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TO
THE STUDENT: No,
this is not a
make-believe event you will likely
escape. If anything, given our current frenzied
drive for information and technology, employers are intensifying their
demand
for good writing skills. Indeed, because
they recognize the trend of declining writing skills, most notably
among recent
graduates, they will continue to include in their interview strategies
writing
samples testing the authentic value of your GPA. In
fact, whether
you major in criminal justice or in
biology, in business or in psychology, you will need to write
competently as
you face the Twenty-First Century–with or without the aid of a
computer.
Computers, after all, have their rhetorical
limits, just as they have their stubborn "down" days. What will
you do then? Will you be able to write a coherent memo
without the benefit of grammar and spelling checks? Some
of you, of
course, will perform splendidly,
especially with a dictionary at your side.
Others of you, whether readily or reticently, will acknowledge your
lack
of effective writing skills, no doubt for which you can assign blame to
many
quarters: excessive television viewing, employment demands, lax reading
habits,
lazy writing habits (how much easier to telephone instead of writing
notes to
relatives and friends), and previous instruction. But blame will
not gain you necessary skills;
only your determination to succeed will. You
see, instructors
can teach you fundamental writing techniques, but a firm commitment to
learn
the basic characteristics of competent writing rests solely in your
hands. Naturally, you cannot expect to improve your
writing if you lack the will to improve.
You have, of course, other options.
You can fault the instructor for calling writing errors to your
attention, you can "shop" for that elusive instructor who ignores
writing errors, or you can
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ask
a good writer to "clean up" your papers. At
the risk of
mediocrity, these are the easy paths to
take. The harder task is to acquaint
yourself with the qualities of effective prose through increasing your
reading
of the masters, scrutinizing their vocabulary to enlarge your own, and
employing their writing strategies in your own work. You will
find, for example, that superior
writers are lovers of words; they get rid of the deadwood that many
poorer
writers want to cling to. In addition to
tending to matters of grammar, spelling, and punctuation (basic skills
that
make writing clear and "readable"), superior writers piece together
their relevant thoughts in a coherent shape; for writing leads them to
consider
the subject matter at hand on a deeper level than class discussion
allows. Yes,
some of you
will struggle more than others to
break old habits, particularly those of you who were accustomed in high
school
to finding two grades on a writing assignment (one for "mechanics"
and one for "content"). You
may continue to believe that they are mutually exclusive. They're
not.
Would you, to take but one example, frame a favorite picture of a loved
one in the cheapest, ugliest frame you could find in a bargain
bin?
Of course not. Neither, then, should you expect a respectful
reading of your ideas, no matter how relevant they are, if you
construct your
frame with a poorly conceived thesis; with faulty organization,
grammar, and
usage; and with weak transitions and erratic punctuation No
matter how hard
you may wish to resist learning correct form, established rules of
writing and
punctuation do matter. Otherwise, how
else can we distinguish between "woman without her man is lost" and
"woman: without her, man is lost"?
How else can we distinguish between a "pretty tall woman" and
a "pretty, tall woman"? And
how else, as Mark Twain noted, can we care that "the difference between
the right word and the nearly right word is the same as that between
lightning
and the lightning bug"? If you
don't care, why should anyone else take your writing seriously?
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