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Transcripts for Writing Center videos

Engaging Writing: Overview of Tools for Engaging Readers

Last updated 4/19/2016

 

Visual: Walden logo at bottom of screen along with notepad and pencil background.

Audio: Guitar music.

 

Visual: “Walden University Writing Center. Your writing, grammar, and APA experts” appears in center of screen. Background changes to another notebook on a table, with a person sitting behind it, and a bright orange box. “Engaging Writing: Overview of Tools for Engaging Readers?” text appears in center of screen in a orange box. Slide changes a mostly gray slide with a blue box in the center. In the blue box is the following:

“How do we engage our readers?

  • Syntax: The order in which words appear to form a sentence.
  • Sentence Structure: The way phrases and clauses (idea chunks) combine to create a sentence.
  • Punctuation: Commas, Periods, colons, and semicolons

Audio: So we’re going to talk about a few of these tools that we have as writers. The great thing about being a writer is that you have agency to play around with your writing, and you have the freedom to tweak things, to move things around, to best address your audience. So syntax is a great way that we can engage our readers using our sentence structure and also using punctuation. So syntax is just the way that the words appear to form a sentence. It’s usually the grammar behind the sentence and that sort of arrangement of words.

The sentence structure is sort of the combination of groups of words, so if you have different phrases and clauses, these idea chunks, how you put them into the sentence, that’s the sentence structure. And punctuation is all of the mechanics: the commas, the periods, the question marks—everything you would use there. All of these can be used to really engage your readers.

Audio: Guitar music.

 

Visual: “Walden University Writing Center. Questions? E-mail writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu” appears in the center of the screen.