On Rhetoric

In writing classes nowadays students tend to get taught that grammar is not as important as content. They're told to concentrate on their argument and the rest will just magically come (or something). I'm grading papers now, and feel the urge to tell the world how very untrue that is. If anything, it’s the other way around: great writing can carry a crappy idea any day. Look how many times this has happened in history! But without grammar, and without attention to a varied and interesting style, you get nowhere.

Bad writing just makes such a very bad initial impression. I imagine it's much like meeting any new person: say this person hasn’t brushed his teeth; he smells bad; you shake his hand and it’s greasy. How much more do you want to know about this person? Do you want to know anything at all? This person may be perfectly great on the inside. But you’re probably never going to find out, because you were so put off by his appearance in the first place that now you’re just anxious to get out of there.

That’s what writing and grammar are to a paper. And the shame about bad writing is that no one has to be a bad writer. A little practice and effort--and the reading, perhaps, of a good grammar handbook--can make anyone into a passable writer. Not a great writer, maybe--writers have degrees of talent, just like musicians or artists. But just as anyone can learn to play an instrument, anyone can also learn to write, and, moreover, write reasonably well.

So, for any of my students out there, here it is: when I read a paper full of dangling modifiers (even one is a pretty bad sign, actually), that paper just dropped to a maximum grade of a B. And the ideas therein better be pretty darn good to get that, because that’s how low my overall impression of the paper has just dropped. It’s going to take a lot of effort to overcome that initial bad impression--effort that an elegant writer doesn’t have to make. Sadly, a poorly written paper with bright ideas will probably get a lower grade than an elegantly written paper with average ideas.

That may be wrong and sad, but there it is. I can’t help it; I’m human. But so is everyone else, and every student should be aware of that. Bad writing is a real crippler.