English 201 Wendt – Makeover “Exam” 1 – 25 points
Below are three paragraphs that are not (necessarily) incorrect but are wordy and poorly structured, lack style, and are boring to read. Please choose one of these paragraphs, copy it, and paste it into a new Word document. Then I would like you to re-write this paragraph but make it yours: unique, interesting, and a pleasure to read. The topics do not lend well to lots of stylistic flair, so this is a challenge for you to maintain the integrity of the information while writing in a strong voice with excellent diction. When you are done, please save your document as lastname-makeover.doc and ask for my thumb drive, where you will save it in Fall 2010 > ENG 201f10.
Makover Option One
Many marketers put customers to work. This represents a saving. The work used to be done by employees, and they had to be paid. Customers carry merchandise home themselves. They use their own cars and pick up appliances and furniture and even building supplies, and these things used to be delivered. Customers serve themselves in groceries and restaurants. They are their own tellers in banks. They assemble barbecues and toys and pump gas. Many items are now sold by mail. More every year are sold over the Internet. This saves merchandisers even more. Customers serve themselves in these transactions. They supply their own sales pitch. They fill in their own order forms. They provide their own store settings. They pay for delivery. The merchandiser’s role is reduced. The merchandiser merely links customers and suppliers.
Makover Option Two
Human beings desire to have everything their own way was remarked on by Freud. Darwin has light to shed on this trait. Gluttony, lust, greed, and anger could help early humans survive. More food might help a person survive and reproduce. The tendency to hoard food for oneself and one’s relatives would be encouraged by natural selection. Whether the food was gained honestly would not matter. Natural selection might favor those willing to fight. They could cow others. They could monopolize resources. They could attract mates. Now guns and knives make it easy to do more damage to others. The old impulses still survive. Infidelity is adaptive. Males spread their genes around. Protection and access to more providers are benefits for females. Creatures strive for evolutionary advantage. Passing your genes to as many of the next generation as possible is evolutionary advantage. Early humans lived in tougher times. Altruistic behavior is something we can afford. They couldn’t. Many of the traits of the evolutionary winners have been passed to us. Saint Augustine knew a lot in the 5th century. He didn’t have a Darwinian explanation. Our corrupt nature was “already present in the seed from which we were to spring.” This was said by Augustine.