2. "The Phemenology of error"

Joseph Williams' article addresses the notion of error in writing and furthermore criticizes the trend of educational systems to focus on error avoidance rather than on the communication of ideas.  Williams notes that when someone reads something with an eye for so called error, they tend to miss the actual content of the literature.  He goes on to claim that this is what most writing teachers seem to do and this results in students receiving less feedback about their accomplishments relative to the feedback they receive about their mistakes.  Because of this, the modern educated public reacts to unimportant mistakes with great disdain.  Having to endure this disdainful criticism of inevitable err both from reflection and exterior review often serves as a roadblock for inspiration.

He goes on to stress the relative nature of language with regards to what types of errors are worth complaint.  Some people find certain errors to be greatly crippling to a given slice of prose, while other people might see the same errors as not being errors at all.  He also stresses the point that everyone errs due to the fallibility of human nature.  He cites numerous examples of errors which had gone unnoticed in the very texts which denote what qualifies as a written error.  The point he is trying to make here is that errors are simply not that important of a concern when the text they appear in effectively conveys it's message.  To really illustrate this, Williams points out that he had intentionally inserted over 100 errors in this very article.  Most readers don't think to look for these just because the text is published and presumably carefully edited and as it were, these errors didn't get in the way of Williams' ability to convey his message.

1. "Writing Experiences"

I've always thought of writing as among the more straightforward means of recorded communication.  I do seem to think in words for the most part, so picking amongst those words and simply throwing them, in written form, at whoever chooses to make themselves my audience is a relatively effective and predictable way to put those thought-words and their conceptual connotations into my audience's considerations.  While I'm very interested in stepping past the constrictions of a coded language as an artistic or communicative medium, it has come in handy for the purposes of structuring my thoughts in order to more successfully capture them through other more novel and dynamic media.  I tend to take part in some degree of organizational writing exercise before every more final artistic effort regardless of media.
My majors here at Ohio university are philosophy and psychology.  Being a philosophy major has put me through several classes where I had to write quite a bit.  Writing philosophically requires much attention to the logical implications of everything said.  I took a class last spring in the philosophy of language which addressed many issues in linguistic communication which lead to confusion.  It seems like a lot of disagreement stems from confusions in language and I've never been much of a fan of disagreement.  I don't really think that there is any reason for most discussions to become arguments.  People have a lot to learn from each-others viewpoints. Logically structured writing is a great way for people to get their viewpoints out there so that others can clearly understand what about their opinions are in conflict.  As it were, writing with that degree of analytical attention to the logical connotations of everything I say has been great practice for clearly presenting my ideas in more subjective forms of writing.  Writing for this class should be a good opportunity to practice writing in some slightly different styles than the very concise and analytically structured style that I've come closer to adopting for my philosophical writings.