"Good" and "Bad" Writing

Bad Wrting

1. The first example given for "bad" writing is actually not bad at all in my mind. It is terrible! Reading the first sentence put me off this pointless paragraph and within the first line, the word individual was repeated three times! This piece of writing has "no direction" and the point, "It has been shown that there is an individual,"states an obvious fact. Also, there are far too many truistic questions, many regarding the media's influence on us. Especially with this piece of writing, I agree with Matthew Stibble that most bad writing needs to go on a diet. For example the sentence, "It has been said that relativist’s are believed to think that relativism is true," is a completely unnecessary statement. Of course a relativist is going to believe relativism is true! Also, when the writer says, "It has been said..." I was thinking, 'well who said that?' This is an example of telling a lie for all I know because I don't know whether he used a viable source or not. Also, I doubt he or she did any research. I could go on and on about all the terrible aspects of this paragraph but I'll probably create a bad piece of writing myself! I'll just say one more thing I thought was funny. I almost missed the spelling errors such as "it's" instead of its and "closet" instead of closest (just to name a few) because I was so distracted by the repetition of words, the lack of direction and the unclear and truistic sentences.

2. The second example of bad writing actually made me laugh. In fact, I'm laughing right now! I have absolutely no idea what the author was talking about so clearly the piece had no direction. Either that, or I'm going a little crazy. What "change" is the author writing about? I also felt there were words left out of this long run-on sentence making it even more unbearable to read. I feel the author's claim was difficult to decipher.

3. I found the third paragraph difficult to understand even after reading it several times. I felt the author was "ignoring the reader" because he assumed I already had background on the subject. The statement, "This proves that religion does not fill the gap of a parent which has been lost," is hardly a proof because the small amount of information given wasn't even organized well enough to understand easily.

Good Writing

1. This paragraph was short yet still informative and direct. It was very attractive in a descriptive manner and the author used, what looks like, a viable source for his or her information.

2. Here is another well directed and interesting paragraph. The author's use of quotations is not an example of Stibble's "getting hyped up" and in fact, makes for a great opening sentence.

3. There are a few questions in this last paragraph however I do not consider them truistic. I did not immediately shoot back the answers but instead, I found myself considering what they could be. The author, again, used a viable source but I felt he or she may have thrown in a logical fallacy. "If by "machine" one means a physical system capable of performing certain functions (and what else can one mean?), then humans are machines of a special biological kind, and humans can think, and so of course machines can think." In short I thought the author was saying: a) machines are capable of perfoming tasks
b) humans perform tasks and can think
c) therefore machines can think Other than that I felt this paragraph was an alright example of good writing mostly because it got me thinking.

Reflection

When assessing the quality of writing it is cruitial to consider the audience but should not be the only deciding factor on whether or not a piece is good or bad. With so many different readers, there is bound to be so many different opinions. Obviously a reader could have a poor opinion regarding a certain text but he or she could still say it was a good piece of writing. For example the third piece of good writing regarding machines did not touch on of my favourite topics but I can still lable it as a "good" piece of writing because I was considering what the author was saying and reflecting on his questions. So it is unlikely that one paragraph on one paticular subject will satisfy all its readers but it can still be determined whether or not it is a good or bad piece of writing. Authors must also assume their readers have no background on the topic as well as write in an understandable and to-the-point fashion. As far as subject matter goes...that is up to the personal tastes of the audience.