Santa Ana Winds Ap Lang Essays

Santa Ana Winds Ap Lang Essays Santa Ana Winds Ap Lang Essay Santa Ana Winds Ap Lang Essay Santa Ana Winds Passage Ap Lang In the piece, Joan Didion describes the Santa Ana Winds which hit Los Angeles every so often. The winds are seen as a threatening issue, as Didion describes them as dangerous and unwanted. The passage portrays her view on the Santa Ana winds as something horrendous that makes a dramatic effect on the inhabitants of Los Angeles. In the first paragraph Didion begins by describing the eerie feeling in the air with words that connote an anxious tone, such as uneasy, unnatural, and tension. She does not mention what she is describing in her piece until the next aragraph, which creates suspense and gives the reader the impression that the subject she speaks of is a terrible thing. Once she reveals the subject, the Santa Ana Winds, the piece gains a certain emphasis and the reader instantly connects it with being malevolent. Didion also depicts the scene which many denizens of the Los Angeles area will encounter during the Santa Ana period: For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night (239). In this excerpt she describes how the wind will cause many fires and maybe even deaths, which give the impression that the winds are very dangerous. The author remember how due to the wind [She] rekindle[d] a waning argument with the telephone company (239). The argument had weakened but the winds evoked a rage inside her that burst into uncontrollable actions, revealing how the wind negatively altered her emotions and actions. In the second paragraph of the passage Didion describes the Los Angeles area during the Santa Ana period. The author recalls being told that the Indians would throw themselves into the sea when the bad wind blew (239). This creates an image of the wind being a feared force, which was horrible enough to make native-Americans run and hide. She also depicts the yellow glow in the sky which is sometimes called earthquake weather. Earthquakes are destructive and significantly alter human behavior as they create disparity in the habitant. This clearly reveals that Didion believes that winds are Just as destructive as an Earthquake except the winds do their deeds by activating mechanistic behaviors. Her neighbor, during the Santa Ana period, would tell [her] that he had heard a trespasser, [and] next a rattlesnake (239). This image reveals the winds negatively altering her neighbors emotions and mental state. He becomes increasingly paranoid, defensive, and violent. In the first half of the third paragraph Didion starts off with a quote, every booze party ends in a fght. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands necks. Anything can happen (239). By using a second view of the winds, she grabs the readers attention and also adds to the credibility of her opinion. The quote also emphasized the fluctuation of human actions due to the Santa Ana wind. The author adds that the basis for the effect is also backed by science and further personifies the wind by describing it as malevolent. Although she contradicts herself, she still gets her point across fairly well. She also adds how the doctors hear about headaches and nausea and allergies, about nervousness, about depression (239). In this sentence fragment Didion uses parallelism in order to show a connection between the symptoms which are all caused by the same Santa Ana wind, making them seem more malignant then they really are. In the second half of the final paragraph Didion begins using facts, saying that the children become unmanageable the suicide rate goes up[. ] and in the courts of some Swiss cantons the wind is considered a mitigating circumstance for crime (239). The author uses pathos to get the reader to see how the winds ause people to go wild. Their brains are negatively impacted by the wind. Near the end of the passage the author uses a periodic sentence: In any case that positive ions are there, and what an excess of positive ions does,9in the simplest terms, is make people unhappy (239). Didion uses a periodic sentence to emphasize that ultimately the winds cause unhappiness and despair in the people of Los Angeles. This sums up her opinion throughout the entire piece. Overall, Didion views the Santa Ana winds as pernicious to humans. She uses syntax, imagery, and diction to unveil and reveal her opinion to the reader.

35 Common Prefixes in English

35 Common Prefixes in English If you were a prefix, you could change the same word in different ways.You could make a cycle a unicycle, a bicycle, or a tricycle.(Marcie Aboff and Sara Gray,  If You Were a Prefix. Picture Window Books, 2008) A prefix is a letter or a group of letters attached to the beginning of a word  (or word root) that partly indicates its meaning. For example, the word prefix itself begins with the prefix pre-, which generally means before or in front of. (By contrast, a letter or group of letters attaching to the end of a word is called a suffix.)   Many of todays English words contain prefixes from Greek or Latin. Understanding the meanings of the most common prefixes can help us deduce the definition of new words that we run across in our reading, especially knowing that they can make a word mean its opposite, such as the difference between possible and impossible.Still, we do need to be careful.  The same prefix may be ​spelled in more than one way (pre- and pro-, for instance), and some prefixes (such as in-) have more than one meaning (in this case, not or without versus in or into). Even so, being able to recognize prefixes can help us build our vocabularies.   To Hyphenate or Not? Rules vary as to when a word should have a hyphen separating it from  its prefix. Go by the dictionary if you are unsure. If you are writing a paper for a class and a particular style guide is used, such as MLA, the Chicago Manual of Style, or APA, the stylebook may have a hyphenation guide or a preferred dictionary to follow for which words to hyphenate and which to close up. If a prefix is attached to a proper noun, you generally hyphenate, such as pre-World War II or anti-American.   The following table  defines and illustrates 35 common prefixes.   Common Prefixes Prefix Meaning Examples a-, an- without, lack of, not amoral, acellular, abyss, achromatic, anhydrous ante- before, earlier, in front of antecedent, antedate, antemeridian, anterior anti- against, opposite of anticlimax. antiaircraft, antiseptic, antibody auto- self, same autopilot, autobiography, automobile, autofocus circum- around, about circumvent, circumnavigate, circumscribe co- with, together co-pilot, co-worker, co-exist, co-author com-, con- together, with companion, commingle, contact, concentrate contra-, contro- against, opposite contradict, contrast, contrary, controversy de- down, off, away from devalue, deactivate, debug, degrade, deduce dis- not, apart, away disappear, disagreeable, disbar, dissect en- put into, cover with enclose, entangle, enslave, encase ex- out of, from, former extract, exhale, excavate, ex-president extra- beyond, outside, more than extracurricular, extramarital, extravagant hetero- different, other heterosexual, heterodox, heterogeneous homo-, homeo- same, alike homonym, homophone, homeostasis, homosexual hyper- over, more, beyond hyperactive, hypersensitive, hypercritical il-, im-, in-, ir- not, without illegal, immoral, inconsiderate, irresponsible in- in, into insert, inspection, infiltrate inter- between, among intersect, interstellar, intervene, interpenetrate intra-, intro- within, inside intravenous, intragalactic, introvert macro- large, prominent macroeconomics, macrostructure, macrocosm micro- very small microscope, microcosm, microbe mono- one, single, alone monocle, monologue, monogamy, monotony non- not, without nonentity, nonaggressive, nonessential, nonfiction omni- all, every omniscient, omnivorous, omniscient, omnidirectional post- after, behind postmortem, posterior, postscript, postoperative pre-, pro- before, forward precede, predict, project, prologue sub- under, lower submarine, subsidiary, substandard sym-, syn- same time, together symmetry, symposium, synchronize, synapse tele- from or over a distance telecommunications, telemedicine, television, telephone trans- across, beyond, through transmit, transaction, translation, transfer tri- three, every third tricycle, trimester, triangle, triathlon un- not, lacking, opposite of unfinished, unskilled, ungraceful, unfriendly uni- one, single unicorn, unicellular, unicycle, unilateral up- to the top or north, higher/better upbeat, updo, upgrade, upload, uphill, upstage, upscale, up-tempo