Gang, Marnie, who is now off-list, has asked me to post this for her. Please do note, this is from Marnie, not me, and the "Mike" quoted in Marnie's post is not me either. Not that I necessarily disagree with either of them, just want credit to go where credit is due.
--Mike J. >>>>>>>>>>>> In a message dated 1/23/2003 1:48:07 AM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >Certainly not. You should jump through whatever hoops you deem it >necessary to jump through in order to achieve what you set out to do: >communicate something to a given audience. If people misunderstand >your meaning very often, that's a hint that you may need to focus more >on your writing. A scarcity of responses can be another indication, >although that's less reliable on USENET, where the convention is that >you don't respond to statements you agree with. >Incidentally, I'd say you write very well. :-) >-tih Thanks. In some ways I agree with you, in some ways, I don't. I am currently unsubscribed right now because I cannot give the list time. But two posts made it into my box on this thread after I unsubscribed and I am responding to both. The other I responded to privately, this I will share -- in hopes that maybe someone will get something out of it. (See below, Mike Berlyn's words alone are worth reading). When I first got on the Internet, I did not worry about my writing. I figured I communicated fairly well. I also visited chat rooms where small i's and incomplete sentences were the norm. Actually, it's sort of amazing how much can be shared that way. Then I joined a game writers newsgroup (well, several). Over the years in those groups I was repeatedly misunderstood. Mainly when I was trying to communicate a difficult concept. I tend toward rambling sentences with a lot of parenthetical asides. I was puzzled, repeatedly, how I was being misunderstood so often. Also because they were writers they considered even posts published works and many would take a great deal of time on their posts before they hit the send button. I found then, and now, having to take so much time to say something tedious. I did not consider posts published works and still do not. Then I talked to a famous game writer, Mike Beryln (Infidel, Suspended, Cutthroats -Infocom and various others) who had also taught writing for years. What Mike said made sense and it has always stayed with me. That's how I agree: if you want to communicate and you are not, then your writing becomes important. Even on the Internet. Unfortunately. Because many do not write well. But, when it comes to myself, I was not only trying to communicate in a newsgroup, I was also trying to become a better writer for the purpose of writing games. (I guess, in the process, I have become better.) So I had strong motivation to work hard on my writing. (I still could put more time into it -- I still tend to make quite a few grammar mistakes.) But your average Interneter, if not writing for any other reason than to communicate in newsgroups, mailing lists, and chat rooms, will not have that motivation. Improving one's writing is a difficult process and may take some time -- even a life time. Those are the hoops I mentioned, learning more about: sentence structure, grammar, words, and even style. And I see no reason why someone should worry about jumping through those hoops if they do not have a deep motivation to improve their writing for some other reason. It not only takes an incredible amount of time, it takes actual painstaking study. I now quote Mike Beryln -- ----------- Talking (chat rooms, conversations, etc.) is a two-way communication process with a built-in feedback process. You quickly see if you were misunderstood. Writing is a one-way communication process with no feedback built in. You cannot afford to take the chance of being misunderstood. Writing is a process through which we communicate ideas. These ideas may encompass emotions, experiences, abstract concepts or events (real or imagined). The purpose of grammar and spelling correctly is to help the reader not let the words get in the way. People are used to seeing certain patterns, and once seen, these patterns melt into the background process. This background process is what makes for certain readers having more trouble with some sentences than others, and the process of understanding a sentence is called parsing. To write something "casually" wherein you pay little attention to the writing itself and instead focus almost exclusively on what you are trying to say will inevitably lead to misunderstandings. You must be clear about what you want to say, and say it exactly. This does not require perfection in word choice or in grammar/spelling, but does require clarity of thought, without being clouded by emotion. Distilling what you want to say into a concrete thought and then saying it as directly as possible is the goal. My view of writing fiction is a little different from most people's as it grew up with me through the sixties: I believe great writing is invisible, that the goal of fiction is to re-create a reality in the reader's mind. [snip] from another letter to me... ...language, in one-way communication, requires stating what we what to communicate in the clearest, most direct manner possible in order to avoid being misunderstood. In this way, language should become invisible. ------------ Mike put it to me so clearly that I got it. The written word should be invisible to the reader. The meaning should come across easily. Not all readers start at the same reading skill level. Conventions in the written word: grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure; give all us readers the same starting place -- the same base. The writer uses that base to communicate their meaning as clearly as they can. If they succeed, their written word will become so "transparent" that the reader will be able to unwrap the meaning contained in their words without any struggle. That meaning will just be viewed and absorbed. However, it's one h_ll of a lot of work to try to write that clearly, and unless one has some other reason to try that hard, then I feel it's too much to ask of most people (not the ones who already write well). And I would and do not ask it. Of others, and of myself when I am in a hurry. Which, of course, veered off quite a bit from Mike Johnston's original post of being annoyed about English mistakes in things that should be proof read, such as ads and magazine articles. <g> But I have given this a great deal of thought for some time and it is a subject I tend to "get going on." Doe aka Marnie (Or maybe I just *like* being lazy re writing. ;-) But I took my time with this post, so you may consider it a published work, if you want. Hehehe.) [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
