A while back someone sent me an email suggesting I share a blog post with my readers: Word Nerds Rejoice: Top 25 Blogs For Editing Geeks. I reviewed the list and even subscribed to several of the blogs. Some of the listed blogs deal in editing minutiae, but there are several funny ones as well.
I love words, and I love editing words to make the stories or advice or information a pleasure to read. One editor described me as “the pickiest person I know!” I am a fanatic about misspelled or misused words, awkward and convoluted verbiage, and grammar errors that interfere with readers’ enjoyment or understanding. However, I don’t believe in being a slave to rules. Looking over this list of editing blogs made me think of a post I wrote in November 2006. Since most of you weren’t reading my blog back then (actually, I don’t think anyone was reading my blog then!), I decided to share it again.
Rules or Artistic License?
I’ve been following a discussion on a writers e-mail list. Must writers follow all the rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, or do the rules stifle the writer’s creativity?
Some writers consider themselves artists who can’t be restricted by rules, while others consider themselves craftsmen bound by conventions.
I fall in the middle—as noted in a previous post, a publisher has called me ”the pickiest person she knows.” As an editor, I have to know and follow grammar rules or I wouldn’t have any customers. On the other hand, my writing style is informal and simple, and I usually don’t worry about all the rules that may be used in formal writing. For example, I don’t mind ending a sentence with preposition. Often it sounds more natural and understandable to do so.
In my view, there are several critical elements to good writing:
- The reader must understand it. Using the right word is essential. Using it’s when you mean its or using their or they’re when you mean there can confuse your meaning. Punctuation to show when sentences start and end is critical. Writers must follow some rules to ensure that their readers know what the writer is saying.
- The writing must be consistent. Some style guides call for serial commas (the comma before “and” in a series of three or more: bell, book, and candle). Other style guides say to leave out the last comma if the meaning is clear (bell, book and candle). If you’re writing an academic paper or a newspaper article, you need to follow the appropriate style guide. But if you’re writing a blog entry or an article for your Web site, you can take your choice of using or not serial commas. But whichever you choose, do it throughout the document. Writing “bell, book, and candle” in the first paragraph and “boys, girls and parents” in the second paragraph won’t work.
- The style of the writing must be appropriate to the subject and the situation. I’ve been editing an academic paper for a doctoral student—that paper is more formal and uses more “big” words than I use in my blog posts. An academic paper should demonstrate that the student has the vocabulary and the formal writing skill appropriate to the level of education. Depending on the purpose of the blog, posts should generally convey the message in a way that is easy and enjoyable for the reader.
- Dialogue should reflect the education and personality of the character speaking. An uneducated laborer shouldn’t sound like a college professor. But even if dialogue contains improper grammar, it should be punctuated correctly so it is easy for the reader to understand what is being said. And if a character speaks in a dialect, just enough of the dialectal spelling should be used to convey the impression without making it difficult for the reader to decipher what the character is saying.
Understanding the rules and knowing when you can break them is one of the hallmarks of a good writer.
Of course, since even good writers (and editors) are human, sometimes we all break the rules without intending to. Most editors say we can find everyone’s errors but our own. So if you see me breaking the rules … maybe I did it on purpose, and maybe I just goofed!
I think that every writer should have his own style, but also, every writer should have a good sense of language. A writer’s mistakes should always have a purpose and a hidden meaning, if not that only a mistake.
Mia,
We all make mistakes occasionally, but hopefully they will be rare.
we love your this sentence – “I love words, and I love editing words to make the stories or advice or information a pleasure to read.” This is really good thing about editor’s job to love what you are doing!
anya,
Some people don’t like editing, but those of us who do find great satisfaction in helping writers make their work the best it can be.
I am very sloppy in my writing… my posts are more about urgency than they are about being correct… it would make an editor roll in their grave, but each niche really is different as your explained in the article.
R.J.,
I recommend at least using spell check and re-reading everything you write just to avoid major errors that will confuse readers. But certainly different situations requiring different levels of quality in writing. The main thing is to get your message across to your target audience.
Hi Lillie, I love your blog so much as it helps me to write for my website, I am a regular reader of your posts. But I am a silent reader and do not comment on the posts.(This maybe I can’t write very good or I’m shy) Your this post is so helpful indeed. Writing “according to subject and the situation” is perfectly very nice point. Keep helping us by posting like this. Cheers
Barney,
I appreciate silent readers as well as commenters but am glad you decided to leave a comment. Hope you return often.
Lillie,
I agree with all your points and I think that the middle that you describe sounds like a pretty good place to be.
Given my accounting background, however, it has not surprised me that throughout my writing course and (very short) journalistic career to-date, I tend to lean more toward the ‘editing geek’ side of the coin.
Andrew,
Accountants have to be perfectionists, so it stands to reason that would carry over into writing as well.
The essential thing is that the reader understand. I agree that there must be some rules for writters!
Marius,
You hit on the key: that readers understand.
Everyone is not a born writer, they harness their skill under a more experienced editor, and a writer should not feel about getting his work edited..Everybody does a mistake, and more than a mistake it is often the suitability of what is written that an editor can understand
Junaid,
You’re right that editors can do more than correct mistakes; they can make the work easier to read and understand.
An interesting technique I’ve seen some writers use is to use purposely use incorrect grammar to either change the mood of the piece, or, to draw the reader’s attention to something. It’s actually fun to see that technique being used. For example, you obviously have excellent grammar and punctuation skills, and your wording is nearly perfect throughout your whole blog. You might choose to use the phrase “don’t say nothin to nobody” (obvious misspelling and a double-negative) because that would most definitely get the reader’s attention, and in the context of a well-written grammatically correct piece, it would be acceptable. Nicely done post, and I do like your informal-but-still-very-correct style!
David,
Yes, breaking the rules can sometimes be very effective. Just know when to do it, and try not to do it unintentionally.
Thanks Lillie. As an impressionable young schoolboy, I believed everything that my English teachers taught me. These instructions in grammar and style were etched into my little grey cells well into my twenties and thirties. It was only when I got into my thirties that I realized that there are school teachers of English who are academically good and there are school teachers of English who are pedagogically good. Many of the rules that I was taught were actually elements of style. I never understood, until recently, why I would be enthralled with some pieces of text. It was because of the furniture and the use of all five senses. How fascinating.
Russell,
It’s great to be able to analyze a piece of writing and see why it works–then hopefully apply those techniques to your own writing.
Writing in a manner that is clearly understood by the reader, to me, is one of the obvious and most important ways to get the message behind your writing through to the reader. But it is something many of us forget so often. Thanks for the interesting article, well written and informative as always.
Mark,
Probably people get the idea that writing needs to be obtuse and use a lot of big words to be “good” from the education system. I don’t like to edit academic papers for that very reason.
Explaining your topic, especially on technical subjects is pretty important to me. I like to believe my readers take something away from my posts.
Mary,
It’s a waste of your time and the readers’ time if your writing can’t be understood.
I think I’m labelled somewhere in between those two. It’s fun to read clever ways of writing, I learn a lot from it. But at the same time it still has to be understood by the readers.
Darin,
I’m always amazed at how often writers write to show off rather than to be understood.
As I get older and grumpier, I find that I have more patience for grammatical errors. Let’s face it, I don’t get it right every time either and I prefer text that flows and talks to me over grammatically perfect prose. I do still take spelling and punctuation very seriously. I see the vocabulary used and the order of the words as my personal stamp, but punctuation and spelling is what makes it English.
Paul,
My focus is on how easy the words are to read and understand.