On Writing

By Christa Bedwin In mathematics, exercises and activities help students to systematically build on what they already know.  Through a step-by-step approach, students develop math skills and understanding, and eventually, the procedural ‘how’ evolves into the conceptual ‘why.’ In the same way, language study in natural, practical situations, like travel to foreign countries or even frequent visits to ethnic neighborhoods or restaurants, can provide opportunities for breakthroughs. Basic understanding of foreign language grammatical concepts eventually gives way to natural conversations—opening a new world of possibilities. Let’s say you’re in Italy and you walk into a coffee shop for a cup of coffee and to ask for directions. If you ask about paying for coffee when it’s delivered to you, you would likely try to put together the words from a pocket dictionary, “I + pay,” to form “io pagare?” without even trying to sort out the grammar. The server might reply, “Dopo, d...

You would never serve your guests a whole cake without slicing it. Do not serve weighty ideas without slicing them up, either. Plenty of writers, whether it is a report or an e-mail to clients or colleagues, simply spill all their ideas onto the page, and expect their readers to divide, categorize, and understand those ideas. This is not reasonable. If you want people to enjoy your cake or your ideas, present them beautifully instead of as a raw chunk. Over my decades of editing I have heard plenty of "rules" about paragraphs, usually going back to things that school teachers said to young children in a desperate attempt to get more words out of their little writing hands. These false ideas include, but are not limited to, the following: paragraphs need a beginning, middle, and end paragraphs must be at least three sentences repeat your topic sentence at the end. None of those are true for adult writing, and particularly not in the internet age! Redefine what you ...