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Subject:Passage To Literacy From:Wayne Douglass <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 24 Jun 1997 09:47:33 -0700
Here's a passage for anyone who wants to devise a test to see if tech
writing candidates have any sense of language. The passage is academic
rather than technical, which may make it inappropriate for this forum.
However, its fundamental error is all the more amazing since it comes from
the pen of a "director of first-year composition," who edited this
particular issue of a film journal to which I subscribe. As Janet Gelb can
testify, *everybody* needs an editor. I hate to steal Arlen's tag line, but
have fun.
"Literacy," according to Robert Pattison in _On Literacy_ (1984), "is a
combination of variables--individual and cultural awareness of language and
the interplay of this awareness with the means of expression." (7)
"Interplay" is a particularly evocative verb here; it stresses the active
nature of literacy, literacy as "doing."
--Wayne
----------------------------------------------
Wayne Douglass phone: 408-542-2139
Verity, Inc. FAX: 408-542-2040
894 Ross Road mailto: wayned -at- verity -dot- com
Sunnyvale, CA 94089 http://www.verity.com
"Connecting People With Information"
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