First published in Column 8 on 31.10.90
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| A music canterbury Source unknown |
(You can tell from that sentence that I’ve read an article
on How To Use Inclusive Language.)
Even writers’ magazines feature such articles, so that we
get the absurdity of the How to Write a How-To Article.
You don’t believe me? Last the year the American magazine The
Writer published an article called ‘Writing the How-To-Do-It.’ This year they
had another: ‘Tips on Writing the How-To Article.’
I had decided, in view of some comments made about this
column, to give 10 short tips entitled How to Read an Article, but I ran out of
ideas when I got to number four.
My alternative would be to give four long-winded statements
on the same theme. However, since I read in an article entitled ‘How to Keep to
the Point’ that long-windedness is no longer in, I’ll give some short sharp
remarks on it instead.
One: Read the article the writer wrote. Of course, this may
be harder than you think. His eloquence may outdo his clarity.
He may have the gift a few correspondents in the Letters to
the Editor columns have: that of driving off in a tangent whenever the road sign
says ‘Straight Ahead.’
Two – this is my next point. Are you still with me? Approach
his article without bias - he should have
tried to approach his subject in the same way.
However, if he’s at all like me, approaching anything
without bias is rather like asking a bowl to roll straight. Not only it is ‘inconceivable,’
to quote one of the characters from The Princess Bride – but it rather
takes away from the fun.
By the way, have you noticed? I may have read an article
entitled How To Use Inclusive Language, but not much of it has sunk in.
My third point: read all the writer has to say, before you
disagree. (The fact that I seldom do this does not make the rule null and
void.)
Follow the writer through to his conclusion – he may be
going to a place you hadn’t expected. Don’t jump off at a stop before he does.
Four: Don’t, the moment you disagree with something, write a
letter to the editor.
I love rushing into print and writing what appears to be a
well-thought out and erudite letter (I love using obscure words as well).
Usually I blame the writer for things he never said,
conclusions he never came to, and ideas that never entered his head.
Unless I’m very disciplined about it, I’m likely to go off
on a tangent, drawing on my vast experience of life. Mostly it has nothing to
do with what the writer wrote.
Letters to the Editor are great for having a dig at the
writer – I know, because I’ve done it.
Having lately been on the receiving end of a few myself –
and I don’t include among these the one from the esteemed University Librarian –
I’ve found letter writers have often read an article I never wrote.
Instead they’ve read their version of my words, and it’s
their interpretation of them they get so incensed about.
Plainly I’ll have to find an article – probably amongst the
University Library’s vast selection of 9756 magazine titles – that tells me How
To Write So That No One Will Misunderstand Me.
Do you think I will?
(P. S. I invited my wife to read this article. She didn’t
get past the first line without jumping to the wrong conclusion.)
))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
A few notes…
A ‘bowl’ - as in the game of bowls – has a built-in
bias.
Curiously, I wrote ‘unconceivable’ in the original –
neither I nor the sub-editor noticed.
In my very first
published column I queried why the local library would have so many
magazines in their stack, and got a wry reply (in the Letters to the Editor) as
to reason for this.
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