Homework #10 – Preparation for Writing Analysis
Due: October 22nd – Bring to class!
During class, we will do an in-class exercise in which we’ll show you how you can judge the quality of your writing by looking at some metrics. With just a few simple numbers, you’ll know if a piece of your writing is making a strong argument and is efficiently edited. Or you’ll find out that your piece of writing is slower paced to add depth and/or diplomacy. Or maybe you’ll find out that your writing goes at a snail’s pace and is making almost no argument whatsoever
For this, we’d like you to bring a piece of your own writing to class that you would like to do this metrics analysis on, but first you’ll need to prepare it a bit so that we’re only getting the data that we need.
Check list for your Writing Analysis Preparation
- Dig up your research paper, article, blog post, term paper, grant proposal, memo, etc. that you’d like to run a metrics analysis on. The metrics were only developed to work on the English language, so the item you chose must be in English. As an alternate option: you’re welcome to use someone else’s piece of writing instead that you’re curious about.
- Transfer it onto a Word Doc (or other word processor)
- Keep the main narrative items. Examples: main body, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, section headings, and titles.
- Delete the unnecessary items. Examples: table of contents, graphs, captions, footnotes, reference section, bibliography, author bio pages, index, acknowledgements, copyright page.
- After you delete the unnecessary items the total word count must be 1000 words or more. A sample size of under 1000 words tends to give strange results. The higher over 1000 words, the better.
- Have the Word Doc ready for an in-class exercise on October 22nd.
Instructions for submitting your homework:
- No need to upload it to Dropbox – just bring it to class as a Word file and have it ready!