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ERIC Number: EJ751712
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2006-Jun
Pages: 47
Abstractor: Author
Reference Count: 57
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0010-096X
The Music of Form: Rethinking Organization in Writing
Elbow, Peter
College Composition and Communication, v57 n4 p620-666 Jun 2006
Written words are laid out in space and exist on the page all at once, but a reader can only read a few words at a time. For readers, written words are trapped in the medium of time. So how can we best organize writing for readers? Traditional techniques of organization tend to stress the arrangement of parts in space and certain metadiscoursal techniques that compensate for the problem of time. In contrast, I'll describe five ways to organize written language that "harness" or bind time. In effect, I'm exploring form as a source of energy. More broadly, I'm implying that our concept itself of "organization" is biased toward a picture of how objects are organized in space and neglects the story of how events are organized in time. (Contains 2 figures and 13 notes.)
National Council of Teachers of English. 1111 West Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096. Tel: 877-369-6283; Tel: 217-328-3870; Web site: http://www.ncte.org/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A