Two questions:
1) I was told by many people to not include anything too corny or personal in my SOP. No, "I've loved literature since age..." or "Modernist literature is so beautiful because..." or anything of the sort. But now I'm worried that I've gone too far in the other direction. Basically, my SOP declares upfront my interests and my knowledge of the field, my relevant undergraduate experience, the value I see in my proposed project, then two paragraphs about why the school is a good place to explore those interests and which faculty members I'd like to work with, and then a bit about my career plans. There's really nothing personal, and the tone is quite formal. I'm nervous I'm coming off bloodless/humorless, but I'm finding it difficult to incorporate spontaneity and candor, given the purposes and constraints of the document. Anyone having this problem?
2) I've seen posts by people on Grad Cafe suggesting that in the SOP you should give a sense of why a certain school's "approach" or "environment" or "methodology" feels right. I'd love to do that, but I find it very difficult to glean that kind of information from department websites. How are you supposed to get such a natural, macro picture of a department without actually being personally familiar? Are there resources for this kind of information that I'm not aware of?