ASSEMBLIES OF GOD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Reading Reflection Report

For

PTH/MCC 556 Field Education Research Project

This is to certify that I have read the following:

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White

105
(Book Title) (# of Pages Read)

What were the four major issues in the book that were of most interest to you?

1. I like the idea of logic and how grammar creates signs and symbols that create meaning.
Grammar is like the skeleton that gives structure to the “flesh” of meaning and
significance. I resonated with the logical structure of the paragraph. That a paragraph
can contain a unit of meaning, a topic, and convey that meaning through some medium
is absolutely fascinating to me. 1
2. Another fascinating aspect of this book is found in the way it explains how important
commonplace things are, like commas and voice, to the proper conveyance of meaning
in the English language. An inference naturally flows from this: for anyone who is an
English speaker by birth, meaning will most powerfully be received in that language. So,
as a result of this, pastors should know the grammar of the English language so that
they can understand, more deeply, the structure of language itself.2
3. The idea that the paragraph is the best way to convey meaning is fascinating in and of
itself. Adding more detail to that structure adds more depth to our understanding of
what makes “meaning”, well, meaning. Part of conveying meaning is the process of
structuring the written paragraph in such a way as to be effective in its goal, which is to
convey the significance and relations between what is written in signs and symbols and
the actual decoding and interpreting of that data in mind. Part of what it takes to
convey significance well in the medium of written language is to repeat the key
information and the beginning and end of each “packet” of information. 3 This allows the
human mind to grasp it well, at least the human mind whose birth tongue is English.
Under the current limitations of this assignment, not much more can be said about this,
except that further exploration could be a worthwhile future goal.
1
William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999), 12.
2
Strunk and White, 3–10.
3
Strunk and White, 14–17.
 4. I loved the way the book showed the structure of a paragraph and the variety of ways
you can use words in between the topic sentence and the rest of the paragraph,
including its ending topical sentence.4 This is extremely helpful in understanding how a
paragraph should fit together around a single idea.

Signed: Josh Burtram Date:

2/20/24

4
Strunk and White, 15.