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From "The Writing Problems of Visual Thinkers"
Available: http://www.longleaf.net/ggrow |
Table 1. |
The Writing Problems of Visual Thinkers |
| 1. Naming imprecise or lacking | "The doohickey bollusked up my thingamajig." Broad, vague nouns and adjectives. |
| 2. Words as labels for unseen pictures, | labels for complex but unexplained thoughts. Effort to label large visual wholes at once, without analyzing them into their parts. Each verbal element seems to refer to more than it says; words have multiple or cryptic, rather than specific, meanings. |
| 3. General fuzziness of language | Words imprecise. Connections unclear. Syntax slippery. Words don't seem real to the writer. Has a "You know what I mean" quality. |
| 4. Words used in a a private and eccentric manner, | like decor. When asked, writer might reply, "That's just what I use the word to mean." |
| 5. Few active verbs | Passive voice. Unexplained appearances ("there is"). |
| 6. Overuse of "To Be" | Leading to imprecise verbs, passive voice. Nothing moves, changes, or acts; everything "is." |
| 7. Non-linear language | Effort to express thought as clustered, stacked, layered, enfolded, rather than linear. |
| 8. Descriptions static | Not arranged in dynamic sequence. Reader does not have enough information to piece together the visualization required and must guess what the author means by a few labels. |
| 9. Weak transitions and connectives | Parts juxtaposed without being related. Reads like haiku or film script. "Dissolve," "jump cut," and "fade to black" would be appropriate transitions. |
| 10. Undefined references | "He did it to them." Dangling
modifiers. Vague use of "this," "it," "thing,"
and other vague terms. |
| 11. Poor organization | Digressive. Gets lost in detail. Thought jumps around. Topic has not been analyzed, broken into chunks, and sequenced in a purposive manner. |
| 12. Weak narrative | Little sense of plot, conflict, drama, structure, buildup, climax. Referred to, but not told. Stated, but not argued. |
| 13. Contextless | No introduction. It is what it is; it is not defined by comparison with anything. Attempts to move visual into verbal through description or proclamation. May include vivid statement of opinion in isolation from other views and supporting evidence, a thought floating in space. |
| 14. Aesthetic indiscrimination | All details are equally important. Everything is everything else. Author does not take a position. Everything hangs in a mesh of undefined relationships. Bland, even, one-level quality to prose. No main point. Reads like a list. |
| Note: | I have exaggerated the problems
here to make them vivid. A writer can have only some of them,
and those to a lesser degree. From "The Writing Problems of Visual Thinkers," © 1994, 1996 by Gerald Grow, Florida A&M University. <http://www.longleaf.net/ggrow/> May be freely used for educational purposes, provided that this credit is included. This table is an expansion of one that appeared in Visible Language, 28.2, Spring 1994. |
Gerald Grow's Homepage at www.longleaf.net/ggrow