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14 August, 2004
On writing clearly

Writing this column is a pretty sweet gig for someone like me. I was a student of the Arts at the University of Alberta for five-and-a-half years, so any writing opportunity that is, well, "non-volunteer", is really terrific.

Or should I say tremendously magnificent? A reader once told me that she was glad I keep the level of my writing relatively high, instead of "dumbing down" like writers for newspapers are supposed to.

Another reader told me that my column really reveals my academic background, because sometimes my sentences are long enough to require him to go back over them and really put some effort into arranging the various syntactical elements into their proper logical order which is perhaps not what the average reader of a 600-word weekend editorial column is looking for, not wanting to insinuate anything negative about the actual reading level of the average reader of my column, but rather just commenting on whether a newspaper is the ideal place for an academic style of writing.

Writing is a craft, an art, and a basic tool of communication. Crafting a good piece of writing requires dedicated precision, patience, forethought, revision, and work. Craftful writers usually have to love the very act of sitting down and basically just thinking about words.

Creatively coming up with words to put down requires one to three times at least ponder yonder rocks under which roles of words behind were left to writers who will explore forgotten rites and implore forgiven wrongs to bend readers' wills into taking a break from dull mulling of the hum of drums of every daze they have spent matching words instead of mixing them. This also requires also a love of sitting and contemplating words.

Establishing basic and successful communication may require less effort than these other aspirations, but it unfortunately does also require substantial thought. In fact, writing just to communicate sadly requires more thought than most people willing to put into it.

This is exemplified by the number of people who regularly say "Well, whatever, you know I meant". If the person listening truly knows what someone like that means, it's pure luck. Some claim that those who emphasize correct usage of words are "anal retentive". That makes lawyers the best paid anal retentive people around, because their *job* is to be anal retentive about words.

Language is a cornerstone of civilization. Without it, we would be animals. There would be no money, no understanding, no peace. We need language, and language only works if the receiver of a message is hearing exactly what the sender is meaning.

It is ironic that, with proliferation of accessible mass world-wide written communication (i.e. the Internet), people appear to be getting lazier in their writing instead of more attentive. Our daily communication with the world is becoming increasingly written, and yet we care less and less about the clarity of our writing. If this trend continues, nobody will have any idea what anyone else is writing.

This is true of both personal and business communications. In fact, there is huge demand now for the training of professionals in business writing.

A bad interpreter can start a war. My wife recently had to tell an Irish guy that she had trouble understanding what he was saying. He replied that he had noticed how Canadians speak very clearly. Is it any coincidence that the Irish are known as brawlers and we're known for getting along?

Well, that's 579 words. Hopefully I've gotten my point across clearly. I know I've succeeded in sitting down and thinking a lot about words.

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