Week 8 Justin Littlewood

Hello everyone,

            Something that I really enjoy when reading is someone writing in the present tense. Here is my paragraph from a book I was reading during my wife’s pregnancy:

            “While we’re visiting this area, let’s cover some names to avoid. I would skip this section, but every year I meet more and more people who can’t seem to get away from these awful names. Once ink dries on the birth certificate, then all of my sarcasm seems mean. We know naming is subjective, but please consider that you may be dooming your child to a life of beat downs and no lunch money.”

            I like this paragraph because it is like the author is taking you with him, and talking about what is going on in his head when people make awful choices for baby names. This kind of writing helps me get into the shoes of either the character or, in this case, the author and feel what they are feeling and see what they are seeing. When using past tense, it is just as if someone is describing something that has happened and there is no action.

           

            For my error that I found this week it goes right in line with cleaning up unneeded phrases. The paper uses the phrase “free gift” to try and entice people to participate.