I am so appreciative of Martha's recent posting about my republication of the essays of Francis Christensen, called "Notes toward a New Rhetoric." For those of you who are not familiar with his work, or who would like a refresher, below is a link to one of the essays that Martha specifically mentioned: "A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence." In it Christensen defines his four central principles of mature style: addition, direction of movement, texture, and levels of generality. He also introduces his very powerful numbering system for illustrating the interplay of the free modifiers, a system that can be taught to students from middle school through graduate school. I like to tell my high school kids that the eight most important free modifiers are like the notes of an octave in music, and with them they can produce a symphony of writing.
www.booklocker.com/pdf/3213s.pdf
I hope you enjoy it.
--
Don Stewart
Write for College
______________________
Keeper of the memory and method
of Dr. Francis Christensen
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