What is prose, verse, and everything else?

[rpgfreak]

My occupations involve coveying my ideas into lectures and written paragraphs. I stumbled upon Benjamin Franklins life story on how he became an accomplished writer and essayist by working on his prose and verse and i never heard these terms before.

My grammer is lacking. I dont know what are syllables are, and not what "metre" or "prose" or "verse" is. I tried reading about it, but i dont understand what makes a sentence "weak" and so forth.

Is there "writing" 101 out there that tells you what is prose and verse and syllables?

 

[sparkchaser]

English must not be your first language.


prose: Written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure.

verse: Writing arranged with a metrical rhythm, typically having a rhyme.

meter/metre: the regular linguistic sound patterns of a verse. Detailed explanation here.

syllable: A unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word. For example, "six" has one syllable, "seven" has two syllables, and "syllable" has three syllables. Note that in some parts of the American South, "war" has two syllables -- "whoah-ah".

 

[rpgfreak]

English must not be your first language.


prose: Written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure.

verse: Writing arranged with a metrical rhythm, typically having a rhyme.

meter/metre: the regular linguistic sound patterns of a verse. Detailed explanation here.

syllable: A unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word. For example, "six" has one syllable, "seven" has two syllables, and "syllable" has three syllables. Note that in some parts of the American South, "war" has two syllables -- "whoah-ah".

You learn this in "English" class? Is there a introduction to english book? I hardly ever learned anything from threads and internet articles.

 

[sparkchaser]

Learned it in English grammar class, but these days Wikipedia is a good place to read about this stuff.

 

[rpgfreak]

And how can i work on my prose and verse and metre like ben franklin did? Shall i look for online copies of spectator and rewrite them?

 

[sparkchaser]

If you are able to, take a writing class.

 

[rpgfreak]

If you are able to, take a writing class.

Ben didnt - why should i?

Id like to work on my deliberate practice skills - and ben franklin is a great example of deliberate practice.

Id just like to know a few basic things, since bens a native speaker and im not

 

[sparkchaser]

I presume his education took care of learning the basics.

But yeah, if you want to be a better writer, write more.

 

[Guy Incognito]

I would suggest rpgfreak that you read the works of one Arthur Conan Doyle.

He wrote some amazing prose. His most amazing book, containing his most amazing prose, would be, The Hound of the Baskervilles, which he wrote in 1902.

It's amazing. I really suggest you check it out.