Krista Ramsey Introduction Activity

This column is about the grandmother of Tyann Adkins, a young teenage girl who was shot and killed by a young boy while getting a manicure, while waiting for a ride home. It describes what happened, and the events and emotions the grandmother went through afterwards. The line that I think is best written is, "'But who would think that in the middle of the day a foolish kid playing with a gun would shoot your granddaughter?' That was all the time Long had Wednesday to ponder a question for which she had no answer. She had to 'keep checking things off my tablet.' Those things included helping her daughter choose her granddaughter's casket, write her obituary and pick out photos for a memorial video." (that's more than a line, I know) These lines relate to the reader by asking them a question, and then continues the story by answering with the grandmother's answer. The question that is posed can be for anybody, so the reader most likely considers it, and might mentally answer it, but they most likely consider what their answer would be, this helps them to relate to the column, paying closer attention and taking the column more seriously than they were. By answering the posed question with the grandmother's answer, it evokes more empathy and sadness for the grandmother and the family of the girl. One observation I made about the syntax in this excerpt was the rhetorical question that was posed in the beginning. I would to describe Krista Ramsey's writing style as journalistic, mainly because she's a journalist, and that usually make their writing style journalistic, but I checked just in case and I still say her style is journalistic because she refrains from using opinions and other forms of expressing personal bias. Such as when she wrote, "But like other teenagers in her neighborhood, she also had to navigate a complicated community" she could have easily written something to sway our opinion towards discriminating against said neighborhood for being a bad place to live, but she decides to use friendlier words when describing it. Some questions I would ask her if I had they chance are as follows:

1. How do you notice things like in the Red's opening day column?
2. Do you ever not want to write about something, like if it's too sad or something?
3. How would you define your writing voice?

(this was supposed to be posted on 4/16)