Information Development World 2015
 

Writing from the Reader's Perspective

Wednesday, September 30 — 9:00am-5:00pm

George Gopen
Professor Emeritus
Practice of Rhetoric
Duke University

This workshop will introduce you to a significantly different way to analyze and control written English. It is based on my discovery that the great majority of clues a reader gets for making sense of prose come not from word choice nor word meaning but rather from the structural location of words: Where a word shows up in a sentence will control most of the use to which it will be put by a reader.  We know where in a sentence to look for the answers to several major questions – questions that are essential to our understanding the sentence the way the writer intended.  Those questions include: What’s going on here? Whose story is this? How does this sentence link backward to the one before it?, and, most importantly... What are the most important words in this sentence – the ones I should be reading with extra emphasis? By the end of the workshop, you should be able to look at an English sentence with new eyes.

About

George D. Gopen is Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Rhetoric at Duke University, where he has held appointments in the Department of English and the Law School for 30 years. He holds both a law degree and a Ph.D. in English from Harvard University, which he achieved simultaneously. His publications include four books and fifty articles. His latest two books (Expectations and The Sense of Structure) explore his "Reader Expectation Approach" to the English language, which is revolutionizing the way in which writing is perceived and taught, both for students and for professionals.