Draft:George Gopen

American author and writing consultant From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George D. Gopen is an American author, educator, writing consultant, musician, and composer.[1] He holds the title of Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Rhetoric at Duke University where he taught for 30 years.[2] He is best known for developing his Reader Expectation Approach to Writing in the English Language known as REA. Gopen introduced REA to audiences through his 1990 American Scientist article "The Science of Scientific Writing," co-authored with Judith A. Swan.[3] He also co-founded the Great Durham Pun Championship.[4]

Early Life and Education

Gopen was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[5] From 1957 to 1963 he attended the Roxbury Latin School, founded in 1645.[6] Gopen received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Brandeis University where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1967. His undergraduate education included a year at the University of Reading in England. He simultaneously earned his Juris Doctor (JD) from Harvard Law School and his PhD in English from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1967 to 1975.[1]

Career

Gopen taught in the English Department at Harvard University for five years while pursuing his PhD at the institution. He then taught in the English Department at the University of Utah between 1975 and 1978. From 1978 to 1985, Gopen served as Director of Writing Programs and Assistant Professor of English at Loyola University of Chicago. He also served as a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School for five years in the 1980s. Gopen was the founder and director of the University Writing Program at Duke University where he taught from 1985 to 2014. He also taught part-time for sixteen years at Duke University School of Law.[1]

Consulting

Gopen began serving as a professional writing consultant in 1978. In 1980, he joined with partners Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb, both of the University of Chicago, to form Clearlines, a consultant firm dealing with legal writing. Since 1990, Gopen has worked as an independent consultant to professional writers in the field of scientific research in addition to the fields of law, business, government, and education. As of 2019, his client roster exceeds 200.[1] As of 2021, more than 19,000 participants have enrolled in his 12-hour writing seminars and workshops.[7] Gopen offers his complete REA lecture series in a 15.5-hour on-demand video course.[8][1]

Reader Expectation Approach

Main article: Reader Expectation Approach to Writing in the English Language

The Reader Expectation Approach is a set of empirically based principles that explain how readers engage in the process of reading. Research on memory from Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) and later confirmed by Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) establishes the serial position effect which demonstrates how readers recall the last piece of information more easily than the first, and far more easily than anything they encounter in between.[9][10] Using this insight into reader habits, Gopen maintains that if information is not located within a sentence or paragraph where a reader expects to encounter it, the reader will have more difficulty identifying and remembering the crucial function information which the writer is trying to convey. In accordance with this research, REA teaches the practice of placing the sentence's most important information in a "stress position" in any sentence: Stress positions are located immediately before a period, colon, or semi-colon.[3] While the stress position concept is key, REA encompasses many other concepts that include leaning forward to the verb and forming connections between sentences and between paragraphs.[11]

Reception

REA has received attention in peer-reviewed medical and scientific literature. Lorelei Lingard of Western University applied REA principles in medical education, describing the approach as central to achieving clarity and flow in academic prose.[11]

Virginia B. Kraus, Professor of Medicine at Duke University, described REA as having "reshaped scientific writing, offering insights into crafting persuasive and reader-centered content." Kraus draws direct parallels between REA principles in writing composition and strategies in landscape art composition.[12]

Duke University School of Medicine offers an annual seminar series, based on REA principles. The series titled "Writing from the Reader's Perspective," is described by the institution as "widely acclaimed."[13] Since 2012, the School of Medicine's Office of Research Development has additionally offered hands-on writing workshops implementing Gopen's REA principles across multiple faculty development programs.[14]

Publications

Books

  • Writing from a Legal Perspective (West Group, 1981) ISBN 978-0829921236
  • The Moral Fables of Aesop (translated from 15th-century Middle Scots, with introduction and notes; University of Notre Dame Press, 1987) ISBN 978-0268013615 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0268013622 (paperback)
  • The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader's Perspective (Pearson Longman, 2004) ISBN 978-0205296323
  • Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader's Perspective (Pearson Longman, 2004) ISBN 978-0205296170
  • Gopen's Reader Expectation Approach to Writing in the English Language: A New Tweetment (2016) ISBN 978-1616991746

Book Chapters

  • Gopen, George D. (1989). "The State of Legal Writing: Res Ipsa Loquitur". In Kogen, Myra (ed.). Writing in the Business Professions. National Council of Teachers of English. pp. 146–173. ISBN 978-0814159001. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)

Articles

"The Science of Scientific Writing" (American Scientist, 1990) co-authored with Judith A. Swan.[3] Gopen has published 69 additional articles (as of 2019) with 42 appearing in the American Bar Association's Litigation journal.[15][1]

Awards and Recognition

  • Phi Beta Kappa (Brandeis University, 1967)[1]
  • Gopen's 1990 American Scientist article, "The Science of Scientific Writing," co-authored with Judith A. Swan, was selected by American Scientist as one of 36 classic articles in the journal's first century of publication.[3]
  • In 2011, Gopen was awarded The Legal Writing Institute's Golden Pen Award for his lifelong efforts to improve the quality of legal writing.[16]
  • Gopen appears in Who's Who in American Education, Who's Who in American Law and Who's Who in the South and Southwest.[1]
  • The Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement website features Gopen in recognition of his outstanding professional contributions.[1]

Music

Gopen has sung with choruses including the Chicago Symphony Chorus and the Choral Society of Durham. He has performed in public lieder recitals as pianist. Since 2007, he has served as the Director of the Chamber Arts Society of Durham, which was founded in 1945.[17][18][1]

In 2022, he composed a score of more than 100 pages for string quartet to intertwine with the oration of T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece Four Quartets; it was given its world premiere performance by the Eliot Quartett in Erlangen, Germany, in April of 2025.[19]

Humor

Gopen co-founded the Great Durham Pun Championship with Tom Campbell.[4] The annual event was reported on by Mental Floss magazine.[20] Gopen also serves as MC and judge for the competition, roles he performs while wearing the neon pink graduation robe from his Harvard graduation ceremony in the 1970s.[4]

Media Appearances

WUNC (FM)

  • March 2015: Frank Stasio interviewed Gopen on The State of Things (radio show) about is roles as MC and judge of the 4th Annual Great Durham Pun Championship.[21]
  • September 2015: The State of Things host Frank Stasio interviewed Gopen about his life, career, and the Reader Expectation Approach.[22]
  • February 2018: Gopen was interviewed by Frank Stasio about his roles as MC and judge of the Great Durham Pun Championship.[23]

WTVD

  • February 2020: Gopen was interviewed on about his roles as MC and judge of the Great Durham Pun Championship and ABC 11's Ryan Brisesi profiled him and co-founder Tom Campbell ahead of the ninth annual championship.[4]

See Also

References

External Links

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