2. What Is Good Writing?

Electronic sorting devices are commonplace these days. They do equally well grading peas, tabulating election re­turns, or checking the quality of manufactured goods. It would be a wonderful thing if we had such a machine for evaluating compositions. Not only would it make English teachers forever grateful, but it would be very useful to us right now. We could toss into it the models presented in the previous chapter and arrange the sorting process so that out would come all the desirable features.

However, we don't have a composition machine yet. Therefore, well have to do the next best thing to help us take an inventory of the skills you already possess and the ones you have yet to acquire. We will convert the good qualities of the model compositions into a questionnaire which will serve two purposes. The questions will give you a sum­mary of superior writing practices. Your answers will offer you a challenge to set up goals in your self-improvement program.

Take the best one of the last few compositions returned to you recently by your teacher. Go through it step by step as you consult the questionnaire that follows. Insert a check in the "Yes" or "No" column, letting your answer be determined by what you actually did when you wrote your paper. Be completely honest with yourself. A "Yes" should mean that you use the recommended technique almost always, not oc­casionally nor accidentally. What we are trying to do here is get a survey of your writing habits—what you put into a composition as well as what you leave out.

Question	Yes	No
Do you take care to select a topic, when you have a choice, or to treat it, when you don't, on the basis of your own interests and experiences? Do you limit the ground you want to cover (scope) to what can be properly discussed in the number of words required? Do you try to be original in your approach? Before you write, do you in some way pre­pare what you are going to say in the begin­ning, middle, and end? Is your opening paragraph as exciting and unusual as you can make it? Is each middle paragraph a thoroughly developed unit, complete in itself as well as a contribution to the main idea? Do you avoid generalities and repetition by using details, examples, or references to support your statements? Do you maintain continuity? Do the sen­tences and paragraphs tie in with the ones that come before as well as the ones that follow? Do you make a conscious effort to use words that are vivid and effective, that reveal your personality and imagination? Does your last paragraph leave the reader with the feeling that you have brought your composition to a logical and interesting conclu­sion? 11. Do you check your work for mechanical errors before you hand it in? 12. Do you constantly seek self-improvement in correctness of expression? For example, if you have a spelling or sentence structure prob­lem, have you made a really sustained effort to get rid of your bad habits in these fields?

Your answers to the questionnaire have completed your self-diagnosis. Now you know where you stand insofar as what needs to be done about your desire to improve. The No's indicate those areas in which your greatest weaknesses lie, and they point a finger at the skills you must try to master.

If a summary card had come out of our imaginary com­position machine, it would have read thus:

LEARN TO

—work with an appropriate topic
—narrow its scope to fit the length required
—look for an original approach
—prepare your material in outline form
—construct good beginning, middle, and ending paragraphs
—use language effectively
—use language correctly
—revise until the result is your best effort

This is the least that any high school graduate should be able to do. If you are planning to attend college, you will be interested in a statement found in a pamphlet entitled "Advanced Placement Program in English," prepared under the direction of the Division of Secondary Education of the New York State Education Department. The recommenda­tions are the result of consultation with the College Entrance Examination Board, teachers who have taught advanced Eng­lish courses, and college instructors. Here's what they say:

"It is expected that college-level courses in composition teach the student to write well about something important. Certain specifics identify the level of writing which distin­guishes the good college-level student from other good high school students:

*The college-level student will not merely reproduce standard patterns of organization (introduction, body and conclusion) and of paragraph development, such as may be found listed in any textbook in rhetoric, but will have developed such flexibility as to be able to adapt these patterns effectively to different kinds of writing assignment.

*The college-level student should have developed subtlety of thought, for example in recognizing implications in context, and in employing synonyms and comparisons with awareness of connotation and appropriateness of tone.

*He should be able to demonstrate his ability to sustain a certain complexity of thought and give it unity of ex­pression, distinguishing between major themes and their subdivisions, and ordering his paper with a sense of purpose and progress.

*That the student's syntax and logic should be beyond re­proach goes without saying."

... no student should be continued . . . who has not al­ready sufficiently mastered the mechanics and conventions of writing to be able to devote his whole attention to his thought and the effectiveness with which he can express it. And this thought should be of such strength and individual quality as to make his writing worthy of the attention of an adult reader—one who will hold him rigorously to account as an adult The -Student must be required to examine his ideas, to say what he means precisely and to mean what he says."

"He must be discouraged from mere pro-forma writing. The merely correct will probably not satisfy the requirements. . . . The writing must have imagination in the sense that it is concerned with the perception of essential relationships and meanings; it must have integrity in the sense that it faces the problems proposed squarely and without equivocation."

What it all boils down to is that once you have left high school you are expected to be able to express yourself with maturity, intelligence, and originality. This stresses all the more the importance of your learning the basic principles of form and content in writing. Whether you go to college or not, there will be no escape from these standards. Every time you write you will be revealing the extent to which you have succeeded in disciplining your mind and your pen so that what you write makes good sense and is worth reading. The person who never learns how to convey his thoughts on paper in an acceptable fashion goes through life with a tremendous handicap. So you see, there is more to writing high school compositions than just getting a mark in an English class.

Something else must be said before we get to the how's of writing. You already have and will again come across pro­fessionally written material that seems to ignore many of the basic principles we will soon discuss. And you may be in­clined to think: "If they can do it, why can't I?" Moreover, you have just read an excerpt from a pamphlet that suggests that the college-level student must be capable of flexibility in his handling of traditional forms. Your reasonable ques­tion can be answered simply. No matter what ability is being developed, the fundamentals must be mastered first. The artist, sculptor, musician, athlete, or author must begin by becoming completely familiar with the theories and practices that experts agree lead to the foundation skills. Only then can the truly creative person perfect a style of his own that will be distinctive and accepted.

Applied to compositions, what has just been said means this. Learn everything you can about topics, planning, para­graphing, language use, and revision. Master the techniques so well that you do the right things automatically, by force of habit. Then make whatever adjustments in the basic principles suit your style or the particular piece you want to write. Indeed, variations are desirable if they represent originality.

Sometimes you may want to eliminate an opening para­graph of the usual kind (as was done in Sample #1), or you may decide that a single sentence will suffice for a paragraph under certain conditions. That's all right—provided your read­er can see, too, that your departure from the fundamentals of writing is deliberate and effective. Be yourself on paper, but don't use your individuality as an excuse to cover up bad habits of spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, or some other writing mechanic. We might as well be blunt about it. If you start out getting consistently excellent ratings, your teachers will allow you great freedom in your handling of form and content. But don't try any tricks until it will be clear to your critics that you have done it by choice rather than through error.

Now let's proceed to the How's of writing!

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