Good writer, bad writer

Read your paper aloud, and you will catch more errors. Almost everyone of my high school English teachers recommended that strategy, and for the most part, it works wonders. It has its limitations though.

For starters, if spellchecker suggests “defiantly” after I misspell “definitely,” I still read out “definitely” because that’s what I meant to say. Additionally, I have a habit of reading out the word or phrase I meant to type rather than the word or phrase that is actually on the page. Finally, I can put my own inflection into my reading, which means that sentences sound fine to me even if other readers may have difficulty parsing out what I meant.

Photo credit – Flickr user Logan Ingalls

For those reasons, I think the better way of hearing errors is to bring in a robot, specifically the one that lives inside your computer’s text-to-speech program.

Text-to-speech programs read text from your screen aloud in a robotic-sounding voice with little inflection. They are great tools for proofreading because they solve all three of the shortcomings listed above. The computer reads what is on the screen no matter what you meant to type, and errors become a lot more apparent. Further, the relative monotone of the computer-generated voice also means that wordy or awkward sections sound wordy and awkward. Continue reading ‘Better proofreading through robots’

The best writers I know also happen to be the best readers. Why that might be true is not hard to understand. The best readers understand how a text leads a reader through a set of ideas. They see the individual choices the author made and understand the strategy behind those choices. The best writers find ways to incorporate those strategies in their own writing.

Learning to read in this way takes some practice. You must read critically, compare the text to other similar texts, and think about how the text moved you. I occasionally try to speed up that process by taking a piece of writing that I find effective and annotating it for my students to show them how I see it working. That’s what I will be doing here.

The piece of text I’ve chosen popped up in my wife’s RSS feed following the Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco earlier this year. She sent it to me because she knows that I’ve read all of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, and she thought it was a great deconstruction of one of Gladwell’s greatest sins, taking the kernel of an idea or theory and extending it past its intended usefulness. It wasn’t a surprise to me that he does this. Gladwell is an expert journalist with an interest in psychology, sociology, and other sciences. Many experts in those fields feel that Gladwell oversimplifies topics. However, his writing demonstrates his eye for the interesting and counterintuitive, and when he finds that, he writes fantastic prose to introduce that concept to a non-expert audience. I’ve always equated reading Gladwell to watching reality television; you know you can’t really trust what you see to be entirely the truth of people’s lives, but the results can be entertaining and thought provoking nevertheless. With this opinion of Gladwell in mind, I had figured that the link my wife sent me would recycle the same criticisms that I’ve already read. The fact that it did not is part of the reason that I’ve chosen the text below: it forced me to think in ways that I hadn’t in the past. That’s a sign of good writing.

Photo from the flickr account of State Library of Victoria Collections

The text below comes from the blog, Ask a Korean! That name explains what the blog does. The main author, who goes by The Korean (hereafter, I’ll just use TK), takes queries via email and then writes up an explanation based on his perspective as someone who has experienced both Korean and American cultures. The blog’s record of success (over 3.4 million visitors, 6.5 million page views, and appearances in national media) speaks to the quality of the posts as well as the author’s prolificness.

I’ve asked for and was graciously granted permission by TK to reproduce the post in its entirety and to insert my own commentary. After this point, all of my words will appear in italics and will be indented.

Culturalism, Gladwell, and Airplane Crashes

A few weeks ago, I attended a PGA golf tournament. You might think watching golf is boring, but I beg to differ: professional golf tournaments offer a chance to witness firsthand one of the amazing athletic feats in the world.

If an ordinary weekend golfer made ten great shots in a row, that might be the best day of her golfing life. If I saw two ordinary weekend golfers making ten great shots in a row at the same time, I would start exclaiming out loud after each shot and buy a round of beer for both of them. Now, imagine watching a hundred fifty golfers playing, in a championship golf course that is designed to leave a very small margin of error. Imagine watching virtually every one of them knocking off ten great shots in a row. The good players may hit 20 or 30 great shots in a row; the best ones, 40, 50, 60 great shots. This is why a golf tournament is so exciting: it is a collective display of perfection, shown over and over and over again. Continue reading ‘Reading for writers: Breakdown of “Culturalism, Gladwell, and Airplane Crashes” from Ask A Korean!’

In the past year, I read a lot about the idea of mindfulness meditation and the long term benefits the practice can have on focus, reduction of stress, and a general state of well being. Needing a bump in all three areas, I signed up for a free online course with guided meditations and exercises. During the first week, I read all the materials and enthusiastically sat on our bedroom floor with my eyes closed. I tried to listen as a guided meditation encouraged me to be present and focus on my breathing, but I kept thinking about my posture, my back pain, arm positions, etc. My internal monologue kept coming back to the same question, “Am I doing this right?”

That question dominates my thoughts whenever I am trying something out for the first time. In some cases, the answer is obvious. When I attempted to fix the pump on my iced tea maker and the water continued to sit placidly in the reservoir, I received immediate feedback, and I could try something else like buying a new iced tea maker. In other cases though, feedback is scarce, and the answer is murkier, sometimes a lot murkier, which causes stress and doubt. During the second week of the mindfulness course, I was less enthusiastic, and that’s partly because I felt more demands were being placed on my time, but I still could not tell if my efforts were being wasted.

Writing is among those activities where feedback is  the murkiest, and that’s a big problem. When I put words down on the page, I have to make an educated guess about whether they’ll have the effect I desire. Often, I’ll have no confirmation of that guess until the writing is out of my hands. Anyone who has a stake in what they are writing, be it a grant proposal, an application essay, term paper, or love letter to a prospective partner, faces the stress of trying to write creatively and accurately express who they are and what they know under a cloud of uncertainty. It’s pretty hard to put full effort and still not know whether or not you are on the right track. When a writer can’t tell, they’ll frequently produce a piece of writing that fall short of their best effort. Continue reading ‘Am I doing this right? The troubles with feedback and writing’