With each different genre of writing, there are conventions
that follow it whether they are written in stone or not. Many people fail to
realize just how broad the world of “written” work is. The simplest and most
straightforward way to discuss each “genre generator” website is to speak of
them individually before being able to discuss their similarities as well as
how each one demonstrates a distinct genre.
For starters, SCIgen is a website
that automatically generates educational papers, or at least mock examples of
papers/journals. Its conventions to the naked eye are very obvious. The
scholastic paper has a bold title, which is not only located top and center of
the paper, but it also numerous font sizes larger than everything else written
on the paper. Right beneath the paper, the names of the contributing authors
are found, also bolded and in a bigger font size than the paper’s actual
written content but still not as big as the paper’s title. Furthermore, the
rest of the paper is divided into sections based on the table of contents. Each
section is numbered, titled, bolded, and written in a larger font than the body
in order to make easier to find. The spacing between the section heading and
the body of the section is that of multiple lines. Another peculiar thing is
that each body paragraph, beneath each section, is not indented. Instead of
indenting each new paragraph, the generator skips a line and then begins a new
paragraph. The body of each section is abundant in higher-level scholarly
vocabulary. Lastly, SCIgen also includes pictures and graphs with very brief
descriptions as visual aid for whatever is being discussed in the section.
Pandyland
is completely different to SCIgen. Pandyland is a random comic generator. It
creates very short comics, a mere three scenes in length, with only a couple of
characters. The characters are simplistic in appearance. Moving on to main
focus of this analysis, the writing conventions of the writing found in this
specific generator. The comics on Pandyland have close to no writing in
comparison to SCIgen. Pandyland utilizes modern slang freely and does not
hesitate in incorporating fragments. The only writing found in the comics has
been restricted to solely being present in speech bubbles.
In regards
to “Meme Generator”, although a different genre, it seems far more similar to
Pandyland than SCIgen. In a
sense, it seems a bit like a one scene comic. Even though anyone can create a
meme using any picture they choose, most memes are composed with images that
have gone viral such as “Doge”, “Bad Luck Brian”, “Grumpy Cat”, etc. Memes do
not have endless amounts of writing, opting instead for a few short words or a
small sentence or phrase. Also, the writing on these memes is almost always in
white block writing with a black outline.
The fourth
genre generator commonly used by most students is the Easy Bib website. Easy
Bib is a website that specializes in generating bibliographies by taking away
the stress of memorizing each punctuation, it’s place in the bibliography, and
the different indentations, along with alphabetical order. Creating the
bibliography is simple. If it’s a website, the user easily copies & pastes
the website’s URL onto Easy Bib, Easy Bib locates the author of the online
article and anything else that may be necessary & creates the entry for the
user. Virtually anything can be cited via Easy Bib, from books, to websites, to
articles, to movies, and even interviews. Easy Bib incorporates all the
conventions of a bibliography. The most obvious one being that the heading of
“Bibliography” is bold, in a large font, and at the center of the page. The
first line of each source entry is one-inch from the margin with each line that
follows, of that same entry, getting indented. In addition, the bibliography
generator alphabetizes all the sources being cited. As a genre generator, Easy
Bib makes creating bibliographies far simpler.
Thus, the
question arises as to how websites, such as the aforementioned, can help people
understand the concept of genre when it comes to writing? Through the usage of
generator websites such as Easy Bib and Pandyland, one can see the exact
components of each individual thing. It makes it easier to acknowledge each
individual “ingredient”, so to speak, how it is used in the final product, and
where it is used exactly. Generator websites aid in showing the “before” and
“after” of each genre, depicting just how distinct yet slightly similar each
one truly is.
