I've been reading Bryan Garner's The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style (ODAUS). Garner collects words or phrases that are frequently misused, mispronounced, or arouse debate among linguistic circles. Since the concept isn't intuitive, here are a few examples:
You'll notice my examples are from the As and Bs, since that's all I've read to. I'm trying to force myself to go slowly, and have temporarily banned myself from reading ODAUS, so that I can take it on my road trip and get some hours from it still.
Garner seems to look with dericision on the "illiterate" American populace. Part of the fun of ODAUS are the quotations of real newspaper articles that botch word meanings, or are caught in pretentious language, or use redundant descriptors, or commit spelling errors. I wonder how it would feel to get your article quoted in ODAUS. I would feel very defensive. I could say, "that's not the point of the article!" and "my readers understand me anyway!" and "I have higher emotional stakes in this than you do!".
At the same time, I understand the importance of striving for a perfectly concise language. It says everything, and nothing more. To me that perfect language feels like a perfect circle - existing in theory alone, but it's so exciting to dissemble language and look at the pieces. I recently told Asa, and I'm paraphrasing, "people have been thinking about writing like math this whole time and I haven't known about it?!". Since I predict this complaint, clear writing doesn't disqualify style. But style needs to be constructed on top of coherent foundations. And although most readers might understand a technically inaccurate phrase, some portion of readers might not, possibly even the same portion of readers each time, therefore barring a demographic from understanding your writing. Garner takes the stakes even further, saying that writers have a responsibility to shape language by using it correctly and clearly (at least in professional writing - but I'll speak to this later).
The reader-writing relationship interests me especially. Garner doesn't reflect on it much, but he does quote some thinkers I want to check out. I think that when writers are presenting their written work to the world and want to be taken seriously, they have a duty to fashion the words into an effective conduit for their reflections. Copy errors pervade "Come Hell or High Water", Nowtopia, Participatory Democracy, and even Beyond Adversary Democracy. A lack of rigour in ideas can be predicted by the number - or even the existence of - copy errors. These errors imply that the text has not been sufficiently thought about. Especially in works which tries to further an academic inquiry, you cannot cut corners on editing. If small mistakes slip by, I can't be confident that the research and ideas have been sufficiently vetted.
My personal dilemma, and what prompted this meditation, is that as I'm thinking more about words, I'm getting into the habit of correcting people. Most of the time it's in my head although sometimes I say it outloud. I don't want to be the sort of person that makes other people feel badly about themselves. If I ever do correct your grammar or word/phrase usage, dear reader, know that it was a compulsion divorced from my perception of you. I think Garner can be mean in his mockery of the mistakes people make, to the detriment of guiding writers towards better writing. Garner writes, "Although there are good, clarifying forces at work on the language, there are also bad, obscuring forces. And these bad forces tend to work most perniciously on people who are heedless of their language. It's hard to know such a thing, but this segment of society may well be on the rise. This book could never reach those people".
After forcing my way through badly written governing documents - causing confusions with serious implications - I understand Garner's frustration. I think his complaint holds true for cases where writing is a responsibility - when you're asking many people to learn from you, or you're announcing a decision that affects others, for example. However (and I would hope Garner agrees, although I'm not sure he does) the "those people" labelling shouldn't extend to someone when they're using language in other contexts.
For example, I don't think the value of my friends's thoughts are at all determined by the grace of their language, making it at best irrelevant to correct them. I hope that as I learn more about writing I can maintain this conviction. I don't want to judge someone's speaking or writing when we're trusting each other with ideas and memories. In sum, I posit when asking ourselves when to judge someone's writing craft, we can ask "are their thoughts a responsibility to others"? I feel that friends talking to me should be able to be clumsy, knowing I can clear up confusions as they occur. They don't have a responsibility to me to be gramatically correct or concise or idiomatic. Perhaps responsibility requires a power dynamic, and the ability to impact others. An author of a book has authority by virtue of having written published material - if it's a non-fictional piece, it's likely attempting to influence a field of study or way of thinking. Journalists have the power to inform or misinform the public. Here, readers need to be considered, and polish - particularly in a way which increases clarity - is a duty along with the content. You could argue that the language we use for our ideas is always a responsibility, and clumsy wording can cause harm. I like the trait of thoughtfulness in general. That being said, I think both parties in these social situations just have a general responsibility to clear up misunderstandings as they occur and presume good intentions. If I made "speaking or writing in a way that is deemed best by linguists" a requirement of my friends, I'd only interact with a narrow and homogenous portion of society.
I'm really excited to read the rest of ODAUS, and then other style guides to compare. I'm practicing. I want my writing to have the grace of a good proof. Paradoxically, much of Garner's "policing of language" or elitist-sounding diatribes are in the name of accessibility. I find that mistakes, even when I should be able to guess at the intended meaning, really throw me off guard. As a literal person, abstract sentences stress me out. And deliberately mistifying language makes me feel stupid. So I'm learning about language not just to be a better writer, but also to be more accessible and purposeful in the words I use. Meanwhile, I will try to stiffle my instinctive urge for correction and remind myself that I'm lucky people are comfortable being imperfect around me.