reaction

why i wanted to learn about style

I first became extremely interested in the issue of style in academic reading when I confronted a co-worker of mine at the writing center who had sent an e-mail to the entire staff at the center, including our boss, about a new e-mail server that we had the opportunity to be a part of. In an e-mail that I thought should have been extremely formal, Dan littered it with swearing. When I asked him about it, he said that he swears in everything he writes and that he is an extremely confrontational writer. He said that even when he tries to be formal, his writing just naturally comes off as obtrusive. He continued to tell me about one particular class in which he turned in papers full of profanity and the teacher loved it because she encouraged the students to find their personal voices. Before this conversation I had always felt that my academic writing was supposed to lack style and we weren’t supposed to experiment or find our own voice. But now I was starting to question this idea. I felt that I lacked style and I wanted to find mine. The next essay I wrote I decided to put a lot of voice in it. But I was frustrated. It didn’t seem natural, it sounded forced. I brought it to the writing center to talk about style and the tutor told me that the style sounded really informal. I changed the paper back to how I thought it should sound, and felt that I was closer to my own style, but also became confused as to whether style really is accepted in academic writing. I took what Dan had said to heart, though. I knew that I liked some writer’s style more than others, that style makes certain writing easier to read and more clear, but I wondered if style was actually learnable, if it was something that someone could consciously work on improving, or if it was just a phenomena that occurred naturally. I decided to do a research project in the writing center to see if writing tutors had any insight as to whether or not style is teachable.