Mia McCarthy

Writing 2

Section 1200

02/22/21

Genre Translation
Dear Diary,  

My day started at the historical archive downtown, where I spent hours 

going through old letters and photos to try to find the best and most exciting 

pieces of evidence for my paper. For months, I have been working on a research 

article on the role music played as a vocational tool for boys living in British care 

institutions from 1870 to 1918. I am very intrigued by the material but the days 

often blur together...it can be exhausting spending so much time on one niche topic. 

However, today was super exciting as I found the PERFECT quote to include in my 

article. It comes from a letter written all the way back in 1908 from an adult who 

underwent his musical training at a care institute and is explaining how he and his 

friends from training are doing, “very glad to let you know that all the boys are 

doing wonderfully well and are enjoying the best of health”. I plan on giving readers 

the context for this excerpt by explaining the school that this man attended is one 

that invested a large sum of money into the music department and this letter is 

one way of demonstrating how the money paid off. I feel confident that I found a 

piece of meaningful evidence that will benefit my paper. Through my historical 

instruments while under the authority of British care institutions from 1870 to 

1918 helped aid poor young boys who had very few career options by preparing 

them for careers in the military bands. I can’t wait until I can FINALLY publish 

this article and help people learn more about this topic! 

More later,  

Nicola 

 
 Metacognition Reflection

While reading various research articles as research for the first writing project, I noticed

how none of the authors asserted themselves into the narrative in any way and that very little

information was available about said authors. Although I know this is purposeful and on par with

what is expected of scholars from prominent discourse communities, I could not help but wish I

knew more about the life of the author and what made them decide to commit such a large

amount of their life to research such niche topics. However, very little information about the

authors of these articles was available online. Understanding what goes into writing an in-depth

research paper makes it that much more interesting and engaging, so, I decided to use my

imagination and knowledge of what goes into writing a historical paper to come up with a fake

journal entry from the perspective of the author of The musical careers of the poor: the role of

music as a vocational training for boys in British care institutions 1870–1918, Nicola Sheldon1.

Translating an academic journal article into a diary entry allows for a more personal and relaxed

feel as well as a new way to approach interesting information. Articles that belong to restrictive

discourse communities and are published in academic journals are required to follow restrictive

rules of writing, diary entries on the other hand allow the author to fully express themselves

through writing in a free manner that allows for creativity to flow.

My primary text comes from a historical academic journal article titled The musical

careers of the poor: the role of music as a vocational training for boys in British care institutions

1870–19182 and is written by Nicola Sheldon. It has many characteristics that are distinctive

from the genre I chose to translate it into. The shift from a research article to a diary entry was

1
Sheldon, “The Musical Careers of the Poor: The Role of Music as a Vocational Training for
Boys in British Care Institutions 1870-1918”
2
Sheldon, “The Musical Careers of the Poor: The Role of Music as a Vocational Training for
Boys in British Care Institutions 1870-1918”
quite difficult because although they share some universal writing conventions, both genres

require writers to utilize practices that are specific to the genre. Due to the fact that my primary

text is a research article published in an academic journal, the author, Nicola Sheldon, was

required to follow some rules to ensure that it would fit in well with other writings of its level.

The writing conventions of the article were pretty on par with a typical research article. Proper

grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization mechanics were utilized. Academic words

were utilized and the tone was serious and professional. This is demonstrated by a sentence in

the conclusion of the paper in which the author stated that “To that extent, this evidence offers a

corrective to the universally gloomy portrayal of the lives of children in the past3”. Although the

written material was interesting, the discourse community does not allow for much creative

expression in its writings. It makes sense that authors belonging to particular discourse

communities must follow the rules of the said community as it allows for members to fully

understand each other’s work and further develop the subject. This is not an issue when it comes

to diary entries as the audience is typically only the author, so, grammar and language rules only

matter as much as the author chooses to make them.

Diaries are typically written with the intended audience of one, the person who is writing

the entry, however, when the author chooses to later publish past entries readers are gifted with

interesting, engaging, and insightful pieces of writing. Since the intended audience is so small,

diaries are a lot more casual and allow for writers to fully express themselves the way they

choose to, similarly to poems, they are the art piece of the various writing genres.

Self-expression and self-reflection are two things that are crucial to one’s development and

writing in a diary help one accomplish both of those things.

3
Sheldon, “The Musical Careers of the Poor: The Role of Music as a Vocational Training for
Boys in British Care Institutions 1870-1918”, 759
 I wrote my initial genre translation quite quickly based on the knowledge I had on the

subject matter from all my analyses for the first writing project. I did this purposefully as I hoped

to emulate the natural diary writing process as much as possible. I later went back and added

certain characteristics that I noticed in the diaries I read, such as ellipses and underlining for

emphasis. I believe that my translation was effective as it followed the proper principles required

by a diary entry and it communicated a fair amount of the important information from the

research article. When it comes to writing in one’s diary there are no real rules in place, it is

solely up to the author as the author is typically the only intended audience. There are things that

are typically done like addressing your entry by writing something like “dear diary” at the top of

the page but the only real rules are those put in place by the author.

I made the creative decision to change the font of my genre translation into one that is

more similar to a person’s handwriting than Times New Roman. I believe that this made it a

more realistic diary entry. Diaries tend to be a stream of consciousness and for many, it is easier

to fully express the thoughts stuck in one’s head when they put a pen to paper.

Through my research on diaries, I noticed that certain punctuation techniques are used a

lot more frequently than they are in other pieces of writing. In many of Taylor Swift’s diary

entries, she made use of an ellipse to demonstrate that her thought was not finished or to indicate

hesitation or to emphasise a point. This tactic is demonstrated in one of Taylor Swift’s diary

entries from July 12, 2009, in which she wrote “Today was just...wonderful. Today was simple.

And perfect.”4 The use of ellipses in this way is not welcome in academic writing and is a good

indicator that the author of this diary, Taylor Swift, is not intending to be formal in any way and

is simply just trying to get her thoughts down. Additionally in this quote, she used another tactic

that is prominent in many diary entries, a visual technique that involves underlining certain
4
Swift. “Lover Deluxe Version 1”, Republic Records, (August 2019)
words for emphasis. This is something that is most definitely not used in research papers where

underlining is used exclusively for titles or things of that sort. Another informal technique often

used in diary entries is capitalizing a word or a phrase for emphasis. This is something that

consistently came up as I read Taylor Swift’s old diary entries. One good example of this was on

November 5, 2004, when she wrote “Yesterday was Friday and instead of going to the movies or

something I fell asleep. I needed it! This past week has been CRAZY”5. This method of

freewriting is artistic in a way as it allows for the author to fully express their emotions free of

judgement.

While conducting this genre translation, there were some things I had to keep in mind in

order to ensure that I was as accurate and realistic as possible. Janet Boyd’s article Murder!

(Rhetorically Speaking) helped me to understand how to get into character to perform my genre

translation. This article helped me to understand what characteristics are defined by genre, Janet

Boyd instructed me to look out for things like content, tone, and diction6. Before I initially read

my piece of primary text, I read the article Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly

Sources by Karen Rosenburg7 and it gave me a lot of crucial tips for reading and understanding

academic articles. Without access to this essay, it would have been a lot more difficult for me to

complete my genre translation as I would not have fully understood the goals of my research

article.

Writing in a journal allows people to write down their memories so they can read them at

a later date as well as experiment with different writing techniques. Reading a person’s diary is a

5
Swift. “Lover Deluxe Version 2”, Republic Records, (August 2019)
6
Boyd. “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)”, Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 2,
(2011), 87-101
7
Rosenberg. “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources”, Writing Spaces:
Readings on Writing, Volume 2, (2011), 210-220
way of looking at what they prioritize and what they want to remember. This is because they can

write in a free manner, one that is not restricted by the rules of academic writing or discourse

communities.
 Works Cited

1. Nicola Sheldon. “The musical careers of the poor: the role of music as a vocational

training for boys in British care institutions 1870–1918.” History of Education,

(September 2009), 747-759, 10.1080/00467600903305590

2. Taylor Swift. “Lover Deluxe Version 1”, Republic Records, (August 2019)

3. Taylor Swift. “Lover Deluxe Version 2”, Republic Records, (August 2019)

4. Janet Boyd. “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)”, Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing,

Volume 2, (2011), 87-101

5. Karen Rosenberg. “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources”, Writing
Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 2, (2011), 210-220