Sunday, September 7, 2014

TOW #1 How to Say Nothing in 500 Words


Paul Roberts writes a surprisingly entertaining and humorous piece about the correct way to write with meaning in How to Say Nothing in 500 Words. Roberts starts off his writing like any other writer would, with a title, but his title is very relevant to the rest of his essay. He makes his title an oxymoron, a statement that seems contradict itself, to give the readers a subtle hint to his purpose, which would be to teach the readers the proper way to write an essay, or any piece of writing, with meaning. What Roberts means to say is that just because there is something that is written, doesn’t mean that it is written well or conveys any meaning or point. Roberts also chooses to take the third person point of view, becoming an objective narrator who guides a student in writing his or her composition on college football. In this position Roberts acts as a guide or teacher and educates the student and the reader on the proper ways and strategies to write something with meaning, and how to avoid meaningless “fluff” or “filler”. Throughout the course of this paper, Roberts uses a great deal of sarcasm. Roberts often pokes fun at a situation that he is addressing saying things like a college professor is at, “the brink of lunacy” after reading several student papers on the same topic, or, “This was till funny during the war of 1812, but it has sort of lost it’s edge since then”. He of ten uses this sarcasm to show how foolish the writer looks while writing something that is truly piss-poor in an attempt to persuade the reader to take what he is saying to heart so that they too do not make the same mistake and look as foolish as the people in his examples. Paul Roberts writes How to Say Nothing in 500 Words to inform his readers about the proper way to write something with true meaning.  

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