Bawarshi, Allen, Magee Articles Response.

In the article by Allen, I read more about scientific writing than I think I've read in my entire life. Even though, I understand the article is pertaining more to the rhetoric behind such writing, I in all honesty didn't find much use for the tools desribed in the writing.

And, I was extremely lost on the integration of the (TBI) and how researchers wrote on the topic. Plus, when the author discusses how editors of Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage claim passive voice allows writers an instance "whereby the writer can easily omit the agent (the "doer" in the clause)" (Allen p98), I was immediately turned off because in journalistic writing reporters are taught to always write in the active in order to take themselves out of the story; exactly the opposite of the point made in the writing.

I liked Magee's article much more, though. I actually wish I'd been able to get my hands on this article prior to writing my college admission letter. As a typical girly girl, I know I constantly project my gender into my writing without thinking twice about it.

This made me take an interest in page 117, wherein the author begins to discuss her own gender characteristics peaking through into her writing. Magee says how in an essay she wrote she compared community service work and the personal need to be her own fairy godmother -- this is most definitely not a piece of writing a typical male would first think to write.

The point she makes in exploring this is finding her true genre of writing before making the mistake of missing her objective -- she writes, "I had to sell myself so that someone at school X would want me to attend his or her institution. It was the genre that influenced both the lack of relationships and the focus on achievements" (Magee, p118).

The person she's writing for, i.e., may not care as much for princesses as her 3-year-old and 20 something self does.

In the final article read, written by Bawashi, the ideas of social influence on writing and the organization and plotting process of rhetoric are assessed together. The two are hand-in-hand in enabling writers to choose a direction and giving readers a genre to dissect.

I agree that the combination of these elements aid in constructing the perfectly laid out article.

"Genre is at the heart of this ecological process, maintaining a symbolic relationship between social habits and rhetorical habits" (Bawashi, p77). -- This point of the article lies at the heart of the author's argument as well as perfectly sums up the emphasis of the writing.