Is bad writing bad for you?*
I’ve spent the day completing a close edit of a business school application essay. The writing is so atrocious that, faced with certain sentences, I hardly know where to begin. Subject-verb agreement? Prepositions, what are they and what are they for? Flawed logic? Implied connections that should be stated directly, or vice versa?
I’m accustomed to editing the work of intelligent writers with a grasp of basic grammar. Editing has been like a conversation meant to test and flesh out ideas. Not so now. But I’ve enjoyed crafting explanations of syntactical choices that seem obvious to me, and it puts me in mind of an observation I’ve heard many times from friends who tutor and teach: you have to know something twice as well to teach it.
This sort of editing will cease to be interesting, I predict, as soon as I learn these basic rules of writing twice as well. Or, to put it more precisely, as soon as I can frame adequate comprehensible explanations for all the basics. Then it’ll be drone work, and my increased efficiency may be outweighed by compensatory reading of the “good writing” I’ll need in order to stay sharp.
*The short answer: yes.
I didn’t describe it to you as the most excruciating job ever for no reason.
(edit THAT! HA!)
Though you have to also keep in perspective how terrible YOUR writing would be if you had to write a biz school app in Korean. That’s the only thought that kept me soldiering on through the hundreds of apps I’ve edited.
Also, believe it or not, it DOES make you a better writer. It’s like, you already know all the rules, and you’re already a good writer, but when you’ve corrected passive voice a thousand times your writing just comes out better. I mean, it takes less work — it’s more automatic and needs less revision to sound polished and “right.”
At least in my case, I think the app editing made my already-glittering prose truly blinding in its intensity.
mike
August 7, 2008 at 9:31 pm