Ah Feels Me a Rant a-Comin' On

Sorry. I just can't help it sometimes. Today's rant is Bad Writing.

How many ways can writing be bad? A million. That's why good writers are good; because so many writers are bad. Bad writing can be boring. That's a major crime. Bad writing can be interesting, but badly written. In other words, a fascinating tale poorly told, like someone telling a great joke badly. "Okay, a penguin goes into a bar. Bartender says . . . no wait -- TWO penguins go into a bar."

Bad writing can be just the result of an incomplete grasp of basic grammatical rules, or it can just be an insensitivity to the rhythm of words and sentences, pauses and line breaks. Like someone who learned to play trumpet but has a tin ear.

Bad writing can be affectative, in the Ernest-Hemingway or Stephen-King tightly-mannered prose sense. In their hands, it works, but in most others' it doesn't.

But the worst writing of all is when someone TRIES to sound like a good writer, but fails. Witness this ludicrous attempt at trying to sound erudite, and analyse just why it so badly fails:

"Kyoto is embraced with the beauty of Japan’s past. History is preserved in the city’s old buildings, valued temples and scenes of traditional life that still roam the narrow streets. (Can you just picture a scene or a temple roaming the narrow streets? What exactly does a scene look like? Is it tall, or is it short? Does it walk quickly, or does it slink along? Oh wait, no, I get it -- HISTORY is roaming the narrow streets. Him and Temple and Scene, out for a rumble. Watch out, World! The boys are back in town! -ed.)

"Going to Japan we had no wants of trinkets, souvenirs, or other little nick-knacks to bring home. We only desired for the experience of Japan’s modern savvy and its treasured past, and to acquire two things.  In Kyoto we would experience a bit of Japan’s past and find the first of our two treasures;  a knife crafted in Japan." (Ahh, the denoument of the paragraph. How subtle, how lilting . . . how . . . mangled. -ed.)

This is the product of an American education? Believe it or not, this is not the writing of a sixth-grader, but of a fully-formed adult.

The worst transgression of all, though, is the "typo." This is a euphemism for "I never DID know what an apostrophe or punctuation was all about." Its all about it's isn't it? Like my typo's?

Don't mistake me. Errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation can be corrected -- that's what editors are for. I'm sure Hemingway couldn't spell "Chihuhaua" to save his life (I'm actually surprised I could first time around) -- but if one is not aware of how bad one's writing is, one should just stay away from keyboards.

But possibly the worst of the worst writing is rambling.

Guilty as charged!