Honesty in the Use of Words

By Martin Naparsteck

What makes great writing great writing is not spelling or grammar or syntax, but honesty. Not the careless honesty of our emotions, but the intellectual honesty that results from careful thoughts combined with a firm insistence that we write only true things. The honest writer always seeks to avoid deception, always believes writing the truth is more important than proving a point. Honesty in the Use of Words by Martin Naparsteck adds a new dimension to such classic writing advice as William Strunk and E.B. Whites The Elements of Style and George Orwells Politics and the English Language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 29, 2005
• ISBN: 9781465328243

Martin Naparsteck

Martin Naparsteck is the author of two novels about the Vietnam War, War Song and A Heros Welcome, and a collection of short stories, Saying Things. His shorter work has appeared in North American Review, Mississippi Review, Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine, The Writer, and more than 100 other publications. He is the book reviewer for the Salt Lake Tribune. He lives in upstate New York.

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Copyright © 2005 by Martin Naparsteck.

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Contents

Part I

Thinking About Honesty In the Use of Words

Part II

Guidelines for Writing With Honesty

A Short Suggested Reading List

By Martin Naparsteck

War Song

A Hero’s Welcome

Saying Things

Honesty in the Use of Words

FOR

TAFT ACHIELLES

MARTY AMERICA

MOLLY-MAGUIRE

I’m grateful that I know a little more now

about honesty in the use of words.

Richard Yates

Two stories are told about Diogenes that, historians agree, never happened. In one, he walks through the streets of ancient Athens during the day carrying a lantern and saying he is looking for an honest man. But he never finds one. In the other story, Alexander of Macedon seeks him out and when he finds him, approaches him and says, I am Alexander the Great, to which Diogones replies, I am Diogones the cynic. Alexander then asks in what way he might be useful to the famous philosopher. Diogones said, You can step out of my sunshine. Although neither incident occurred, both may be true.

Part I

Thinking About Honesty In the Use of Words

The Purpose of Writing

I have a suspicion: I suspect a perfectly spelled memo convinced Ford to manufacture the Edsel, an ugly car that was introduced in 1958 and which lost the company $250,000,000. I suspect also a memo with every comma and semicolon used the way a rules book says you should use them convinced the top executives at Coca-Cola to change the soft drink’s formula in 1984, a decision that irritated loyal Coke drinkers and led the company, within days, to reintroduce its old Coke, calling it Classic Coke, quickly doing away with the new Coke, and embarrassing itself with a silly decision perhaps more than any other company in American history. And I have no doubt that neither of those memos had a single dangling participle. You can’t deny the logic of spelling, the wisdom of punctuation. They are, oh, so convincing. I suspect also the FBI field agent who warned that Arabs were taking flying lessons in America wrote a memo with a split infinitive; no wonder she was ignored. And, no doubt, the woman at Enron who wrote a memo warning about the ethical problems in the company’s practices must have confused affect and effect, or maybe then and than; how could she ever expect to be taken seriously?

Scenario: You have a car and when you turn the steering wheel to the right, the car goes to the left; when you step on the brake, the car accelerates; while you’re driving down the road, the car just conks out, just stops running, and you don’t know why. So you take the car to a mechanic and tell her about all these problems and she examines it. Then she ambles over to you and says, You need to polish this car more often. Wash and dry it thoroughly and then polish it. Then polish it again. Do that, and it will run just fine.

Or how about this: you go to a doctor and tell him, Doc, I got this severe pain in the chest and I can’t breathe real good, and I’ve been losing weight, twenty pounds in the last week. The doctor examines you, gives you all kinds of tests, consults with specialists, and then tells you, You have to comb your hair more neatly and start ironing your clothes more often, and buy more stylish shoes. My god, man, you look a mess. Straighten yourself up and you’ll feel just fine.

Here’s a third scenario: a copywriter writes an advertisement that is deliberately misleading; a businessman writes a memo to his boss suggesting ways to get away with breaking the law. A company owner writes a letter to all 2,000 of his employees promoting a shallow, poorly thought out idea, calling it brilliant and creative. Or one department head writes a note to another department head advising her how she, too, can screw workers out of overtime pay. A college business professor gets to see all these pieces of writing and tells the faculty teaching writing in the English Department, You know what, those guys out in the business world can’t write; it’s embarrassing to realize they all graduated from my department. You guys in English are going to have to make students pay more attention to spelling and punctuation and, my lord, can’t you get them to stop dangling their participles?

If your professor in your college Freshman Composition course stressed what you should have learned in grade school—spelling, punctuation, using a topic sentence—and said you, too, should insist on high standards, you shouldn’t have trusted him. Such standards are not high; they’re rigid. To pretend spelling, punctuation, and syntax are what count in writing is damaging. It takes time and, more importantly, a student’s emotional investment away from honesty and courage and originality, the triumvirate of high writing standards.

There’s one other problem with stressing the mechanics of the language over values. It damaged the natural enthusiasm you had as a student to learn. You entered kindergarten wanting to learn, but by the time you were ready to graduate from college, your interests may have long shifted to wanting to get higher grades, accumulate credits, get a degree. Like the Wizard of Oz convincing the scarecrow he already knows everything he needs to know and just needs a degree to convince himself of that, college students have convinced themselves the purpose of higher education is not learning but validation of their knowledge and intellect. A majority of college students, in surveys, confess to having at sometime cheated on a test or paper. If you’re one of them, you know that not one single time you cheated was so you would better understand the material; not one single time you cheated was so you would increase your store of knowledge. You cheated for one reason only: to get higher grades and, as a result, convince the world, including yourself, of your intelligence and intellectual accomplishments. You didn’t want to learn that good writing requires honesty and courage and originality. You were convinced you knew how to write, that good writing is about spelling and punctuation and syntax. You were taught that in grade school and in high school