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Writing Strategies for Adding Content to the Complaint Box

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In this lesson, you will read one of The New York Times "Complaint Box" series and use descriptive and persuasive writing strategies to communicate your own pet peeve succinctly and productively.

1. Read the Complaint Box: Public Grooming case in the following link:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/complaint-box-public-grooming/

Now prepare to write your own 500-word persuasive and descriptive essay about one of your pet peeves, inspired by the "Complaint Box" series.

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Solution Summary

This solution is designed to help writers create engaging and captivating written material that communicate their opinions on a variety of topics for inclusion in publications like the NY Times Complaint Box series.

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First:
Be sure to read some of the articles in the Complaint Box. Pay close attention to how the writer plays with language and style to keep the reader interested. The public grooming article is a great example for you to use. You can actually use it as a guide to writing your own essay, using a similar styles to those used by this author.

Then:
You need to have a clear understanding of descriptive and persuasive writing strategies. Here are a couple of definitions and some examples to help you.

Descriptive writing: This is easy when you think about it from the perspective of telling the story as you see it. You give details, and a lot of it. The more details you give, the more interesting it will be to the reader. For example, let's say you just witnessed a teenage girl popping gum. You could say:

"There is a girl across the street popping gum."

Or, you could say:

"Across the street I saw a very petite teen-aged girl ...

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