Krista Ramsey Homework 4/14 Blog Post

Krista Ramsey Homework 4/14 Blog Post

The column I chose is named, "Locking into the magic of Legos."

This column talks about the following: Many young children are so attracted to Legos over the past 65 years, and while they play with them tiny pieces, they learn about the importance of progress, and trial-and-error situations.

To look at the actual column, click here.

The line that I think is best written is, "At 5 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month, a long line of small- to medium sized children snakes along the main concourse of Kenwood Towne Centre." This is the very first line in the column. The impact of this line on the reader is that the reader gets lured into reading more of the article because he/she may not know this fact that comes true in Cincinnati, and they may get even more lured into reading this article if they actually live in Cincinnati. So as a result, they want to read more over why this giant line of kids come at this specific mall in this specific city. For diction and syntax techniques that are present within this line, I am finding the presence of concrete diction and a balanced sentence type of syntax. The reason why I say this is that for diction's reason, there is a tangible idea and a physical quality present. And then for syntax, I see that the number of phrases and clauses in that sentence are equal. 

For Ramsey's writing style, I would describe it as journalistic and terse, because she is providing a service to the public by analyzing news and current events that are going on today, so eventually, her writing is emphasized and enhanced to look like a typical news reporter wrote it. Quotes that help prove this are, "In the U.S. alone, the percentage of people ages 12 to 54 who are nearsighted - meaning unable to see things clearly at a distance - rose from 25 percent in the early 1970s to 42 percent now" (From the first article), "And life itself regains the punctuation that says every day isn't the same as every other, that we are all part of a collective experience and that we honor each other and ourselves when we care about how we're groomed and dressed" (From the second article), "Like sparklers and hugs, Legos are things a child can never have enough of" (From the third article).  Her writing is also in a terse style because throughout the article, I can see that she is always talking up to the point about this current event article over kids' attraction to Legos. She never adds any irrelevant information to the article and she always talks in a cohesive manner up to the point. In addition, she also adds some personal opinions to her writing because that's what a journalist and/or news reporter would typically do. This can be seen in the third quote, for example, from the third column. 

Questions I would ask Krista Ramsey, if given the opportunity, are as follows.

1. How long has your career in writing been? 

2. In high school, did you work for a school paper? If so, were your first articles like the ones you publish today, and still continue to publish?

3. Where exactly do you get the information you need to write your articles, and what are your tips into making their writing so engrossing and unique?