Defining Good Use :: Teaching Writing Education Essays

Defining Good Use In my opinion good use can depend on what you are writing, who you are writing for, and your purpose for writing. Good use can change from writing to your friend in North Carolina to writing a business memo for your boss to writing a paper for an English class. The good use of language can differ from one situation to another. Many of the writers we discussed in class had many different ideas on what good use is. Emerson wanted us to believe that "truth and sincerity unsullied by ulterior motives" constituted good use. The only problem in that is even though you may be telling the truth, does it actually make it "good"? As in the exercise we did for class that showed how using different words we could make the same place sound attractive and then not so attractive. In both cases, we were telling the truth, but can we consider one description "better" than the other. The truth of one person may not be the same as the truth for another person depending on their perspective. Robert Hall stated good use as "the most efficient way of saying whatever's being said." But is efficiency really good use? You may accomplish being efficient, but are you really saying exactly what you want to say. Maybe by being efficient you are leaving out important thoughts or feelings that could be used to relate what you are saying and cause your receiver to understand exactly what you are saying. Being efficient is not always being effective. Wouldn't you rather have the reader understand more fully what you are saying rather than being vague just to be efficient? Orwell considers good use as "letting the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about." To me, that seems somewhat more to what good use is. Your meaning in a letter to a friend and your meaning in a business memo to your employer may be different, and thus you need to choose words that fit your meaning. The words you write on a piece of paper should not dictate what you want to say but express your meaning in the words you write. I agree with the statement that "language is perceptive." Writing the same thing to two different people can cause different images for each person depending on the reader's perspective. A more descriptive paragraph may make a clearer picture for someone who is educated in that field and may cause a foggier picture for someone who knows nothing about the topic. Defining Good Use :: Teaching Writing Education Essays Defining Good Use In my opinion good use can depend on what you are writing, who you are writing for, and your purpose for writing. Good use can change from writing to your friend in North Carolina to writing a business memo for your boss to writing a paper for an English class. The good use of language can differ from one situation to another. Many of the writers we discussed in class had many different ideas on what good use is. Emerson wanted us to believe that "truth and sincerity unsullied by ulterior motives" constituted good use. The only problem in that is even though you may be telling the truth, does it actually make it "good"? As in the exercise we did for class that showed how using different words we could make the same place sound attractive and then not so attractive. In both cases, we were telling the truth, but can we consider one description "better" than the other. The truth of one person may not be the same as the truth for another person depending on their perspective. Robert Hall stated good use as "the most efficient way of saying whatever's being said." But is efficiency really good use? You may accomplish being efficient, but are you really saying exactly what you want to say. Maybe by being efficient you are leaving out important thoughts or feelings that could be used to relate what you are saying and cause your receiver to understand exactly what you are saying. Being efficient is not always being effective. Wouldn't you rather have the reader understand more fully what you are saying rather than being vague just to be efficient? Orwell considers good use as "letting the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about." To me, that seems somewhat more to what good use is. Your meaning in a letter to a friend and your meaning in a business memo to your employer may be different, and thus you need to choose words that fit your meaning. The words you write on a piece of paper should not dictate what you want to say but express your meaning in the words you write. I agree with the statement that "language is perceptive." Writing the same thing to two different people can cause different images for each person depending on the reader's perspective. A more descriptive paragraph may make a clearer picture for someone who is educated in that field and may cause a foggier picture for someone who knows nothing about the topic.