GROUP 2 Collaborative Journal 1

Katherine Kurtis, Joseph Ferrin, Jessica Curatolo, Robert Castle

ENC 1145

1.27.15

Collaborative Journal 1

            All three of these texts that try to define everyday writing, agree that it is mundane, boring, and really common. Because of this they view everyday writing as able to be discarded. It doesn’t necessarily need to be ignored, but it also isn’t so special that it has to be kept and remembered forever. They try to show how everyday writing is boring through the mediums of writing that they think should be the definition of everyday writing. Lyons uses “home writing” as his definition, which includes letters, grocery lists, postcards, and he discusses how it has a historical connection. Lillis has a more all-encompassing definition of everyday writing, but he adds government papers, medical documents, resumes, and work related writing. Gilan uses postcards to get his point across.

I think they would all agree that all types of everyday writing serve different social functions. This is shown in the wide range of writings they think are everyday writing. Letters, and postcards help us to communicate. Lists help us remember. Work related writings allow us to delegate and manage. Government papers allow us to have a structure, and medical documents give explain our issues so that they can be understood.

As a group we disagreed with Lillis the most. We agree with all of them that everyday writing is mundane, but we disagree with Lillis’s definition. We thought government documents and medical documents were interesting and not boring, as well as too formal to be considered everyday. As a group we came up with the definition of everyday writing as “home writing”. Meaning things that come out of the house, or in other words, writing that is done without having to think and structure too much and is done comfortably. We don’t mean to say that it has to come literally from the house. A letter written at a coffee bar is just as much “home writing” to us as is a letter that was written lying on your stomach on your bed.

These discrepancies in the definition of everyday writing are the differences between the three writers. Another difference is that Lillis uses charts and graphs to back up his argument, and Gilan uses postcards from Europe, which gives way to some cultural differences from America in the everyday writing. They are all similar in their ranking of everyday writing on an excitement scale from 1-10. Which would be about a 2.