Stu, Stu, Studio

The characteristics of selected readings effect how much a student will benefit from them. How easily text is comprehended will effect how much a student learns and how motivated they are to try. Lanham suggests that the shape of text determines its ‘comprehendability’ because: “Shape disciplines thought—shapelessness blurs it/” If text lacks shape, a reader will skim through the words without drawing connections between, loosing the their meaning, Many writers abandon the natural shape of language that people speak with in order to sound how they think a writer should sound.. They use an excess of needless words in which their intended meaning is lost or very vague. Lanham calls this style “pseudo-profundity.” In shapeless bodies of text, it becomes almost impossible to pull out the important points and the main action. The placement of action alone can begin to create shape. It must come in a simple action verb and appear quickly with no long wind-up introductions. (Otherwise it is lost in the sentence.) The piling up of prepositional phrases muddles comprehension because readers get lost in them trying to determine the main focus of the sentence. An excess of “is” forms does the same thing. A sentence’s length and rhythm also create its shape. Lanham suggests reading text out loud to determine whether or not it has any shape. Legal documents are hard to understand because they often have endless shapeless sentences where the subject and verb are hidden in legal verbosity. Parallel sentences have obvious visual shape. The eye helps the mind see the sentence’s pattern. For example “sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.” In sentences like these, the shape embodies its sense and it is easily comprehended.