Writing Well, by Donald Hall, is an amazingly interesting textbook. I cannot remember reading an instructional manual with such brilliant imagery, flowing style, and amazing concepts. This is what education should be – interesting, provocative, and natural. However, in the first eleven pages of the text, I do not agree with two of the three analyses of Hall’s examples. In the comparison of the college student’s two expressions of his first impression of his …showed first 75 words of 703 total…

…showed last 75 words of 703 total…can pick out errors and solecisms in a paper with ease. Despite these skills, something in my writing is lacking. Every time I look at one of the papers that I have written, I see a boring piece of writing that I could have pulled off impromptu in little more than a 45-minute class period. I hope that by studying Donald Hall’s teachings, I will learn to make my writing more interesting and useful.