Writing 101

Words matter. Witness the stupidity attached to George W. Bush after he mispronounced so many simple words and grammatically botched so many basic sentences during the campaign. Recall the eloquence of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln and the bright legacy they have always had in this country.

Words matter.

This observation is not limited to politics. In any professional field where persuasion is integral to accomplishment, words and ideas have unrivaled clout. Those who have learned how to speak convincingly and write powerfully are especially well prepared to succeed. If this is true, then the cultivation of these talents should be a priority at Princeton.

But Princeton has not done all it can to ensure that its graduates are persuasive writers and articulate speakers. As far as I know, the University offers only one class that addresses the art of public speaking — HUM 228: Classical Arts of Persuasion: Rhetoric, Sophistry, and Salesmanship from Ancient to Modern Times. Otherwise, while you may learn a few things from the debaters of Whig-Clio, the University makes no special effort to encourage students to develop their oral communication skills.

Unlike speaking articulately, writing well is an ability the University is trying to help its graduates to master. Princeton has a writing center, which offers classes designed to improve students' writing like WRI 151w: The Craft of Writing. But how many people opt to take this class? The course description sounds like it's only for people who are poor writers, and this deters good writers — who may still want to become better writers — from enrolling.

In the midst of my writing this column, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel announced a proposal to require all freshmen to enroll in a writing seminar similar to Writing 151. If the writing seminar will encourage revision, provide line-by-line oversight and organize peer reviews — as has been proposed — then this might remedy the current problem. It's a much-needed change, and I hope the faculty approves it.

Change is necessary because the present situation is grim. The Undergraduate Announcement 2000-2001 states on page 57: "What characterizes these courses [that fulfill the writing requirement] is the close attention they pay to the process of writing. Students will be expected to write frequently, to hand in drafts, to rewrite and to progress from short papers to papers of increasing complexity."

Unfortunately, this characterization is inaccurate. Though we are often required to progress from shorter to longer papers in writing requirement courses, there is little attention paid to drafts and even less to the process of writing. For instance, I took LIT 141w: Modern European Writers during freshman year. My preceptor, who was supposed to be teaching us to write well, spoke English as his second language. This is not to say he was not a good writer — he may well have been. But he was not a good teacher of writing, and I was so confused at the end of the class that my writing abilities had regressed since I had first begun.

Perhaps my experience was unusual, but I know many people — myself included — who rarely revise their papers. They view revision as a mere last-minute error trap — an afterthought in the process of writing. The writing requirement, then, hasn't done its job.

The misconception about revision is also the fault of the faculty. Overworked preceptors and busy professors are usually good about writing comments on returned papers, but they often ignore critiquing the writing process itself.

The blame rests with our culture, too. Perhaps because writing is a difficult and tiresome process, many people assume that great writers have something they do not: genius. But genius is just another word for what we do not understand; furthermore, we should never underestimate the genius of hard work. And make no mistake about it — great writing is hard work: "Writing is very easy. All you do is sit in front of a typewriter keyboard until little drops of blood appear on your forehead," Walter W. "Red" Smith once wrote. And Thomas Mann offered this wisdom: "A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

If ideas and word choice are products of the mysterious corners of the mind, then revision is the product of patience and sweat. It is not the afterthought of writing, but the core of the process. Novelist James Michener once wrote: "I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's greatest rewriters."

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If revision is the key to great writing, then the right kind of practice is the path to improvement. The University may give us the opportunity to practice by forcing most of us to write a lot of papers. But without proper instruction, this process is akin to telling a budding tennis player to go out and hit thousands of tennis balls until he gets better. He might improve to a point, but after that, directed practice and instruction are the only steps to achievement.

(Jeff Wolf is a philosophy major from Chevy Chase, Md. He can be reached a jeffwolf@princeton.edu)