English 521: Composition Theory and Pedagogy

     My last five years spent in academia has allowed me to try my hand at the various styles of writing demanded by both the humanistic and scientific disciplines. Each semester's work built upon the skills learned in the last creating a flexible form and style of writing I believed would carry me through the rest of my scholastic career. Over this period much of the writing that was assigned became repetitive in structure leading to a sense of boredom and complacency that stifled any further concern for growth. During latter part of this period I believe my most radical departure from my adopted style was the use of footnotes for documentation instead of citing sources within the text. Fortunately for myself, this stagnation wasn't meant to continue as my icebreaker was on its way. Much to my surprise this assignment was to be my most challenging writing project to date and would draw upon every skill and resource I had. This was not, as one might assume, a lengthy research paper or creative composition project but rather the creation of a series of critical annotations for a reference book. When I first accepted the assignment I was naïve to the extreme amount of time, focus and preparation it would require. It seemed a simple enough task to compile a collection of trade and consumer oriented magazines and journals directed towards the broadcasting industry and compose a short ten or fifteen line paragraph briefly describing and critiquing each one. With fifty or so publications in all, this amounted to roughly seven hundred and fifty lines which was certainly shorter than any research paper I had ever written. All I felt I needed was an organized plan of attack and the words would take care of themselves.

     I began my preparation by subdividing the titles I had amassed by type: either industry or consumer publications, and by category which was either video, radio or television. Then I started the somewhat laborious process of contrasting and comparing each group of magazines in order to assess its overall content quality, appropriate target audience and potential usefulness in academic, public, business or school libraries. Having gotten this far without any major upsets, my confidence level was soaring even though I hadn't typed one word of text. I knew the requirements of the assignment, I had done what I believed to be a very methodical and through analysis of the subject matter and now all that was left was to type out a few sentences about each title. However, as I sat down to type the first few words on to the screen, I quickly realized that this was not going to be as simple a job as I had first anticipated.

     The first obstacle I needed to overcome was trying to work within the ridged format of the critical annotation. Unlike many of my other experiences with writing, the structure of these annotations needed to be so condensed and tightly focused that each and every word had to be meticulously chosen in order to effectively convey the required information about that publication. In order to grasp the appropriate style this reference book demanded, I found it helpful to imagine myself in the place of its primary users, the busy librarians who may use this book to quickly and efficiently decide which publications their patrons and budget would support. As a reference tool of this kind, there would be no tolerance for superfluous words or flowery tangents. Once a budget has been passed it is unlikely to remain stagnant while competing departments try to make up their mind what materials to purchase so the librarian in charge of periodicals needs to be able to make informed, confident decisions based upon these annotations to determine which publications would be most cost efficient and beneficial to his or her facility. In order to accomplish this I had to decide upon the basic components needed to make this type of decision.

      The most obvious elements required would be a basic description of the magazine including price and types of articles contained therein followed by a summation of its overall competence in relation to similar, competing titles. The next segment should deal with any specialized attributes unique to the publication which may have some bearing on the purchasing decision and the closing remarks should offer guidance as to the types of institutions this periodical would best be suited for. When combined, these essential components would enable the user to quickly weed out impractical or unnecessary titles leaving only those really worth considering. Once a suitable annotative structure had been created I could finally begin the process of fleshing out its skeleton with text. This, however, is where my headache really began.

     Imagine if you will, trying to compose fifty different, original, annotative entries on basically the same material, within the same format and still avoid the pitfall of perpetual redundancy. Toothbrush and razorblade manufacturers have been doing it for years but unfortunately I either lacked their gift or curse, depending on how you look at it. Regardless, it soon became painfully clear that I needed to develop yet another plan of attack if I was going to avoid any more long, painful hours staring at a blank screen awaiting inspiration. Since there was no way around the repetitive nature of the subject matter I began to try and assemble a working vocabulary list of synonymic and related terms that would accurately describe the material I had to work with. Armed with this list, I hoped to be able to vary the sentence structure of my entries enough so that the user would be able to distinguish between similar types of publications while at the same time, accurately interpret the necessary information needed to make qualitative decisions.

     This strategy proved to be a very effective way of dealing with this type of writing situation. By approaching the creation of each entry as a word game I was able to shatter the writers block which would reoccur after each critique and actually enjoy myself in the process. Journals became industry publications, special interest articles were now geared towards the enthusiast and so on. Once all the entries were complete, I took a step back and reviewed my work in the order and structure that it would appear to the public. I felt this was important in order to fine-tune my work when taken as a whole. Because my assigned section was not to be broken down by fields and covered a wide range of broadcasting mediums, each entry was to be placed in alphabetical order thus taking it out of context with its related peers. This reordering could potentially disturb the overall flow of the section and feeling of individuality I had attempted to construct between annotations. I therefore had to go back in and reexamine each piece in relation to its new and ultimate location while still keeping in mind the fact that they would eventually become reorganized back into categories as titles were weighed against one another for consideration. Fortunately this task was not as problematic as I had anticipated. Although this step required more time than actual revision work, a few minor word substitutions in a few reviews were all that was needed in order to preserve a decent sense of flow in both formats.

     As I look back on the project, I consider myself very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to engage in an unfamiliar form of writing. By unknowingly accepting this new challenge, I was forced to explore and re-invent the ways in which I approach writing from both a technical and artistic standpoint. The project itself was well received by both the books' creator and publishing company and I was given a standing invitation to continue as that sections' editor for the next several editions.

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