McCloskey Assignment

Assignment on McCloskey, Economical Writing

Good things

For each, give the page number where McCloskey makes the point and explain the point:

1) parallelism; 2) polyptoton; 3) the place of emphasis (in a sentence); 4) be concrete; 5) use verbs; 6) transitive writing

Bad things

For each, give the page number where McCloskey makes the point and explain the point:

7) boilerplate; 8) elegant variation; 9) Latin-fed polysyllabic baloney; 10) straggle; 11) cant; 12) five-dollar words; 13) teutonism; 14) linking words; 15) typographical tricks (name four types of typographical tricks); 16) this-ism; 17) control your tone; 18) quotation marks without actually quoting someone; 19) excessive introduction (aka anticipation) and summarization; 20) comma splice

Other points about style

For each, give the page number where McCloskey makes the point and explain the point:

21) English achieve coherence by repetition, not by signal; 22) implied reader; 23) implied author; 24) table-of-contents paragraph; 25) nominalization; 26) “hopefully” (What is its proper usage? Improper usage?); 27) Ersatz Economics; 28) paragraphs should have a point; 29) thinking with your scissors

Drawing connections between the points

For each of the following, explain how the point is related to each of X other points numbered 1–29:

30) Polyptoton: 2 other points

31) The place of emphasis in a sentence: 2 other points

32) Be concrete: 4 other points

33) Transitive writing: 1 other point

34) Excessive introduction/anticipation and summarization: 3 other points

Points about the process of writing

For each, give the page number where McCloskey makes the point and explain the point:

35) Don’t let the moment pass.

36) Don’t break off when on a burn.

37) . . . write down your thoughts, however vague, on what will come next.

38) Writing is rewriting.

Rhetoric

39) Explain what McCloskey means by the word rhetoric.