You’re A Novelist And Didn’t Even Know It
That’s right, according to The Atlantic, the average person writes roughly a novel worth of emails in one year. Now imagine all of the emails you have sent on top of all of the social media posts, text messages, or other daily activities that require writing that you do every day. If you were to print all of those writing activities at the end of each year, you would have several novels in front of you.
You may wonder, why is this important? To be blunt, the novels previously mentioned are likely to be hard to read or consistent with grammatical errors. Why would they be hard to read, you may ask? One would think that all of this writing practice in daily activities would make someone a better writer. However, that’s not always the case. College students should take the time to learn how to become better writers while they can before being pushed into the workforce.
What We Don’t Want
Did you post something on social media today? Did you send an email to a peer today? Did you forget to double-check your writing? You most likely answered “yes” to all three of these questions as they are common daily activities.
The reason I ask these questions is to emphasize the thoughtlessness that goes into common writing endeavors. An example of a social media post that wasn’t grammatically checked prior to public posting comes to mind. A current volunteer for Elon University’s Edge Magazine posted an Instagram Story about the magazine in hopes of recruiting more volunteers to write articles. The post had significant grammatical errors such as using the incorrect “you’re” and missing words in a proper sentence. Not only does that look bad for the owner of the post, but it looks bad for the magazine that is looking for writers.
If you think that the previous example is no big deal, then how did I remember it so well months later? The human brain often remembers mistakes, or things that go wrong, more than things that are done well, or are correct, according to The New York Times. Similar to how one bad grade on an assignment can bring down your entire grade significantly, one writing error can negatively impact your professionalism and credibility. Whether individually or within the workforce, no one wants to be perceived as having a lack of professionalism or a lack of credibility.
Why Become A Better Writer?
Becoming a better writer not only benefits you in all future job endeavors, but it makes you a better person, according to The Chronicle Of Higher Education. The article written by Bob Fischer and Nathan Nobis lists some ethical norms to encourage good writing. The list written by Fischer and Nobis includes, but is not limited to:
- Follow the Golden Rule: Treat your readers the way you would like to be treated as a reader.
- Respect Everyone: Think of your readers as inherently valuable and rational beings when considering their time and reason in your writing.
- Good Traits of Character: Apply traits that you value into your writing. An example from Fischer and Nobis could be how an empathetic person thinks of the viewpoints that others may have on a topic. An empathetic writer would then consider their readers’ viewpoints upon their writing.
If a writer were to incorporate these few ethical norms into their writing, not only would their writing improve but their own morals and ethics would improve as well. There are many ways to practice how to become a better writer, but starting with the checklist above is a great stride towards the goal as well as a higher level of professionalism and credibility.
Now that you know that you unconsciously write novels each year, are you going to think more about how you write in the future?
