Clear, Concise, Concrete

In 1961-62, during the second of my three years at Culver Military Academy, my English course turned out to be a writing lab.  The instructor had previously worked as an editor in a publishing house, and at Culver he became his students' Editor.  For each class session we had to produce one page of writing, typed and double-spaced.  Our Editor would correct our work and then hand it back for re-writes — while, of course, we were churning out new compositions.  A particular essay might be revised a half-dozen times before he considered it ready for publication, i.e., display on the bulletin board.

Our guide to the holy mysteries was The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White.  Our Editor admonished us to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest this classic, especially its rules.  (For example, Rule 12: "Make definite assertions.  Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-commital language."  Well, sometimes, maybe.)  This was the year I learned to write, and it was principally this skill — not IQ or hard work, much less self-discipline — which got me through college and seminary.

No doubt you've heard Ed and Patsy Bruce's 1975 song Mamas Don't Let your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys, covered and popularized in 1978 by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.  My version would be Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Bad Writers.  In fact, many babies graduate from high school, college, and even graduate school without knowing how to write.  This was confirmed for me in the mid-1970s when the Williamston (MI) Chamber of Commerce invited MBA students from Michigan State University to do a retail marketing survey as a class project.  This was pro bono work, and I know the old bromide about choosey beggars.  However, their final report was a revelation.  The statistics, charts, and graphs were nicely handled.  But the text incorporated (rather deftly, I thought) almost every possible error of English grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style.  Before that I had assumed MBAs were the risen cream.  Since then, and especially having seen the recent economic carnage wrought by brilliant MBAs at the intersection of Wall Street and Main Street, my appraisal is less creamy.

How does this happen?  Here's one insight.  In the early 1990s my Detroit parish worked with Crossroads, a church-based social service agency, to develop The Learning Center at St. Columba.  This was an effort to equip jobless folks on Detroit's Near East Side with skills needed for entry-level employment, e.g., remedial math, typing, basic computer skills, and more.  I taught writing and used my Culver Editor's approach: write, re-write, re-write again.  My students were not very enthusiastic, but they did the work and turned in their papers.  After a few weeks one young lady, having written a vivid and competent account of a relative's wedding, declared that this was the first piece of writing she had ever enjoyed producing.  When I expressed surprise, she said, "You see, in school, if you broke the rules, the teacher would give you a writing assignment.  Writing was punishment."

For those who like words, I commend two web sites.  One is Wordsmith [wordsmith.org/awad/], which has been sharing "the magic and music of words" since 1994.  If you subscribe to A.Word.A.Day, they will e-mail you a new word every morning.  Each week's offerings reflect a theme.  Another is World Wide Words [www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm], which specializes in international English from a British perspective.  Editor Michael Quinion responds to reader inquiries with background essays on words and phrases.  Click on Other Word Sites (on the left) and you can access dozens of interesting web sites, including a searchable version of The Elements of Style.  Another link takes you to the 2010 List of Banished Words published by Lake Superior State University at Sault Ste. Marie.  Among the terms proposed for exile this year is "shovel-ready" — as in, "Father, your sermon this morning was shovel-ready." •••