Describing similarities and differences in your experiences. Your responses must be at least two paragraphs in length and offer your opinions about other students' ideas. Discuss what you agree with and why, what you disagree with and why and any other related topics.

One major point I learned from the OWL article was that even the most seemingly insignificant words can have a major effect on how a message is conveyed to the reader depending on if those words have a positive or negative connotation. For instance, many negative-sounding words -- such as "not" or "unable" -- can leave a bad impression on the reader. By contrast, messages that focus on what something is, or what can be done, are much more likely to be persuasive. Another major point I learned from the OWL article was that even if you do have to convey bad news, it's best to do so in the subordinate positions of a message -- such as in the center of paragraphs or sentences -- and leave the good news to the beginning and the end. There is a certain degree of logic to this, because I'm willing to bet that the beginning and the end of paragraphs or sentences are the parts that grab most people's attention when they're reading, so putting good news in those positions is likely to have much more of an impact than if you squeezed it in the middle.

I think the most difficult part of giving bad news is the question of "what's the best way to frame the bad news?". There are many situations where giving someone bad news is unavoidable, but it's also not something that people enjoy doing either, generally speaking. Ultimately, it seems that even if you have to tell someone something that you know is going to be unpleasant, it's best to let them down easy and to cushion the blow, so to speak. This ties into the last question of using the tips from the OWL article to make a situation where you had to deliver a negative message to someone a little bit bitter. While I cannot, off the top of my head, think of a situation like this that I have been in personally because I try to avoid them whenever possible, I will be sure to take some advice from the article if I do have to give someone bad news in the future: try to include some positive messages and good news along with the bad news so that way it will generate some goodwill with the reader.