Writing Well - It IS Important

I've talked before about how much I love Lisa McLeod's on-line newsletter, Forget Perfect.  I read every article, even those I don't think will really interest me because they do, in fact, interest me.  It's a nod to her fabulously conversational and witty voice that keeps me glued to her articles.

Her latest article made me so mad that I woke up Chris to complain to him about it.  (Take a few minutes and go read it so that you're all caught up with Dawn's rage.)

Oh, by the way, this post IS a rant, so if you're turned off by that sort of thing, stop reading and come back Thursday when I talk about a less ranty topic on bedrooms and sanctuary.  Aaaahh.

Now back to the rant.

In her article, Lisa talks about how those who think that writing well is important sap the life out of creativity.  (Now do you get why I'm mad?)  She says she was discouraged from sending a letter to Mad Magazine because her English teacher critiqued it too harshly.

I feel sorry for Lisa that she let one person's comments keep her from doing something that to this day she regrets.  How much do we read and hear that if we're really passionate about something we should go ahead and do it anyway?  It's like what Scott says:  do whatever it takes.  How passionate are you about something if one person can shut you down?  Oh, and that leads me to something else Scott says:  stand up, speak up, or get shut down.

(This rant really is about Lisa's article, not Scott's blog, but Scott's blog is so fun, easy, and full of common sense that it's a great resource.)

Lisa also cites an excerpt from Stephen King's book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.  In it, King describes a childhood experience in which he wrote a grisly story, and his teacher was horrified.  Now, the teacher was horrified by the gory stuff that was in the story he wrote, not so much by the bad spelling.  What she commented on was the gory details.  Lisa tries to use this as an example of how teachers and others shouldn't harp on grammar and spelling and such.

That wasn't King's point.  His teacher wanted to know why he was wasting his talents writing like this.  Her words (quoted by King):  "What I don't understand, Stevie, is why you'd write junk like this in the first place.  You're talented.  Why do you want to waste your abilities?"  Not a thing in there about how he shouldn't even attempt writing since he couldn't spell.  She admitted that he had an incredible talent.

King goes on (I have my own copy of his book) to say that he was ashamed of what he had written.  Again, not by the bad spelling and grammar, but by the content.  He says he spent the next forty years feeling ashamed about what he wrote.

Now that's a great example of how we should just keep on and do what we're meant to do despite what the naysayers say.  However, this isn't a good example of how the "grammar Gestapo" should just leave us be.

Lisa's plea to her readers is this:

Correct English is the worst way to articulate something. If I tell you that at my last family reunion we ran woefully short of poultry due to an equipment malfunction, you don’t understand the situation as well as if I write, “my second cousin told everybody ‘We don’t got no fried chicken ’cuz daddy done broke mamma’s deep fry tryin’ to boil the tar off his lug nuts.'”

I'm sorry; correct English doesn't mean stilted, stuffy, and inflated English.  Correct English means using words correctly.  Would anyone (even I) actually say, "We ran woefully short of poultry due to an equipment malfunction"?  I don't think so.

The final blow for me was "so us writers intentionally ignore the rules and say things like 'the person with a smile on their face' (instead of his or her face) knowing that as enough of us add a gender neutral pronoun to the vernacular, it becomes accepted practice."

We writers do nothing of the kind.

Okay, so let me get this straight.  If enough of us say something incorrectly, then the incorrect version becomes correct?  Is it just easier to do it incorrectly than to make an effort to do it right?  I can think of several ways to avoid the awkwardness of assigning a gender.  If you're trying to describe the person with a smile, then I'm betting you know the gender and just say "the person with a smile on his face."  If you're talking in general about a smiling person, then you don't need to point out a specific person; you could say something like "people with smiles on their faces."  Or just take the plunge and assign a gender:  "The person with a smile on her face."  Gasp!!!  Can we really do that?

Yes.

We don't have to be stuck with incorrect pronoun agreement.  If you know the correct way to do it, and you do it incorrectly, I think it makes you look lazy.  (Now, I'll say right here and now that one can deviate from "proper" grammar and usage for stylistic reasons.  Heck, I do it all the time.  However, there are some things that just aren't right any way you cut it.)  Take the time to do it right.

Epilogue to this story:  my family absolutely agreed with me about the pronoun agreement.  To explain to my seven-year-old, I used this example:  "It's like saying that if enough people declare that 2 + 2 = 5, then that will be an accepted answer."  You might think that it's going overboard, but I don't think so.  If you have a singular thing, you need a singular pronoun.  If you have a plural thing, you need a plural pronoun.  How is that different from basic math facts?

My husband's favorite metaphor was this:  "If enough people start robbing convenience stores, then 7-Eleven will start giving Slurpees away for free."

Don't count on 7-Eleven giving away Slurpees for free any time soon.

Final Conclusion:  This post was written using about 90% correct grammar and usage.  I gave myself 10% leeway for the informal and conversational tone of the blog.  I'm guessing that you were able to understand my writing and didn't feel that the good grammar ruined the story.

Comments

[Lisa Daily]

Hi,

I stumbled upon your blog and read it with great interest. After reading Lisa McLeod's column, I must say, I couldn't disagree with you more.

I am an author or a non-fiction book with a major publisher (Stop Getting Dumped!/Putnam) and I have have just sold my first novel to Putnam as well. Before I became an author, I worked for eight years as a professional writer.

Before you call out the rest of the Diction Militia and hang Ms. McLeod on typewriter ribbon for her sins, you might want to reconsider. From William Shakespeare to Pat Conroy to Dave Barry, great writers have always used language at their whim to communicate their ideas. And sometimes those ideas are too big to fit into proper quotation marks.

Writers should not be slaves to punctuation and grammar -- we are not shift workers punching in for the big composition teacher in the sky.

Punctuation and grammar exist for the writer, not the other way around. Punctuation for writers is like being vocal during foreplay -- we use it to tell the reader to speed up, slow down, or move a little to the left.

Grammar and punctuation exist for us, which is why we don't always need to follow its rules, it adapts to ours. We are the keepers of the dictionary.

You may be satisfied with woefully-limiting pronouns, but I am not.

Lisa, Dave, Stephen and I, along with the other writers in the world who need a gender-neutral word for his and/or her, will use "their" in the singular. And thirty-five years from now, the lemmings who teach fifth period will follow suit.

If you want to wait until the good folks at Elements of Style and Webster's Dictionary catch on, be my guest. But I don't feel it's necessary to wait for the world to catch up with what I'd like to say.

I do agree that good writers should know all the rules. And when they have a darn good reason, they should feel justified in breaking them. But not knowing all the rules does not make a bad writer, it just makes a bad composition teacher.

Ms. McLeod may be the worst grammarian on the planet, but she's a fantastic writer. Maybe we should take up a collection to hire a good line editor for her.

Writing isn't basic mathematics. It is fluid. If it wasn't, Webster's wouldn't need to add all those new words every year.

Respectfully,

Lisa Daily

[Dawn Goldberg]

Thanks so much for taking the time to comment on my post on Write Well Me. I appreciate the different point of view!

I agree with you that Lisa's writing is superb. Her writing is from the heart, and she has a quirky sense of humor, which I adore. :-)

My problem isn't with Lisa's writing style but rather with her assertion that proper English is unworthy of a writer and that if enough people do something incorrectly (such as pronoun agreement), the incorrect way should become correct. If someone chooses not to, well, that certainly is her choice. Just don't try to convince me that it should be the correct choice.

Writers do often manipulate language to their own needs. For one, that's how we get new words. I just don't agree that writing in proper English makes the writing unreadable.

I do thank you for continuing the conversation and submitting your comment.

Anyone else have an opinion?

[Lisa McLeod]

Wow, who knew this was such a hot topic.

I've written about Jesus, Sex, Botox, and Predjudice, and I've never had more passionate responses than to my column about grammar.

One editor refused to run it, and two others who have never run my column before picked it up because they liked it so much.

Go figure.

Here's the deal, I was trying to make a point on behalf of people whose heads are filled with ideas, yet face constant criticism about their mechanics.

I went through school absolutely miserable and completely convinced that I wasn't one of the smart kids, because ever teacher I ever had hammered my on spelling, grammar, punctuation, and handwriting,

Byt the time I was in fourth grade I was totally checked out, and it wasn't until I was 35 years old that I realized I had had something to say, and that I could say it in writing.

So here's my non-expert opinion, if you want to encourage people comment on their ideas first, and their mechanics second.

And if you have a chatter-box, joke-cracking kid with sloppy everything, tell them that you see the seeds of something good and that they shouldn't let grammar hold them back.

Lisa McLeod -wwwForgetPerfect.com

PS - if Lisa Daily's idea to take up a collection to hire an editor for me takes off, I will gladly accept their services with great relief.

[Stacy Brice]

Not to be snert-like about this, but goodness... "their" is simply not a gender-neutral pronoun.

You want one? Me, too. How about if we create one and try to get it adopted.

Lemmings aside, there's no reason to try to make something into what it's not.

I mean, you can stand me in the corner with a umbrella over my arm and a hat on my head and call me a coat rack, but that doesn't make me one, you know?

"February" is "February," no matter how many people think it's fine to drop the middle "r." And oddly, I suspect that those who think that's no big deal (dropping the "r") would like to die before accepting that the same fate ever happen to "library," although common use might make that a reality at any moment!

Rules in language exist so that all users can understand each other. What we have with English is odd, to be sure, but is it so horrific that it needs to be dumbed down and quirked up more than it already is?

Writers are leaders in the use of language. Those who insist on bastardizing the language (and the associated rules of grammar and punctuation that go along with it) not only (IMO) set a poor example for the rest of the world, but also might find themselves writing in a completely different language in the not-so-distant future.

Ebonics, anyone? :)

[Dawn Goldberg]

Okay, I had to look up "snert." I found a series of definitions on (where else?) Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snert, for those of you who are interested. :-)

And you stole my thunder on "February," although I'll still talk about it come February 1. :-)

Thanks for adding your voice!

Love,
D