Author:
Simulacrum
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Date:
12/6/2020 9:06:45 AM
Subject:
Writin and readin
The internet is a repository for bad writing. This is because anyone can "publish" whatever they want with no editorial oversight. Inattentive readers already have difficulty understanding the differences between professional and amateurish writing, and the differences become all the more meaningless when publication happens at will instead of being filtered through professionally accepted rules. These rules exist not as creative buzz-kills but as customs agents who prevent certain plants, animals, and diseases from entering an otherwise healthy country. This is why you have the Associated Press Stylebook, the Chicago Manual of Style, and other gating publications, and this is why legitimate print publishers don't want your brilliant manifesto or novel, even though your friends have told you that it's a work of quirky genius.
Such friends no doubt scan things on the internet instead of studying things in print, so they aren't paying much attention to the technical punch lists associated with genuinely good writing. Very likely they have their own moments of genius, leading them to write poems or social solutions in a kind of "free style" that will one day be appreciated by a readership no longer constrained by boring grammar and usage rules. What they overlook is that most real literary geniuses intimately understand such rules and only depart from them for good reasons. The vast majority of these geniuses know that writing is a matter of discipline and that greatness comes at the tail end of steady, focused, attentive reading.
In short, undisciplined writers are usually inattentive readers. They scan only for content and would much rather not have to read at all. Yet they are convinced that the world needs to read what they have to say.
We all recognize explicitly bad writing. We know when a paragraph is missing all punctuation, or when someone consistently misspells words, or when they spew out oceans of text with no paragraph breaks. But inattentive readers are less apt to notice subtle errors like misused prepositions ("arrived to" instead of "arrived at," "bored of" instead of "bored by") and transposed homonyms ("your" instead of "you're").
Let us examine this passage from Bridget Cunningham's
article on graphene synthesis
:
You’ve probably heard the word “graphene” in the news and here on the blog numerous times, usually with references to its powerful capabilities in advancing technology within various industries. It’s not every day that a material quite as unique and powerful as graphene comes along and it’s safe to say the world has taken notice.
This is an example of what is perhaps misleadingly called "informal" style in composition and rhetoric classes. As in the rest of the article, the sentences in this short passage are "loose," meaning that modifying content follows the main statement. This is how sentences look in most conversations. A more formal style would use an increased number of "periodic" constructions in which the modifying content precedes the statement. Additionally, you would find longer combinations, often with interrupting clauses. Note, too, the uses of contractions ("you've," "it's"). The important thing is that Cunningham wants a broad audience to keep their eyes on her content, not her writing style. She does this not simply by writing conversationally, but by carefully straining out every possibility of error, misconstruction, and distraction. The comma between "times" and "usually" is used correctly to signal a clause change. She correctly distinguishes between the possessive "its" and the contraction "it's." She uses a vocabulary designed for clarity rather than self-aggrandizement.
This is not great literature, but it is very effective professional writing. It pays attention to the punch list. It is not in any way quirky or eccentric or unique. It is filtered and disciplined, the work of someone who understands the rules and who reads other people's writing attentively.
There. My mind is discharged. Go about your internet things.
