Writing Style Analysis of Jason Karpf's Essay 'I CAME. I SAW. I SPUN.'

This essay provides a comprehensive style analysis of Jason Karpf's essay, "I CAME. I SAW. I SPUN." The analysis delves into the author's use of diction, grammatical structure, and syntax, assessing their effectiveness in conveying the essay's central theme. The essay explores how the writing style successfully creates an engaging narrative, drawing parallels between Julius Caesar's strategies and modern marketing techniques. It examines the author's ability to use language to create atmosphere, evoke specific moods, and captivate the reader. The analysis highlights specific examples, such as the use of evocative words and phrases, and discusses how the author maintains a balanced tone and a clear, linear structure throughout the essay. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of these stylistic elements in achieving the essay's goals and successfully communicating its ideas about marketing and branding.

“I CAME. I SAW. I SPUN.”: STYLE ANALYSIS
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

The writing style is the first and foremost deciding factor of the popularity or success of
any prose. While poetry has the advantage of being open to interpretation, prose or essay forms
of literature must be able to deliver the different ideas and opinions without any dogma or
complications. Lucid, fast paced language that enthrall the reader and engulfs in its content must
be ensure through usage of language (Gastel, Barbara and Day). A good style, combined with
syntax and diction, can connect words in the correct way, that makes the most engrossing
sentences to captivate the reader and give some of the most exhilarating experiences ever.
Therefore, analyzing writing styles become just as important to get a comprehensive idea about
how to deliver the best way, and how to make the reader feel in complete cohesion with the text.
“I came. I saw. I spun.” By Jason Karpf is a documentation essay that talks about the journey of
Julius Caesar from an average politician to becoming an institution himself. In an attempt to
analyze this essay, the style of the writing would be given special attention. In the following
essay, the writing style of the above mentioned essay will be taken a look into, taking into
account the diction, grammatical structure and the use of syntax which have been employed, and
to decide whether the essay is successful in nature or not.
Using language to create atmosphere and instigate a particular mood. If language and
writing style fails to achieve this particular feat, it would be its single biggest hindrance to
become exquisite in nature. The essay that is currently being discussed successfully reaches the
heights that is reserved for only the best. Despite being a simple documentation about how
Caesar used his will, skill, motivational tactics and superior political understanding to make a
brand out of himself, the essay also manages to engulf the reader about the marvelous feats that
were achieved by him (Karpf). Choice of a formal or informal way of writing can be decisive in
many ways (Krishnamurthy and Mitchell) In this essay, the writing style comes out as very

balanced. The correct combination of formal and informal writing style is a great way to deliver
facts and ideas in a captivating way. Under the veil of the military and political triumphs of
Caesar, the underlining gist of the essay is how can marketing properly make for the best ways to
create a reputation of a specific brand in the market, which would successfully boast customer
loyalty and sway the public opinion about that particular brand.
Using words like “unshorn” shows exactly how much is the author knowledgeable in the
usage of dictions to concisely put forward a description of an entire group of people. The style of
the writing helps to understand a very modern marketing strategy by using the example of the
life and principles of a person that lived two thousand years ago, and how did his actions and
strategies help to silently shape a tactics that would be used by marketing giants in the future
(Karpf). The use of words such as “zenith” makes the reader engulfed and an aura of an
enchanted world is drawn upon, which helps to keep the reader involved in the matter of the text
and the curiosity is overwhelming, making the reader want to keep on reading (Farra et al.).
Though it could be argued that it is easier to keep the reader go through the entire text in case of
short essays, it must be kept in mind that concisely asserting a lot of details in a short span is no
small task. It takes a lot of thinking and planning to come up with a technique that helps to
encompass a lot of details and facts, yet delivers in such a size that does not tax the attention
span of an individual (Loughran and McDonald).
Using phrases such as “knife-wielding” shows the expertise of the author to choose
words and that are complete cohesion with the spirit and the theme of the text. Even though the
essay is actually about marketing and how was it first used effectively, albeit unknowingly at that
time, it has been told using the story of Caesar, a person who has been known to be virile and
courageous (Karpf). Using such phrases gives a glorifying aspect that helps the reader to

sympathize with the protagonist and truly feel connected. The author is very clever in being
capable of syphoning the emotions of the reader to make sure that the actions of the protagonist
are acknowledge and validation is achieved (Du Bois).
The syntax of the entire text is done in a way that sums up a lot of details and facts about
the strategies of Caesar, the course of history and how did events unfold one after the other, in a
way that does not get too complicated. Of course sentences have to be long when the very
essence of the essay is complex and the thematic view is somewhat unconventional. Yet, it has to
be remembered that the sentences and the use of conjunctions should not become a confusing
element for the reader, which leads the person astray in the middle of a sentence, which is so
complex that the reader loses track of the direction of the text (Foss). The author has been
successfully able to make sure that a linear form is maintained throughout the entire essay no
disruption is caused by grammar.

References
Du Bois, John W. "Towards a dialogic syntax." Cognitive Linguistics 25.3 (2014): 359-410.
Farra, Noura, Swapna Somasundaran, and Jill Burstein. "Scoring persuasive essays using
opinions and their targets." Proceedings of the Tenth Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for
Building Educational Applications. 2015.
Foss, Sonja K. Rhetorical criticism: Exploration and practice. Waveland Press, 2017.
Gastel, Barbara, and Robert A. Day. How to write and publish a scientific paper. ABC-CLIO,
2016.
Karpf, Jason I Came. I Saw. I Spun 2008 Available at: file:///C:/Users/Downloads/I%20Came,
%20I%20Saw,%20I%20Spun.pdf [Accessed on: 14-10-2017]
Krishnamurthy, Jayant, and Tom M. Mitchell. "Joint Syntactic and Semantic Parsing with
Combinatory Categorial Grammar." ACL (1). 2014.
Loughran, Tim, and Bill McDonald. "The use of word lists in textual analysis." Journal of
Behavioral Finance 16.1 (2015): 1-11.