November 24th Post (Chapter 8)

Chapter 8 covered several good elements of style in writing effective rhetorical papers. The first one covered was clarity, which I think is some of the biggest issues my writing has. My ideas are good, but sometimes I have a difficult time relating that back to the audience.
The second element covered in chapter 8 was coherence, which goes hand in hand with clarity. I like the way the book put it: "if there is any way for your readers to get lost- they will." So obviously, it's important for writing to make sense to the audience. The book mentions form and cohesion as means to create a coherent paper.
Conciseness is also pointed out as being important. In short, there shouldn't be unnecessary words in sentences or unnecessary sentences in paragraphs and so forth. This is also a major problem I can see in my own writing. I tend to use words that don't necessarily need to be there.
Voice is extremely important in determining whether or not the reader will continue on reading, according to the author of chapter 8. Voice is what makes the author unique from other authors. Obviously, better voices are better for different situations, but it can make or break a paper.
The rest of the elements dealt with delivery. The author first mentions punctuation and shows how the lack thereof can detract from the author's credibility. Afterwards, usage, more commonly referred to as word choice, is mentioned. One must be careful not to say anything stupid in his or her papers, which is where usage comes in.Finally, an appropriate layout is mentioned, which makes the paper more inviting for the paper to read.
As mentioned, I could be a little bit more clear in my writing. I consider that to be my biggest downfall. Conciseness is also an area I can improve on in my research paper. It is a goal of mine to improve on those two areas in my research paper. In order to do this, I will need to make sure to have my rough draft peer reviewed by several different people to make sure that it is clear. As far as being concise, the trick with a long paper like this will be doing a lot of research and having a lot of information. It is better to relay a lot of information than it is to drag a little information out for too long. Those are my two biggest goals for this research paper.