Question 1

The “Punctuation and Professionalism” video this week ended with a recommendation from longtime editor Harold Evans.

“We should respect grammatical rules that make for clarity, but never be scared to ______ rules that seem not to.”

Fill in the missing word.

Question 2

The materials mentioned two concepts that might help us navigate the tricky balance between showing and telling. One of those concepts is “summary.” The other is?

Question 3

Which of these quotations best describes the dual set of skills needed to become good at both “showing” and “telling,” of zooming in close and also taking a more big-picture view?

“Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves." --Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (2009)

“The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.” --Freeman Dyson, “Freeman Dyson: Mathematician, Physicist, Writer” (1994)

“Most people who encountered [Justice] Louis Brandeis were of a different view. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes described him as a ‘master of both microscope and telescope.’” --Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “From Benjamin to Brandeis to Breyer: Is There a Jewish Seat on the United States Supreme Court” (2003)

“‘Cornel,’ I said, after introducing myself, ‘I’m making my way around the state visiting all the good folks’—when you campaign in Montana, it’s ‘folks,’ not ‘people’ or ‘persons,’ folks, folks, folks, and more folks.” --Thomas McGuane, “Wide Spot” (2019)

Question 4

Here is a passage from the “Show and Tell” reading.

“You need the occasional summary not just to move things along but also to turn individual incidents into a more coherent whole. A summary provides ________. It identifies patterns, organizes data, and imposes much-needed structure. Without summaries, you’ll just have a collage of images and ideas."

Fill in the blank.

Question 5

The Punctuation and Professionalism materials this week included a reminder about conjunctions that can inform whether to deviate from certain common conventions in a particular sentence. Identify that reminder below.

Question 6

The “Note on Nuance” segment this week was a little different. Instead of focusing on one move and many different authors, we focused on one author and many different moves.

Name the author.

Question 7

In Our Man: Richard Holbrook and the End of the American Century , George Packer includes the following sentence when describing the relationship Holbrook, an accomplished diplomat and author, had with the members of his staff.

He took a keen interest in their careers and lives, _____ was dating ______.

Using your knowledge of the difference between “who” and “whom,” choose the proper way to end that sentence.

Question 8

“As a rule,” writes Rudolf Flesch in The Art of Readable Writing , “you should never stay at the abstract level for long; as soon as you get there, turn around and plunge again into the down-to-earth world of people and things. This ‘up and down’ writing is the only protection against misunderstanding.”

The “up and down” approach Flesch describes is very similar to our __________ approach.

Question 9

The “Show and Tell” reading included writing advice from Judge Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. It was based on a strategy she learned doing high school debate: “Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em; tell them; then tell them what you’ve told them.”

The structure of that advice is essentially ___________.

Question 10

The “Show and Tell” reading mentioned a letter from a famous Russian writer to his brother, Alexander. The letter included the following suggestion about the importance of being concrete and specific.

“In descriptions of nature, one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you’ll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball.”

Identify the Russian writer.