Natasha Athey

Self-Analysis Peer Draft

9/12/14
My writing style has developed in a unique way over the course of my life. When I was
very young, my mother taught me to read using a mixed curriculum made up of Hooked on
Phonics and A Beka books. My family has never paid for television, so the only channel we got
consistently was the Public Broadcasting Service, and we would watch shows from the block of
time that they reserved for kids programming. I remember learning with Big Bird, seeing Arthur
work out what seemed to my brother and me to be complex social situations, and getting to
watch Power Rangers and sometimes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Saturday mornings. Add
these things to the fact that I did not enter public school until I was seven, and you can see why
I had a different writing background than most people in America. From this base of education,
I kept certain elements of writing that I grew up with or didnt understand too well in my
writing, sometimes inadvertently, that are still prevalent in adulthood.
One example of something I do regularly is that I tend to take a while to get started on
writing a paper, and I also like to work on my paper in big chunks, instead of working on it in
intervals. In fact, I usually just sit down and write my whole paper all at once. Sometimes, this
can get me into procrastinating trouble, as you can imagine! For instance, my senior project
research paper was mandated to have twenty pages. Well, I pretty much wrote fifty percent of
that paper in one day, with minimal breaks. The amount of time that I would have spent on that
paper while working in short chunks would have been more than the amount of time that I put
into the paper in a couple of tries. As a result, I believe that my papers tend to flow well, and
dont seem to be made up of little chunks.

Natasha Athey
Self-Analysis Peer Draft
9/12/14
When writing about politically charged issues, I tend to use language that explores the
issue rather than assert my own opinion on the issue. I believe this is because from the time I
was about eight years old I was raised in a very politically conservative household and
hometown. My own political views have grown and changed since then, but having that
politically charged childhood has made me sensitive to the ways that rhetoric, used wrongly,
can hurt understanding and prohibit the growth of knowledge. As a result, I try and write about
politically charged issues in a way that allows the reader to form their own opinions and gives
way to greater thought. However, I have deviated from this stance once, when I purposefully
wrote a research and rhetoric paper on the issue of abortion. I wrote this paper for my junior
year AP Language class, and it ended up being fifteen pages long! I took a strong stance in that
paper, and while I deviated from my held intentions to give way to greater thinking, I am
grateful that I was given the opportunity to write that sort of a paper.
One of the things that I have trouble with is my use of quotation marks for things that
dont need quotation marks. For instance, one particular way that I use quotation marks
incorrectly is when I try to denote common words in a context outside of their original
definition. I think this is because a lot of what I read is from newspapers, magazines, and
articles online. A great example of my misuse of quotation marks is found in this excerpt from
an essay that I wrote for an American history class:
The New Woman did not have much more political power than her old
counterparts, as womens political influence was repressed by the male domination of parties,

Natasha Athey
Self-Analysis Peer Draft
9/12/14
inexperience in voting, and the fact that there were not many female candidates for political
office at any level. The New Woman, while she did not have much more political power than
the women of older generations, at least started the movement toward greater and more
effective womens participation in government and legislation.
I look at the words old and she in quotation marks in the paragraph. Looking back at
it now, I see that I didnt need to put that word in quotation marks, but at the time I think I was
trying to be sensitive to the fact that nuances I may try to write in my writings may not come
through to reader. I now realize that using quotation marks does not help in that regard, but I
still have trouble sometimes recognizing when it is appropriate to do this (for example, I have
seen examples of this in newspapers) and when it is not appropriate to use quotation marks in
this regard. I think I still tend to err on the side of caution, but I think that I will try to work on
using quotation marks solely in their proper way as I develop as a writer.
Another quirk of mine is that I use the Oxford comma, while many American-style
writings do not use the Oxford comma. Take this sentence from the same American history
essay referenced above:
As a working woman, the flapper participated in the growing consumer culture by
buying lipstick and rouge, and dressing in the latest fashions of the day: short skirts, drop
waists, bare arms, and scandalously forgoing wearing petticoats.

Natasha Athey
Self-Analysis Peer Draft
9/12/14
As you can see, I use the Oxford comma in this list: short skirts, drop waists, bare arms,
and scandalously forgoing wearing petticoats. I dont necessarily think that not using the
Oxford comma is a bad thing, but using the Oxford comma makes sense to me, especially in
context with this well-known example: We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin. Without the
Oxford comma, that example would read: We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin. Im pretty
sure neither JFK nor Stalin were strippers, so to clear up any confusion, I always use the Oxford
comma.
One final thing that I notice about myself as I write my papers is that I do not stop typing
often to check my entire paper. I may do that once or twice to remember the feel of the paper
and direction in which I am trying to make it go, but I like to revise and edit as I go along, as
many other students in this class do as well. For instance, if a word becomes underlined as a
misspelled word, I will quickly fix it mid-thought and then continue on with my sentence. This
doesnt mean I dont check for mistakes at the end, however; I usually read over my paper once
or twice before submitting it. That being said, I believe that I am very good at grammar anyway,
so there are usually minimal, if any, grammatical mistakes to correct.
My unique writing style, made up of little quirks, remnants from how I first learned
English, and elements that I never understood very well, makes a paper of mine stand out from
the crowd, I think. Of course, over the years my uniqueness has been tamed by the public
education system, but I think I could still pick out a paper of mine solely by the writing style it

Natasha Athey
Self-Analysis Peer Draft
9/12/14
uses. In conclusion, I believe that my writing style is unique, and I am constantly learning how
to better my writing while keeping a unique quality of mine.