Instructor's GuideAdditional Resources for BIAW: There is One Good Style of Writing

Below you can find a list of curated resources related to the bad idea that there is one good style of writing.

According to Anjali Pattanayak in "There is One Correct Way of Writing and Speaking," people consistently lament that kids today can’t speak properly or that people coming to this country need to learn to write correctly. These lamentations are based on the notion that there is a single correct way of speaking and writing. Currently, the general sentiment is that people should just learn to speak and write proper English. This understanding of writing is rooted in current traditional rhetoric, which focuses on a prescriptive and formulaic way of teaching writing that assumes there is only one way to write (or speak) something for it to be correct. However, over the past several decades, scholars in writing studies have examined the ways in which writing has a close dialectical relationship with identity, style, genre, and culture. In other words, the rules for writing shift with the people and the community involved as well as the purpose and type of writing.

According to Laura Lisabeth in "Strunk and White Set the Standard," the kind of writing [they] put forth as good writing is in fact a discourse that limits and excludes, not reflecting the valuable ways English is practiced in local and digital contexts and by a variety of writers from different language traditions. Insistence on the kind of English constructed by The Elements of Style is uninformed at best and...unethical and racist at worst."

Readings

Available right here!

Students' Right to their Own Language (1974)

Strunk and White Elements of Style

Geoffrey Pullman "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice"

Jackie Royster "When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own"

Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur "Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach"

Versharn Ashanti Young "Should Writers Use They Own English?"

Lynn Bloom “Freshman Composition as a Middle-Class Enterprise"

Asao Inoue Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies

Richard Ohmann "Use Definite Specific Concrete Language"

Richard Lanham Revising Prose

Armstrong and Hamilton Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality

Min Zhan Lu "Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone"

Available as ebook or download via UNC Library portal

April Baker Bell Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy

Ian Barnard Upsetting Composition Commonplaces

Anne Beaufort College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction

Available as as actual "hold-it-in-your-hands" book at the UNC Library

Shirley Brice Heath Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms

Brian Street Literacy in Theory and Practice

James Paul Gee Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideologies in Discourse

Richard Lanham Style: An Anti-Textbook

More Open-Access Content!

Writing Spaces

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing is a book series containing peer-reviewed collections of essays—all composed by teachers for students—with each volume freely available for download under a Creative Commons license. Writing Spaces aims to build a library of quality open access textbooks for the writing classroom as an alternative to costly textbooks.

Check out this activity on "Concise Writing Strategies" or this one on "Beyond Transition Words"

Purdue OWL

This online writing lab offers global support through online reference materials and services for creating citations, cover letters, major-specific writing help, and general writing advice. You can find tons of materials related to citation, including power points and sample essays.

Check out this page that specifically addresses style.

Writing Commons

Writing Commons is an award-winning, peer-reviewed encyclopedia on writing. They publish original articles on topics of interest to students and teachers.

Check out this page on style for definitions, guidelines, and recommended readings.

WAC Clearinghouse

This an open-access publishing collaborative that draws on the contributions of more than 200 scholars from six continents. The Clearinghouse publishes articles and books of interest to both the writing-across-the-curriculum community and the larger writing studies community. They also provide a wide range of web-based resources for instructors who wish to use writing in their courses.

Check out this open-access edited collection The Centrality of Style. Lots of cool readings!

Boston University, Teaching Writing

This an online resource connected to Boston University's faculty seminar on linguistic justice. It has an excellent list of resources, readings, videos, and more, all related to linguistic justice.