Paul Roberts's How To Say Nothing In 500 Words

In the passage “How to Say Nothing in 500 Words” written by Paul Roberts was a very useful piece. Roberts goes on to talk about writers who go on and on in their writing, and they don’t fully address the prompt. He also throws the reader in situations to further explain his reasoning’s, and tells us our thought process throughout the situation. I believe the author’s purpose throughout the story was to inform, he is trying to advance our writing. The tone sounds like informative, he is basically just explaining to us how to explain our words. The audience is other collegiate students, I say this because he uses various situations that college students are actually put in. He also goes on to state his thesis on the second page in the last paragraph.

We do not take the time to properly develop and plan our writing like we should. We need to use his 9 guidelines stick to the prompt and nothing else. Roberts’s introduction is effective because he throws the reader into a relatable situation immediately. Then the reader can but their self into the writers shoes, and draw up their own thoughts and responses to the situation. His essay does indeed support his this, because he goes on to describe how a writer can turn into subject into an interesting one. He also includes how to keep the reader drawn in and also what not to say. Basically he tells the reader to immediately get down to the point of things and to not beat around the bush. Out of all the nine guidelines, the one that I’d say is most relatable to me is the one that says “avoid obvious content”. I say this because I have a very bad tendency to do this a lot. I feel like I have to let the reader know that I actually read the passage, and the way to do that is to restate the main information stated in the passage. However, after reading this passage, I have learned that there are ways to avoid this. Lastly, I find his examples very helpful. I was very unfamiliar with some of his guidelines until he explained them with examples. So as a reader, the examples really helped me fully grasp what he was trying to