In my expository writing class the on-line teacher expects me to turn
in papers that follow a specific format. She grades each paper and sends it
back for corrections and it seems like with each revision she finds more
corrections that need to be made. Personally, I’d just as soon she give me a
lower grade and let me move on. A comma here and a semicolon there just do not
seem that important to me. Does it really matter if I get a B- rather than an
A+? I’d like to think if God had entrusted me with the blueprints to the ark,
the temple, or the Holy of Holies that I’d be more precise. However, I can
imagine that there too I’d be saying, “Does
it really need to be that exact?”
1 comment:
Gail;
-----You’ve struck upon one of my favorite concepts. When God is giving the instructions, you need to be as precise as are the instructions, no more, no less. When man is giving the instructions, you need to be as precise as is the grade you want from him. And if you want a higher grade, give him a little more precision than he’s asked for (hanging preposition at end of clause.) But you’d better very well know him, or your effort will draw another mark-down. What the difference? Simple. Man is not God. No man is God. Every man is only a man. No man knows everything, by far! Well, I mean by almost infinitely far. And worse yet, every man who does know stuff knows at least some (and usually much) of that stuff in a bit of a distorted way. Not only is our knowledge limited, it is twisted to fit our own perspectives. Then why should we try to so precisely match the teacher’s curved perspective when we know our own perspective will just add our own curves?
-----Sometimes it is important to minimize the twists and curves drastically. I would definitely think this about learning to mix nitro-glycerin. Much of the rest of chemistry is that way, too. Math is that way, but less dangerous, unless of course you’re engineering bridges or skyscrapers. But you get the drift. And even though the effects of such fields must be precise, the approaches for achieving those effects still get curved around by personal perspective.
-----Language isn’t as bendable as is art, but it is more bendable than mixing nitro-glycerin. Yet it sounds like your teacher thinks you’re mixing rather than writing. I think there are probably invaluable lessons of discipline to be learned by bowing down to another person’s precision-god. But the effects of those lessons in this course are probably going to be relegated to the places of feeling and expression the time the course is finished. And well such effects of exacting precision should be so relegated.
-----Language is an ever changing substance. I see a few grammatical differences today that when I was in High School would have drawn red marks of almost paper-cutting force. One for example is simple. If I were to mention a few punctuation marks, such as, period, semi-colon, colon, comma, exclamation point and question mark. Have I made the grammatical error of not supplying the comma before the “and” of the final item in my list? Or have I made the error of not supplying the “and” before that final item, which was the combination of two items!? Yet today they teach no comma before the "and" of the final item, which can occasionally cause ambiguity.
-----This one thing I always keep in mind when I am reading: how ambiguous is this author being? And when he is being ambiguous, is it intentional? We all know that there comes a certain point in a sentence or paragraph when the reader gets what you’re saying. Emphasize then? Break a rule! But which rule? The one that was, or the one that is?
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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