Camellia, W14, Topic Selection

Hello again everyone!

For the past week, I have been listening to many different podcasts and I have decided that I definitely want to emulate Grammar Girl.  As I stated in last week’s blog post, editing is a passion of mine so I always try to be aware of the many different grammar rules.  I believe that it is important to adhere to grammar rules because it allows the writing to be professional and comprehensible to the readers.  I am intrigued with anything grammar-related, so I can’t wait to create a 15 minute podcast all about grammar.

I also plan to emulate the style of Grammar Girl.  In each episode, Mignon Fogarty aka “Grammar Girl” addresses a specific grammatical element or rule that may confuse people.  Then, she uses concrete examples that will help the listener remember how to follow the grammar rule in the future.  She delves into the history of the grammar rule and references credible sources, as well as talks about how the grammar rule is used or misused in our culture today.  I enjoy this style.  Just like Grammar Girl, I also want to present professional studies/facts from credible sources and I want to present examples from advertisements, social media, etc. in my own podcast.  I also enjoyed Grammar Girl’s pacing in her podcasts – she spoke clearly and overall, it felt like a relaxed podcast.  I also want to emulate this pacing because it will allow the listener to absorb the grammar rules more easily.

After much consideration, I realized that I’m highly interested in the common grammar mistakes I see on social media or in advertisements.  Specifically, I notice that there is common confusion over whether it’s “your or you’re,” “its or it’s” and “whose or who’s.”  Therefore, I think I will talk about apostrophes and all of the different ways an apostrophe is used/misused.  I listened to a Grammar Girl podcast that talked about apostrophes and I just hope to expand on the topic.

I already had the idea about creating a podcast on apostrophes (while looking at the Grammar Girl website) before looking at SPARK, so I did not refer to SPARK to help me with topic selection.  However, I believe SPARK’s suggestion to explore your interests when coming up with a topic is very useful because from experience, I have discovered that research for an essay, project, etc. is less overwhelming when it pertains to your interests.  My only advice (to other students in my position) is that you may have so many different interests that you want to tackle, but you must always keep the constraints of the assignment in the back of your mind.  Good Luck!