Spence Green

For the past year I’ve been improving my writing. More specifically, I’ve been learning how to communicate technical information efficiently and with style. By “efficient” I mean that each word, paragraph, and sentence is contentful, and that thematic strings bind the story together in an accessible way. A reader can use the document as one might use an encyclopedia, i.e. there are elements throughout the running text that help the reader navigate. And by “style” I mean the cultivation of a voice: the arrangement of sentences; the careful use of symmetric; lexical choices. In technical writing, style decisions are made to help rather than to impress the reader.

“Style” in the popular sense should be avoided. In other words, don’t read Strunk and White. Geoffrey Pullum, co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, wrote recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education,

The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students’ grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.

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Is free speech free? For a moment consider this question independent of politics and economics and law. As a human being, are you free to express yourself absent some social cost? Of course not. And this certainty has inspired some reflection recently:

I can’t mention success because I will look arrogant.
I can’t admit failure because I will look weak.
I can’t really ask stupid questions because people will think I’m stupid.
I can’t show too much enthusiasm without appearing glib.
I can’t despair because that’s a treatable medical condition.
I can’t dress carelessly because I’ll look unprofessional.
I can’t wear fine fabric because I’ll be called a dandy.
I can’t be indecisive because men, even in these liberal times, are expected to act.
I can’t be too sure because I’m probably wrong anyway.
I can’t write these words without knowing that some employer, some admissions committee, some friend, some colleague, some family member, or some stranger will pause and think:

Wow, what a (   ).

And that is what we do. We are classifiers, all of us.

The usual objection to this reasoning is that self-worth should not be influenced by external opinions. But suppose that I am confident in myself. Will that get me a job? Into graduate school? A promotion? A new house? A happy marriage? Moral children? And if I am confident, and I don’t have any of these assets, how many people will believe that my confidence is real, that I am not delusional?

The more I ponder this question, the more I realize that total indifference to the opinions of others is a form of madness, or at least it’s seen that way.

More than a few friends have cautioned me about moving to California: you will be offered drugs, you will spend $10 on a sandwich, a man will try to marry you. California’s ostensibly high tolerance for “experimentation” and otherwise callow ethics has become an idee fixe for these wags, and the origin of endless comedy. But California culture merely follows Europe by widening the moat around personal preference: if you desire it, and it does not interfere with others, then do it. Very different are the puritanical politics of the east coast and the endless debates about whether Capote novels should be allowed in the school library or not. To me, these questions are a matter of perspective, and that is why I feel as if I am moving to another country.

No perspective, however, can convince me that preference can alter nature’s organization. What other gender possibilities exist?!