I’m reading Natalie Angier’s 1999 book “Woman: An Intimate Geography”, a review of biological research on women’s bodies that challenge evolutionary explanations for gender stereotypes.  Angier is a journalist who writes science pieces for the New York Times.  I am fascinated by the ease with which she is writing about phenomena as complex as, for example, “apoptosis”:

“The millions of eggs that we women begin with are cleanly destroyed through an innate cell program called apoptosis.  The eggs do not simply die -they commit suicide.  Their membranes ruffle up like petticoats whipped by the wind and they break into the hearts of neighboring cells.  By graciously and melodramatically getting out of the way, the sacrificial eggs leave their sisters plenty of hatching room.  I love the word apoptosis, the onomatopoeia of it: a-POP-tosis.  The eggs pop apart like poked soap bubbles, a brief flash of taut, refracted light and then, ka-ping!”

Scientific terminology explained in everyday language (let’s disregard “onomato-WHAT?”) and imagery in such an engaging way and with a natural authority.  Isn’t this the whole point of WAC/WID?  I often wonder how I can best solve the tension between “Use your own words” and “Learn the disciplinary vocabulary” when I see students use disciplinary terminology in sentences to show that they are aware of its existence, with no evidence of a real understanding of the concepts.  In his well-known piece David Bartholomae talked about our expectations of students to “invent the university”, that is, to adopt the discourses of particular disciplines in which they are writing.  But we want them to do this in a way that shows that they actually grasped the significance of those discourses.  Of course we don’t foolishly expect them all to be Natalie Angier.  But I wonder to what extent we expose students to this kind of “beautiful” scientific writing.  Any examples from the syllabi you are working with?

I have noticed that when students submit typed papers they often only place one space after their periods and before the first word of the next sentence. I have always used two, and as far as I know so has everyone else that I know. I don’t like reading papers where the sentences are smooshed together like that, because it is not what I am used to and at times I find it extremely irritating.

When I’ve mentioned this to students, they tend to act like they have never heard of such a thing. In some cases they say that they were taught specifically to only use one space. A student last week claimed that every teacher tells him something different about it. Are teachers really telling students to only use one space? Have style manuals changed since I learned to type?