How Important Is Grammar?
As a general statement, let me start by saying that while grammar and its close cousin stylistics are still important, they alone cannot suffice.
However, we still need grammar to navigate the tricky shoals of what is or isn’t acceptable in a given language (English, in our case). Sloppy grammar is enough to put a lot of readers off. And, this point needs to be emphasised since your objective in creating content is ultimately an attempt to create your own authority. Who would take you seriously if your grammar is poor? Historically, grammar established itself as a marker of education — this tradition still continues.
Stylistics
Once we’re past the stage of grammar, we enter into stylistics — which is about the elegance of language. This is also called felicity of expression. Some constructions may be grammatically correct, but they may still come across as awkward. This is precisely where stylistics comes in.
Guideline
Grammar and stylistics are vast topics in their own right and are veritably inexhaustible — we will need several volumes to cover them. And since our objective here is not to provide an exhaustive course, you may consider grammar and stylistics as your basic guideline in producing standard written communication, however, with the understanding that these cannot cover all the exigencies of writing.
We still need to acquire the skills of writing, separately — how to put words together to produce an engaging reading experience, not just grammatically correct language.
Now the million dollar question is . . .
How Best To Acquire These Skills — Fast?
Exposure —
Engaging with well written works (books; articles) is one of the best ways. We learn many things not by rote but through internalisation — we have to live it to learn it.
In this matter we can take our cue from the acquisition of cultural conventions. How do people, for example, in the Japanese culture know how to bow? — By living in the culture of course.
It stand to reason, therefore, we need to find the culture of writing and start living in it to acquire its convention, not by rote learning but through actual practice, through emulation (what others do).
That culture of writing is available everywhere. In fact, we are drowning in writing. Choose a genre — fiction, non-fiction, literary, non-literary, factual, informative, polemic . . . the variety is inexhaustible.
Then start living in your chosen ‘culture.’ This is also called immersion — as in French immersion courses.
Actually, there are two forms of learning: explicit and implicit. In the first one the rules are explained elaborately. In the second one, the rules and their learning is implicit — we might say intuitive. Humans learn their first language this way — by living in the language culture they are born in. In the case of second language acquisition, this is mostly through the explicit rules of the second language, its grammar.
And, while it is true that grammatical rules are ‘explicit’ (actually they are a retrospective descriptions of how language works), they still require something else: performance. What are the rules of performance? Only performing a language act in a given language community can tell us that. In other words, the rules of performance are implicit.
If by living in a culture we can learn its rules — through experience — then why can’t we learn writing that way? We can and do, far more than we think. A child reading bill boards while sitting in the family car as they drive through the city internalises the conventions of commercial writing — without consulting a book on the subject. Exposure, in other words.
Want a crash course in a particular genre of writing (and, I am not being frivolous), engage with it, expose yourself to target texts then see what happens. Writing has a way of rubbing off on us.
This is also where the next feature of writing, heuristics — arguably, the most important feature — comes in.
Heuristic Approach Definition
Writing skills can be acquired effectively by experimentation, by trying out different combinations of words to explore how they look and might sound to the reader (this is what real writers do). This is by far the most extraordinary feature of writing, even more so, given the fact that today’s digital technology allows for infinite revisions (over-experimentation, however, is not advised). Nothing really is permanent in this form of writing. Even after publication errors can be corrected.
It is not always the case that a writer knows everything in advance. They start out with a general idea which through many iterations becomes refined and well defined, taking eventually a concrete form. In fact, what is that one wants to say may only be discovered only afterwards.
Writing is also a self-generating process. Words have a rhythm of their own; they have a way of leading us to newer insights — what is called the narrative pull — a small riptide that one, can take you out to sea easily — one is also a reader at the very moment of writing — that is how it works. (Even this sentence is evidence of that process).
It is precisely this aspect of writing that also leads to originality. Effective writing more often than not is the result of happy accidents — we call this serendipity. Suddenly a combination of words opens a whole new vista of possibilities hitherto unseen. You may know that originality ranks high on Google.
Who wants to read stale writing?
Writing-as-Editing —
I shall use revision and editing interchangeably here.
It is hard to imagine writing without revision. In fact, writing and revision are inseparable in such a way that they form a single continuum — one long unbroken line, if you like.
Every act of writing creates the potential for revision just as every revision creates more writing . . . in an infinite chain.
This is both an advantage and a disadvantage: we can always fix something afterwards but then again, that possibility can make the very thought of writing seem burdensome.
Looking at this double-edged sword positively, we always edit, true, but up to a certain degree only without getting bogged down in immobilising perfectionism. A modest amount of revising to improve expression or clarity is always recommended but overdoing it in the hope of producing the perfect copy is not. We can never say everything we want and we can never say it with the degree of perfection we yearn for. As in life, so in writing — beyond a certain point the effort becomes counterproductive.
Now to more practical issues of carrying out the task. I believe that the best way of writing is to write a first unedited draft — with all stops pulled out. Let it rip. After letting this impulse (for that is what it is) play itself out completely, go make some tea or coffee or whatever your favourite poison might be. Yoga stretches might work splendidly, too. Whatever it might be: create some distance between yourself and your first draft before returning to edit it. Take a second look. (The experience might be comparable to the eerie experience of seeing one’s own image, or hearing one’s recorded voice).
What do you see? Overall, do you think you managed to say what you wanted to? If happy, move on. If not, refine until you are happy. Try different words to express the same content. Which sounds better to you? Yes, it is a judgement call — it always is, remember. And be prepared to accept the fact that not everyone might agree with your judgement call. Some of it might be right, others not. That is how it goes.
You will develop good judgement only if you take some small risks and scale them up gradually.
Experimentation — heuristics — is the best teacher. Experimentation can liberate the words and expressions struggling to come out of you as a writer.
That is discovery for you. That is also the road to originality for you.
Embrace it.
Specificity —
Writing has value when it has specificity — I have also referred to it above under Heuristics. What does this mean? It means avoiding vagueness. If, for example, I were selling a program which teaches effective writing, I would state that, “This program teaches effective writing heuristically through my proprietary software,” rather than just “This program teaches effective writing” — which begs the question: How?
“This program has benefits” — vague.
“This program has three benefits: X,Y, Z.”
Now let us come to the question of how specificity is crucial in affiliate marketing. Here, the issue is not just well written material but also well written material containing specific words that rank high on, say, Google searches. Long-form content must be SEO-friendly (search engine optimisation friendly).
This can be tricky for at least two reasons — first, how to use key words? — second, where to find them?
Let me address them in my next post.