On Writing
I remember being in office hours one time and asking a Professor how I could write better. He told me to focus on writing one beautiful sentence after another. I rember being unsure of how to respond to that advice.
I am not a particularly good writer. I can recognize good writing and have a strong appreciation of good writing, but I’m a JV writer myself – maybe a Freshman. To write well you need to (1) know what you think and (2) think carefully about how best to present your thoughts to the audience. I struggle with both of these points.
In this class, I won’t teach you how to write. I won’t be up at the chalk board discussing prepositional phrases or the like. Instead, we’ll read articles from people who know how to write, and then discuss them. It will be very informal and wide ranging. What did you like? What did you not like? How would you have written it different? We’ll read articles from Matt Levine of Bloomberg, Harvard’s own Jill Lepore (who also writes for The New Yorker).
How to Write for this Class (except not actually THIS class)
The first piece I’d like us to read is this short note by Jill Lepore on how to write for her history class. Jill is a Professor of History at Harvard.
