The Taylor Essay: A Deeply Flawed Writing

     This blog post will be focused on the Taylor essay on page 297 of The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing, and mainly what I thought of it after reading through it.  To keep it short on my thought of the overall essay, it was pretty bad.  Int the essay, Taylor attempts to argue that the sport of paintball is very healthy, as well as fun and challenging, rather than very violent and not a team sport.  However, at many points in the essay, he contradicts what he is trying to argue.  This is one of the biggest problems with this essay, is Taylor's lack of making a good point.

    An example of Taylor contradicting himself is in the first paragraph.  Throughout his intro paragraph, he describes the game of paintball as a military war situation, like they're defending a certain territory.  This severely contradicts his point of paintball not being this violent sport, as he describes it as just that.  Another case of Taylor contradicting himself is at the beginning of the 9th paragraph.  At the start of the paragraph, Taylor writes "What I am trying to say is that, yes, paintball is violent to a degree.  After all, its whole point is to "kill" each other with guns." (Taylor 9)  These two sentences further contradict Taylor's point about paintball and violence, and possibly attempt to make his point invalid.

    Another issue with the Taylor essay is Taylor's sourcing/citing.  There are many areas in the writing where he doesn't give a specific source, or has no source at all for his info.  For instance, in paragraph 3, Taylor explains some history revolving around the sport.  He states that the paintball guns are CO2 powered and that they shoot at a rate of 250-300 feet per second.  However, he doesn't give a source, which not only makes his information more unreliable, but can also be considered plagiarism if the source where he got his information from is found.  Furthermore, in paragraph 7, Taylor states that "the public" believe that paintball guns can damage your eyes.  Who is the public, Taylor?  This further sheds light on the many flaws of Taylor's essay, which turn the writing into a bad product.

    In short, the Taylor essay has many flaws that make it fall short of being a quality piece of writing.  However, if I do take something out of this, it's to not insert these bad habits into my own writing, and make citing sources and not contradicting myself a strength of my writing.