Sunday, February 21, 2016

Local Revision: Pronoun Usage

Pronouns are so easy to use; why say an entire name when you could shorten it to a small, easy word? But writers should always be wary of pronouns. Having looked a little deeper into mine, I decided I feel confident in my pronoun usage.


1. I'm really grateful to see that I don't think I overuse pronouns. After a good few sentences with pronouns, I always find a way to work in the original noun, to prevent the audience from forgetting the subject. I was always taught to do this. However, my pronouns aren't so effective when I use them ambiguously. For example, I often say "It" like "It doesn't make sense how..." or things like that. I think the proper English way to craft a sentence would be to say "____ doesn't make sense". I've always been told it's a no-no to use "it" and "there" and "that" without specifically referring to things. I may need to look into a fix for this in my project.


Looking into my pronoun usage teaches me whether I'm being clear in my writing or speech. If I'm just throwing a bunch of "He"s out there, without explaining if I mean Ham or Nye, my controversy postmortem will get really confusing. It's important to double check that clarity is never compromised for my ease.


2. There are, in fact, moments where I directly refer to the audience. I think these are employed in all the right places. I address the audience in the title to hook them, in the introduction because the sentence is directly for them, and in the conclusion where I'm investing them into the controversy. These are all powerful moments of conversation between myself and the audience member.


I leave my audience out of the actual storytelling because the purpose is for me to explain the story. And if my audience wasn't there, I can't just throw them into it. I can talk to them outside of telling the controversy, and I think it's effective when I do this, but I can't just place them into the controversy if they weren't there or didn't actively play a role.

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