The writer’s revolution

Generally speaking, Facebook isn’t the first place I turn to sharpen my prose.

Although social media such as Facebook, Twitter and the blog have revolutionized the nature of communication and reporting, they have also promoted incorrect punctuation, convoluted syntax and sloppy writing. One might guess they are well on their way to destroying any sort of intelligent social discourse.

Yet Anne Trubek, associate professor of rhetoric and composition at Oberlin College, argues precisely the opposite in a recent online essay for More Intelligent Life, a quarterly magazine from The Economist.

Despite the informality of new media, she claims, the frequency with which people use these forms of communication will necessarily increase their comfort, and eventually their facility with writing.

“With more than 200 million people on Facebook and even more with home Internet access,” Trubek writes, “... And if we subscribe to the theory that the most effective way to improve one’s writing is by practicing – by writing more, and ideally for an audience – then our writing skills must be getting better.”

Trubek references the ubiquitous “25 Things About Me” survey I’ve probably deleted from my own Facebook inbox at least a dozen times. She characterizes this thread as “precisely the kind of brainstorming exercise” more high school students need “just to loosen up,” to overcome the stilted, contrived prose that literary negligence will produce.

Trubek’s argument correctly assumes frequent and comfortable writing is a prerequisite for the development of an original, articulate voice. And yes, more people are writing in more ways than ever.   

As Trubek fails to acknowledge, however, frequency and comfort alone are grossly insufficient for producing effective writing. An English professor ought to know writing frequently is only valuable insofar that it instills proper mechanics and familiarizes one with the arduous revision process.

In other words, if untethered from fundamental principles of composition, writing frequently and comfortably possesses no inherent worth. If it did, we would all be celebrating the abundance of bad writing. Her argument is accurate in its trajectory but misguided in its specific assertions. Emerging media can indeed produce a more articulate social discourse, but not for the reasons Trubek offers.

Instead, one might examine remarks made by blogger Andrew Sullivan at last week’s Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. Sullivan suggests that, for writers, a new medium like the blog represents the most transformative development since the printing press. He also argues the blog has become a genre of its own, making the conception of an idea and its expression a nearly instantaneous event. And as Trubek herself observes, the “quality of many blogs is high, indistinguishable in eloquence and intellect from many traditionally published works.”

This means ingenious, talented writers can emerge as intellectual leaders in society through a variety of media (even Facebook) without having to penetrate the traditional journalistic establishment, as one would have five or 10 years ago.

More media outlets will project more voices, which means the competition for smart analysis and articulate reporting intensifies. And presumably, in the end, the best writers will prevail, ultimately fostering a more sophisticated social discourse.

Who knows, maybe we can even master the semicolon, too.