 How Computers
Cause Bad Writing
Original title: "Lessons from the Computer Writing Problems
of Professionals"
- by Gerald Grow, PhD
- Professor of Journalism
- Florida A & M University
-
- Published in College Composition and Communication, Vol.
39, No. 2, May 1988, pp. 217-220. Copyright 1988. Words [in brackets]
were added in 1999.
- How Computers Cause Bad Writing
- The Editing Trap [Substituting Writing
for Thinking]
- Problems in Collaboration by Computer
- Reused Prose
- Distortions of Length: Prolix and
Telegraphic
- Small Screens and Clean Printouts
- Computer Self-Defense for Future
Professionals
- Over-Editing
- Collaboration
- Boilerplate
- Problems of Length
- Small-Screen Thinking
[How Computers Cause Bad Writing]
In the past seven years, I have edited the writing of a number
of professionals--including instructional designers, engineers,
management consultants, environmental planners, biologists, psychologists,
Army officers, and journalists--who write with computers. Like
most users of word processing, these are not "writers"--they
are professionals whose work requires them to write. Few of these
have ever heard of "the writing process," and few have
had any formal training since freshman English 20 years ago.
For them, like millions of others, writing by computer is largely
a self-taught enterprise.
Although most of these professionals share the belief that
computers help them write, they display specific writing problems
that may actually be caused, or accentuated, by the fact that
they write on computers.
There are two reasons why the writing problems of professionals
may be important to teachers of writing. First, students that
I have taught (graduate students in instructional development
and education, juniors and seniors majoring in communication
and journalism) show similar tendencies when they write on computers.
Though student writers may not have enough experience to demonstrate
all of them, they distinctly gravitate toward the writing problems
described here.
Second, many students from writing classes will soon be surrounded
by people who have largely taught themselves writing and word
processing. These self-taught professionals will become your
graduates' next writing instructors--and their bosses. Unless
students bring with them enough experience to maintain and defend
good writing habits--the kind that make them effective, productive
writers--they may be swamped by the kind of writing habits and
writing problems common among self-taught professionals.
I will describe the problems I have observed among "real
world" users of word processing and suggest some strategies
for working with future professionals while they are still your
students. What I have to say will apply best to nonfiction writing
that is amenable to strong focus and clear organization--functional
writing of the kind required of professionals in many fields.
The Editing Trap [Substituting
Writing for Thinking]
Computers seem to tempt people to substitute writing for thinking.
When they write with a computer, instead of rethinking their
drafts for purpose, audience, content, strategy, and effectiveness,
most untrained writers just keep editing the words they first
wrote down. I have seen reports go through as many as six versions
without one important improvement in the thought. In such writing,
I find sentences that have had their various parts revised four
or five times on four or five different days. Instead of focusing,
simplifying, and enlivening the prose, these writers tend to
graft on additional phrases, till even the qualifiers are qualified
and the whole, lengthening mess slows to a crawl.
Drawn in by the word processor's ability to facilitate small
changes, such writers neglect the larger steps in writing. They
compose when they need to be planning, edit when they need to
be revising.
Problems in Collaboration by
Computer
Computers encourage more collaborative writing, and they encourage
the collaboration to be far more intense. Before computers, the
usual form of collaboration consisted of dividing up the work
so that different authors wrote different chapters; then they
reviewed one another's work. Writing with computers, though,
collaborators can enter into one another's work so readily and
revise it so easily that, in effect, co-authors can mutually
co-write each sentence.
This kind of collaborative writing can be difficult to read.
No two writers have quite the same sense about punctuation, tone,
rhythm, headings, sentence variation, and the like. In collaborative
works, I sometimes find grammatical conventions changing from
the beginning to the end of the same sentence--because one author
started the sentence and the other finished it.
In the worst cases, collaborative writing becomes a colloid
of conflicting styles. In a document I recently edited, one section
was written by a psychologist with a propensity for theoretical
language, another by a computer programmer concerned mainly with
the technical characteristics of machinery, another by a manager
recording the history of the project. To complicate things, each
author had inserted a few sentences (in his own style) in the
midst of the other sections. Every time I reached a new major
heading, the narrator changed voice--and the voices occasionally
jumped around from sentence to sentence. It was schizophrenic
prose, with faults that had been amplified by the easy editing
made possible by the word processor.
Reused Prose
Writers easily become attached to what they have written,
even when it serves the purpose badly. The computer frees many
writers from this attachment by making the text fluid and continuously
editable; for some writers, though, computers make this attachment
harder to break. Typewriters challenge this attachment; in writing
with a typewriter, writers typically retype each passage several
times, which forces them to reread word for word and presents
an excellent occasion to hear the passage and make changes. By
contrast, a word processor enables writers to reuse passages
from the developing piece so easily that reuse becomes a universal,
invisible step in writing.
Being pragmatic, professionals often reuse blocks of material
from previous reports. A good writer can do this well, but a
less accomplished writer easily succumbs to a clumsy kind of
self-plagiarism. Most of the adult writers I have worked with
reuse "boilerplate" materials in a simple, modular
fashion, stacking blocks of self-contained material in the midst
of new passages, having little sense of how to combine the different
parts. Most of them are tone deaf to the lurches, shifts in convention,
and changes in tone between new and old writings.
I often advise authors to throw out these drafts and rewrite
from scratch, but no one ever has. In part, they are always too
busy; but more important, they are not writers. They are unaccustomed
to taking responsibility for a piece of writing, devising an
effective strategy, and seeing it through. Few of them have developed
an effective writing process, and their approaches to writing
lack flexibility. Such people do not need an editor; they need
a writing instructor--something they lack but your students are
fortunate enough to have.
Distortions of Length: Prolix
and Telegraphic
The ease of writing on a microcomputer liberates many writers:
And though this liberation helps reticent students, aids brainstorming,
and makes many professionals more productive, the very ease of
writing can lead to problems. People who have little to say suddenly
take a long time to say it. Word-inflation multiplies. Instead
of saying it well one time, unfocused writers devise dozens of
ways of coming close to saying what they mean. They continue
writing. The words pile up. The results look impressive, but
I never know quite what the writers meant to say.
Computers have the opposite effect on other writers. Normally
intelligible, they become cryptic. Each mysterious word stands
for phrases, sentences, even whole pages of unwritten intentions.
I have to pry the words apart to uncover the thoughts concealed
between them.
Small Screens and Clean Copy
It is hard enough for writers to get an overview of their
work when they write on a typewriter; when they use a screen
that shows, at most, 24 lines at a time, an overview is almost
impossible. Without a clear sense of direction, prose wanders,
partially expressed ideas recur, and the point gets muddied.
Faced with this problem, I advocate various strategies, including
extensive use of an outlining program. Among the professionals
I have assisted, however, few use outlining programs (something
available to them all), and only a few others outline effectively
in any form. Generally, they try to write as they talk--offhand,
or from a few casual notes.
Even one of the nicest features of word processing can cause
an unexpected problem. At any stage, writers can always get a
beautiful print-out of perfectly-formatted clean copy. Unfortunately,
some writers confuse clean copy with completed copy. When they
see their words on nice-looking pages, they begin to feel finished
long before they have a reason to. When I think this is happening,
I deliberately mess up their printouts with markings--to shock
them into distrusting the finished appearance of their working
drafts.
Computer Self-Defense for Future
Professionals
You may find the problems I have described worth discussing
in technical and professional writing classes where students
are writing with computers. I raise them in courses on editing
and magazine article writing. The recommendations that follow
may not seem new, but they offer a different perspective from
which to justify, explain, and reinforce certain teaching methods.
Over-Editing. Emphasize
that writers should think through the topic until they develop
a strong focus. Reinforce the distinction between large-scale
revision and small-scale editing. Give them exercises in revising
passages that need, not just editing, but rethinking.
Collaboration. Show
students ways to divide responsibilities among the writers preparing
a collaborative writing project. (For excellent charts to track
the various roles of collaborators, see Dan Poynter and Mindy
Bingham, Is There A Book Inside You? 1985, 154-56.) Have
them write in collaboration with at least 2 other students. Give
the class practice editing a work of multiple authorship so that
it has a single, consistent style.
Boilerplate. Show
students how to reuse blocks of prose from previous work, and
show them the problems that may come up. Give an assignment that
requires such reuse. For example, give them an article on disk
to rewrite for a different audience, reusing large portions of
the original text. Or have them design form letters that use
boilerplate passages, then add appropriate transitions and edit
the results for continuity.
Problems of Length.
Experience is probably the best cure. Make sure your students
write enough to become comfortable with a word processor. Show
them the problems. Teach them to edit out prolixity, to identify
and expand cryptic passages. By reading aloud examples of good
writing, train their minds to hear the rhythm of prose that speaks
and breathes. Interview cryptic writers as a way of drawing out
their intentions and helping them move past a draft filled with
enigmas.
Small-Screen Thinking.
Help students clarify the topics they are writing about. Show
them ways to keep the focus of the piece in mind while writing.
For a simple method, tape a one-sentence summary to the side
of the screen. For a more complex method, demonstrate how a project-management
chart can be adapted to track a complex article as it develops.
Study examples of how good writing is organized. Practice devising
alternate plans for organizing and developing a given topic,
preferably with the help of an outline processor like "ThinkTank."
Ask students to be ready at any time with a clear, short answer
to the question, "What are you writing about?" ["ThinkTank"
has long disappeared. Meanwhile, the outlining function of Microsoft
Word has developed into a valuable tool for organizing
long pieces.]
So they won't confuse clean copy with finished copy, encourage
students to leave in extra headings, embed working questions,
etc., so their working drafts look distinctly different from
their final drafts.
Remind students that you are helping prepare them for a world
after college--a world in which many of them will write with
computers. By helping your students develop ways of writing that
make them effective and productive, you give them the best general
defense against the pressures facing them when they are required
to write on the job.
[End]
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