ENG 223: Rhetorical Strategies for Writers • Blankenship
Analyzing Your Writing Style
The goal of this short workshop is to help you think about your own writing style in a
meta way in order to give you more tools and ways of further developing and refining
your style. Generate your thoughts below in a color you like (besides black).
1) How would you describe your writing style in the manuscript you brought today?
Another way of thinking about this question is how you would describe your
“voice.”
Some examples to help you think about this question: formal, informal,
accessible, cerebral, humorous, ironic, straightforward, others?)
2) Does your writing style vary depending on what you’re writing? From genre to
genre?
3) What kinds of genres do you write in? (examples: academic papers, fiction
writing, social media writing, blogging, journalistic writing)
4) How does your writing vary from class to class or between academic disciplines,
or does it?
5) What’s your favorite kind of writing and why?
6) What kind of writing are you best at?
7) Why did you choose this manuscript to bring as an example? (Hopefully)
relatedly, what do you like about your writing?
8) The four primary virtues of style in classical rhetorical theory are clarity,
correctness, appropriateness, and distinction (pgs. 138-142 in Rhetorical
Analysis, Longaker and Walker1).
Clarity
Directness: using precise, familiar language, accessibility
Economy: avoiding both filler language that pads expression without adding
anything significant to the meaning and convoluted, clumsy sentence structures
that obscure meaning or bury key ideas
Vividness: using concrete language that brings what is described before the eyes
(where possible); avoiding unnecessary abstraction
Correctness
Standard Written English; signifies education in a certain discourse community
(most often thought of as academic discourse or discipline-specific discourse).
1
Longaker, Mark and Jeffrey Walker. Rhetorical Analysis: A Brief Guide for Writers. NY: Longman,
2010.
According to Longaker and Walker, “in both modernity and antiquity, an evident
lack of mastery [of SWE]—usually revealed by unconscious, nondeliberate
deviations from the rules—signifies not wit but outsider status. The error-prone
writer or speaker may be perceived (fairly or not) as poorly educated,
unsophisticated, unfamiliar with the world of public or professional discourse, and
lacking authority” (140).
Appropriateness
Also known as decorum; “language that is not only clear and correct, but also
appropriate to the rhetorical situation” (Longaker and Walker 140). Think of
kairos here as well.
Distinction (Urbanity, Ornament)
Witty, clever, sophisticated, distinguished; stands apart from the ordinary and the
bland
According to Longaker and Walker, “Distinctive discourse exhibits such qualities
as individuality, variety, wittiness, expressiveness, impressiveness, charm,
memorability, pathos, emphasis, sophistication, even beauty” (141).
In what ways would you say your writing style demonstrates
characteristics of the four primary stylistic “virtues”? What are some
examples of your rhetoric (written or spoken) when you’ve pulled off one or
more of the virtues well? Not so well?
9) Code-switching (pg 143 in RA) involves shifts of register, or discourse that’s
persuasive and authoritative among a certain discourse community, or group of
people with similar warrants and values. When do you use code-switching in
strategic ways in your written or verbal rhetoric?
10) Longaker and Walker list a variety of figures of speech and thought on pages
144-156. Which of these do you use in your rhetoric? List a few examples from
your manuscript you brought today and what they add to your writing.
11) Rhythm (pages 157-159, RA) is incredibly important to good writing, to beautiful
writing, to memorable writing. I’ve always thought of good writing as a bit like
music. Are you aware of the rhythm your prose creates? Do you read your writing
out loud or in your head and listen for the rhythms of your words and sentences?
Look at the manuscript you brought in and read it silently to yourself with this lens
in mind and describe what you notice.
2
Analyzing Your Style2
Before you can start to refine and improve your style, you have to know the
characteristics of your style. In other words, you have to be able to describe it.
Together, the four steps below are a useful quantitative way of analyzing and thinking
about style. In these steps you consider sentence length, emphasis, sentence variety,
and first elements.
Sentence length
1. Count the number of words in each sentence on the first page of your
manuscript. List each number on a piece of paper, drawing a line under the
number for the last sentence in each paragraph. For example, for the "Note"
above, the list would look like this:
19
11
16
13
List yours here:
Looking at the list tells us not only the length of each sentence, but the way the
sentences group themselves in paragraphs.
Look at the list and answer the following questions. Assume that sentences of
1-20 words are short; 21-45 are medium; 46-70 are long; 71+ are extra long.
a. How many words are in the longest sentence?
b. How many words are in the shortest sentence?
c. Are the long sentences clumped together or spread out?
d. Are the short sentences clumped together or spread out?
e. Do some paragraphs contain mostly (or only) long sentences?
f.
Do some paragraphs contain mostly (or only) short sentences?
g. What's the average length of your sentences?
2 Adapted from The Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
http://writing.mit.edu/wcc/resources/writers/analyzingyourownstyle
3
Advice: Variety in sentence length is usually more effective than unchanging
sentence length because readers subconsciously get bored with the same
length all the time. Short sentences are often useful for driving home a point or
making a dramatic impact; longer sentences are useful for summing up a series
of points at the end of a paragraph (or section), for qualifying an idea stated in a
previous sentence, or for making a transition from one idea to another. If the
majority of your sentences are long or extra long, try breaking a few of them into
short sentences (only you can decide which points you wish to emphasize or
qualify). If the majority of your sentences are short, try combining some of them
into longer sentences. Doing so will help clarify the relationship between the
ideas contained in each short sentence.
Emphasis in your sentences
2. Underline the most important thing in each sentence of the first page of your
manuscript.
3. Where is that most important thing located - at the beginning of the sentence? at
the end? in the middle?
.
Advice: Emphasis is a complicated issue, but here are some guidelines to
follow:
The middle is the least emphatic spot and hence receives the least attention
from readers. The idea or words you want emphasized should be at the
beginning or at the end of the sentence.
a. All other things being equal, old information (information your readers
already know either in general - the sun rises in the east - or from earlier
parts of your paper) should not be emphasized; it should be used to lead into
new information (information that you can't assume your readers know.) New
information should usually be placed at the end of sentences; old information
is placed at the beginning as a transition from the previous sentence.
b. All other things being equal, the subject slot and the predicate verb
slot are the two most emphatic "function" slots in a sentence. They gain even
greater emphasis if they occupy the beginning or end of the sentence.
c. All other things being equal, independent clauses receive more
emphasis than dependent clauses. This guideline coincides with the fact that
the sentence's subject and verb are emphatic slots and are always found in
the independent clause.
d. All other things being equal, any item taken out of its "normal" order
receives more emphasis. The "normal" order of English sentences is subject
- verb - object/modifier - dependent clause (e.g., "She cried for a long time
because I told the truth"). Simply moving the dependent clause to the front of
the sentence gives it more emphasis for two reasons: it's out of normal order
4
and it's now in the second most emphatic spot (the beginning). "Because I
told the truth, she cried for a long time."
Note that anything out-of-order gets emphasis (e.g., "for a long time
she cried"). The length of her crying gets significantly more emphasis
here because it's out-of-order. Also, the middle of the sentence gains
some emphasis because the sentence's subject ("she") is located
there.
Sentence variety
4. Review the standard ways of analyzing sentence structure:
a. Simple sentence: "I told the truth."
b. Compound sentence: "I told the truth, and she cried."
c. Complex sentence: "She cried because I told the truth." or "When I told the
truth, she cried."
d. Compound-complex: "After I told the truth, she cried and I felt guilty."
5. Make a list of the structures of the sentences on the first page of your
manuscript using the letter code above (a for simple, d for compound-complex).
Underline the letter for the last sentence in each paragraph as you did above.
List yours here:
As with length, variety in structure piques the reader's interest and also helps
you see the connections between your ideas. Moreover, varying the structures
will help you place the emphasis more effectively.
First elements
First elements are the first grammatically detachable units of a sentence. For example, in
this sentence the transitional phrase "For example" is the first detachable unit. The first
element in this sentence, however, is the subject "the first element." If the first element is
not the subject, it is often (but not always) followed by a comma.
Consider the following examples:
1. I ran down the street screaming because my shoes were on fire. (I, the subject,
is the first element.)
5
2. Screaming, I ran down the street because my shoes were on fire. (Screaming,
a present participle, is the first element.)
3. Down the street I ran screaming because my shoes were on fire. (Down the
street, a prepositional phrase, is the first element.)
4. Because my shoes were on fire, I ran down the street screaming. (Because my
shoes were on fire, a dependent clause, is the first element.)
5. Further, I ran down the street screaming because my shoes were on
fire. (Further, a transitional word, is the first element.)
6. I ran down the street screaming with fiery shoes on my feet.(I, the subject, is
the first element.)
Implications of first elements:
Notice that sentences #1 and #6 seem to feel the same when we read them. In
other words, two such structures back-to-back would not feel different to us as
we read, hence we would have no sense of variety. Yet their structures are
different - #1 is a complex sentence while #6 is a simple sentence. Variety in
structure alone, then, cannot guarantee a sense of variety in style.
In addition to varying the length and structure of your sentences, vary their
first elements as well. No doubt the majority of your sentences will begin with
the subject, but if more than 3 consecutive sentences start with the subject
(or with any other first element), you should probably change one of them.
Analyze your own first elements:
Below is a list of common first elements. Beside each first element, write the
number of sentences in your paper that begin with that type of first element.

Subject of the sentence

Transitional word or phrase

Prepositional phrase

Expletives (there, it)

Modifiers (e.g., adverbs such as perhaps, participles)

Dependent clauses

Inverted verbs (Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?)
6

Interrogatives (e.g., Why, How)

Other (anything you can't identify)
Reflection:
What did you learn about your writing style from this exercise?
What would you like to work on to improve your writing?
What would say are your strengths as a writer?
7