Using Official Style to Discuss Children's Literature

It may not seem necessary to use official style when analyzing equestrian fiction for young girls, but Ellen Singleton does exactly that in her contribution to the book, Gender and Equestrian Sport. Singleton’s section focuses on literature starring young females and horses analyzes the genre and attempts to explain why these books weren’t as popular as books about boys’ adventures. This book is by multiple authors and contains a range of ideas about the equestrians and gender. Most of the contributions are from professors and they are all written in official style. 

The section I am analyzing starts out with an introduction paragraph that scored a 9.00 on the Flesch Reading Ease scale: 

In the current era of concern among educators for the reading habits and skills of boys (Ontario Ministry of Education 2004), it is interesting to note that vintage adventure and sport book series for boys were published, marketed and sold in much greater quantities than similar books for girls. This leads to the question of whether boys’ series were more popular than girls’ because the topics were more amenable to masculine reading interests or whether young girls also read ‘books for boys’ because they offered a vicarious adventurousness and physicality not often found, or at least not often found without feminine equivocation, in books for girls. Furthermore, the idealised images of masculine gender displayed in these stories were not only more congruent with the physically challenging adventures portrayed in the stories but also less problematic for both young male and young female read- ers to envision (op de Beeck 2005).
(https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-007-6824-6#about)

This paragraph is only three sentences long and averages 48 words per sentence. It is a strong example of official style, with words such as “physicality” and “amenable” in places that could have used simpler words. It uses passive voice and a long wind-up to reach the point: that fiction for boys is more popular due to societal preferences and stereotypes about gender. These sentences are long and complex, with the message hidden at the end. The paragraph is only the introduction, with one main idea, and it takes a long time to reach that idea, with a lot of complicated words and sentence structure thrown in.

The argument is not easy to find, but it is what Singleton’s entire section is about. The message could get across better if it wasn’t written in official style. The entire book may need to change, but the message would be more effective if it were more readable. Reading the first paragraph out loud isn’t easy- that means more concentration goes into trying to read the words rather than thinking about the message the author is trying to convey, which makes rereading necessary. 

The Gunning Fog Index states that this text would take a 25.68th grade reading level to easily understand it. This means that not everybody who is interested in this topic would be able to read this text. It is free to find online, but it is not accessible in the sense that it is difficult to read and requires a high reading level. Many people are interested in the equestrian sport and have experience with the kind of literature that Singleton is discussing and they wouldn’t be able to read this text, so they wouldn’t be able to think critically about it, like Singleton wants. It is not accessible enough for the average person, who reads at a seventh grade level. Singleton’s message won’t be able to circulate very much; it has 11k downloads, but only 54 citations and 14 mentions. This means people are able to find and access this book, but they aren’t able to use it. This is likely because it’s in official style and many people are unable to understand it. 

There could be various reasons for writing this piece in official style. It is part of a book that was edited by educators, all talking about various gender issues in the equestrian community. Every section of the book is written in official style, keeping the voice and tone consistent. It is also aimed at an educated audience that will be able to understand both the equestrian sport and different gender dynamics that may be referenced. Official style is common among educators and educated people, which may be the reason this entire book is written in official style. 

It could also be written in official style because that’s the standard for texts like this. As I stated earlier, it is aimed at an educated audience, so the authors would have no problem with writing in official style. Since official style is the standard for texts like this, it is probably what the authors are used to. Writing in official style might not have even been a conscious decision or one that they discussed. 

This raises further questions, such as how do people decide whether or not to use official style? Is the official style always necessary in academic settings?  Could this be written without official style and keep the same message that the authors wanted? These questions don’t have definitive answers, but official style still remains common in many journals and articles. 

I think this article is representative of other academic articles written in official style. The sentences are long and it takes a while to get to the point. These articles use academic jargon that makes it hard to understand, unless somebody has a vast knowledge of both the equestrian sport and literature. Writing this without official style would get the message across in a much clearer way and would allow more people to read and understand this.

Kira Nerat

Does Philosophy Have to Sound Philosophical?

Using the official style in writing is a practice that has been taught in academics for a long time. Although coined by Lanham later, the official style has been exampled in writing long before.

Louis Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher in the mid to late 1900’s. He often discussed ideology and how it works in society, expanding on Jacques Lacan’s work. One of his most famous writings is “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” an excerpt from the longer essay “On the Reproduction of Capitalism.” The essay attempts to explain the relationship between “state and subject.” The original idea was that the state operates through false consciousness, where they are able to maintain control over their subjects by creating the illusion that they are choosing their position instead of being results of the ideology of the elite. However, through reading a piece of the “Ideology” essay, not many people would come to this conclusion. And that is due to the official style.

The “Ideology” essay is written in a way that is not understandable to the masses. This is a common trend when looking at academic writing. But why?

The official style is something a lot of people have come to identify as synonymous with being smart, professional, and authoritative. Althusser is an academic and philosopher. Perhaps his use of official style is in order to attribute worth and meaning to his profession. The ideology essay was an expansion on Lacan’s work, another philosopher, and also influenced other philosophers after it was published. He writes with the same intellectual ideals that Marx, his inspiration, did. Maybe Althusser was conforming to the styles of writing that inspired him to write this essay. Maybe, the meaning behind his use of official style comes from a strange need to explain a complicated idea by using even more complicated words.

Analyzing the writing of Althusser reveals his frequent use of the official style. Commonly found in the “Ideology” text is the use of infinitives, relatives, and coordination.

The most common strategy is the use of coordination, constantly using “and”, “or”, and “but” to connect and continue ideas to increase their sentence length. There are roughly 36 instances of coordination in this small excerpt. Use of infinitives is also prevalent in Althusser’s writing including: to grasp, to take, to recognize, to break, to represent. The infinitives he uses seem to go together, grasping and raking, recognizing and representing, and then ending it all in breaking. The connection I find in the infinitives seems to point to a more deliberate use of official style, rather than this simply being the way Althusser transfers his jumbled thoughts onto paper.

Additionally, the writing exemplifies the use of long, complex sentences and extreme presence of parenthesis. For example:

“By this I mean that, even if it only appears under this name (the subject)…the category of the subject (which may function under other names: e.g., as the soul in Plato, as God, etc.) is the constitutive category of all ideology, whatever its determination (regional or class) and whatever its historical date – since ideology has no history.”

This all occurs in one sentence. It brings your brain to so many different places, having to constantly go back and forth between the parenthetical statements and the basic sentence. In trying to be clearer through explanation it becomes too much for my mind to follow. There are many more throughout the entire reading as well that follow the same convoluted sentence structure. The fact that the topic of Althusser’s writing is to analyze the influence society has on its subjects seems to constitute a necessity for it to be readable by those subjects. However, could his purpose be to write to a more specific audience with intentions of someone else being his translator? There could be so many motivations. So this continues to beg the question: why is he writing like this?

The sentences throughout the writing often sound like rambling thoughts. Sentences become so hard to read that it sounds official but unofficial at the same time. I am both impressed by the complexity but confused by the reading of it all. The longer I look at it, the more I feel like I should understand what he is saying. I think Althusser is being more deliberate in his use of official style. Patterns and constant use of strategies seem purposeful in order to sound philosophical and prove he is of high regard.

The official style has been used for centuries, even before it had an official name. There must be a meaning to it. However, I think the meaning comes from the people reading it, not from the people writing it. When Althusser is writing about ideology and ideological state apparatuses, he clearly knows what he’s talking about. But if he wrote about these topics without using identifiers of official style would we take the writing with the same amount of sophistication? He needs to write in the official style to prove he knows what he is talking about, but that is not his doing. It’s ours.

Maybe Althusser believes philosophy must sound philosophical.  He could consider the societal views of philosophy and how it is taken by the masses. If it weren’t written in official style people wouldn’t think it so important because if anyone can understand it, why is it special. The official style is certainly a type of writing that is associated with authority and intellect but also detachment and non-bias. The reason for using official style may never be definitive as it always seems so unnecessary when reading it, yet we make it necessary by valuing prestige and intelligence. But after reading Althusser’s writing about ideology and ideological state apparatuses it seems the best answer I can muster is that Althusser wants to be heard and taken seriously. He believes his writing is important and the best way to get everyone else to believe it’s as important as he does is to use the official style. Althusser knows that the people around him have linked the use of official style to authority and intellect and thus, his ideas will be highly regarded and taken seriously.

 Noelle Hausen

Authoritative AND Easy to Read?

     The instructions for the card game UNO are an example of a plain style text. This text is written for a wide audience including children, and is effective in using elements of plain style writing to deliver these instructions in a clear and easy-to-read format for players of the game in a way that still commands authority.
The people that would read this text are primarily game players (which can be a person of any age, social background, education, or class). Other people or companies that are creating card games might also read this as a reference for their games, and stockholders or owners in the Mattel Company might also read this to get an idea of the product they are offering. This text is used as instructions for the game, which means that unless someone is playing it for the first time they probably won’t sit down and read every word. It’s often used to answer specific questions about the game, which means people will skim the reading for a specific answer, and it’s written to accommodate that easily.
     At the very top of the instructions, it states that the game (and the instructions) are intended for ages seven and above. I believe the reason for this is that most children in the US can read at age seven, and although some learn earlier the cards like “draw four” or “skip” may cause confusion in younger children. Many four year olds would benefit from a color/number matching game, but the other cards added may be too difficult. Readability calculators put the grade level of this text at between fifth and seventh grade, around ages ten to thirteen, which may initially cause confusion as to why the instructions are more difficult to read than the intended audience. There are several reasons for this, the main one being that this game is intended to be played with a family (younger children and adults) as a type of educational activity. A child at ages ten to thirteen would most likely be capable of learning the game rules themselves, but younger children often need adult help to learn most things, including card games. Mattel most likely determined that with adult guidance (at least initially to learn how to play the game), the perfect age for the game and this text would be age seven due to the average development of children in the US. Additionally, the readability calculators may have detected elements of the Official Style in it that are being used in a Plain Style, and don’t make the instructions more complex.
We can tell that this text is written in Plain Style because it breaks all the rules of the Official Style. This text uses small words and everyday language to make the instructions clear for anyone. The sentences are short and use active verbs. There isn’t any jargon, nominalizations, or technical words, and the words that correspond specifically to game play (like draw pile, discard, and uno) are written in all caps to distinguish them from explanatory words. The same terms are used throughout the instructions and aren’t substituted with synonyms, making the writing more specific and concrete. The only techniques of the Official Style that are used in these instructions are relative clauses and modal verbs, but they aren’t used to create the Official Style. These sentence structures are practically impossible to avoid in this text because many of the clauses are structured in an “if, then” or “when, then” format. The “if, then” and “when, then” clauses, as well as the modal verbs, clarify specific situations where there’s questions about whether an action is allowed. Usually, the relative clauses and modal verbs are coupled with strong actions verbs to create statements that grant permission. In the Official Style, modal verbs and relative clauses often create ambiguity and allow for other interpretations and possibilities, while in this text they are being used to allow specific actions to take place. Even though some of the stylistic choices for the text would be considered Official Style, in this case the text uses them and other aspects of Plain Style to create an easy-to-read set of instructions.
The organization of this text is also indicative of Plain Style. There are only a few paragraphs in a row, and most of the instructions are broken up into bulleted lists, terms and definitions, bolded words, numbering, index-style lists (for point calculations), and several layers of headings and subheadings. The information is broken up into small chunks that are easy to understand and convey one or two points, unlike an academic essay that might have paragraphs with several ideas jammed into it. The text is sequential and answers questions in the order that people would usually have them, with the most important info at the top (the object of the game, set up, and how to play) and the least important at the bottom (other variations of the game and how to make it more difficult). The organization is part of what makes this text so effective at addressing a large audience of varying ages and reading levels.
Usually, plain style texts are criticized for not conveying authority or multiple answers to complex questions. This text, because of the way it’s written, who it’s written by, who it’s written for, and how it’s intended to be used, doesn’t have these issues. These instructions are written by an authority figure (the game creators) about how to use their product. People use the rules as a reference during game play and consider them the official judge of whether or not an action in the game is legal, just like a dictionary in Scrabble. Because the authorities of the game wrote this text for the players to tell them how to play it, this text commands authority and dictates actions. The imperative voice (do this, do that) is more authoritative in this context than other types of sentences. The type of writing itself is credible and doesn’t need to use Official Style techniques to seem credible, such as the passive voice that emphasizes the action instead of the actors.
This text is also unique in that there aren’t questions posed by it that have multiple answers, like in an academic article. You can choose to follow the rules or break them, or follow some and break others, or change them altogether if you want, and the text allows for this with their mention of  “house rules” and other suggestions for modifying the game. However, the official answers to game-play questions like “What do I do in this scenario?” or “Can I do this or that?” have a binary, yes-no answer in this text. In an experiment, solutions to the questions it explores use passive voice to allow for other interpretations of the results because there are so many possible answers, but in a card game leaving ambiguity would just confuse players that want to play the game according to the rules. Plain style is the perfect way to write a text like this because it’s needed to answer questions clearly and directly.
Overall, the use of Plain Style techniques in this text effectively accomplishes the goals of providing clear instructions for game play to a wide audience without seeming untrustworthy or too simplified to be correct.

Elizabeth Puck

A Credible Use of The Official Style in Government and the Non-Profit Sector

     This analysis focuses on a press release located on the Goodwill site about a grant from the government that was awarded to the company. It was written by the U.S Department of Labor and published on their site as a news release. Through an analysis of the rhetorical situation, I will argue that the Official Style is necessary for this piece of writing to be effective for both Goodwill’s purposes and the Department of Labor’s purposes, and that the Official Style’s exclusion of certain readers is necessary in this rhetorical situation.
     This piece of writing on Goodwill’s site is meant for potential donors, most likely corporations or other large organizations. They included it in their website to show other potential donors that the company is credible because it’s backed by the federal government. Their audience of potential donors in this part of the website is not the average person that would donate clothes - they would be appealing to professionals interested in donating large sums of money or companies that would want to partner with them. The US DOL’s purpose in publishing this is to show the general public where and for what purpose their tax money was spent. Government officials that supported this expenditure or worked on securing it might use this news release as evidence that their work is better than their opponents when they run for re-election, and the use of the Official Style in this article helps demonstrate their responsibility. The article is available to everyone, but the people most likely to read it are corporate executives, non-profit executives, and other members of government. Professionals recognize the Official Style in writing as a signal of being in their group, giving the article social currency in the professional sphere. It also signals that the writer has received higher education - only 25% of the population could read this article according to the Flesch Reading Ease, and the Flesch Kincaid Grade Level and the Coleman Liau Index put this piece of writing at a second to third year university level. The authors used “the Official Style” in this piece because it’s intended for people that would be comfortable reading that type of writing, and it commands authority from the rest of the public that may choose to read it.
     This article consists of long sentences that have many clauses, semicolons that are appropriately used, stacked prepositional phrases, to-be verbs, a lack of grammatical errors, and an (in general) impersonal writing style. These strategies of the Official Style convey authority and knowledge from the writer to the reader, making them appear credible. For an article by a governmental department, this is not only normal but expected by anyone who might read it. If the article had been written in a more plain style to appeal to a wider audience, working professionals might not respect the Department of Labor as much because this information is not necessary for the general public (like an announcement for an election might be). The US DOL’s following of expected writing conventions reinforces the Official Style as a norm for companies and government, and increases credibility in general for Goodwill and the US DOL.
     It’s important for the authors to show their credibility in this article through the use of the Official Style because both organizations are playing off of each other’s credibility to increase their own - Goodwill is showing that they’re endorsed by the federal government, and the US DOL is proving that they make good choices with tax money by giving it to a nationally-known non-profit. Both companies want respect and to appear authoritative in this article because they are receiving money from the citizens’ taxes. When the average person reads something very complicated and official-looking, they ask less questions about it and are more likely to ignore it because it’s difficult to read. If they do read it and it superficially appears to give enough information to satisfy them, they’re less willing to criticize it or think critically on it.
     Using verbose and bureaucratic jargon relating to business makes the reader less interested in thinking critically about the issue. Some examples of business jargon are phrases in the article like:

• pre-employment training
• occupational skills training 
• intensive individual assessment
• labor organizations 
• workforce development institutions
• energy-efficient building construction and retrofit
• certification of five member Goodwill headquarter agencies
• energy efficiency assessment
• obtain and retain well-paying jobs

     Most of these phrases (such as “occupational skills training” and “intensive individual assessment” ) are rather vague ideas hidden behind business buzzwords. Using this language to describe the programs that the US DOL is supporting at Goodwill allows the specific details of the program to be obscured yet gives just enough information for a casual reader to see a general picture of what is being supported. Brevity is important for this style of writing because a press release is often confined to one page, but use of vague language is also a common marketing practice for companies. The less a company says specifically about their organization’s programs, the more people are likely to support the programs that company is using. There is an ethical problem with that type of writing, but often it’s not produced with harmful intent. In my opinion, Goodwill and the US DOL don’t want to have to answer too many questions about this grant because they both believe that Goodwill deserves it. The people that need to understand it (like the Goodwill executives or other government officials) will, and everyone else will ignore it because it seems like someone smart and credible wrote it. Writing in a plain style might open up a massive discussion with a large group of Americans that simply doesn’t need to happen. We elect officials to make decisions like this for us, and it would slow down the procedure if everyone could understand and debate it. By excluding people through the use of the Official Style, the authors of this article are preventing complications from this decision by people not involved in the decision-making process. 
     This article is one of the few examples where the Official Style is necessary to accomplish the article’s goals. The authors informed the right people about the right amount of information, and through word use and sentence construction excluded everyone else that didn’t need to know about it. It’s written appropriately for the audience it’s intended for, and accomplishes its goals utilizing the Official Style.

https://www.goodwill.org/press-releases/u-s-department-of-labor-awards-goodwill-7-3-million-for-green-jobs/

https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/eta/eta20190717

Elizabeth Puck

Cultivating Creativity for the Masses

               For many of us, college is a journey full of ups and downs. While many people look forward to graduation day, I can almost guarantee that not a lot of people think about who is going to give the commencement speech or what they are going to talk about. Now, you may be thinking that every commencement speech is basically the same so why does this guy matter? You’d be correct in that assumption; they are all pretty much the same. However, one speech that has stood apart from them all is “This Is Water.” David Foster Wallace gave this commencement speech on May 21^st, 2005 to the graduating class of Kenyon College. Since then, his sarcastic and brutally honest speech has been made into videos, documented in multiple online databases, and even printed as a small non-fiction novel. David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York in 1962 and he tragically took his own life at age 46 in September of 2008. An accomplished author, speaker, and friend, he published sixteen different literary works, both fiction and nonfiction. All of his works were published by one company–– Little, Brown and Company–– which is an American publisher founded in 1837. They are “committed to publishing fiction of the highest quality and nonfiction of lasting significance.” During his lifetime, David Foster Wallace was awarded a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and the MacArthur Fellowship. His legacy lives on through The David Foster Wallace Literary Trust; the foundation is currently donating the proceeds of sales from his collected works, The David Foster Wallace Reader. The proceeds will go to the Tucson Youth Poetry Slam – a nonprofit that advocates youth literacy, critical thinking, and youth voice through poetry competitions, workshops, and community showcases. 

            “This Is Water” is classified as a motivational and persuasive speech in which David Foster Wallace challenges his audience to choose to live a full and compassionate life from that moment forward. This twenty-two-minute speech became so popular that his published seized the opportunity to memorialize his work and createdThis Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. This nonfiction book is his speech, word for word, printed out over 137 pages. Pictured to the right is the cover of the book. Published only a year after his death, the book is available for purchase online or in stores at a range of four to eleven dollars. If you’re not interested in purchasing the book, here is a LINK to the audio and text version of the speech.

            Originally written for a group of college graduates and scholars who worked at Kenyon College, “This Is Water” became so much more than just another commencement speech. His words encompass passion, the value of a single choice, life’s clichés, and the motivation to succeed in whatever life path you choose. I was curious in my research so I decided to see how this speech ranked in comparison to others according to the toughest critic: The Google Search Engine. If you type “Motivational Speeches” into your computer, 22 of the Most Inspiring Speeches pops up and places Foster Wallace’s speech as number two. Among the ranks include: J.K. Rowling, Sylvester Stallone, Steve Jobs, Ellen DeGeneres, and many others. This goes to show “This Is Water” is comparably unique to other graduation ceremony speeches.

            People who are likely to engage with this text include but are not limited to: a person who is preparing to write a commencement speech, a person seeking motivation or how to

handle stress, future or current college graduates, or even someone who is researching David Foster Wallace. Situations and motivations for textual engagement range from research to pure enjoyment to stumbling upon the speech after a deep Internet dive.  In its original context, the speech was delivered by one person to the masses. An important aspect of the context was that during the speech, there were no special effects, technologies, or digital enhancements, only his brutally honest and slightly sarcastic message. This is significant because it shows that he was not concealing any bias or ulterior motives other than what he directly told his audience about. David Foster Wallace’s motivation behind writing and presenting the speech the manner in which he did can be drawn back to a line within the speech itself: “It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.” His motivation stems from the belief that it is the audience’s choice to lead a life worth living. The purpose behind his powerful words is to inspire the masses that they have that opportunity to navigate their future day-to-day adult life with compassion, fearlessness, and faith.

            Throughout his entire speech, David Foster Wallace uses a variety of plain and creative stylistic strategies and rhetorical devices in order to captivate his audience’s attention and open accessibility to a wide variety of people. Right away, he demolishes the speaker to audience barrier by telling his listeners that “[i]f anyone feels like perspiring, I’d invite you to go ahead because I’m sure going to.” For the next twenty-two-minutes, he maintains this same level of conversational and down-to-earth tone with his audience. By speaking to the graduates of Kenyon College directly and on a personal level, he establishes a connection that captivates their attention. He never lets his listeners’ thoughts wander because he is constantly saying things like “[a]s I’m sure you guys know by now…” and “[y]ou get the idea…” The speech begins with a short story about some fish in the water and directly after, his brutally honest agenda comes out as he states:

The story thing turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.

In this small part of an overall larger message, David Foster Wallace reveals three things to his audience. First, he tells the audience that he is aware of the typical format for commencement speeches but he generally doesn’t like the style. Because of this, he has decided to go about it in his own way. Second, he is “not the wise old fish.” Meaning, that just because he was asked to give a speech to liberal arts graduates doesn’t mean that he knows the meaning of life; he isn’t about to tell them everything they need to know or what they should do. That is for them to figure out. And finally, he clears up any ambiguity in the meaning of that short story. He makes it clear that he is not going to let his audience listen to his entire speech without telling them exactly what he is trying to say or what the point of the story is. All three strategies establish his credibility with the audience within the first couple of minutes. What surprised me the most about this speech was how informal and personal it was. The fact that he remained honest and open during the entire speech made me want to trust him and pay more attention.

           David Foster Wallace makes fun of and critiques the stereotypical style of commencement speeches in order to create an open-space with his audience and capture their attention. To the right is a table of readability statistics combined from two different calculators. As you can see, the average

grade level is just under eleven. For a group of college graduates, their comprehension could potentially fall between fourteen and eighteen. Through the use of hyperbole, irony, metaphors, parables, and simple diction he was able to create a piece that invited listeners of any race, age, gender, sexuality, or religion. Specifically, David Foster Wallace uses hyperbole in order to stress realistic issues, why those issues could be seen in a negative light, and then reveals how those same situations could be perceived positively as long as you make the conscious choice to do so. The point is that it is all relative to the way you choose to take in life.

            Written in a brutally honest filter, this speech advises the audience on how to navigate through their future day-to-day adult life. The stylistic elements and rhetorical strategies work together in order to open up reader accessibility and understanding. This is important because David Foster Wallace’s stylistic choices allow the masses to understand and benefit from his message: This Is Water. So why does any of this matter? You have the choice to decide what to stress over, what to celebrate, or what to forget. This is water and you always have the power.

- Lindsey M.