PB2B

For this PB, we have to compare the rhetorical aspects of two of the readings that we have already done. For this, I choose two articles I found particularly intriguing: Dirk's "Navigating Genres" and Bunn's "How to Read Like a Writer". Both authors are extremely effective in using various rhetorical features to make the paper easy to follow and understand, and hopefully by analyzing these things I (and everyone in our class) can utilize similar techniques in our own writing as we continue to develop as writers in this class.

One of the biggest things I admire about a good paper is the ability to organize ideas in paragraphs. It really is an art that people have to learn, but good paragraph spacing not only makes a paper more visually appealing but it also is an indication of a new idea for the reader. In Kerry Dirk's piece, her paragraphs are all separate chains of thought that she explains and discusses. If you look at pg 250, the middle paragraph is basically just several sentences about the Dirk's purposes for  writing the paper, which she says "are to expand your definition (or to introduce you to a definition for the first time) and to help you start thinking about how genres might apply to your own writing endeavors" (Dirk 250). The following paragraph though has to deal more with Dirk's initial struggle to figure out how to write her paper. I think Dirk's move when it comes to paragraphs is to make all her sentences in one paragraph follow the process of explaining one idea, which sounds simple but is harder to accomplish than it sounds. I think its successful because as a reader you are constantly picking up on something new. 

You can see the same skill in Bunn's paper. Every paragraph is almost like a breath of fresh air. Every new thought provides something new for the reader to think about in some way, and all the sentences have a common theme. One thing that Bunn does that isn't really done in Dirk's paper is the use of small one or two sentence paragraphs. He does this to make a sentence stand out, or to make that one specific idea more important. Sometimes, it even is used almost like a transition. On pg 72, Bunn has one very short paragraph that says, "I came to realize that all writing consists of a series of choices" (Bunn 72), and then goes on in the next paragraph to talk about something else. Burn states something that he learned, and then uses that as a springboard to explain something else. This is an extremely effective move that Bunn uses to keep readers engaged. 

One thing that I noticed about both papers is they both make efforts to change up the writing style so that the paper doesn't seem so boring. What I mean by that is rather than just writing paragraph after paragraph, both authors switch it up using things like bullet points, large quotes, and series of questions to make the paper more entertaining. This move is successful for both writers because it provides a little more originality to both papers, while also making the paper less bland and boring. 

The tone of both papers is extremely informal, which is evident no matter at what paragraph of either paper you choose. The language that is used is like you are talking to  a friend who is trying to teach you something. I really like this style of writing because formal writing just makes me feel pressured to talk in a way that isn't how I normally would talk. For me, I thought that both papers used this tone in order to make the audience (which you can presume is rambunctious college students who are learning to write better) more interested in the subject matter. This tactic may not work for everyone, but I thought that both papers were extremely easy reads. 

Criticizing writing has always been difficult for me because I think writing is such an exquisite practice that its hard to really understand the author's thinking from just reading their work. That is what is discussed in the "How to Read Like a Writer" paper by Bunn, but obviously it's not possible to completely get in the mind of the author. However, with that being said, one thing that I thought both papers had issues with was keeping my attention. I personally thought that some things in both papers that were put in were not necessary. I think I'm a little biased now because I've read both papers multiple times and I'm getting a little sick of them, but some of the ideas in Dirk's paper are rewording the same idea, and I thought that the random names that are used as examples have no relevance to me as a reader so they are somewhat unimportant in my mind.

PB2A

Using SCI generator and finding some scholarly articles through UCSB's library website, I found a lot of similarities between the published academic articles and the ones generated online in a couple seconds.
You would expect there to be some noticeable differences at first glance, but surprisingly they look almost the same. The very first things to appear are the title of the paper and the authors, followed by an abstract and an introduction. After that there are some differences, but that is still pretty remarkable that they both begin so similarly. This is important knowledge to have because this may possibly be the general and accepted form for starting an academic article, but thats just me hypothesizing.
After those initial similarities, some of the aspects that make one academic article specific to computer science and the other article was titled "Applying Hierarchical Task Analysis Method to Discovery Layer Evaluation", and honestly your guess is as good as mine as to what that really means. I attempted to read the abstract and even the tone of that was too scholarly for me to understand what was being talked about. After reading more of the article I learned it was about a new kind of search engine similar to google that is starting to be used in libraries across the country. After realizing that both articles had to deal with computers, I figured that some of the similarities between the two are because they both deal with computers (which ties into the whole concept of genres that we covered).
It seems like its important to have a clear and east to follow organizational layout so that the reader could read just the titles of the various section and understand what is being discussed. It also is very apparent that having outside sources and people is necessary to really have a convincing paper. There are cited sources all over each page of both the real article and the generated one. Another thing that is easy to notice in the real articles from the databases and the generated articles is the use of graphs, charts, figures, or images to help the readers follow the process or topic of whatever is being discussed.
One of the major differences I noticed is just the professionalism that I notice with the papers from the database compared to the generated paper. The real papers usually have some simple kind of theme that makes the paper a little more appealing, they all have page numbers and each section has a large chunk of writing that explains it, whereas the generated article doesn't really have long explanations for each section. It just makes the real articles seem like they have more legitimate information to back them up, the generated articles could be completely made up for all I know.
After some explaining the real articles usually have a section for discussion, or the authors own thoughts, which is obviously an important section. Although the middle sections of all the articles I looked at varied, they all had a discussion section. I think this is equivalent to the results section of the generated paper. Both the generated papers and the real ones all have a conclusion which is utilized to wrap up the whole paper overall.
The last major thing I noticed that is obviously important is the bibliography or refrences page(s) that always signals the end of the paper. In a day where plagiarism is easy to do with the internet and all the available sources and opinions, the works cited part of a page is extremely important to make sure credit is given where credit is due. By doing this, the academic world is able to further learn and share opinions and grow as one group rather than individuals.

PB1B on generators

Boy oh boy, I can just type my name in and a completed paper comes out? Where was this all those nights in middle school when I was up all night the day before a paper was due? Interestingly enough, and also a great example of what we have been discussing in class in terms of textual genres, every paper produced by the first SCIgen has very particular conventions that all have room for variability, allowing the computer to easily produce paper after paper after just a single click. First off, there is always a title at the top, followed by whatever "authors" you choose to type in before generating the paper. The title always is a topic related to computer science, however the titles are typically to complex for individuals that are not familiar with computer science lingo. Next, the papers always contain an abstract which is a short blurb that talks about the paper as a whole. The purpose of the paper can almost always be found in this section. The differences in the papers become most evident after the abstract, where the papers begin to take different forms. The paper takes on a professional and academic look by its structure, which never really changes. There is a table of contents, followed by different sections of the paper, with short paragraphs explaining that section. The papers usually utilize graphs and diagrams as well, which makes the paper seem more legitimate. Lastly, the paper includes many sources which interestingly are not all used in the paper.
Pandyland.net provides another generator, this time producing comic strips rather than computer science papers. The comic strips that are generated are always 3 separate images that focus on just two characters, one a blond boy and the other a brunette boy. Comic strips are hard to follow sometimes because there is never a backstory to a comic, the reader gets tossed straight into the action. In order to understand the short plot, the reader must also have a basic idea of how comics work. For instance, the difference between a speech bubble and a thought bubble must be understood in order to understand the point of the strip. There is only a couple different images that are used to start each generated comic strip, so the main aspect that changes is the thought and speech bubbles. Typically one of the images from the strip will be a close up of one of the characters as well. The storyline in the comics is completely random and often doesn't seem like it has a point, but the point of the comic is to get a chuckle out of the reader and this is usually accomplished through the absolute randomness of what happens in each strip.
The last generator is a meme generator, which is a genius idea. Memes are easy to create, all they really are is a picture that has a caption on top of it, so they are easy to generate over and over again. The conventions of memes are simple. There is always a picture, and many times it is a recycled picture that has been used many times already. The pictures are usually chosen for a reason though. The picture could be a famous person, a funny face, an awkward photo, or many other things. The caption is what gets people to laugh though. The caption requires two kinds of knowledge, one being what will make the desired audience laugh, and the other being what will be people's first reaction to the image. The first kind of knowledge is important because memes are short, so wording is crucial. The second kind of knowledge is also important because memes are usually extremely relatable, which is the reason people find them so funny.
For an additional genre generator, I decided that easybib.com could fall into that category. Bibliographies are all very similar and have known conventions, but obviously are always different and have some room for change. By entering in whatever works you used when writing a paper, the site will automatically alphabetize the authors and works as well as put the sources in the correct format for a works cited page, which makes a very tedious task much easier.

PB1A about Instagram

In class we have talked about the word genre, and how it can be applied to so many more things than just genres of music or books. In the present day, social media is becoming increasing popular. Since social media is relatively new, the qualities that characterize each website and app is still in the process of being defined. Instagram is just one of popular forms of social media that has emerged in the last couple years that has developed its own sense of style. Instagram posts is its own genre, and has several of its own conventions. 

The audience intended from an Instagram post is one's own followers, and the purpose of the post is to get those followers to like and/or comment on it. Obviously not all people are just looking for a superficial "like" though, but in general people tend to feel better about an Instagram post where he/she gets more like as opposed to a post where he/she gets fewer likes. There's a sense of personal satisfaction that comes from other people appreciating your post, and this common purpose for likes is present in all Instagram posts. 

Instagram posts also often have witty or clever captions to go along with them, everyone knows a good post has a sweet picture and a killer caption. Sometimes a good caption will make you laugh, other times a good caption is motivational, and there are other types of captions as well. The captions often reflect the intentions of the post. Instagram posts as a genre all commonly have these captions, and these captions are often used to make the picture available to particular genres of people that enjoy similar things through the use of hashtags. For instance, if I posted a picture from a hike I took and added the hashtag "#nature", all people that look up that hashtag could see my photo that normally wouldn't. This is ironic because by using these hashtags, the post is actually being categorized further into its own genre of nature. This is actually a helpful thing though, because by using the appropriate hashtag and finding other people that are interested in taking and viewing pictures of similar things you can also gain more followers and consequently more likes (or at least the potential for more likes).  

The style and the tone of Instagram posts have a little bit more variation in them when compared to the other aspects discussed already. A lot of times an Instagram posts' tone will reflect directly on the vernacular and lifestyle of whoever posted it. When I look at my Instagram for instance, a lot of my friends' captions are inside jokes that are intended for a small group of people from my high school. But just because I mainly follow friends from my hometown, many other Instagram users have followers and follow people that they have never met. There are Instagram pages  intended for sports fans, to display artwork, to showoff photography skills, to inspire others, to show what you did last weekend, etc. 

There are still a couple more things that make an Instagram post unique. Although this is obvious, Instagram is mainly used as a mobile app. Instagram does have an online site where you can log in, see all the pictures that would normally be on your feed, and comment on things as well. However, there is no direct way to post to Instagram online, which is somewhat unique. Instagram has become so popular that it is also used as a way to advertise now, because millions of people around the world use Instagram. 

About me

I'm a freshman from Los Gatos, which is a small town near San Jose in northern California. I was born and originally raised in Italy though, where I lived with my parents for 3 years before they got divorced. I'm a huge sports fan and have been following multiple teams for most of my life. My favorite teams include the Golden State Warriors, San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants, FC Barcelona, and the San Jose Sharks. I love going to watch games live and also watching games just on tv. My favorite sport, and the sport I have played for 16 years, is soccer though. I have played at the most competitive level for kids throughout the world, playing for an academy team and traveling around the globe for games. I'm currently on the club soccer team which is pretty competitive but not as strict and serious as the NCAA team. I really enjoy traveling and seeing different parts of the world and witnessing different cultures. I love being outdoors as well, doing any activity from camping and hiking to mountain bike riding and canoeing. I try and go surfing a couple times a week if possible as well. I am a psych major, and I hope to one day be a clinical therapist for children. It's always been a passion of mine to help others and doing that as a career would be very fulfilling.