Regular Life

My previous post was just an experiment. I was thinking yesterday of how much writing goes on thanks to blogs, and how many have unwittingly become better writers because of that. Just the fact that people are reading so much in their spare time is encouraging. I expect this holds true regardless of language.

This brought another question to mind.

If a lot of the writing is bad, then is all this reading really helping increase literacy? The easy-going side of me says that open communication is good, and as long as the point gets across, then spelling and usage errors should not be of concern. However, I also believe that enough errors can start to undermine the author’s message. Was following the story of my post made more difficult by the errors? I personally found it very distracting when re-reading it. It’s a bit disturbing to me that there might be people out there who plowed through it without hesitation.

The biggest difference between some blog writers and published authors? The editing process. Even best-selling authors write revision after revision of their work, and then largely depend on editors to make their stories fluid on the page. I have no examples, but my source is “they” and I stand by it.

No matter what field one chooses, the ability to write well is vital. Especially in the age of e-mail, when pretty much everybody writes their own stuff instead of dictating it, this has become more important at every level. I’m not at one of those levels where dictation would have been an option, but I can dream.

I will not say that errors are indicative of intelligence, because I know mathematical and scientific geniuses who couldn’t compose a well-written document any more than a chimp could. Now, this is just me going out on a limb, but think computer programmers. Smart folk, no doubt, but wow have I seen some eye-popping errors come from that camp (some of which inspired my previous entry). I think in many cases this is not because they can’t do it right, but just don’t see it as important. With such a highly specialized skill set, and in such high demand, perhaps they can afford such an attitude.

Then we have the people who are super-smart in everything, or have just enough smarts in all areas to fake it. Early in my education, I showed promise of being one of these, but I didn’t apply myself in math and science enough to maintain it. Yes, in those fields I probably contributed to US students’ apparent spiral down the brain drain.

I was going to segue that last sentence into a bit about some of my readers seeing that spiral go down the drain clockwise, but then a quick Internet search revealed that down is the only guaranteed direction of draining water in any given hemisphere. The direction of the spin depends on factors having nothing to do with where in the world you are. There was a decisive and decidedly low-tech MIT study to prove it.

And I thought I was going to go all “Coriolis effect” on you.

In college, I heard some fairly cockamamy theories on education, but Howard Gardner’s Seven Intelligences are worth a look. You can test your own tendencies here. Share your results.

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