We Be Writing Good

Mitchell's post below is especially timlely given the fact that a friend recently asked me to proof a group paper she's been writing for one of her graduate courses.

Judging writing quality can be a subjective task, and if anyone's like me, bad writing usually jumps out like a sharp poke in the eye. And what's more, gauging its relative improvement or degradation over the years has to be one of the few things we just don't keep hard statistics on.

However, I was taken aback at the poor quality of the initial draft of this paper, which was written by another classmate and replete with sentence fragments and punctuation errors (apostrophes were the death knell of this particular fellow), and it had me thinking what it actually takes to be admitted into graduate programs these days.

Most irritating was the usage of the word "firstly" to introduce a sentence; though I realize this is an actual word that can be used synonymously with the term "first," I've always recoiled at the clumsiness of the word when there are so many better alternatives available. Worse, the writer didn't even use it to introduce successive ideas, instead using it alone and abruptly ending his thoughts without justifying its usage in the first place.

I know I probably sound pretty stuffy right about now, but that's not my intent. Although I've taught a college writing course, I'm well aware that I'm hardly atop the universe when it comes to the quality of my own writing. But I've taken the time to outline this example because, in addition to being a candidate for a master's degree, this person is also a college instructor (though not a professor) in some capacity.

Mitchell is right to ask what type of role we can expect our students to play in this country's future when they can't speak or write English effectively. And I might add, how can we expect them to do so when many of them are probably being taught by those who can't?