While reviewing some of my classmates blog posts about the first post of McCloud I found one that was missing a big point in McCloud's book. This blog was posted by David Slaga and the comic he chose to analyze can be found at http://www.comics.com/comics/hedge/archive/hedge-20081027.html.
The comic is shown in 3 panels and is drawn in black and white. It's very "cartoony" and appears to come to have come right out of a sketchpad. The element that David fails to mention is McCloud's idea of space and time. In all 3 panels there are 2 or more characters speaking within the same panel. McCloud talks about this in chapter 4 of Understanding Comics by showing a panel with several different characters speaking right after each other in a row. McCloud does not consider this a "single moment" in time, like everyone is speaking at once. Rather we are walking through the panel meeting each character one after the other. McCloud describes this by saying that "each figure is arranged from left to right in the sequence we will read them, each occupying a distinct time slot" (97).
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
McCloud part 1
The Eerie Chronicles by Toki www.foolstrip.com/index.php/id=16&serie=15&page=1 has many of the characteristics that Scott McCloud mentions in Understanding Comics. Understanding Comics is a comic book itself about the creation and interpretation of comics.
The Eerie Chronicles is drawn in black and white, and although I haven't read anything in McCloud yet about color, I assume that color choice has an impact on the reader. The first panel has no characters or dialouge in it. It is just used to "...set the mood or a sense of place..."(McCloud 103) This helps the reader get a feeling of hte comic and know what kind of emotions are present. Another panel in the comic shows one of the characters smoking a cigarette. It is drawn with wavy lines coming out of it. McCloud points out that "This is the artist's way of telling you there's smoke coming..."(128) or it is on fire.
The entire first page of the comic deals with the idea of closure. You only see the character's legs or feet. Maybe half of a face to a hand. You never get the whole picture. McCloud gives an excellent example of this in Understanding Comics by showing himself in several panels without his legs and saying "In this panel you can't even see my legs, yet ypu assume that they are there" (61). That is the same idea used in the comic I found. We assume that everyone has more to their body than just their legs or arm so our minds fill in the blanks to create a whole person.
There is also a panel in the comic that zooms in on one of the characters and his eye fills the entire panel. You see huge sweat bead running down his face. This is another element mentioned by McCloud. He describes tools like this as "indicators of emotion" and says that they are "visually based" (130). So the sweat bead allow us to see that the charater is nervous and the close up of hte eye reminds us of our eyes getting bigger due to anxiety or maybe fear. Either way these two elements added together give us a sense of the characters emotions.
The Eerie Chronicles is drawn in black and white, and although I haven't read anything in McCloud yet about color, I assume that color choice has an impact on the reader. The first panel has no characters or dialouge in it. It is just used to "...set the mood or a sense of place..."(McCloud 103) This helps the reader get a feeling of hte comic and know what kind of emotions are present. Another panel in the comic shows one of the characters smoking a cigarette. It is drawn with wavy lines coming out of it. McCloud points out that "This is the artist's way of telling you there's smoke coming..."(128) or it is on fire.
The entire first page of the comic deals with the idea of closure. You only see the character's legs or feet. Maybe half of a face to a hand. You never get the whole picture. McCloud gives an excellent example of this in Understanding Comics by showing himself in several panels without his legs and saying "In this panel you can't even see my legs, yet ypu assume that they are there" (61). That is the same idea used in the comic I found. We assume that everyone has more to their body than just their legs or arm so our minds fill in the blanks to create a whole person.
There is also a panel in the comic that zooms in on one of the characters and his eye fills the entire panel. You see huge sweat bead running down his face. This is another element mentioned by McCloud. He describes tools like this as "indicators of emotion" and says that they are "visually based" (130). So the sweat bead allow us to see that the charater is nervous and the close up of hte eye reminds us of our eyes getting bigger due to anxiety or maybe fear. Either way these two elements added together give us a sense of the characters emotions.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Picturing Text
Since I work for Bob Evan's I thought it would be great to see how the company advertises on the web. Many of the same promotions are found in the store and since I am there so much it is easy for me to look over it and not really "take in" the message. When I stopped and really looked at what was in front of me I found a lot of examples used in Picturing Texts to also appear in Bob Evan's advertising. website: bobevens.com
The first thing I noticed was the promotion for our "knife and fork sandwiches". The customer is asked to "Vote now" for their favorite one. The words are shown on a red, white and blue round pin that also contains stars. This design is similar to the use of pattern found in Picturing Texts. Bob Evan's uses the colors and design commonly used in elections to market their product. It is very clever because of the election going on right now. People see these colors and symbols everywhere so their eyes probably go right toward them. Plus asking customers to "vote" would mean they need to try them all, thus making them want to come back to see which one is their favorite. This pattern is easily recognizable by people and follows a pattern of color and the object the words are placed on.
The first thing I noticed was the promotion for our "knife and fork sandwiches". The customer is asked to "Vote now" for their favorite one. The words are shown on a red, white and blue round pin that also contains stars. This design is similar to the use of pattern found in Picturing Texts. Bob Evan's uses the colors and design commonly used in elections to market their product. It is very clever because of the election going on right now. People see these colors and symbols everywhere so their eyes probably go right toward them. Plus asking customers to "vote" would mean they need to try them all, thus making them want to come back to see which one is their favorite. This pattern is easily recognizable by people and follows a pattern of color and the object the words are placed on.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Peer Editing Wiki
I found that peer editing with wiki was more difficult when compared to google docs. My biggest complaint is how wiki saves the changes you made to the essays. When I was finished editing the first essay and went to save it, someone else was trying to save their changes also. (on the same essay) This caused overwriting of my changes, basically none of my changes were saved. It was a hassle to go back and reread (since there were changes I had to reread the essay) and re-edit. I also found it more difficult to type in comments in the essays. Since I wanted my commets to stick out I made them green, but the font color never stayed green. It would automatically change back to black once I clicked out of the text. It may not seem like such a big deal, but it took more time. My third complaint is that I only got two edits of my essay. I don't know if I can blaim that on wiki, but I think that we should have to edit certain student's essays so that everyone gets a handful of responses.
Although I do see the benefit in having both classes essay's available, I still prefer the google docs. I think a good word of advice to others using wiki for editing, or for myself the next time I do, is to look and see how many people have already edited the essay. That way if someone has a lot but others have non or barely any, you can edit that papers that need more attention.
Although I do see the benefit in having both classes essay's available, I still prefer the google docs. I think a good word of advice to others using wiki for editing, or for myself the next time I do, is to look and see how many people have already edited the essay. That way if someone has a lot but others have non or barely any, you can edit that papers that need more attention.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
what other people are saying
While looking over classmate’s blogs, I found one that I agreed with on many points. This was written by Chase. He said, “From what I recall in the reading, William's didn't hit the rules I discussed in my Strunk and White blog very much, mostly because it's a different type of book.” http://archasius.blogspot.com/ I faced this same problem while completing the “Comparing Strunk and White with Williams” blog post. This I believe is due to the different nature and audience of the books.
Chase also mentions that he found William’s more helpful because he likes to know why something is correct and not simply that it is. I completely agree. William’s helps understand why we do things and why things should be written a certain way. That way we can use the “rules” in everything we write and know how to actually apply them. For instance, both books mention the importance of the active voice. However, William’s goes further into the “agent-subject” importance by explaining that “…each agent-subject anchors the reader in something familiar at the beginning of the sentence…before the reader moves on to something new”. (38)He compares this to the passive by saying “…you find yourself shifting from one unrelated subject to another…”(38) This gives reason as to why an active voice is sometimes better. The audience is clear of the subject and the writer is consistent. The reader also knows where the action is taking place. As opposed to the passive where the subjects are changing and the reader doesn’t know how to follow. Strunk and White describe the use of the active voice with examples of an active and passive sentence and say that the passive “…is less direct, bold, and less concise.” (18) They offer advice to omit certain words from the passive sentence, but they still don’t explain why. William’s tells us why and how we should use the active voice. Not just to do it and what our sentence will sound like if we don’t.
The only disagreement I found among our ideas is that Chase thinks “It [Strunk and White] gave a good basic layout for each type of punctuation…” and “it would be a good book for reference while writing”I have to disagree because I think that so many “rules” in Strunk and White are out dated. They should really revise some of the language used and “rules”. There were problems with the apostrophe section, the listing section and many of the examples used are full of unfamiliar terms. Not to say that the entire book should be tossed out the window, but there are more useful grammar handbooks out there. I would be very upset if while writing a paper I looked up a rule only to get it wrong. This is another reason why I think William’s is more effective. I don’t believe that creating a clear, concise style that William’s promotes will ever be out dated. That is to say it will never go out of “style”.
Chase also mentions that he found William’s more helpful because he likes to know why something is correct and not simply that it is. I completely agree. William’s helps understand why we do things and why things should be written a certain way. That way we can use the “rules” in everything we write and know how to actually apply them. For instance, both books mention the importance of the active voice. However, William’s goes further into the “agent-subject” importance by explaining that “…each agent-subject anchors the reader in something familiar at the beginning of the sentence…before the reader moves on to something new”. (38)He compares this to the passive by saying “…you find yourself shifting from one unrelated subject to another…”(38) This gives reason as to why an active voice is sometimes better. The audience is clear of the subject and the writer is consistent. The reader also knows where the action is taking place. As opposed to the passive where the subjects are changing and the reader doesn’t know how to follow. Strunk and White describe the use of the active voice with examples of an active and passive sentence and say that the passive “…is less direct, bold, and less concise.” (18) They offer advice to omit certain words from the passive sentence, but they still don’t explain why. William’s tells us why and how we should use the active voice. Not just to do it and what our sentence will sound like if we don’t.
The only disagreement I found among our ideas is that Chase thinks “It [Strunk and White] gave a good basic layout for each type of punctuation…” and “it would be a good book for reference while writing”I have to disagree because I think that so many “rules” in Strunk and White are out dated. They should really revise some of the language used and “rules”. There were problems with the apostrophe section, the listing section and many of the examples used are full of unfamiliar terms. Not to say that the entire book should be tossed out the window, but there are more useful grammar handbooks out there. I would be very upset if while writing a paper I looked up a rule only to get it wrong. This is another reason why I think William’s is more effective. I don’t believe that creating a clear, concise style that William’s promotes will ever be out dated. That is to say it will never go out of “style”.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Strunk and White vs. Williams
In my recent blog about rules from Strunk and White I found the “who/whom” rule very useful. However after reading Williams I found his take on the rule more effective. Willams gives a better explanation by saying “The form of the pronoun depends on whether it is a subject or an object of its own clause” and “always use whom as the object of a verb or preposition”. Williams explains the use of the word, not just examples of what is correct or not correct in certain sentences. So now I know why I am choosing the word for what reason. Not simply because it sounds correct. That is what I got out of Strunk and White, to determine which word to use say it to yourself and whatever sounds better is the correct choice. Williams also offers the great bit of advice not to use either if you are unsure.
The second bit of guidance offered in Strunk and White that I found useful was to “write naturally”. Williams touches on this throughout the book but dosen’t give a specific example. Rather, he focuses on things like to how to construct meaningful sentences and relate them to each other in paragraphs. This is probably the only thing that stands out to me as “better” in Strunk and White when compared to Williams. I appreciate that Strunk and White say to go ahead and write in a way that comes to easy to you and they say not to “force” anything and if you do it won’t sound as good. It was useful to me to be assured that when writing for work it is still ok to have a personal style and not to simply sound like you are just rattling off facts. It’s almost as if Williams expects everyone to have embraced their “naturalness” and is now giving us tools to revise it.
The topics I chose from Strunk and White that I found to be outdated or against what I was previously taught are writing numerals in text and the use of commas in a list within text. These also aren’t mentioned in Williams. This is probably due to the nature of both manuals. While Strunk and White was written to the newbies of the writing world, Williams is geared toward someone who has more experience. Maybe Williams expects his readers to already know these rules and only highlights the rules found in Ch. 10 “Usage” because they are commonly misused by even the most professional writers. Within the ten chapters and 200 pages of Williams, he only uses one chapter of it to spell out rules about double negatives and subject-verb disagreement. But Strunk and White write and entire book about them.
I feel the overall difference between the two manuals is the audience. Williams sets some expectations in his audience that they already know the “elementary rules of usage” but Strunk and White don’t believe their readers know anything about grammar and writing. I think that both are effective in different ways and almost for different revision objectives.
The second bit of guidance offered in Strunk and White that I found useful was to “write naturally”. Williams touches on this throughout the book but dosen’t give a specific example. Rather, he focuses on things like to how to construct meaningful sentences and relate them to each other in paragraphs. This is probably the only thing that stands out to me as “better” in Strunk and White when compared to Williams. I appreciate that Strunk and White say to go ahead and write in a way that comes to easy to you and they say not to “force” anything and if you do it won’t sound as good. It was useful to me to be assured that when writing for work it is still ok to have a personal style and not to simply sound like you are just rattling off facts. It’s almost as if Williams expects everyone to have embraced their “naturalness” and is now giving us tools to revise it.
The topics I chose from Strunk and White that I found to be outdated or against what I was previously taught are writing numerals in text and the use of commas in a list within text. These also aren’t mentioned in Williams. This is probably due to the nature of both manuals. While Strunk and White was written to the newbies of the writing world, Williams is geared toward someone who has more experience. Maybe Williams expects his readers to already know these rules and only highlights the rules found in Ch. 10 “Usage” because they are commonly misused by even the most professional writers. Within the ten chapters and 200 pages of Williams, he only uses one chapter of it to spell out rules about double negatives and subject-verb disagreement. But Strunk and White write and entire book about them.
I feel the overall difference between the two manuals is the audience. Williams sets some expectations in his audience that they already know the “elementary rules of usage” but Strunk and White don’t believe their readers know anything about grammar and writing. I think that both are effective in different ways and almost for different revision objectives.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
revising with williams
I think sentence 1a. is "unclear" and as Williams would say, "make[s] us work harder than we think we ought to." (18)
1a. The catalog requirements in effect at the time of the student’s initial registration at a college
or University or the requirements of a subsequent catalog, including those in effect at the time of the student’s graduation, may be used to complete graduation requirements.
1b. When a student registers at a college or University they are to follow the current catalog requirements or what is in effect at time of graduation to satsify graduation requirements.
As Williams writes, sentence 2b. places the subject "chatacter" in the correct place as compard to sentence 2a.
2a.EMU’s perspective has also grown, not only in on-campus program development, but also in online courses offered through the Office of Extended Programs.
2b. The Office of Extended Programs expanded EMU's perspective thru on-campus program development and on-line courses.
Sentence 3b. is more precise and to the point while 3a. repeats information already stated within the paragraph.
3a. Extended Programs dissolves traditional campus boundaries through collaborative programs that extend the education, service and applied research of Eastern Michigan University to benefit local, national and international communities and organizations
3b. Extended Programs dissolve traditional campus boundaries and expands them to the local, national and international communitites.
1a. The catalog requirements in effect at the time of the student’s initial registration at a college
or University or the requirements of a subsequent catalog, including those in effect at the time of the student’s graduation, may be used to complete graduation requirements.
1b. When a student registers at a college or University they are to follow the current catalog requirements or what is in effect at time of graduation to satsify graduation requirements.
As Williams writes, sentence 2b. places the subject "chatacter" in the correct place as compard to sentence 2a.
2a.EMU’s perspective has also grown, not only in on-campus program development, but also in online courses offered through the Office of Extended Programs.
2b. The Office of Extended Programs expanded EMU's perspective thru on-campus program development and on-line courses.
Sentence 3b. is more precise and to the point while 3a. repeats information already stated within the paragraph.
3a. Extended Programs dissolves traditional campus boundaries through collaborative programs that extend the education, service and applied research of Eastern Michigan University to benefit local, national and international communities and organizations
3b. Extended Programs dissolve traditional campus boundaries and expands them to the local, national and international communitites.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)