Writing: Rules Vs. Choices

Words Matter

A friend recently expressed frustration regarding an author’s use of contractions; the book in question was a self-help type of book, with an informal tone and supportive voice. The friend called this author’s use of contractions “lazy writing,” which surprised me. I’ve studied writing for many years and in many different forms, and I can’t recall any teacher, professor, or other writing expert ever chastising my use of contractions or telling me it was “lazy.” Informal perhaps, but not lazy. I became unsettled by this use of the word “lazy” to describe an author’s stylistic choice.

When I first started writing this post, I didn’t plan for it to stem from the word “lazy.” But as it headed that direction, I was reminded that this next week (March 7-13, 2021) is Words Matter Week, a week-long holiday sponsored by the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors. It’s a week to both celebrate and ponder words. Words are important. And the words we use to describe our writing–and other people’s writing–matter. Words matter.

Much of my work as an editor and writing consultant involves offering writers thorough feedback on their work as well as constructive suggestions for improvement. My goal is to provide detailed and comprehensive feedback without assigning judgment to the writers themselves (or their writing style).

Suggesting that someone’s writing style is “lazy” because of a certain stylistic choice they have made is a subjective assessment that neglects to consider the larger picture. In this way, it’s not just words that matter; context matters, too.

The use of contractions can certainly affect the tone and formality of writing. Importantly, it also affects voice (particularly in creative writing). My blog posts are written in an informal tone, and I certainly use my share of contractions. That does not invalidate the information I share. Information can be written in a variety of ways. It’s all about choice.

Making Choices

Like many writers, I’ve been warned (though never sternly!) about using contractions in formal writing (e.g., academic writing, technical writing). Some formal writing also tends to avoid (or use sparingly) first-person pronouns (“I,” “me,” “we,” etc.), though there are certainly exceptions. And formal writing almost always avoids the use of second-person pronouns (“you,” “your”), although, again, there can be exceptions.

Decisions to use contractions, first-person pronouns, or second-person pronouns are conscious rhetorical choices that a writer makes. Relatively conscious choices, at least. The caveat here is that many writers—especially in more informal writing—write like they speak. Thus, contractions and first- and second-person pronouns are bound to appear. Many readers like this informality and and naturalness of voice. They feel comfortable with the writer; they trust them. It’s effective.

Rules Versus Choices

It is the word choice that I’d like you to think about for a moment.

So many of us are taught writing rules. The word rule, though, implies that there is a right way to do something and a wrong way to do it. It leaves no room for the in-between “gray” areas.

Misleading Advice

In creative writing, writers are often told to “Show, don’t tell.” This adage is often presented to writers as a hard-and-fast rule. While it’s not necessarily bad advice, it is misleading advice. It implies that a writer should never “tell,” and that’s simply not true. Both “showing” and “telling” have their place in creative writing. The trick is knowing when to do one or the other!

Eighteen years ago, when I first started participating in writing critique groups, “Show, don’t tell” was a rule that was iterated again and again. It caused me some anxiety as a young fiction writer and served to push me toward writing poetry almost exclusively for a long while (not that there’s anything wrong with writing poetry!). While I understood the why of showing versus telling, I was given relatively few guidelines as to the how. I only knew I was doing something wrong, without a clear path of how to fix it. As a result, I often froze up whenever I tried to write. Was I showing or telling?

Thus, my goal now as an editor and writing consultant is to help writers in such a way that they don’t feel like they’ve done something wrong, but instead offer them options for maybe doing something more effectively in their writing—by making different rhetorical choices. Often the best option depends on the writer’s intended audience, purpose, or goal.

Understanding Rhetorical Choices

When I was in high school, I had a couple of awesome English teachers. I can say unequivocally, in fact, that I am where I am today in part because of these fantastic English teachers. Besides sending me on my way with a solid understanding of grammar, punctuation, and how to write, they also drilled into my brain two particularly important things: 1) how and why to write an effective thesis statement (something that became even clearer to me when I was an English teacher myself), and 2) the difference between passive and active voice.

I’m not going to discuss thesis statements in this post, but I will minimally discuss the use of passive and active voice as it relates to choice in writing.

Passive Versus Active Voice

Consider the following sentences:

A. Twenty business owners were interviewed for this study.

B. I interviewed 20 business owners for this study.

Sentence A uses the passive voice. There is no explicit subject noted. Who interviewed the business owners? We don’t know. The assumption is that it was probably the author/researcher of the document. It is sometimes the preference in academic writing (depending on the academic journal, the professor, etc.) to avoid the use of first-person pronouns. In that case, Sentence A is a good option.

Sentence B uses the active voice. The subject “I” is performing the action. We know who interviewed the business owners. There is a slightly more informal tone, though there is still certainly an appropriate level of formality to it as well.

Both sentences are grammatically correct. Neither one is wrong.

Besides affecting tone, the choice of whether or not to use active or passive voice depends on where the writer wants to place emphasis. In Sentence A, the emphasis is on how many business owners were interviewed. Depending on the rest of the context, this could help with clarity, cohesion, and overall readability. Sentence A draws clear attention to the twenty business owners. On the other hand, if the writer wants to put more emphasis on the method (i.e., interviewing) or who did the interviewing, it may make more sense to go with Sentence B.

To say that a writer should avoid passive voice—which is a rule a lot of writers are taught—is dismissive of the fact that there are certainly appropriate uses of passive voice. The idea here is that the writer has the freedom to make this choice, but it should be based on an understanding of what the alternatives are.

In other words, writers need to know certain grammatical rules, but they also need to understand how each grammatical choice (based on the rules they’ve learned) can affect the writing. Aspects to consider when making rhetorical choices include tone, voice, emphasis, clarity, cohesion, and overall readability.

Lazy Writing?

So, is there such a thing as “lazy” writing?

As a writing tutor in graduate school, I once had an undergraduate student bring me a paper in which they had regularly used the lowercase first-person pronoun “i.” A missed lowercase “i” here or there could be considered a typo, but the student also regularly used “u” instead of “you.” Compared to the larger, more pressing issues of the paper, though, these stylistic choices were minor. Would I consider such informalities (“i” or “u”) to be “lazy”? Probably not.

While there were a number of stylistic and grammatical issues in the paper, the student had made an appointment at the tutoring center; they clearly recognized something was amiss in their writing. In this particular case, I would say that the student did not have all the information they needed in order to make more effective rhetorical choices in their writing.

If you go into a restaurant and every customer that you see is eating broccoli cheddar soup, you might make an assumption that broccoli cheddar soup is the only available soup at that restaurant. Maybe the menu simply says “Soup of the Day.” The waitstaff asks you if you’d like the broccoli cheddar soup, not offering you any other options. So, you order the broccoli cheddar soup. A while later, the chef comes out and asks why no one is ordering the tomato soup or the minestrone. Tomato soup? Minestrone? I didn’t know those were options.

Writing Is a Series of Choices

To become a skilled writer, some of the best advice is to read widely and analyze the writing. Through this reading/analysis, you can learn to make certain choices in your own writing; you learn the effects of certain choices. If you are aware of other options, you then have the ability to make different choices. And then instead of judging a stylistic choice as “lazy,” you might say that you don’t like the informal tone—it’s not your preference. Words matter.

In writing, if we’re only taught rules without learning how to make appropriate rhetorical choices, our writing can suffer. We might freeze, afraid to make a mistake. The same goes for us as readers. We must look at the larger context and appreciate the choices authors make (and why they may have made those choices), even if we personally wouldn’t make the same choices.

Writing is a series of choices made by the writer. Choosing one option over another does not indicate laziness. It simply means that the author has chosen a different way of expressing themselves, a way that they feel best suits their voice and the subject matter.