2018 - Spring

A Person on the Page

Course Number: JOUR-GA 1231.001

Day & Time: Tuesday, 2:00pm-5:40pm

Location: Room 652

This is a writing class, the point of which is to improve your skill, your thinking and maybe even your imagination in writing about what most people like most to read about: Other people. We’ll be reading and writing in a variety of forms, some that you might very well be called on to write in as a professional journalist and others that are less journalistic but can be instructive about how character is revealed in prose. We’ll be talking about practical matters like how to interview a subject when you don’t have much time (or even when you do) or how to write about yourself with honesty and without self-consciousness; and more abstract issues such as: What do we mean by a writer’s voice? We will speak weekly about clarity — about saying exactly what you mean, avoiding fuzzy language, selecting precise words, and, yes, writing grammatically correct sentences and punctuating properly. You will hear me say this again and again: If you want to get a job in journalism, know your grammar, check your spelling (especially proper names) and be able to choose among commas, semi-colons, colons and periods.