Start by reading and following these instructions: 1. Quickly skim the questions or assignments below and the assignment rubric to help you focus. 2. Read the required chapter(s) of the textbook and a
of their audiences, realizing that som e m ay prefer the use of singular they as in “Jam ie called m e and I calledthem back.” Others prefer to use an alternate gender-neutral pronoun such as ze or zir. Linguist Peter
Sm agorinsky notes that it was only several decades ago that wom en, tired of having to be either Mrs. or Miss,
coined the title Ms. It took som e tim e, but eventually caught on:
It m ay w ell be that “ze” and “zir” w ill replace current pronouns over tim e. For those w ho reject “they” as
gram m atically im proper w hile also recognizing that “he” and “she” are inadequate, it m ay becom e a
reasonable developm ent.
And of course, still others are just fine with the traditional he or she. The im portant point for writers and speakers
is to be sensitive to these differences and to choose term s appropriately.
Y ou w ill w ant to be careful, as A nnette V ee is, w ith the use of jargon, the special
vocabulary of m em bers of a profession, trade, or field. A lthough jargon serves as
shorthand for experts, it can alienate readers w ho don’t recognize technical w ords or
acronym s.
A nother verbal key to an argum ent’s style is its control of connotation, the associations
that surround m any w ords. C onsider the straightforw ard connotative differences am ong
the follow ing three statem ents:
Students from the Labor A ction Com m ittee (LA C) carried out a hunger strike to call
attention to the below -m inim um w ages that are being paid to cam pus tem porary
w orkers, saying, “T he university m ust pay a living w age to all its w orkers.”
Left-w ing agitators and radicals tried to use self-induced starvation to stam pede the
university into caving in to their dem ands.
Cham pions of hum an rights put their bodies on the line to protest the university’s
tightfisted policy of paying tem porary w orkers scandalously low w ages.
The style of the first sentence is the m ost neutral, presenting facts and offering a quotation
from one of the students. The second sentence uses loaded term s like agitators, radicals,
and stam pede to create a negative im age of this event, w hile the final sentence uses other
loaded w ords to create a positive view . A s these exam ples dem onstrate, the w ords you
choose can change everything about a sentence.
W atch how Jason C ollins, the first openly gay N B A star (see im age here), uses the
