Unlearning

For many college students the beginning of learning how to write well is to unlearn much of what they've been taught. Most students arrive at college with a grab-bag of rules that they try their best to adhere to. They've never really thought about these rules, or wondered if they make sense （understandably, since their teachers probably didn't either）. But students believe that following these rules will help produce "good writing," and that "bad writing" is defined as breaking the rules.

　　If you think the "rules" are your best guide to good writing, you've got some serious throwing-away to do as the first step in your growth as a writer.

　　Some of the false or overly simplistic rules about essay-writing I've heard most often: don't split infinitives, don't start a sentence with but or and, don't use direct questions, don't abbreviate, don't say I or you, don't end sentences with prepositions, avoid pronouns as being too informal, and write essays in precisely five paragraphs. There are also lots of idiosyncratic usage edicts. Some teachers for instance require their students to dutifully change towards into toward every time they come across it.

　　Now there is a grain of truth and even more in many language and usage rules. But in the black-and-white way that writing rules are taught to most students, they are absurd, not to mention contradicted by many examples from first-rate writers.

　　It's true, for instance, that one should be careful about using split infinitives, simply because most readers have been trained to recognize them as a mistake. But that's not the same thing as saying one should never split an infinitive, or that split infinitives violate some real law of language. Sometimes a split infinitive is just the most graceful and rhythmic way to say something. What if Captain Kirk, cowed by his English teacher, had said, "Boldly to go where no man has gone before." That sounds prissy rather than soaring, doesn't it?

　　Indeed the split infinitive rule, like the stricture against ending a sentence with a preposition （regarding which see Winston Churchill's wry comment） is bogus. It was invented in the 19th century by classically obsessed scholars who wanted English to be like Latin and Greek （whose one-word infinitives cannot be split）. If you're not sure whether to believe me or not, here's what the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage says: "Split them when you need to. . . . The objection to the split infinitive has never had a rational basis." （more on rules and usage）.

　　Now I certainly don't object to a due measure of formality in one's writing. But the question is, do the rules most students come to college with help produce good writing? The answer is "no." They do not. They do much more harm than good. The "rules" forced on many students teach an exaggerated reverence for formality as the mark of good writing.

　　This formality becomes a style unto itself, often referred to as the official style. The official style is marked by big words, wordy constructions, long gobs of prepositional phrases, and supposedly formal techniques like the passive voice. Most students are trained to write in this style, and as long as they obey the particular subset of local rules their teachers enforce, they think they are developing a mature, effective writing voice. From the point of view of high school, maybe that makes sense: the clearest way for teenage writers to stand out is to write differently from how they used to. Once upon a time they learned to read and write in short, declarative sentences, with plain words and simple verbs: See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Now, it seems, the rewards go to those who can use the biggest words and most ornate constructions: a domestic quadruped was observed moving with a high degree of velocity.

　　The trouble is that in college, probably because teachers have more time and higher expectations, windy prose like that is more likely to be recognized for what it is, and to get graded accordingly.

　　Learning how to be simple and smart is thus a key college survival skill.