Part 4: Writing to Evaluate Mortimer's Style

The purpose of adding relevant evidence to a paragraph is to

support a point.

Read the beginning of the literary analysis paragraph. The writer has a very accomplished style. His descriptions make the facts more dramatic for the reader. Which sentence would further develop the paragraph by providing evidence to support the point?

The writer repeats the word "deadly" so much that it becomes alarming.

Which sentence uses precise, domain-specific wording?

I liked how the author's use of second-person point of view got my attention.

Read the passage from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England. 1.) It is easy to write the line "people starve to death"; it is much harder to deal with the harsh reality. 2.) But you need to understand this point, if only to see how little choice you might have in what you eat. 3.) The itinerant poor might literally die in the street. In what way is the second sentence effective?

It emphasizes why this passage is important to the reader personally.

Read the passage from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England. There are no roads across this wasteland, only track ways. Elizabethans see it as good for nothing but pasture, tin mining, and the steady water supply it provides by way of the rivers that rise there. Many people are afraid of such moors and forests. They are "the ruthless, vast and gloomy woods . . . by nature made for murders and for rapes," as Shakespeare writes in Titus Andronicus. Certainly no one will think of Dartmoor as beautiful. Sixteenth-century artists paint wealthy people, prosperous cities, and food, not landscapes. What is the effect of the author's word choice in the passage?

It supports the author's purpose of challenging the image of the romantic countryside.

At what point should a writer introduce evidence in a paragraph?

after making a point

Read the passage from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England. Perhaps the most difficult thing to come to terms with is the scale of death. Influenza, for example, is an affliction which you no doubt have come across. However, you have never encountered anything like Elizabethan flu. It arrives in December 1557 and lasts for eighteen months. In the ten-month period August 1558 to May 1559 the annual death rate almost trebles to 7.2 percent (normally it is 2.5 percent). More than 150,000 people die from it—5 percent of the population. This is proportionally much worse than the great influenza pandemic of 1918-19 (0.53 percent mortality). The evidence in the passage is strong because it

is relevant to the topic.

When a reader evaluates an author's style, the reader

judges it in a careful and thoughtful way.

Read the sentence. The playwright created a tragedy with nice characterizations. Which underlined word would be the best to replace in order to create more precise wording?

nice

To analyze an author's style, which elements should the reader identify? Check all that apply.

point of view tone word choice