About Comics, part 1

I started reading Penny Arcade, an online comic, which is a comedy about two room mates named Gabe and Tycho who touch on all sorts of video games and technology. In the latest strip, the two discuss the discrepancies between the games Guitar Hero and Rock Band - - Gabe arguing that Rock Band is better because the player has the option of playing the song "Jessie's Girl", while Tycho admits that he doesn't care either way because he does not even like the song. The last panel shows a jury acquitting Gabe of murder, adding that Tycho "had it coming" because of his dislike of the song.

After reading through a few of their comics and getting a feel for their writing and art, I have to say they (the creators of the comic) have an excellent sense of pacing. The comic is usually done in three to four panels, so pacing and using the "gutter" is essential to telling the story. According to McCloud, the spaces between the panels tells a story, linking the images and text in the panel together in the reader's mind. For example, in the comic discussed above, the readers at first sees Gabe and Tycho talking about a game. The last panel shows the jury acquitting Gabe of murder, and the reader must make the connection in his or her mind the passing of time and the series of events that led up to the last panel. A regular reader of Penny Arcade would, after reading for a while, understand the sense of humor that comic strip offers, and could probably fill in that time jump between panels with a sense of humor appropriate to the strip, thus injecting and imaginative humor that I personally believe is far more potent than just showing.

Recap on Peer Review

I have to say, I actually liked the Style Rules Wiki more than using the GoogleDocs because the layout was more familiar and much more intuitive. The actual user-interface and graphics of the website were better layed out and organized. When it came to editing and adding notes on to other people's essays, a simple and easy to find click of the edit button would grant access to the whole document, and you could just dive right into making changes. The reviews and advice I got where fairly helpful, and the option at the bottom of the Wiki's allowed for simple thread posts that reminded me alot of Facebook or IMDB.com's threads. I can't think of anything that would necessarily be a "con", so that means I definetly would endorse using the Wiki for peer review.

Comparing the Two

If I were to compare Strunk and White's book to Williams, I would easily say that despite the grumpy and doddering old man feel the Strunk and White have, I like their book far better than Williams. Williams is extremely hard to read for me because the way he writes is so incredibly boring. Perhaps that has no merit, but the sentiment of his book seems to touch on the points of clarity and decisive prose, a rule which he breaks in one way or another. For example, Williams opening chapter is all about the history and formation of the English language we know and use today, and how we (the users of English) have our difficulties with grammar and diction because of the convoluted evolutions and amalgamations of the language. This part of the book was interesting in a way, but was wholly unecessary because it does not really get the "bare bones", "just do this" instructions that I liked in Strunk in White. Williams seems to go on and on about this and that before finally getting to the lesson. In William's second chapter, "Clarity", he goes on about three pages with examples of good writing and then analyzes them to show what is clear writing and what is not. Finally, page twenty-one, we get two very direct rules of clear writing: "Readers are likely to feel like they are reading prose that is clear and direct when (1) The subject of the sentences name the cast of characters, and (2) those verbs go with those subjects name the crucial actions those characters are part of".

I would have started with those two rules at the very beginning, then went into one example and analyze that using the two rules I had previously stated. There is no need to go into some sort of academic extrapolation. Please, just give me the lesson. Strunk and White and Williams are trying to do the same thing, but Strunk and White do a far better job.