Official style… But Why?: An analysis of the consequences of official style in a legal journal

Jana Norman’s scholarly article published in the Alternative Law Journal showcases characteristics of official style throughout the entire piece. Through sentence structure and word choice, the author adheres to the strategic components of the style, which changes the way the message is perceived. It is common to see texts that are in the legal field use official style, and Norman’s is no exception. The purpose of her piece seems to aim at delivering information, so then the question is why did she make it so difficult to understand? And does this affect who chooses and/or is able to read it? By analyzing the specific techniques she used, as well as the context in which it was written, I intend  to uncover some of the answers to these questions.  

Right from the start, the title, Introducing the Cosmic Person: An ecocentric legal subject, prepares the audience for a more challenging read. Many people, including me, would not know what a “cosmic person” is without some background research. I assume that this could turn people away from reading it, if they struggle to understand even the title. It is also incredibly specific, unless interested in the law and also familiar with the ethical view ecocentric, there would be no reason to necessarily read the article based on the title. This leads me to believe that although informational, her purpose was not to inform a wide range of people, but just those who are already interested in the topic and are itching to learn more. Also, by just glancing over the article before even starting to read, the layout and format of the piece displays characteristics of official style. It is dense with words, and follows a very professional, clean cut look, which is the standards set by the publisher, Sage Journal.

By doing background research, I found that Norman has a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology and her Masters of Divinity from Yale University. When she wrote the article she was in the midst of getting her PhD in the philosophy of law, focusing on concepts of the legal subject. This wide range of subjects, as well as her numerous degrees shows that Norman has been in the educational setting for quite some time. Academia is another very common place where official style is utilized, which could just mean her style is a force of habit or what she is used to reading and writing. I also found that this is her first published article, which could be one of the reasons why her piece follows such strict official style. As a newcomer into the published relm, she could have wanted to ensure she maintained her credibility and also wanted to showcase her extensive knowledge on the subjects. Lastly, by looking at the author herself, I found that she started a public engagement project related to this article called the Community of the Cosmic Person. Looking at its website I noticed that it uses much less characteristics of official style and seems to be more directed at the public.

Excerpt and image taken from the website https://www.cosmicperson.com/context

While I do not know if Norman wrote the information on the website herself, this does prove that she believes that the “cosmic person” notion is important for everybody and not just those in the legal field to be aware of and understand. 

Diving into the actual body of the article, the word choice and complex sentences make it difficult to understand. Based on the Flesch reading level calculator, the article is a 15.82, or is meant for a reader at the 21.74 grade level. This places it way above the common readers’ ability. Norman combines ideas through coordination techniques such as using “but” as well as punctuation such as colons and semicolons. In addition to that, the use of legal terminology, while makes her work appear more credible and aligns with the unwritten standards that are set in the legal profession, makes the common reader struggle through each sentence. This leads to the article being inclusive to only individuals who can understand this vocabulary, which is very limited. 

“The notion of expansion implies something already in existence that can be expanded, in this case the most prevalent concept-in-use of the legal subject: the rational, autonomous individual. There are other concepts of the legal subject in play within the Western legal milieu, but as expert profiler of such concepts Ngaire Naffine notes, orthodoxy favours the concept of the rational adult ‘imagined as self created, pre social individuals’ ” (127). 

The author also uses passive voice, which shifts the main focus of the actor. For an example, in the following paragraph, the actor is not known until the end of the sentence, and it places importance on the rights of nature which is what is being acted upon.

 “Efforts to recognise the rights of nature and expand the community of legal subjects to include nonhuman beings have not been the exclusive purview of Earth Jurisprudence, of course. Legal inclusion of or accounting for non-human entities and life-worlds has long been a feature of environmental law and ethics” (127).

Lastly, I also noticed that the author could have been much more concise with how she phrased her sentences and explained the concepts. I believe that this also correlates with being for the legal field, because it is necessary to provide full explanation so that ambauties or loopholes in the argument do not arise.  While this reason, and the reasons such as credibility that I discussed previously, are valid explanations for using official style, I still question if they outweigh the cons. Her article provides an in depth explanation of the ethnocentric philosophy, that I have reason to believe she deems important enough for everybody to be aware of. By using official style she is working against her goal of spreading the message, by enabling a select few to be able to understand it. I am left with the results and impacts of her choice, but still questioning her intentions. If she published another piece, it would be interesting to compare and see if she made any adjustments in the language she used based on the reaction from her first article. 

Kaitilyn Bestor

Who Watches the Creative Styles?

            One of my favorite monologues of all time is the one spoken by the character Dr. Manhattan on Mars with Silk Spectre in 2009’s Watchmen, which was based off the Alan Moore graphic novel with the same name. It shows a return to humanity to a very inhuman character. It is not only shown visually as this was a graphic novel before it was turned into the more popular film, but the return can also be found in the strategies used in the monologue. It isn’t obvious but through the right analysis, it can easily be seen.

The story takes place in an alternative timeline in 20^th century with the presence of non-powered superheroes (with Dr. Manhattan being the only exception), America winning the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon serving as his third term as president in the 1980s, which is when the main story is taking place. The story is famous for its portrayal of the ongoing ideological debate between deontology versus consequentialism through nihilistic and existentialist lenses. A story as complex as this is not often portrayed through the genre of superhero comics which is what gave this story such a large audience. It should also be noted that the 1980s, when the graphic novel was published, was an interesting time for these schools of thought as many feared that the world was going to end by nuclear war.

The topic of the monologue was miracles. The way I would describe it is that it’s a unique take on personification. To understand the scene we must look at the entirety of the movie. Even before the movie begins, Dr. Manhattan is losing his connection to humanity. The superpowers he gained after his lab accident gave him the ability to be omniscient to his own perspective in time and be able to go anywhere at any time in the universe. He doesn’t even perceive time normally. He is mentally in every moment in time. On top of that, he is also immortal unlike how the TV show, Watchmen displayed. Other characters will often refer to him as a god. His character in the story is the embodiment of nihilism. Dr. Manhattan even said “Life is an overrated phenomena”.

With the world nearing Armageddon, Silk Spectre tries to convince him that humanity is worth saving. Dr. Manhattan, to restress his lack of humanity, compares the landscape as Mars as being perfect without humans present. The conversation leads to both Dr. Manhattan and Silk Spectre discovering that she is the biological daughter of the Comedian who is a much despised person. Silk Spectre breaks down and declares her life is a joke. Dr. Manhattan reacts to that revelation in completely different way.

Dr. Manhattan asks if she will stop crying if he admits to being wrong about the idea of miracles. He begins “Miracles. Events with astronomical odds of occurring. Like oxygen turning into gold. I’ve longed to witness such an event and yet I neglect that in human coupling. Millions upon millions of cells compete to create life for generation after generation until your mother loves a man. Edward Blake, the Comedian, a man she has every reason to hate. And out of that contradiction against unfathomable odds. It’s you, only you that emerge. To distill so specific a form from all that chaos is like turning air into gold. A miracle. And so I was wrong. Now dry your eyes, and let’s go home.”

When reading the passage, you noticed that he speaking in cumulative sentences as he did with the sentences that started with “Edward Blake”. This is something he never does in the rest of the story. It should be noted that within the comic book genre, proper sentences are rarely used in dialogue as its expressed in text bubbles so however you read it in your head may determine where sentences begin and end, I am using how it is expressed in the Zack Snyder film. This shows that the cold blue character who sees no difference in life or death finally appreciating life as something miraculous.

That scene was powerful in so many other ways. His parallelism between them allowed him to be more open or human to her which is what she really needed. One could argue that he was being hyperbolic and that would relate to an earlier scene where a Night Owl tells Silk Spectre “If he pretends that that means he cares.” Night Owl is an existentialist, so that could mean that in Dr. Manhattan’s nihilism, he was able to create meaning through Silk Spectre. 

In his own lenses, he personified human coupling to events he still never witnessed in his life. He expressed his love for her through his normal language which lacks humanity and without even saying the word.  He used the idea of “oxygen turning into gold” as an analogy. You can also see some humanity return because instead saying oxygen like a doctor would, he says “air” when paraphrasing. Let’s not forget, the definition of personification is the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form. He uses personal attribution but then again, it’s really hard to single out another fictional character like Dr. Manhattan.

Just from looking at what happens without looking into the text, Dr. Manhattan attempts to care about humanity once more. What he says to Silk Spectre also reveals that he cares about humanity again as well. As I have shown, if you look at the strategies used in that monologue, you can see that the writer for the film was trying to show that Dr. Manhattan’s humanity has returned.
Abdulla (Mustafa) A. Gaafarelkhalifa

Children! News! Plain Styles! Hut! Hut! Hike!

Sports are a nearly universally beloved leisure activity in the United States whether you play it or watch it. Sports entertainment is indiscriminate in popularity among people of any gender, race, and in in this case, age. That is why sports events are usually G-rated, in a sense. Not just the events but the news, television programs, and the commercials in sports channels are very child friendly. When it comes to writing, the writer shouldn’t just worry about whether they use inappropriate language or not, but they should worry about if their intended readers can comprehend what they’re trying to say to begin with. They aren’t just writing for patrons who are regulars at sports bars, but even children who are most likely unable to comprehend most large words.

This article from NPR (National Public Radio) titled “No March Madness: NCAA Cancels Men's And Women's Basketball Tournaments” is a good example. The content within the article is very self-explanatory just from the title. It starts out by stating the obvious, “The NCAA has announced that it is canceling its Division I men's and women's college basketball tournaments. This year, there will be no March Madness.” That was the kicker. The first section of every paragraph in the article starts off with the most important information first and secondary facts afterwards.

The article then goes on to explain that this announcement came after multiple colleges have decided to not have their teams participate in the games. All due to fears of the further spread of COVID-19. Like most AP style articles, this short article relied on a lot of quotes from individuals who are subject to the situation.

As I stated previously, news like this doesn’t just affect athletes, but also the fans who watch it from home in front of their TVs, many of whom are children. The average reading level of this article was at a seventh grade level. If you look at any other article that has to do with closings or cancellations due to the Coronavirus, such as “Performing Arts And Cultural Organizations Close Their Doors Due To Coronavirus,” you will see an eighth grade reading level. The Wamsley article was also well catered to a younger audience because it doesn’t have any additional information about COVID-19 that are less suitable for children. Information that is common on this topic include the number of people who are infected, how infectious it is, or how many people died from the coronavirus that could alarm people.

Despite the limited information from the article, the medium is made to for a wider audience, meaning it can be consumed by children. According to Media Bias/Fact Check, NPR is put left center in their in their political spectrum because the stories that uses loaded words to favor liberal causes but are very factual in their reporting. For the sake of perspective, a news organization like Fox News is put closer to extreme right for using loaded language as well but are also show more mixed results in their factual reporting.

            Overall this piece, compared to other genres, is easier to read. There are a lot of issues that come about making something easier to read. One issue, especially with news articles is that the author may not be credible. The credibility of the author isn’t obviously stated in the article but since this is an online article, all you have to do is click or tap the name of the author and you’ll find a page that leads you to a mini-biography about the author and all the previous articles they’ve published.  The article isn’t controversial in any way. All the author did was state what happened and gave context to the reason why. Personally, this isn’t the type of news I would pay attention to so I did find it boring, but then again, I am not a sport fan. Many people are though and that’s why this article was written in the first place.

            This article, written in AP style, and fits in plain style. It’s very accessible since it was written at the seventh grade level. The topic, other than COVID-19, is sports which is very popular and will impact a lot more people, especially with regard to age. The platform also serves to reach a larger audience due to its tractability and overall trust. It prioritizes important information for the reader to read as should any article written in AP style thus making it plain style.

-Abdulla (Mustafa) A. Gaafarelkhalifa 

Article Links
www.npr.org/2020/03/12/814992409/in-the-age-of-covid-19-event-cancellations-precipitate-a-large-economic-impact.
www.npr.org/2020/03/12/815115557/no-march-madness-ncaa-cancels-mens-and-women-s-basketball-tournaments.

The Official Style on Research Paper Abstracts

The official style can be seen in many mediums, including abstracts for academic papers. Those are often the first thing one reads when reading a research paper. I came upon this abstract when working on the literature review for my capstone paper. The title of the academic paper is “Valuing subjectivity in journalism: Bias, emotions, and self-interest as tools in arts reporting.” The article was written by Phillippa Chong who is part of the Sociology Department of McMaster University in Canada. What the article was trying answer was how effective the use of bias, emotions, and self-interest are in journalistic publishing when captivating their audience. This was written during a time of strong political division so the questions they tried to answer is still relevant today.

            When preforming a readability test on the entire abstract, the following results came. The Gunning Fog is 23.9, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level showed 19.5, and the SMOG expressed 17.6. All these results showed that this abstract is of the official style. This certainly makes sense since this is an academic paper from a university.  This abstract also carries other parts of official style. Examples such the use of Subordination and a noun substitute in the second sentence. In the fourth and longest sentence, you will find an appositive phrase and relative clause. All of which is proof that this abstract was written for an older, or more educated audience.

            Even for academia, this abstract, as all others, should have a lower reading level than what is in the actual paper, and it does. If you look into the actual paper, you will notice a slightly higher reading level worth of text. For example in the ‘Data and Methods’ section, the readability scores start to get a little higher than the abstract. The first paragraph in that section shows the Gunning Fog is 21.94, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level showed 19.97, and the SMOG expressed 18.8. A minor increase with the exception of the Gunning Fog but done on purpose. Last but not least, the abstract is relatively short, and it doesn’t even take up a whole page.

For the 2018 STD Prevention Conference Scientific Program Committee, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made a set of guidelines for abstract submissions. The CDC is a trustable source on this issue since they go through research very often and extensively for public health. To them, an abstract should cover the major parts of a project, study, or analysis and concise by not containing excess wordiness or unnecessary information. They should also be clear, as in readable, well organized, and not too jargon-laden. Lastly, cohesive by flowing smoothly between the parts. All with a limit of 300 words.

In a PowerPoint slide that explains why these regulations are important, in one bullet they explain “Helps the conference organizer decide if your project/study/analysis fits the conference criteria.” The other bullet in the slid states “Helps the conference audience decide whether to attend your presentation”. So the abstract was easier to read on purpose for the sake of attracting more people, even by the readability scores. After all, the lower the reading level of a text, the more people can actually read it. The readability scores for the abstract were certainly higher than normal but understandable given that the discourse community of the reviewers are nearly all college educated.

-Abdulla (Mustafa) A.  Gaafarelkhalifa

           

King and Creativity

This is an excerpt from Stephen King’s The Stand. It is a fictional book, so it uses a lot of creative style strategies. It was published in 1978 and the uncut version was reprinted in 1990. It took him around two years to write, and was about 823 pages. Critics and audiences both consider it to be one of King’s best books and it has inspired a comic series, three songs and two television miniseries so far. It has won awards and made several best book lists.

The Stand is about a flu that manages to wipe out 99% of the population in about a month. The survivors then try to band together and form a new society. They also have to deal with the threat of another, more evil society.  This particular excerpt is in the beginning and is describing one of the main characters, Stu Redman. This is the first time the reader meets Stu Redman and King uses creative styles to share the most important aspects of his backstory. He uses creative style strategies to keep the readers engaged. He could have used plain style to just give the readers the information they need, but he uses creative style. This style means that the excerpt is more interesting to read:

Stuart Redman, who was perhaps the quietest man in Arnette, was sitting in one of the cracked plastic Woolco chairs, a can of Pabst in his hand, looking out the big service station window at Number 93. Stu knew about poor. He had grown up that way right here in town, the son of a dentist who had died when Stu was seven, leaving his wife and two other children besides Stu.  

His mother had gotten work at the Red Ball Truck Stop just outside of Arnette—Stu could have seen it from where he sat right now if it hadn't burned down in 1979. It had been enough to keep the four of them eating, but that was all. At the age of nine, Stu had gone to work, first for Rog Tucker, who owned the Red Ball, helping to unload trucks after school for thirty-five cents an hour, and then at the stockyards in the neighboring town of Braintree, lying about his age to get twenty back breaking hours of labor a week at the minimum wage.  

Now, listening to Hap and Vic Palfrey argue on about money and the mysterious way it had of drying up, he thought about the way his hands had bled at first from pulling the endless handtrucks of hides and guts. He had tried to keep that from his mother, but she had seen, less than a week after he started. She wept over them a little, and she hadn't been a woman who wept easily. But she hadn't asked him to quit the job. She knew what the situation was. She was a realist.  

Some of the silence in him came from the fact that he had never had friends, or the time for them. There was school, and there was work. His youngest brother, Dev, had died of pneumonia the year he began at the yards, and Stu had never quite gotten over that. Guilt, he supposed. He had loved Dev the best . . . but his passing had also meant there was one less mouth to feed. 

In high school he had found football, and that was something his mother had encouraged even though it cut into his work hours. "You play," she said. "If you got a ticket out of here, it's football, Stuart. You play. Remember Eddie Warfield." Eddie Warfield was a local hero. He had come from a family even poorer than Stu's own, had covered himself with glory as quarterback of the regional high school team, had gone onto Texas A&M with an athletic scholarship, and had played for ten years with the Green Bay Packers, mostly as a second-string quarterback but on several memorable occasions as the starter. Eddie now owned a string of fast-food restaurants across the West and Southwest, and in Arnette he was an enduring figure of myth. In Arnette, when you said "success," you meant Eddie Warfield.

Link:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/92992/the-stand-by-stephen-king/9780307947307/excerpt

This excerpt is full of rhetorical devices and creative writing strategies, including a variety of sentence lengths and structures. There are many exemplums that King uses to enrich this backstory. King’s examples give readers a better picture of what he is talking about. There is also some understatement in here, especially since it is being told from Stu’s point of view. He is not dwelling on events that could be considered traumatic. He also uses ellipsis to indicate hesitation in Stu’s internal dialogue and he uses actual dialogues. He also has a couple appositives, most notably the one in the very first sentence. This inserts information in an efficient, yet interesting way. 

This entire excerpt is an example of amplification. King took the idea of Stu being poor and kept adding more detail to amplify this idea. King uses amplification to discuss one of the most important parts of Stu’s backstory. He even does this within Stu’s backstory; he amplifies Eddie Warfield’s character and the jobs Stu had when he was younger. King restates the original idea, in slightly different words, then adds more detail to build on these ideas. Amplification like this is common in King’s books, and this excerpt is an example of it.

Using creative styles is a way to keep readers engaged. Nothing is really happening in this part because it’s just background information on Stu, but King needs to make it interesting in order to keep his readers interested. If the readers aren’t interested, they won’t read the book. People could write a story in plain style too and get the message across, but authors choose to write in creative styles, to keep readers engaged. Using rhetorical devices can paint a better picture and describe things in unique ways, and that will interest readers more than just stating something in plain language. This is why authors use creative style strategies instead of plain or official style strategies. 

King, in particular, uses amplification in an extreme way to highlight what he thinks is most important. He also uses devices such as exemplums, dialogues and ellipsis all within this one excerpt. A lot of fiction authors use rhetorical devices to develop their own voice within their writing, and King is doing the same thing. These rhetorical devices aren’t unique to certain authors, but the way they use them can make their writing different and distinct. 

This story would look a lot different if it was written in plain or official style. Would fiction still be a popular genre if it didn’t use creative style? How would the genre look if it was all written in plain style? Are these rhetorical devices used in King’s other stories?

Rhetorical devices and variety of structure and language can contribute to creative style. These things make texts more interesting for readers to read, which is likely why authors use creative styles. It also helps them develop a unique voice and it paints a clearer picture and keeps readers engaged.

Kira Nerat

Plain Style for the Public

Some pieces need to be written in plain style  in order to cater to their audience and provide them with important information. The average adult reads at a seventh grade reading level, so plain language is becoming more and more important. Especially in cases like this, where this blog post is conveying important information.

This blog post is from a horse camp in Mazomanie, Hoofbeat Ridge. Hoofbeat Ridge runs a blog that updates campers and their parents on what is happening in the camp. Most of the blog posts are updates on how camps are going and they are all written in plain style. This particular post is a little different though, because it is updating people on important information that they would need to know if they were planning on attending camp around this time. This post is updating people on how the major flooding in Mazomanie is affecting camp and upcoming events:

http://hoofbeatridgedaycamp.blogspot.com/2018/08/end-of-august-camp-update.html

This post uses a lot of plain style strategies in order to make it easy to read. The organization in particular makes this post easy to read. Every paragraph is about a new topic and they each keep them short and to the point. Every time the topic changes, the paragraph changes to make it easy to read and navigate. It includes links and pictures that make it a little bit easier to understand and read. 

The sentences are short and to the point. There aren’t any difficult words or jargon, so it is easy enough for anybody to understand. Anything that may need further explanation, such as the Able Trek Tours, has a quick explanation in parenthesis. It is also clear “who is kicking who” in all of these sentences. This post only gives the necessary information and provides it in a concise, straightforward way. 

The Flesch Reading Ease is at 70.62, which means it is pretty easy to read and comprehend. The grade levels vary from 7th-9th, depending on the test, which is almost ideal for the average adult. The average sentence only has 16 words, so they are shorter than sentences written in official style. These readability results show that this is more plain style than official style and it is easier to read. 

The audience for this blog mainly consists of the parents of campers. Other possible readers include campers, camp counselors and people who are thinking about sending their kids to camp here. The education level and background of the audience varies, so using plain style is the best strategy in this case. This post is also giving important information on the state of the camp and upcoming events and how it was all affected by the major flooding. 

The best way to convey important information to the public is by using plain style. It leaves less room for misinterpretation. This post gets right to the point and tells the audience what they need to know and what is going on. If they had used official style, it would be harder to find the point. A lot of important information from press releases are written in official style and it is hard to know what is going on in some of these, especially with the average reading level for an adult is 7th grade. 

This is only one example of plain style, and it might not be representative of all versions of plain style. It is also a fairly short blog post, so it doesn’t have as many opportunities to use plain style. More information might also help with this analysis, but we aren’t sure who wrote it or how much thought went into the style of this post. There is no way to tell whether or not this was a conscious decision, but all of the blog posts are written in plain style. 

Plain style is the best way to get information across to the general public and it is the way Hoofbeat Ridge Camps have chosen to convey this information. They use a lot of plain style strategies to make this post readable. It contains a lot of important information, or at least information that would be important to their audience and they present it in a very plain way. There aren’t any difficult words or complex sentences and the entire post is organized in an efficient way. 

Kira Nerat

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