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Vinson Lin

Writing 2

From an Academic Article to a Blog

Anyone with a computer and access to the internet can create a blog and amass their own

audience. Blogs can be scholarly and written by a group of professionals or they can be informal

and run by an individual who just wants to share their thoughts online. I chose to translate Austin

Frakt and Aaron Carroll’s academic article “The Quality Imperative: A Commentary on the U.S.

Healthcare System” into a blog written in a less professional and more conversational style. In

the authors’ original article they present the problems that plague U.S. government healthcare

and what solutions there are. In my “blog post” I have taken their main ideas and synthesized it

into a shorter essay intended to be easily read by the general public.

Although blogs and scholarly articles can be structured similarly, I still had to pick and

choose which elements of the article were most important to implement into the blog. I found

that the main purpose of the article was to explain that healthcare reform was a necessity and

propose a solution to fix cost inefficiencies. By building off this main idea, I started out the blog

by stating U.S. healthcare was failing in order to set the stage for the necessity of reform. Next, I

explained what one of the main issues are with government medicine, which is cost ineffective

treatments. Lastly, I explain problems that the government faces when trying to fix these issues

and I conclude with a statement that says what could be done in the future. The blog models its

paragraphs after the different sections of the article. I thought it was best to translate the two

genres this way because it seamlessly conveyed the essence of the original article. Although the

structure of the two genres are strikingly similar, I still omitted large chunks of the article

because I thought it wasn’t crucial for understanding the main purpose or it didn’t apply to the
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audience of a blog. For example, I decided to remove most of the technical terminology and

some smaller details about the Affordable Care Act. I also decided to replace some of the graphs

used in the article with one I found online. The new graph I chose still builds off the points made

in the article, however it is easier to understand.

I picture the audience of my blog to be anyone who has some interest in learning about

U.S. healthcare reform. Reading a blog about this topic rather than a scholarly article is

beneficial if the reader is not particularly knowledgeable about the subject. Typically, published

peer-reviewed articles use technical terms and can be difficult for non-professionals to

understand without any background research. On the other hand, blogs reach out to a wider

audience of varying educational levels. When I wrote the blog I shortened the length of the

original article and used less technical terms in order to appeal to an audience that isn’t in the

medical field. I envision the blog I created as a part of a blogging site covering medical care as a

whole, which I run independently. I expect a majority of my intended audience would find my

writing through google searches which means that anyone with an interest about this topic can

consume the readings on my blog. I also took inspiration from real government healthcare

blogging sites such as The Health Care Blog which allows enthusiastic readers to engage with

writers by leaving comments below the blog. By replicating this convention of blogging sites, I

added comments at the end of my blog which both praise and challenge certain points. By doing

this I hope to show that a genre of a blog will allow the audience to contribute their own thoughts

as opposed to an academic article which harnesses a lot less feedback from the general public.

Blogs tend to be a very broad genre because the substantive and stylistic characteristics

can vary depending on who the author is and what they are writing about. In Elizabeth Wardle

and Doug Down’s ​Writing on Writing​ they explain that genres are like maps because “they
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change across time and for different purposes. But like maps, they aren’t rigid and

formulaic”(36). I believe Wardle and Down’s definition of genres agrees with my statement of

blogs being a broad genre which means I was able to have some flexibility on my stylistic

characteristics. My interpretation of this particular blog is to have a writing style that is friendlier

and more casual than the article while maintaining a sense of formality. Frakt and Carroll’s

article used sophisticated language and technical vocabulary such as “suppressing arrhythmias

post-myocardial infarction” which could drive away an average reader. By keeping the audience

in mind, I changed the style of writing to something less complex, something that would keep a

casual reader engaged in this topic. Nonetheless, I still wanted to keep a tone of professionalism

because government healthcare should be taken seriously and I want the blog to come off as

credible. Although I left out verbose language and most medical terminology, I left in some

specific details and examples in order to build off the main purpose of the original article. In

doing this, I believe that the diction I used allowed for a fluid translation from an academic piece

to a blog and for my writing to appeal to my audience of casual readers.

By choosing to translate an academic essay into a blog, I think it highlights one of the

main points of the article which is to spread the idea that healthcare reform “is an imperative”.

Blogs can have a greater impact on influencing the general public because the style of its writing

invites people to engage with the topic even without extensive background knowledge.

Furthermore, I thought the translation would highlight the similarities in structure that blogs and

academics articles can have. I viewed my blog post as a simpler version of an academic article.

However, the simplicity of a blog does lose some of the specific details and expert analysis

contained in an article.
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While creating the blog, I came across major obstacles like keeping the main purpose of

the article while writing for a new audience. I am not an expert in the medical field so trying to

understand the academic article and turning it’s main ideas into a blog was difficult. By putting

myself in the authors’ perspective, I could decipher their intentions for writing the article. I

believe they wanted to emphasize that healthcare reform must begin immediately and drastically

because the authors opened and closed the article by saying healthcare reform was imperative. I

replicated this urgency by adding some facts used in the article detailing the severity of problems

with U.S. government healthcare. Another obstacle I faced was trying to show in my writing that

I had a completely different audience. Genres, as explained by Lisa Bickmore, are “built into the

settings” (Bickmore) in order for writing to fit into a certain context or audience. In my

perspective, the setting of a blog is completely online where people share their ideas. From this

setting I saw the audience as adults trying to get some basic knowledge of the subject. After I

figured out my general audience, I decided to drastically reduce the length of the text so that the

blog post would become a “quick read”.

By doing my own genre translation I have grown a greater appreciation for writing in

general. Originally in high school the structure of the class would be the same every year, read a

book then write an essay on one of the four prompts. Doing an assignment like this genre

translation is unique because when I wrote in the new genre I was able to write without having to

cite sources or worry about analysis. Additionally, I understand the importance of writing in

different genres. An academic article typically draws in a narrow audience of experts in a

particular field. However, a more streamlined genre could draw in more attention from bigger

audiences which is important for topics like government healthcare, where the general public

needs to be involved in order to see massive political reform.


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References

1. Frakt, Austin and Aaron Carroll. “The Quality Imperative: A Commentary on the U.S.
Healthcare System” ​American Journal of Preventive Medicine,​ Jan. 2013.

2. Squires, David and Chloe Anderson. “U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective:
Commonwealth Fund.” ​Spending, Use of Services, Prices, and Health in 13 Countries​, 8
Oct. 2015.

3. Wardle, Elizabeth. ​Writing about Writing.​ Boston, Bedford/St. Martin's, Sept. 2019.

4. Bickmore, Lisa. “Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical


(Eco)systems” ​Pressbook​, 2018.

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