mccloud part1

For this assignment I chose the comic Piercing by David Gaddis.  The link is http://www.davidgaddis.com/piercing.html. This fits the definition of comics that Scott McCloud used in his book Understanding Comics.  To him comics are side-by-side sequential visual art.  This work by Gaddis exhibits that and that is what makes it a comic.  There are also other elements of the book that I see in the comic.  This first thing I noticed is the type of sequencing.  McCloud states that there are different ways in which a comic is sequenced. The first type I noticed the aspect to aspect one.  Here, as McCloud states, it "passes time for the most part and sets a wandering eye on different aspects.  You get this a lot in the first few panels of Gaddis' comic.  But Gaddis also includes other sequences too.  For instance he has action-to action which shows one action being taken place to the next action. Then there is subject-to-subject which is still staying in mind with the same scene or idea.   

I also want to talk about the time in between the panels.  Even though there is not a lot of moment-to-moment sequences  I was still able to read the comic in a continious manner.  I knew what was happening even though Gaddis didn't draw it.  McCloud talks about the theory of  this by saying that by the scenes showed we can determine what was not shown.  After reading McCloud I got a better understanding of comics and was able to guess more on what the author was trying to say.

pictures and texts on the web

For this assignment I used the barnes and noble homepage. Here there are a lot of examples apply to the text. First of all there is a balance to the webpage. In the middle there is all the text and pictures. On either side you will find an even amount of green space. What is on one side is on the other. There is also balance in the text. In the middle there are 4 topics that are posted in rows of two. Each column has two topics and the subtext is also equal. There is also emphasis on this website. This goes with the balance of the green panels. These plain sides give way to focus on the important text the website wants you to focus on. Plus, things like new books or sales are given more space and large lettering. This makes your eyes focus on the spot they want you to see. Also like mentioned above their are columns are broken into topics. This is a means of classification. They are classify the types of books available on the side of the website. Description is also given. On the page there are a few pictures of books covers. But that is not enough to sell the reader on the book. On the side it gives the name, author, price and the option to read more about the plot of the story.

peer review part 2

I think that this peer review was better than the first one. This time around I felt I gave sound advice, even when it was dealing with something bad. Also I believe the advice I got was better and will will really help with my revision. This is not to say the first peer review was bad because I believe it allowed the class to break the ice on editing. I know I got the hang of it the second time around.

I liked and disliked wetpaint. One the one side it was good because mostly no body knew it was you editing. Call me a wimp, but I think it is harder to be unbiased when the person you are editing knows you who you are. On the flip side, because we were not assigned editors, some people, me included, looked like they did not get as much advice as others. Some people got 4 or more edits while the last time I checked I only had one person edit my paper.

what others are saying

For the most part I believe the class is having the same thoughts that go along with mine. Chase mentions in his blog that I thought about too. Williams book was focused on why things should be done that way when Strunk just told you what to do. I also agree with Chase's blog when he talks about how Strunk dealt with grammar more than Williams did. But I have to disagree with him on the fact that Williams was easier to read and understand. For me, personally, sometimes I had to reread what Williams wrote to make sense of it and I could not read it for very long with out skimming or losing focus. Not that Strunk and White was a page-turner, either. I just could force myself to pay attention more to Strunk because his ideas were short and to the point which is what I like to see when I'm reading about style. On the other hand I liked that Williams did explain his reasoning. If he hadn't I would have been even more lost reading his book. Like Chase, I, sometimes, too need to hear the why in order to do it properly.
This leads me to Rachelle's blog. I felt she made some interesting points that I did not make in my blogs. Like her I found Strunk's rule to omit needless words to be good. But like Rachelle, I too didn't really get how to do that until I read Williams and he explained how it could be done in depth. At times like that I like Williams more that Strunk and White. But then again Williams and Strunk focused on two very different things. Strunk did not reaaly go beyond discussing grammar like Williams did. While I liked and learned more from Williams I did not like when he got into other elements of style. Then it got more boring than Strunk and White.
But other than a few differences I felt that most bloggers were writing the same opinions that I had about the two books.

comparing

I believe that Williams took a different approach than Strunk and White but still managed to touch some similiar subjects. But their ideas were usually conflicted. The one thing I really liked about Williams' was his way of breaking writing myths. The bad thing is that some of the myths he discounted were ones Strunk had written. Like I mentioned in another blog Strunk and White talked about omitting long sentences with lots of words. But Williams mentioned how long sentences were good as long you were clear about the subject and verb. So now I am at square one in dealing with long snetences. Should I use them if I can or lose them like Strunk suggests?
Besides touching similiar subjects, these two books were very different from one another. While Strunk and White just stated the rules and gave examples more or less, Williams' took the time to explain each rule in depth. This was useful because it gave me understanding on why I should do it that way instead of memorizing it and just doing the rule. On the other hand, I felt that Stunk's rules were more relevant. I felt I took more from his book on writing than I did Williams'. I may not understand why I had to do those rules but I got clear cut ways of writing.
While I may not know which one is better when learning the proper grammars of writing, I do believe it is important to look at both because it gave me a better understanding on how to write.

revising with williams

original sentence:
Eastern Michigan University is a comprehensive University whose roots date back to 1849, when the Michigan Legislature designated it as Michigan’s first institution to educate teachers to serve the public schools. At that time the Detroit school system was only 10 years old and the transition from one-room school houses had just begun.

New Sentence:
Mighigan Legislature started Eastern Michigan University in 1849 as an institution to educate teachers to serve public schools. At that time the 10 year old Detriot school sysetem had just begun the transition from one-room school houses.

I changed these sentences because they were too long. Not that this is a bad thing. But as Mr. Williams states in his book, this is a problem when subjects and verbs become unclear. This happen in the first sentence. The two subjects presented were the Mighigan Legislature and Eastern Michigan University. By applying the rule I was able to make it clear what the point of the sentence was more clearly. In the second sentece there were nominalizations. All the extra words that had no meaning were thrown out. This was done by taking the "and" out for starters because it was not needed. Just managing the words better allowed for a more clear sentence.