Before I read the articles, I first read a blog post from a past student who goes by “dossanje” to see what they had to say about them. After reading their response, it made me realize something. It upsets me that the lack of creativity college students have is due to college essays and its boundaries. These essays are such a bore to both the writer and the readers (usually). I will say, college essays are (to an extent) an easy format to understand considering that everyone who has ever wrote an essay follows a formula. But this ‘formula’ is what makes the essay feel so dried out. Think of it as a boiled potato, there’s not much taste to it but you can certainly eat it- you just won’t get a great feeling out of eating a tasteless potato. In this case, essays don’t have any gimmicks but there definitely some good information. It all just comes down to formatting really, so how can writers be able to provide information like essays while adding a little spice to make something interesting for the audience?
Thats where both Michael J. Klein & Kristi L. Shackelford come in with their article “Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom“. What Klein and Shackelford do great is explaining the factors that are played in these essays and describe other possibilities to make the writing its own thing. Not only that, but they also give the do’s and don’ts whenever using anything eye catching such as imagery. One part I believe everyone should look into more though is when they talk about repetition and why it’s important. I think repetition is good in certain circumstances such as trying to emphasize a topic or subtopic and changing the fonts in any way can fix the issue.
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