Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Reading Johnson on Style

Focus, flow, story, rhythmic emphasis

These are the four stylistic principles that Johnson explains in this chapter. Johnson also  spends a great deal of time talking about a "felt sense". This sense basically allows a writer to tell if they are writing well or not. It's a bodily sense that makes us feel good, feel relieved, when our writing is going well and makes us feel the opposite when it is not.
What stood out the most to me was when Johnson said "rhetoric as the study of style is the primary focus of education, culture, and even humanity". I feel like the main concept Johnson wants his readers to grasp regarding style is that it has the ability to give any writing great power. Style is taking your own thought, your own writing, and twisting and turning it into many forms until you feel confident, great, excited about it.
I found the information on story as a stylistic principle the most useful. Johnson made a point that readers gain interest and want to continue reading when ia writing is in a story format; stories have a way of sucking readers in and not stopping until the end. I am going to attempt to use this style somehow in my paper.

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