Author: metbaseball

Overgeneralization in Writing

Posted on by metbaseball

Writing is about more than slapping words onto a page or screen. It’s about creating logically connected content that’s not victimized by logic errors.

One logic error that can befall text is overgeneralization, the expansion of too few instances to many in a manner difficult to justify. For example: If, after eating a Red Delicious apple for the first time, someone said, “All apples are red,” he would be making an overgeneralization. The statement was made based on insufficient evidence to support it. In contrast, if a high school baseball player who hit below .200 for three straight years says that “I’m not a very good hitter,” he is not making an overgeneralization. He’s reached a conclusion based on sufficient, factual evidence. He’s made a generalization.

Here’s another example of an overgeneralization. This season, the Mets have won only four of their first eleven games. If, based on that, someone states that in 2011 the Mets will lose more games than they’ll win, he’s making an generalization. The evidence is insufficient to support that claim.

A key factor in determining whether a statement is a generalization or an overgeneralization is the validity and sufficiency of the supporting evidence.

Why is Jose Reyes batting lead-off?

Posted on by metbaseball

In yesterday’s Sun-Ledger, Conor Orr quotes the Mets Jose Reyes as saying that “I don’t go to home plate looking for a walk, I go there looking to swing the bat.” Given that Reyes is batting lead-off for the Mets, he should be going to the plate to get on base. The fact that he’s not doing that explains why his on-base percentage (OBP) last season was only .321. That stat placed him in a three-way tie for the 110th spot in the MLB OBP rankings. Even Carlos Pena, who hit only .196, had a higher OBP than Reyes.

Coherence: Synonyms and Pronouns

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In addition to using a repeating word to effect sentence coherence, a writer can also use synonyms, pronouns, and repeating ideas.

Example:

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Brooklyn and Staten Island, was once the world’s longest suspension bridge. Its main span is 4,260 feet long. Verrazano-Narrows lost that title in 1981 to England’s Humber Bridge: Humber’s main span is 4,626 feet long. Since 1981, four other arches have been built that are even longer than Humber’s. Two of them are in China, but the longest one is in Japan. It’s the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, which is about 1,300 feet longer than the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

In the above paragraph, sentences are connected by

  • repeating “bridge”
  • using synonyms for bridge (span, arch)
  • using the names of bridges (Verrazano-NarrowsHumber, Akashi Kaikyo)
  • using a year (1981)
  • using pronouns (them, one, it)
  • revealing a bridge’s length (4,260′, 4,626′, and 1,300′ longer)

In addition, notice how the sample paragraph begins and ends with the same noun phrase (the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge). That’s a means of increasing a paragraph’s internal coherence.

Question: How else are the example’s sentences “coherently connected”?

More on Coherence

Posted on by metbaseball

In this post, a published paragraph’s coherence will be analyzed. The paragraph is from page 13 of The Twilight Warriors by Robert Gandt, an excellent book about the fight for Okinawa during the Second World War. The numbers in parentheses are not in the original. (Pasco was a naval air station used to train aviators in a town with the same name.)

(1) Flying was the only thing the cadets liked about Pasco. (2) The remote base was enclosed with a galvanized wire fence. (3) There was nothing there but a few two-story barracks for the cadets and for the enlisted men who worked on the yellow-painted Stearmans. (4) The town of Pasco had no bars, no entertainment, and, worst of all, no available women. (5) The closest real town was Yakima, a two-hour bus ride away, but the cadets had learned that Yakima wasn’t much of an improvement over Pasco.

Coherence Analysis

  1. This sentence comments on flying at Pasco.
  2. By substituting “remote base” for “Pasco” and then describing an aspect of it, the author connects sentences 1 and 2.
  3. The second “there” in “There was nothing there” is used as a fill-in for Pasco: it’s a pronoun functioning as an adverbial. Sentence 3 provides more details about the base.
  4. “The town of Pasco” is this sentence’s connector given that the air station name starts with “Pasco.”
  5. This sentence contains two connectors. The first is “closest real town,” which connects with sentence 4’s “town.” The second is “Pasco.”

Gandt’s paragraph is an excellent example of how to effect coherence within a paragraph.