acting and forensics during high school got him the job of forensics coach and play director. These new positions shifted his career as an author, and he quickly became a successful playwright with almost too many published works to count. He writes mostly short comedies for a small cast, which makes him a popular author in forensics competitions. “Assault Toast” fits that description. This play depicts a conversation between two sisters. The younger sister is attempting to modify the toaster such that it becomes a home security device. The older sister questions her logic and doubts her ability to perform such a crazy task. This dynamic continues throughout the entirety of the play and bickering that you would expect from teenage sisters is very prevalent.

This play uses a handful of rhetorical devices throughout the short excerpt that I have chosen. These include alliteration, repetition, amplification, and others. It also uses sentence structure to help emphasize the tone of the play and of each character. One character is questioning the logic of the other, so she uses short, to the point sentences to portray her confusion and irritation. The other sister tries to defend herself using larger terms and longer sentences to seem as if she knows what she is doing. The author of this play uses creative styles to allow for different emotions to be felt by the audience and by the characters in the play. To the audience, this is a comical depiction of an argument between sisters, but the sisters, especially the younger, are being serious.

Creative style strategies are used in play-writing as an attempt to keep viewers engaged in the performance the entire time, whether that is for a few minutes or a couple of hours. It is important for the success of the author and the performance to keep people anticipating what is coming next and willing to watch the whole thing. The creative style allows for an author to take advantage of sentence structure and word choice to keep the piece interesting and stay away from monotony. Plain or official styles wouldn’t be able to capture the interest of people in the way the creative style does. The use of a variety of rhetorical devices and sentence structure contribute the most to the creative style in this piece as well as in other plays or movie scripts. They are important devices used a lot in written dialogue and can even be picked out of spoken word. Creative style is necessary to escape to monotony of plain and official styles and allows the reader or viewer to fully immerse themselves in the work.

Kelsie K.

America's Pastime and Plain Style

Baseball is considered America’s national pastime. People of all races, cultures, social classes, and ages enjoy watching baseball and many other sports. This means that publications in sports media are written in plain language to allow for accessibility by ALL people. As difficult as it may be to ensure that an article can be read and understood by everyone, plain style strategies can be used to aid in the task. Many of the articles that I have looked through eliminate the use of prepositional phrases or sentence combining strategies and follow the “who’s kicking whom” strategy. Sentences get straight to the point and leave little up to interpretation.

            The article that I chose was written following an interview with baseball stars Christian Yelich and Cody Bellinger. This interview took place in a local bar and followed Yelich and Bellinger competing in different games such as cornhole, skee-ball, ping-pong, and even beer chugging. Part of the article was simply a transcription of the interview and the other part gave information about the setting of the interview, questions posed to the athletes, and short summaries of the athletes. The article doesn’t include any extra information than one would need to understand the situation. A lot of direct quotes and dialogue were included in the article. This helps the reader get information straight from the horse’s mouth, it isn’t an interpretation of what the author thinks. The information given is from the athlete about himself, no room for argument.

            

          Plain language strategies used in sports journalism include the use of active voice, simple sentence and paragraph structure and word choice, and a conversational tone. This again brings up the strategy of “who is kicking whom.” This strategy keeps writing in the active voice and simplifies and shortens sentences. In plain style, the shorter a sentence can be the better. Most sentences in my article only had a handful of words and the paragraphs are only a few sentences each. Sports articles typically feel very conversational. This one in particular is about a casual interview that happened in a bar, so both the questions and answers are less formal. Journalists write this way to attract interest to their article by all types of people. I know from personal experience that I am attracted to reading an article by the first couple of sentences and am usually turned off if it is too long and wordy. Authors need to keep their writing interesting but also short and to the point.

          

          Journalists, especially those covering sports, use plain language to appeal to as many readers as they can. They realize that a variety of people may be interested in their chosen topics, and their articles must be accessible to all of them. Plain language strategies keep readability scores high and allow for all people to engage in sports media.

Kelsie K.

Keep Calm and Wash your Hands: A Look at the ‘Spokespoem’ of the Corona Virus

The year 2020 will be remembered in many ways, but across the entire world the pandemic will always be at the top of the list. During this time of crisis, Kitty O'Meara’s poem “In the Time of a Pandemic”  captures many of the emotions that people are feeling. Due to how viral it went I think it will be correlated with this time period in the future, a piece of literature that will be looked at for generations to come, to describe this life changing situation we are faced with. 

In order to understand the piece better, I did some research and slight online stalking of the author. I found she is a retired school teacher from Madison, Wisconsin. She wrote the poem in efforts to decrease the anxiety that she and those around her were feeling towards the virus. In an interview with Oprah Magazine she explains the purpose of her poem "It offers a story of how it could be, what we could do with this time." She had previously been writing on her blog, which she used as sort of an outlet for her feelings.  She said "I was getting kind of sad. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t help my friends. I was very worried about them. My husband said: ‘Write. Just write again.'" And so she did. And she wrote a poem that became known worldwide that everyone, from Deepak Chopra to Bella Hadid has shared. 

In attempts to understand how and why this poem became so viral, I analyzed the context and main elements that I believe contributed to its fame. They are separated and outlined below: 

Relatability  

Although how we are experiencing quarninteing looks vastly different depending on the person, we all share a common ground: we are all affected by this pandemic. Kitty’s poem highlights that similarity  and creates a sense of inclusion. This is a very new experience for many of us, which in turn leads to new feelings that many people don’t quite know how to describe. Kitty offers words that help to pinpoint what they are, and explain them in a positive way. While we are physically being separated and isolated, the poem creates a mutual understanding that most people can relate to. One way she archives this is by the use of anaphora (repetition of first word)  throughout the entire piece. The first word “And” helps add to that inclusion because it insinuates we are all in it together. If she would have used the word “or '' such as “or read books and listened, or rested and exercised, or made art and played” it would have separated the actors instead of creating one singular entity doing these actions, which is essentially all of us. It would lose the all-embracing feel it has. 

Story 

Her poem also reads similar to a story. There is an introduction, climax, and conclusion. It provides hope that there is not just an ending to the pandemic, but a happy ending, because she claims we will be better than before. It also flows nicely, because of the similar length in sentences and easy to read structure. There are no complex words or ideas used, which makes it accessible to most reading levels.

Location 

The poem was posted on her facebook, where sharing and spreading information is as easy as a click of a button. I believe that the popularity of a text such as this, is truly dependent on the platform in which it is posted on. People have been going to facebook to share their thoughts and feelings about the virus and this poem captured it perfectly. I also believe that Facebook is a major contributing factor to the conspiracy theories around the poem. With no fact checkers, and in the online economy that profits from the number of engagment it gets, fake news on facebook spreads like wildfire. These false claims, such as that it was written during the Spanish Flu influenza in 1919, quickly grabbed people's interest. In a time of such uncertainty and well... boredom, it is easy to gravitate towards false conceptions as a way of explaining the present, and using it to provide hope for the future. I believe that this leads to a loss of credibility, because people are seeing the poem and associating it with lies. In reality however, I would argue that the actual context that it was written, which was March of 2020, makes the author much more credible to be discussing the current crisis, as she is living it in real time. 

Kitty O'meara's poem, although written for herself and those closest to her, became known worldwide.  She wrote her honest and raw feelings, which resonated with thousands, and thus ensuring her work will create a lasting impact. 

 In the Time of a Pandemic

And people stayed home

and read books and listened

and rested and exercised

and made art and played

and learned new ways of being

and stopped

and listened deeper

someone meditated

someone prayed

someone danced

someone met their shadow

and people began to think differently

and people healed

and in the absence of people who lived in ignorant ways,

dangerous, meaningless and heartless,

even the earth began to heal

and when the danger ended

and people found each other

grieved for the dead people

and they made new choices

and dreamed of new visions

and created new ways of life

and healed the earth completely

just as they were healed themselves.

Kaitilyn Bestor

Can’t Quite Quit it Cold Turkey: An analysis of the USDA’s transition to plain language

The Plain Writing Act of 2010 was created in order to “enhance citizen access to government information and services by establishing that government documents issued to the public must be written clearly, and for other purposes”. Being a government organization, the United States Department of Agriculture is no exception to this rule. They provide essential information to the public regarding farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food, and therefore it seems obvious why the information they are presenting must be inclusive and accessible to anyone who reads it. As someone who is interested in the affairs of the USDA on a personal level, I have scrutinized their work in order to determine if it meets the requirements of the law. Furthermore, I have worked to determine if adhering to the plain writing act is enough to ensure that it is easily understood by the public. 

In order to answer this, I chose to look at a specific part of the Animal Welfare act that was published by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. This act, which was updated in 2019, essentially outlines the federal laws that are in place to protect animals. Because it was published by a government industry and intended for the public, the USDA had no choice in the matter of style; it has to be in plain language. Although arguably following the general standards of what constitutes as “plain language” according to the plain language act, the actual accessibility of the text is up for debate. 

The Center of Plain language.Gov  provides an evaluation report card that outlines how governmental agencies are rated based on their adherence to the plain language act. Surprisingly, the USDA scored one of the highest. They were judged in three categories:
1. Compliance: This looks at the organization's ability to adjust and respond to audiences' reactions to their website and written material and also being transparent with the goal of using plain language. 
2. Writing: The actual text was analyzed to determine if it was easy to read and easy to understand. The following was looked at: 

• Did the writer limit their use of passive and hidden verbs?
• Did the writer use common words and avoid or define jargon?
• Was the content direct and concise or wordy?
• Was the narrative cohesive?
• Was spelling, grammar, style and terminology correct?

3. Information design: How the information was presented was considered to ensure it is organized, and effective in capturing attention and reinforcing the important information.

The Animal Welfare Act meets the requirements for compliance because the USDA clearly states on their website that they intend to use plain language in all of their documents. I would argue that the act met some but not all of the requirements under the writing section. Active voice was used throughout, and most jargon was avoided. The guidelines also suggest repeating terms when referring to the same concept to avoid confusion. The Animal Welfare Act does have examples of this throughout the text which are underlined below. 

“USDA Animal Care, a unit within the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, administers the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). This federal law establishes requirements concerning the transportation, sale, and handling of certain animals and includes restrictions on the importation of live dogs for purposes of resale, prohibitions on animal fighting ventures, and provisions intended to prevent the theft of personal pets. Regulations established under the AWA set standards for the humane care and treatment for certain animals that are exhibited to the public, sold for use as pets, used in research, or transported commercially. Facilities using regulated animals for regulated purposes must provide their animals with adequate housing, sanitation, nutrition, water and veterinary care, and they must protect their animals from extreme weather and temperatures. The regulations also establish specific requirements that must be met prior to the importation of dogs for resale purposes.”

The repeated words not only provide consistency but also highlight the main idea which is the purpose of the established and regulated animal requirements. This emphasises the vital information in the passage. 

Although these follow the plain language guidelines, there are some elements of official style that could have easily been avoided. Many words could be switched out with more common and more concrete ones such as the words “adequate”, “concerning” and “intended”.

 “...must provide their animals with adequate housing, sanitation, nutrition, water and veterinary care, and they must protect their animals from extreme weather and temperatures.” 

 “This federal law establishes requirements concerning transportation…”

“...and provisions intended to prevent the theft of personal pets.”

I would argue that these words are not very common in people’s everyday vocabulary and have vague definitions. After reading these sentences, I realized it didn’t provide any actual information because these words are subjective. What is “adequate housing” to one person could be very different from what the act actually wants.   Along with that, I found many instances of nominalization, which makes the verb less effective.  The act has “requirements” instead of  “requiring” and “prohibitions” versus “prohibits”. 

I also think it is important to note that the word “animals” that is repeatedly used, is quite inclusive. Not included in this short explanation of the act, is the unfortunate but very relevant exclusion of livestock. According to the law, any farm animal regarded as an asset, is considered property and therefore not protected under the Animal Welfare Act. This is a perfect example of how information appears to be straightforward, while actually misconstruing the truth. The USDA uses this tactic often in order to skirt around topics that the public would have issues about, but that is opening a whole new can of worms. 

Referring back to the specific attributes of the written act, I noticed the sentences are also typically long, averaging 24 words per sentence. When I plugged the text into a readability calculator, the website suggested simplifying both the sentence structure and word choice in order to make it more readable. According to the results of the test, the Gunning Fog index of 22.69 and a Flesch Reading Ease of 9.45 this indicates that the text is much more difficult to understand than the average person would be able to comprehend. The USDA explicitly explains that their purpose is to inform United States citizens, as is the plain writing act. Looking at the readability index however, it is indicated that the text is written for those who have a higher level of education. That changes the information from being inclusive to very exclusive. 

Plainlanguage.gov is an official government run website that helps organizations communicate effectively following the Plain Language Act.  It provides an example (as shown below) of a USDA regulation that has been changed to be in more of a plain language style. It addresses the format of the text to make it more visually appealing and easier to read. The Animal Welfare Act could have followed a similar style such as bullet points for each of the sections that are long lists to make the information more concise and organized. 

I would argue that it is difficult to maintain the level of credibility when trying to incorporate plain language. Before the Plain language Act, government organizations used very official style when presenting information and thus official style became the norm. Switching to plain language not only takes time and effort, but also a change in the mindset of those who write the information. When looking at the Animal Welfare Act, it could meet all the requirements of plain language, without actually being effectively communicated. I think that is a perfect example of how laws can be too vague and thus failing to do what was intended. The USDA used the loopholes in the law to create a shield that the public could not penetrate. The Act, although seemingly transparent, excludes many and lacks the information that the public has a right to know and comprehend.

Uncovering the truth behind large corporations and government entities and unethical actions takes more than just a whistleblower or under cover activists. It takes the general public being aware of our rights, and calling them out when they are being obtuse, in order to keep those with authority accountable. 

Kaitilyn Bestor