Response to Mark Twain on blogging

The letter Mark Twain writes to D.W. Bowser relates to modern language even today. He comments on how Bowser uses plain, simple language. Twain believes this is how you are supposed to write. It is completely unnecessary to use long, descriptive sentences when it is possible to sum up a point in a few words. He believes "fluff" is a bad thing. The fluff he is referring to is the extras in the sentence used to lengthen them and make them seem more complex. In reality, the sentences are only getting more confusing and they stray further from the original main point. Twain also sees this way of writing as a habit that can become permanent. He is right. Today many students are taught to be descriptive in what they are writing. What makes matters worse is the minimum page requirement in papers. The pressure of a "minimum" amount of pages that have to be written is more than you would think. This can cause students to write lengthy sentences and to add unnecessary and irrelevant information. Blogs usually never have what Mark Twain considers fluff. Usually when people blog, they write whatever is on their mind. There is no need for writing long and descriptive sentences unless you really want to. With no complexity, the original idea of an author can be almost completely understandable. Blogs can be more precise than papers.

Analysis of bizzare AT&T commercial?

This AT&T commercial was obviously aimed at children. It featured a young girl and boy walking through the dangerous streets of New York. These two children are obviously not from the city because their clothing is completely outrageous. No parents are in sight and the children are leaving bread crumbs to mark their trail. They walk until night which probably isn't an intelligent thing for two young children to do. They obviously get their stupidity from their parents because what normal parent would let their two young children wander in the city alone? When they decide to go home at a very late time, they realize the bread crumb trail is gone and they whip out their handy touch screen cell phone complete with a navigation system! No worries! So what was the point of leaving bread crumbs? Children watching this commercial relate themselves to Hansel and Gretel with the awesome cell phone. They then proceed to harass their sucker parents to no end. They finally give in and get their child an AT&T phone. And this is how AT&T makes the green.

The writing begins...

So here I am at Hofstra, and I am blogging. Writing online makes me feel normal. It is normal for me to be writing online, I do it every single day. Blogging is somewhat new to me but I have been writing online for most of my life. I use aim all the time to keep in touch with my friends who are away at college and have fun drunk stories to tell me. It's always a good conversation. I signed up for Twitter but it's really not that interesting. I'm not really sure what to blog about right now so I guess I'll just write what I'm doing. I'm on a desk top in Mason Hall listening to people in the writing center talk about their essays. It's not my favorite place to be but I don't really mind it since I'm getting paid and money is always a good thing. And the people who work here are awesome. Anyway, writing online isn't really anything out of the ordinary for me. I'm pretty much addicted to Facebook and on it 24-7. I'm a loser I know. Writing on people's walls and commenting on people's pictures is something I tend to do a lot when I'm bored or procrastinating. Mostly I write online to keep in touch with my friends. I think blogging is kind of stupid but I'd rather be writing a blog than writing a paper. Papers suck. They are probably my least favorite thing to do in the world besides going to the dentist. Dentists are so much worse than papers. i enjoy writing online b/c i never use proper grammar. I don't know whether you're supposed to have proper grammar in blogs so maybe I'll change it up in the next one. It is MY blog. So, I ran out of things to write about and most likely no one is interested in this so those are my thoughts on writing online and blogging and whatnot.