Since I wrote my first entry in the Ethnography Notes, I have started to change the way I write in my log. For one, I have started to use choppier sentences, closer to how I actually speak in real life. This is probably because I have become aware of how I was writing before, and realized that writing formally for a private log is not worth the effort. Aside from that, I am still writing for The Caravel newspaper, with my writing style still unchanged — probably for the better, since people read it to understand the world around them instead of for an exercise in freeing oneself from grammatical limitations and conventions. I think it would also be disrespectful to write about a disaster using slang. On the subject of The Caravel, every article I write goes through at least two phases of editing to iron out any errors and make the writing more concise. I noticed that the editors prefer to split any longer sentences I may have in two instead of using semicolons, even in cases where I already had semicolons. I’m not exactly sure what the purpose of that is, but I think the editors naturally expect someone to read a newspaper article in a more meticulous manner than any other type of writing, so any longer sentences may cause the reader to become fatigued. Regardless, I have had practise with formal and informal writing this week, so this should serve as a good baseline for future ethnography note entries.
