ch. 17

Ch 17. is on choosing an appropriate language. Your choice of language can be effective to the type of genre you are writing on. In this chapter they warn you to stay away from “jargon,” which is a specialized language used among members of a trade, profession, or group. Sentences that contain jargon tend to be longer and more puffed-up language. For example, a sentence that contains jargon in it is like this, “Mayor Summers will commence his term of office by ameliorating living conditions in economically deprived zone.” But the simpler way to write this sentence would be to say, “Mayor Summers will begin his term of office by improving living conditions in poor neighborhoods. You should try to also avoid obsolete and invented words. The dictionary lists obsolete words, but they shouldn't be used in your writing. Neologisms also know as invented words are known to be too recently created to be part of standard English. Stay away from slang, regional expressions and nonstandard English. Slang is an informal and sometimes private vocabulary that is usually used by teenagers, hip hop artists, or football fans. The word jazz started of as a slang, but is now there to describe a style of music. Regional expressions are common to a group in a geographical area. For example, “Let's talk with the bark off,” rather than let's speak frankly. People with a common regional or social heritage are the one's who speak nonstandard English. Nonstandard English is inappropriate for most formal and informal writing, but may be appropriate when used to talk to a small group of people.

This chapter was very helpful to me. At times I'll be doing a writing assignment and I'll catch myself writing down slang words or even when I'm talking with someone in person. I learned some very helpful tips from this reading that will be helpful to me in my future writing assignments.