Writing Points

On Saturday afternoon I sat down and read and reviewed all the "short papers." I probably surprised some of you with how detailed my review was, and some of you were probably left with some uncertainty about how valid some of the points I made were.

I reviewed various aspects of your writing.

1. Correctness from an English-usage standpoint. There is a fairly great variety of ways to write "correctly" in American English, but some ways of writing make just about everyone's incorrect list. Spelling, punctuation, capitalization, complete sentences, correct antecedents, consistency in singulars and plurals are certainly among the aspects that need to be considered. On a number of papers, I found incomplete or run-on sentences; incorrect use of the "apostrophe s," usually by failing to use it when required for a possessive; a failure to use a comma before a second independent clause in a sentence when the second clause is preceded by a conjunction such as "and"; using commas when semi-colons are necessary or vice versa; dangling or misplaced modifiers, which happen when you think that you have used a phrase to tell about one person or thing, but the placement of it actually leads your reader to the conclusion that it is being used to tell about another person or thing; and inconsistency in using singulars and plurals, for example, starting a sentence with each (singular) and then referring to the "each" as "they" or "them" later in the sentence. Failures in these areas may be because of carelessness in proofreading or may stem from one's not knowing the rule. Many times we have ways of informal speaking that are not helpful when we sit down to do formal writing.
2. APA requirements. Spring Arbor like many higher education institutions demands a specific format and rules for writing. Spring Arbor's is APA. If you were using references in the text according to other formats you could underline a book title. In APA you place it in italics. Another example of a requirement specific to APA is that when you present a list of three or more things (e.g. bell, book, and candle), each of them must be separated by a comma, even the one after the "and."
3. Style. Some questions of style, in fact many, are a matter of choice on the part of the author, not right or wrong. However, there is a good deal of general agreement about what makes for more readable style. In fact, some stylistic problems are so great that they can make sections of writing almost unreadable. Excellent style demands a very time-consuming process involving multiple reviews (If you are not John Updike or Toni Morrison, that is.). This is not always possible, of course. Business communications and the practice field for them in the classroom do, however, demand at least one thorough review of everything one intends to communicate--something more than using the spell and grammar check.

In establishing the grades for the papers, I stuck with measuring these items almost exclusively by the use of the 10 points set aside for "proofreading." Even in this category, I emphasized correctness, not APA or style. The only exception to the use of this one category was when the writing was rendered so unclear by lack of correctness that it interfered with my understanding the substance. Then there might be some influence on the 20 point category. Mistakes in the method of listing or including references in the text also affected only the proofreading points.

I would not be as careful in my review, probably, if this was not a course in business communications. I figure: if not here, then where. I am sure all of you want to be more correct writers who write with a style that leads to greater clarity and power for your messages. This may mean for some a need to review things that you were probably taught long ago but have ceased to influence your writing recently. For others, it may just mean some greater care in the review process before submitting one's work. In any event, my goal is that you would experience being a better writer at the end of the course than you were at the beginning. Please don't hesitate to question my comments. A dialogue between us can be a help to the final goal. Your questions may also lead to reconsideration on my part.

When I went back to competitive swimming almost three years ago after a 45-year hiatus, I returned as the relatively good swimmer I had been when I was a boy. What I discovered was that there were some things that I had not learned the first time around and others which had fallen away because of bad habits I had gotten into through the years. I know that to achieve further goals in my swimming I will need to continue to try to be a "lifelong learner." I think it's quite clear that this applies to writing as well as most other activities that we consider important enough to work on for a lifetime.