Some notes on grammar and writing

Correct use of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and syntax on a consistent basis is something more people ought to strive to master. Certainly, such concepts are more easily employed in writing rather than speech, and certainly one must consider the intended audience for a specific message when deciding how best to convey information. Stylistically, it may be important to use unconventional spelling or rely heavily on slang in a particular medium. It is inherently important, though, to be as straightforward and correct as possible whenever composing very formal pieces. Basically, you don't want to write a résumé the same way you'd write a text message.

Even though I spent years writing excruciatingly formal term papers, I don't write like that all the time. The types of grammatical mistakes I see that bother me aren't ones stemming from casual writing. I know how to tailor my language to suit the situation. The problem arises when people are writing things that need to sound formal and fail miserably because of a combination of common errors that render the resulting material confusing or cause it to bear the appearance of haphazardness.

I've done a lot of proofreading and copy editing on everything from short fiction to term papers to magazine articles to advertisements, and I've done this on both professional and volunteer levels. One of the biggest sources of mistake-riddled copy I see is the "letters to the editor" section of newspapers. Granted, that's part of the whole point of such a section, to be an unfiltered soapbox for the average reader of a particular publication. When I see the same kinds of mistakes over and over again, mere words cannot describe how much I want to sob hysterically when reading the Op Ed pages.

Taking merely one letter written in one paper and highlighting all problems of grammar, spelling, punctuation, or awkward phrasing, I find problems in six sentences out of twenty-one. In other words, well over a quarter of that piece would require copy editing were it to be considered publishable by a professional news organization.

The symptoms themselves, in the case of the particular letter in question, are not as egregious as some I have seen. There are no spelling errors, but there are lots of problems with sentence construction. There are lots of awkward prepositions, for example, and that’s an issue that bothers me a lot lately.

I am reminded of watching a segment of an entertainment news show discussing the release of Madonna's album Confessions on a Dance Floor. The host incorrectly called the work Confessions off of a Dance Floor. Not only is that the wrong title of the album, it is grammatically clumsy.

Is it technically wrong, though? To be perfectly honest, I don't know. To my ear, it sounds weird and bad, and it makes me think that the person making the gaffe doesn't read a lot and isn't exposed to traditional grammar. When I was in junior high school, I had quite a lot of fellow students who were growing increasingly fond of stating things like, "Richard Dean Anderson plays on MacGyver." "Plays on," before about 1987, was not a phrase I ever encountered to describe the concept of an actor appearing in a particular film, television program, or theatrical production. While not particularly wrong, as an avid media critic, I take issue with the verb "plays" being used here, too; it renders the entire profession of acting a little bit dodgy, childish, and trivial. Saying that an actor "plays" a particular character doesn't exactly carry the same sense of derision, but the term "portrays" is preferable. "Plays on," however, should be avoided at all costs as sounding infantile and grossly inelegant.

Essentially, while phrasing things awkwardly may not get you demonized, it will make your writing come across as seeming slightly immature. If your goal is to reach the widest audience possible with your composition, it's best to use as close to standard phrasing as possible.