In Other Words, They Should Show Schoolhouse Rock! Reruns in College English Courses.

How are there so many English majors who don't understand basic grammar and sentence structure? In my Advanced Research and Literary Analysis class, we are divided into groups of four. Each group has invented its own literary journal to which other students submit papers for potential publication at the end of the semester. The project is overwhelming at times, especially since half of my group is unreliable at best, but it's also valuable because we each get to take on the role of both writer and editor. The problem is that many of the papers I've had to edit have been horribly written. Any interesting idea the writers have are buried under a mess of stupid. I'm not talking about a small portion of a paper needing to be reworded for clarification; I mean a single sentence that I can read ten times and still have no idea in Hades what the person is trying to say. This might not mean anything to non-writers, but really, proper grammar makes a world of difference. I am amazed when I see people in an advanced college writing class litter their work with comma splices and run on sentences. Sometimes entire words are left out or randomly placed. I seriously think Theory of Language (AKA Grammar) should be a prerequisite for this class.


Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one who rereads something before submitting it. I mean, do those sentences make sense to them when they read it to themselves? Here is the concluding sentence from a paper I'm currently editing: "Failing to fulfill his role as the archetypal father by preparing his son for the real world, the man dies leaving his boy alone to find happiness when he himself was the one holding his son or the future from attaining it." Holy mouthful of crap. Whaaa? Here's another one: "In other words, had the man been more trusting he too would have found happiness and civilization in the end." First of all, I think that in most cases, if you have to use the phrase "in other words" in a paper, you are admitting that even you were confused by your first explanation. So why don't you just cut it out and replace it with the "other words" that are supposedly better than the originals? Second of all, what does this sentence mean? Actually, because I've read the rest of the paper, I have a fairly good idea of what this sentence is supposed to mean, and it's probably the best analysis the writer makes. Now it's my job to figure out how to help him use his idea to form a comprehensible point on paper.

I've really enjoyed editing my peers' papers despite the fact that many of them struggle to put together a coherent sentence. In fact, I owe it mostly to this class for my recent ambition to become an editor. I write a lot of comments for these writers to consider, and sometimes I worry that I'm making more enemies than friends. I can only hope they can take it in the spirit in which it's intended. It's not that their analyses are necessarily awful. Some of them have a knack for finding hidden meanings in literature that I don't see because I'm too shallow. They just need a lot of help communicating those ideas, whereas I need help coming up with ideas in the first place.


I had a conference with my teacher the other day, and she told me that she really enjoys reading my papers because they are so easy to understand. She said I have good control over the micro level of writing: structure, language, flow, etc. It made me really happy because I feel like writing is my sole talent, and it's encouraging to receive compliments from someone who knows what she's talking about.

Now watch. Someone (Laura) will find a grammatical error in this post, and I'll never hear the end of it.