Style Academy Assignments

From the style academy assignments I was introduced to and reminded of flaws in my sentence and paragraph structuring. Our first assignment was to practice combining short individual thoughts into complex or more complete sentences. From this exercise I realized how unprofessional and unedited short choppy sentences appear and sound when reading them aloud. I also recognized how easy it is to create a run-on sentence and so correct punctuation is very significant. The challenge to combine the separated thoughts into seven sentences proved how simple and beneficial to your paper correcting and editing sentences can be. The imitation exercise was a foreign concept to me at first, but then I realized that all writing has a muse or a model to pattern ones writings from. I for one recognize that when writing a talk for church I tend to pattern my talk from the talks spoken in general conference, as far as my terminology and tone of voice are concerned. The assignment in and of itself was more challenging than I had initially anticipated. Trying to keep the structure of the sentence the same but come up with a completely original thought to base it off of was difficult. This made me realize why plagiarism is so dangerous; if someone already said it so well, it’s difficult to come up with a better and original way to put it. I think these exercises are relatable in my own writing because they brought my attention to points of good writing that I hadn’t considered before or do not frequently consider. The concept of attempting to enhance the quality of writing through creating strong and meaningful sentences and through using the skill of imitation to generate creative qualities in a paper is the two meanings of the exercises that I learned. Even from writing this reflection I have been more aware of my sentence structure and punctuation. I also recognized the tone of voice in my head while writing the response which felt somewhat like the writings from a review from a product or article where opinion is backed up with examples and facts.