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I tend to agree with you, but I'd like to understand better the mental process that leads him to penalize students for an approach that he concedes is logically

by nkurz 11y ago

I tend to agree with you, but I'd like to understand better the mental process that leads him to penalize students for an approach that he concedes is logically preferable. My guess is that he thinks he's doing them a service by showing them how their writing will be judged "in the real world". Perhaps someone who agrees with the author's approach can offer better insight?

ldmoray 11y ago
The author teaches courses on Journalism. Agree with the logical style all you want, professional journalism is written according to style guides, and those style guides more often than not dictate American Style punctuation. In this case, "the real world" includes the newspapers his students wish to end up employed at. In the case of a professor taking marks off for punctuation issues when writing essays on history or economics or engineering, I agree that's wasteful.
- jdietrich 11y ago
  The "real world" of journalism is now highly globalized and casualized. Young journalists should expect to work for a large number of publications as interns, freelancers or short-term staffers. In this climate, adaptability is a core skill. It is perfectly appropriate for an instructor to specify a style for an assignment and grade accordingly. Dogmatically teaching only one style is outmoded and actively harmful.
deleted 11y ago
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mturmon 11y ago
A pugnacious case for this position ("doing them a service by showing them how their writing will be judged") was made by DFW in his very long essay on English usage [http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0...]. See the bottom of page 53, or see just the basic excerpt at: https://www.reddit.com/r/SRSDiscussion/comments/xp3i4/race_and_language_in_authority_and_american_usage/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SRSDiscussion/comments/xp3i4/race_a... . DFW, who of course did teach writing, got significant pushback in the letters the next month. There's no winning this particular debate.

by nkurz 11y ago

ldmoray 11y ago

The author teaches courses on Journalism. Agree with the logical style all you want, professional journalism is written according to style guides, and those style guides more often than not dictate American Style punctuation. In this case, "the real world" includes the newspapers his students wish to end up employed at. In the case of a professor taking marks off for punctuation issues when writing essays on history or economics or engineering, I agree that's wasteful.

jdietrich 11y ago
The "real world" of journalism is now highly globalized and casualized. Young journalists should expect to work for a large number of publications as interns, freelancers or short-term staffers. In this climate, adaptability is a core skill. It is perfectly appropriate for an instructor to specify a style for an assignment and grade accordingly. Dogmatically teaching only one style is outmoded and actively harmful.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

mturmon 11y ago

A pugnacious case for this position ("doing them a service by showing them how their writing will be judged") was made by DFW in his very long essay on English usage [http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0...]. See the bottom of page 53, or see just the basic excerpt at: https://www.reddit.com/r/SRSDiscussion/comments/xp3i4/race_and_language_in_authority_and_american_usage/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SRSDiscussion/comments/xp3i4/race_a... . DFW, who of course did teach writing, got significant pushback in the letters the next month. There's no winning this particular debate.