Writing is all around us weather you notice it or not and it comes in many forms. Magazines, news articles, advertisements, billboards, books, the list goes on. Good writers can persuade readers by the language they use as well as knowing the different connotations and denotations of words. Another critical part of good writing is the use of rhetoric, also known as the ability to speak or write persuasively. Persuading the reader is not just a one sided job, the reader must also be able to have imagination, memory, diction, curiosity, and an artistic sense to critically analyze and understand what they have just read. Good writing not only must be grounded in data to establish credibility, it should also tell the whole story, incorporating multiple viewpoints from different perspectives.
To understand and appreciate good writing, you must first be able to recognize bad writing. Bad writing is everywhere and we are bombarded with it in our everyday lives. A great source of bad writing can be found in news articles. Though often these articles are coming from journalists with years of experience, they tend to be littered with one sided opinions. These biased articles misinform the public making them believe the perspective of the person who wrote the story. The big problem with all of this is that it does not give the reader the opportunity to hear the full story and develop their own opinion. For a short amount of time from 1979-1987, there was a ruling by the Supreme Court saying that all digital media and broadcasting networks must present issues fairly by sharing contrasting points of view known as the Fairness Doctrine (Roscoe L. Barrow, e Fairness Doctrine). Though, this was a good idea it became very hard to enforce and was ended less than ten years later allowing for networks to continue making one sided stories the were very biased.
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a great example of good writing because it took on issues that were relevant at the time the book was released as well as current times. Though this book is fiction, it was based on the realities of racism and social injustices in the south during the 20th century. The reason this reading can stand superior to others is because of its ability to make you sympathize for many of the characters. A big lesson in this story is how important it is to put yourself in the shoes of others before you judge them. This was shown near the beginning of the story when they describe their neighbor, an evil hermit that kills animals and children who goes by the name of Boo Radley. Scout and her friends were fascinated by the house and fooled around on his property, daring each other to run up and touch the house amongst other things. As the story unfolds, you see Boo Radley performing small acts of kindness such as leaving candy out near a tree for the children and fixing one of the boys pants which had gotten torn off in the fence while escaping his property one night. You begin to realize that he isn’t the person the kids had made him out to be at the beginning. Though it was unnecessary for the author to show Boo Radleys acts of kindness in this story, it helped dramatically because it gave a different perspective to the children’s tainted vision of who he was. Without it, all we would believe is that he is still just an evil human that is out to kill the neighborhood children.
Another example of good writing comes from Charlotte Perkins, The Yellow Wallpaper. This fictional story utilizes facts to give it validity. In this story the narrator is silenced by her husband, who tells her that she is not well and that she should refrain from activities that she enjoys such as working and writing. Throughout the story she becomes fixated on the wallpaper to the point where it is all she can think about, ultimately realizing that she is one of the trapped women that she sees in the wallpaper. The reason this story is so successful is because it took a common issue that was not talked about much during the 19th century and shed some light on it, offering a new perspective for those that chose to read it.
A good write should be able to recognize that his or her viewpoint is not the only way to think about a particular idea. Both Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), and Charlotte Perkins (The Yellow Wallpaper), were able to share how they felt about a particular subject while still showing other ways of thinking. These authors were also able to back up their stories with facts from that particular time period. It is important to understand what good writing is in order to be able to know what to trust, especially when we are reading to inform our opinions.
Works Cited
- Garrett-Diaz, Stacie. “Explain How the Author Uses Language to Influence the Reader.”
- Prezi.com, 11 May 2015, prezi.com/xr9ja3udpw6n/explain-how-the-author-uses-language-to-influence-the-reader/.
- Lee, Christopher, et al. “9 Qualities of Good Writing.” Ann Handley, 2 Dec. 2017, annhandley.com/9-qualities-of-good-writing/.
- Roscoe L. Barrow, e Fairness Doctrine: A Double Standard for Electronic and Print Media, 26 Hastings L.J. 659 (1975). Available at: hps://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol26/iss3/3
- “Writing Your Paper: Topic Sentences and Transitions.” Research Guides, research.ewu.edu/c.php?g=525372&p=3591228.
