As students move through IEW’s structural units at a regular pace, they also learn to insert various stylistic techniques along the way. Initially students learn to insert dress-ups, beginning with the -ly adverb. Once that is mastered, the next dress-up is introduced and practiced. Sentence openers are another form of stylistic technique, providing students with a toolbox of ways to vary syntax. Examples include opening sentences with a prepositional phrase or an -ly adverb. The goal is to trickle in the stylistic techniques one at a time such that the student is never overwhelmed and is moving steadily according to his ability, something IEW calls teaching the EZ+1 way. The stylistic techniques help students fill a toolbox with ways to add interest, precision, and beauty to their writing.
IEW’s stylistic techniques do not end with dress-ups and sentence openers, however. Students also learn decorations. Decorations make a student’s writing more vivid and engaging. Adding sophistication to a composition, decorations may be thought of as the jewelry of the piece.They foster creativity within the student. IEW teaches six decorations. Students indicate a decoration by either writing “dec” in the margin or italicizing.
Alliteration
Alliteration is a literary device that places words close together that have the same initial sound. IEW requires at least three words in order to qualify for this decoration. This is an example of alliteration: The conniving cat crept up on the quiet, distracted mouse.
Question
Questions posed in paragraphs invite the reader to ponder something. They invite the reader to participate in the composition. It is required that the question be framed as a complete sentence. Here is an example: As Henry Ford considered how to build his automobiles quickly and affordably, could he have possibly envisioned how vital assembly line construction techniques would become for the modern world?
Quotation
Quotations are phrases or sentences that were spoken or written by another person. As such, they must be placed within quotation marks. If a quote is not easily recognizable, the student should introduce the quote or provide a citation. Consider this example: As World War II entered its beginning stages, Winston Churchill, not yet Prime Minister, urged British citizens, “This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.”
Simile/Metaphor
Both similes and metaphors are figures of speech that compare two items that are different from each other. A simile, which relates one thing as being like or as another, is a softer form than a metaphor, which states that one thing is another. For example, compare this metaphor “Unable to move, Shackelton’s boat was at the mercy of the frozen devourer” to the simile “The ice was like a frozen devourer as it slowly destroyed the ship.”
3 Short Staccato Sentences (3sss)
In music, a staccato note pops. The same is true for the 3sss, which is a series of three very short sentences, one right after the other. All three of the sentences should relate to each other. The sentences must align with the #6 sentence opener in that none of the sentences may exceed five words or be fewer than two. Within that framework, sentences should have the same number of words or decrease in number. An example is The battle began. The soldiers fought. Few survived.
Dramatic Open–Close
The dramatic open–close decoration grabs a reader’s attention. It uses a #6 very short sentence as the very first sentence in either the introduction or the conclusion and is capped at the end of the same paragraph with another #6 very short sentence. If it is used with a body paragraph, the dramatic open appears before the topic sentence, and the dramatic close appears after the clincher sentence.
While the checklist reminds students to insert each dress-up and sentence opener into every paragraph of a composition, decorations are used sparingly. The minimum rule is to use one decoration in each paragraph of a composition. As students learn the various decorations, they should insert a different type of decoration into each paragraph.
James Webster, the founder of the Structure and Style® writing methodology, was a master at utilizing decorations to their best advantage. His hilarious piece “Delightful Decorations: Dr. Webster’s Kamikaze Chickens” is charming. If you would like to read the entire piece, you can access it here. It is a wonderful way to see how effectively decorations can be employed in writing. Enjoy!
by Jennifer Mauser
