Getting students to format their online discussion posts for readability

[polly_mer]

I agree with refusing to grade or recording a zero if the instructions are clear.

I disagree with most of the exact words that mamselle just wrote, but do give clear examples and expectations.

That's fine, but they're not random, they're leaned from three years' experience on a nationally recognized weekly newspaper in a major city.

I'm basically paraphrasing what my editor said to all of us, all the time, and they've worked for my own editing and teaching ever since.

If you want a more conventional set of suggestions, Strunk and White (or whatever iteration it's in now) is likewise useful and has pithy suggestions that people can remember. 

But you do need to give people guidelines.

M.

I often wish for a red pen to fix your posts because they are annoyingly formatted and are more like disconnected thoughts instead of tightly written informative pieces. 

I agree with following good journalistic standards, but those can't possibly be the guidelines for any of the newspapers I've followed over the years and enjoyed reading.

[Cheerful]

Ouch.   A shame when posts here get personal.

I appreciate Mamselle and her posts.  Happy Labor Day.

[mamselle]

Ouch.   A shame when posts here get personal.

I appreciate Mamselle and her posts.  Happy Labor Day.

Thanks. No umbrage taken.

And....no biggie--I suspect many of us wish for a "track changes" or "red-pen" function for various posters' works. We all have different writing styles based on our backgrounds, disciplines, and what we had for breakfast that morning.

I post with single lines, not because the ideas are disconnected, but because people don't read walls-of-words...their eyes skip to the next line and then the next.

Pixel pointillisme, perhaps.

That's why print newspapers were formatted as they were; for casual reading, where development of the idea is important, but not the main goal, the same aesthetic applies; online forum posts are much more legible in that way.

And, since it's harder to do, it's a better discipline, especially for students--at least, that's how I explain it to mine, and I've had several get back to me at the end of a course and say they learned to write as well as to absorb the course materials, so it must at least work for some of them.

But again--no issues.

We all have contributions to make and they can take different forms, so long as they are offered with good will and sensitivity to others.

At least, that's how I see it.

M.

[ciao_yall]

I have to narrow the screen on these message boards because the text lines are to horizontally wide to read efficiently.

Then, mamselle's posts look quite readable because they automatically wrap into reasonable looking chunks of text.

Meanwhile, other people's posts turn into the "walls of text" that make my eyeballs bleed.