Chapter ten of They Say/I Say, describes the ways of incorporating metacommentary into our writing styles. Most of us unknowingly use metacommentary on a regular basis. It is basically a sentence that explains and guides the readers through the author’s claim. When readers misinterpret the writer’s message, it becomes essential to use metacommentary to guide readers through the thinking process involved to understand the author’s claim. The book uses a lot of different styles and templates to explain this. “What I meant to say was _________,” “My point was not ____, but ______.” are some of the very common uses of metacommentary that can be used to enhance the clarity of our writing.
From this chapter, I clearly understand the importance of incorporating metacommentary in our writing styles. No matter how clearly an author writes, every person has a different perspective and different experience to relate to one single claim. In such scenarios, it becomes very important for the author to mention what he/she wants the user to interpret. In my opinion, the most precise and thought-provoking writers are the ones that create a multi-dimensional opinion. These multi-dimensional perceptions create a lot of ambiguity and reduce the essence of the author’s message.
Although this is a different point of view, in my opinion, metacommentary also helps enhance a claim of the author. It helps the reader stay focused on what the author wants to convey and allows the reader to think on the same terms as the author. I personally feel that this form of writing could also act as an emphasis on a topic and the main thesis. Though it is mainly used to prove the author’s point, it can help generate the main topic and tie up various viewpoints that culminate to the main focus of the topic. So as a conclusion, what I mean to point out is that, we as authors, must try to incorporate metacommentary templates in our writing and not stray away from guiding our readers and making a clear point.
