Category Archives: writing (the craft of writing; good vs. bad writing; my training, experience, and lessons re same)

“pure naturalness and truth”

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“[P]ure naturalness and truth, in whatever age, still find their time and their place.”

— Michel de Montaigne

 

So do I believe.

And earnestly wish.

I myself have strived to achieve “pure naturalness and truth” in my writing. Here and elsewhere. In writings and communiques, public and private.

Some narrow minded, mean spirited critics, who feel it incumbent upon themselves to keep an eagle eye on this site, feel otherwise. They are always carping and finding fault. They never have a complimentary word for my writing. In fact, incredibly, they find me to be pompous and feel that I pay fast and loose with “the truth,” as they see it. This, they feel, makes them entitled to correct and scold me, instead of offering constructive criticism.

My most admired writers, those whom I wish to emulate, include, along with Montaigne, Samuel Johnson and (in various works, including prose) Walt Whitman.  It’s unlikely that my detractors are well acquainted with their works.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   September 2017

J-school students, give heed!

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Yes, I’m a J-school grad.

M.A., Journalism, New York University, 1988.

All journalism students are taught, first and foremost, the importance of the LEAD.

Here’s a stupendous one:

Without it, if you are a New Yorker of a certain age, chances are you would have never found your first apartment. Never discovered your favorite punk band, spouted your first post-Structuralist literary jargon, bought that unfortunate futon sofa, discovered Sam Shepard or charted the perfidies of New York’s elected officials. Never made your own hummus or known exactly what the performance artist Karen Finley did with yams that caused such an uproar over at the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Village Voice, the left-leaning independent weekly New York City newspaper, announced on Tuesday that it will end print publication. The exact date of the last print edition has not yet been finalized, according to a spokeswoman.

“After 62 Years and Many Battles, Village Voice Will End Print Publication”

By John Leland and Sarah Maslin Nir

The New York Times, August 22, 2017

 

 

— Roger W. Smith

   August 2017

 

kudos

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Writers hunger for understanding and appreciation (as well as readers).

A few readers of this blog, besides disagreeing (often vehemently) with my point of view, as reflected in some of my posts, have also critiqued my writing.

I have been accused of “braggadocio” and pomposity in my posts and of defects in writing such as trying to impress readers by using big words and a weakness for overly complex wording/sentence structure. And, of using arcane scholarly references in what is deemed an effort by me to show off my learning (such as it may be).

But others with whom I have shared my writings or have discussed this say that, on the contrary, my writing is the opposite in many respects: that it exhibits humility of spirit (“sure!” my detractors would say), honesty and sincerity, and a desire to make myself clear (read simplicity; of course, my detractors would say that my writing is NOT clear).

I was going through and cleaning up old papers today. I found that I had made a note of a remark my former boss at a consulting firm where I was employed for over twelve years made to me on August 11, 1990. He told me that his wife (a retail executive who became CEO of a large department store chain) had said to him: “He writes better than you.”

Whereupon my boss said to me: “You write with a clarity of expression that takes complex issues and makes them understandable.”

Like most people, I’ll take compliments wherever I can get them.

— Roger W. Smith

   August 20, 2017

 

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addendum:

My wife read this post today. She emailed me as follows:

Roger —this is not the first time that someone has said this about you. Don’t let it go to your head [meant jocularly].

She reminded me of a remark a friend of hers, an English teacher, once made to me. Her friend said she had enjoyed published writing of mine that my wife had shared with her and made a statement to the effect that I could write well and convincingly about anything and make it interesting. I recall the words she concluded with: “You could make a doorknob interesting.”

Am I full of myself, or what?

 

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note: I intend to complete another post or two in which I will discuss issues related to style (did Strunk and White write the last word; is there another way?), vocabulary (are big words verboten?), and voice in writing.

regarding Professor Strunk’s admonition, “Omit Needless Words.” (or, are long, complex sentences bad?)

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Should long, complex sentences be considered, a priori, evidence of bad writing? Ask Samuel Johnson. Or practically any other great writer one can think of.

Sometimes the shortest sentences can be extremely powerful: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).

But, note what Professor Brooks Landon has to say in his lecture ““Grammar and Rhetoric” (lecture 2, “Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft”; The Great Courses/The Teaching Company).

 

— Roger W. Smith

   July 2017

 

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… unless the situation demands otherwise, sentences that convey more information are more effective than those that convey less. Sentences that anticipate and answer more questions that a reader might have are better than those that answer fewer questions. Sentences that bring ideas and images into clearer focus by adding more useful details and explanation are generally more effective than those that are less clearly focused and that offer fewer details. In practice, this means that I generally value longer sentences over shorter sentences as long as the length accomplishes some of those important goals I’ve just mentioned.

Many of us have been exposed over the years to the idea that effective writing is simple and direct, a term generally associated with Strunk and White’s legendary guidebook The Elements of Style, or we remember some of the slogans from that book, such as, “Omit needless words.” … [Stunk concluded] with this all important qualifier: “This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.” [italics added] … Strunk’s concern is specifically with words and phrases that do not add propositions to the sentence [e.g., “owing to the fact that” instead of “since”].”

… simple does not mean simplistic. Direct does not mean short. And, simple and direct does not mean that we should all write like Ernest Hemingway in a hurry. “Omit needless words” is great advice, but not when it gets reduced to the belief that shorter is always better, or that “needless” means any word without which the sentence can still make sense.

… I like Faulkner, as well as I like Hemingway. And, I’d like to believe that even Professor Will Strunk and certainly E. B. White would not have tried to edit Faulkner out of existence.

… Strunk and White do a great job of reminding us to avoid needless words, but they don’t begin to consider all of the ways in which more words might actually be needed. … in many cases, we need to add words to improve our writing … rather than trying to pare our writing down to some kind of telegraphic minimum.

 

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Addendum:

from Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_wept

 

Jesus wept (Greek: ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς, edákrysen o Iesoús lit. “Jesus shed tears”) is a phrase famous for being the shortest verse in the King James Version of the Bible, as well as many other versions. It is not the shortest in the original languages. It is found in the Gospel of John, chapter 11, verse 35.

This verse occurs in John’s narrative of the death of Lazarus of Bethany, a follower of Jesus. Lazarus’ sisters – Mary and Martha – sent word to Jesus of their brother’s illness and impending death, but Jesus arrived four days after Lazarus died. Jesus, after talking to the grieving sisters and seeing Lazarus’ friends weeping, was deeply troubled and moved.

office politics (reflections upon, plus some thoughts about writing as it relates to IQ)

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I had a varied and spotty career in my work life.

I was a freelancer for a few years, interrupted my career to pursue a graduate degree, but spent most of my work life working in offices.

I always hated it. The office environment and culture did not suit me.

It was claustrophobic. One basically has no privacy, feels no freedom to be oneself.

The pettiness, narrow mindedness, and gossip – the constant security of one’s slightest actions, peculiarities, behavior, comportment, grooming and dress, feelings, moods, whims, attitudes, opinions (God forbid that they should be original or controversial), and so forth — were irritating and depressing. The routine mind numbing and ossifying.

 

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In my last office job, which lasted over twelve years — as a writer on the business development team (and prior to that on the communications consulting team) of The Wyatt Company in New York City — I had a boss whom I admired in many respects but also resented.

He was a hard taskmaster.

He prided himself on his savoir faire and intelligence, not without some justification.

He admired my intellect, but he also felt qualified to lecture me, which I found somewhat annoying. He took it as a given that he was the more knowledgeable one.

In the office in midtown Manhattan where I was employed, there were two distinct factions which hated one another.

There was a sort of renegade faction opposed to the current office manager.

The renegade faction allied itself to a powerful figure in the office who had major clients. In retrospect, it seems that he overestimated himself, but people were intimidated by and afraid of him.

The members of his faction seemed to spend an awful lot of time kibitzing and putting down others.

The leader of this so called renegade faction eventually lost out in an office power struggle. He was not chosen as the next office manager, which he had expected. He left in a huff, as I was later told. He filed a wrongful termination suit (unsuccessful) against the firm.

My boss made what I thought was a sage observation while this power struggle was going on but before the denouement. He said he never participated or engaged in office politics. If others started to gossip about or badmouth coworkers, he would abstain.

“The problem with office politics,” he said, “is that if you choose a side, you may end up being on the wrong one.”

That is precisely what happened with the renegade coterie. They left the firm, individually, sequentially — unhappily and under circumstances not favorable to them –shortly after their de facto leader had himself left.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   December 2016

 

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Addendum:

I got to thinking yesterday, for some reason, about this post and about the leader of the “renegade faction” in my former place of employ described therein, anecdotes about whom were intended to illustrate a general point I was trying to make.

A couple of other details occurred to me.

Only a few days after I had joined the firm, I attended a company conference on the West Coast which was devoted to cross fertilization among associates from different offices. That was the first time I became aware of a high ranking employee, Mr. ________, who would later become leader of the “renegade faction.”

The first time I saw him, he was in a corridor of our hotel prior to the beginning of the day’s proceedings. He looked like he had just woken up, and he was carrying a copy of the New York Times which he had purchased at the hotel magazine shop. He appeared lost in thought and somewhat disheveled and looked like a prototypical New York intellectual.

That’s _______ _______,” someone said. “He’s brilliant!”

It turned out that almost everyone in our office held Mr. _______ in awe. Mostly because of his reputedly large stable of devoted clients and his mesmerizing hold on everyone as an absolute authority on employee benefits who was not to be gainsaid.

But — I found out over time — he was no Einstein. Not a genius. His reputation for intellectual prowess, such as it was, was not deserved. (Which is not to say that he wasn’t intelligent.)

He once took his secretary and me to lunch and talked briefly with us about his education. I gathered that (if I recall correctly) he did not attend college right after high school, but went back to school later. The school, which I had vaguely heard of, was a local school with no great reputation. Certainly, not a prestigious university. It may well have been a nonaccredited school. He obviously finished and got some kind of degree in a narrowly focused course of study. Whether it was a bachelor’s degree, I don’t know.

The renegade leader’s secretary showed up at my desk on a workday once and dropped a seven page long, double spaced, typed draft on my desktop. “_______ wants you to edit it,” she said. I did not work for _______’s department, but it was assumed that I would do it immediately with no further discussion. It turned out that what he wanted me to do was edit the draft of remarks, or a speech, he was planning to give to some office, company division, or professional association.

It is actually the kind of work I like to do. I dove right in. Soon I was scratching my hair. The content of the speech may have been okay, but his thoughts were expressed horribly.

However, I have always fancied that I can wordsmith and make read decently just about any piece of English prose — on any subject, technical or nontechnical — written by an adult with a modicum of education and a knowledge of English as a first or second language.

Among the awkward phrases I recall — the renegade leader kept failing miserably at getting his thoughts across, at crafting phrases and sentences — was “Russian red tape expert,” used in the following sentence about employee benefit laws: “A Russian red tape expert would be proud to issue 49 pages of closely printed regulations. ….” I changed it to “Communist apparatchik.” (Upon reflection, I think that “Soviet apparatchik” might have been better.)

I labored over the speech for about two hours and returned it to the renegade leader’s secretary. It was received without a word. I never heard anything from him by way of follow up or got any thanks. I was proud of my work. I still have a copy of his draft with my edits.

It is true that a lot of so called geniuses — this includes true geniuses — cannot write well. It also seems that many of the greatest writers of all time, while showing obvious intelligence, let alone brilliance, in certain respects — did not possess IQ’s that would make them eligible for Mensa.

Just what the relationship between a genius for writing and being in the “gifted” class (as early childhood educators would term it) with respect to intelligence is, is not obvious and raises potentially interesting lines of inquiry.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   March 17, 2017

a letter of recommendation

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60892770

 

My father wrote this recommendation for my good friend John Harris in October 1965. John was a 1963 graduate of Canton High School in Canton, Massachusetts.

I feel that my father’s letter of recommendation demonstrates – provides one small example of – how well he could handle any writing task.

I have found that various samples of writing can teach you a lot about writing in general. This includes both good and bad writing.

In the case, of bad writing, I find that it sometimes enables me, by comparison, to become more aware of what the difference between good and bad writing is, and thereby to see more clearly what the ingredients of good writing are.

Similarly, one can learn a lot about good writing both by reading and appreciating the works of the masters – an Edward Gibbon or Charles Dickens, say – and by examining pieces of everyday writing – including those of young people and of adults who are not necessarily of English prof caliber – when it is apparent that there is an innate gift for expression and an ability to convey ideas and feelings. It could be a letter not intended to be “literary,” for example.

What I notice in my father’s writing:

GRACE – his prose is always graceful, regardless of what he is writing about, whom he is writing to, or how important the topic may or may not be.

CONCISENESS – he says just enough, no more or less. There are no unnecessary words.

CLARITY – his prose is crystal clear.

COHERENCE – the sentences and paragraphs are tied together seamlessly, like a well made piece of clothing.

IT FLOWS – the exposition proceeds logically and straightforwardly. There is no discontinuity.

TONE – it is just right for target audience. There is awareness on the writer’s (my father’s) part of who his audience is – whom he is writing TO – and of the kind of language and tone that should be employed for that target audience.

CHOICE OF SUBJECT MATTER – he uses appropriate, telling examples, the best ones he can think of, to get his points across. He has gone through his mental storehouse of impressions and memories to come up with the best examples. He has chosen the ones that best fit. Then, he has plugged them into the letter in just the right places, where they support the key points being made.

ORGANIZATION – the organization is not really noticeable, which is not to say it is flawed. It is not noticeable because it doesn’t require attention. One can follow the logic of the communique with no special effort required. There are a logic and orderliness to the way the letter is constructed. Points follow in the order that makes most sense. (This, by the way, is not true of a lot of writing. Poor organization can tire a reader trying to follow what is being said.)

EMPHASIS – this is something my high school English teacher commented upon that many writers seem to be either unaware of or unable to achieve. The letter is constructed in such a way that key points are highlighted without this being obvious.  I believe that the ability to achieve this is a mark of a master writer.

 

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I have thought about writing at this level of excellence (as I deem this short, perfunctory communique to be) and have concluded that in writing, many of the principles that apply also apply to music. For example, a composer must achieve a logical progression to his piece; he can’t be, or at least shouldn’t be, bombastic; he needs to hold the listener’s interest and to be able to convey musical ideas in such a fashion that they are not utterly incomprehensible and “take hold” upon the listener.

Which brings us back to the topic of EMPHASIS.

In good music, you feel that there is something inevitable about the “logic,” the flow of the music. You feel it sort of HAD to be constructed that way. You feel the piece could not have been composed differently.

I would contend that my father’s letter, while perfunctory in one sense, shows some of the same qualities. You get the feeling that there was only one kind of letter of recommendation that would do for this particular individual (my friend) in this situation, and that my father managed to write just that letter.

 

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I myself have often felt, when writing, that there is some kind of abstract, perfect piece of writing — appropriate to, called for, as pertains to — whatever I am writing about – just what needs to be said about this or that topic (say, a book under review) – and that I have to “find” the absolutely perfect words, not only so that they are expressed perfectly, but also that they are just what needs to be said about this or that topic, and that they cover it fully. In other words, it’s a question of both prose (wording) and subject matter (content).

It’s kind of like the search for the Platonic ideal.

So that the examples chosen to make the point are just the right ones. Say, it’s a book review I am writing, for example. This would mean that I have discussed exactly those parts of the book that merit or require discussion, that I have found exactly what passages should be quoted, and have come up with the best analogies or comparisons that must be made to other works with which this book should be compared.

Searching for the best examples, for just the right things to say, can make writing very difficult, indeed exhausting. Many pieces are not written this way. They are tossed off, written in haste. (A writer notorious for this who comes to mind is the historian A. J. P. Taylor; many op ed writers compose in this fashion.) Such writing can be adequate, but it does not have the staying power of a piece that a great deal of thought and effort have been put into.

I think my father did something similar here. He thought of just what needed to be said about my friend. He chose the best examples: marshaled them. Then, he succeeded in presenting them in the most effective possible fashion.

A further word about emphasis. In writing, as in music, emphasis, which is to say putting the weight where you want it to fall — making the reader (or listener) come to attention — can be achieved in many different ways. It could be a short, punchy sentence or phrase (“I recommend him without qualification”) or it could be something elaborate and wordy. It depends.

Variation often helps here, which means variety of pacing and tone and an admixture of the terse and direct with more high flown, wordy, abstract language. Composers do this all the time: a short musical phrase followed or preceded by a long intricate passage.

 

— Roger W. Smith

     April 2016

 

 

show, don’t tell

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The following is an exchange of emails between a friend and myself from last night and this morning. (April 14-15, 2016)

 

Scott,

I am rereading my own stuff, namely, my “autobiography.”

I think it illustrates an important aspect of writing one is supposed to learn, be taught: SHOW, don’t tell.

Roger

 

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Roger,

Do you mean, the reader should see it, feel it; you shouldn’t have to try to explain it through words?

Scott

 

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Scott,

What I mean it is:

One sees awful GENERIC writing all the time.

You get a communiqué from a relative or friend: “Having a great time in Paris … wonderful! … beautiful city … fascinating … we love it.”

Tell me WHAT makes Paris so wonderful in your experience and from your vantage point. Tell me something about:

What you are doing or enjoying. What you had for breakfast. A café you were at. An interesting person you met. A show you saw. A street you liked. Your hotel. What the service and staff are like. Where you have been and what you did there.

As Walt Whitman put it in a letter to a friend (1863): “don’t run away with [the] theme & occupy too much of your letter with it – but tell me mainly about all my dear friends, & every little personal item, & what you all do, & say &c.”

Here’s s what is said on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,_don’t_tell

Show, don’t tell is a technique often employed in various kinds of texts to enable the reader to experience the story through action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author’s exposition, summarization, and description. The goal is not to drown the reader in heavy-handed adjectives, but rather to allow readers to interpret significant details in the text. The technique applies equally to nonfiction and all forms of fiction ….

In other words, avoid the generic. Make what you want to convey come alive through details. Then the reader can figure out for himself or herself what it was about.

In writing, I try to work in details that come to mind. I feel that that’s what makes a piece interesting. I rely on memory, intuition, and a mental process of association in doing this.

It’s the particulars that give a piece of writing life. No experience, no person is quite the same as any other. That’s what makes life so interesting. And, most experiences aren’t plain vanilla, white bread stuff. People have funny idiosyncrasies. Funny things happen. Things don’t hew to the norm. There are all sorts of surprises, twists, and turns.

I feel that the little details make for interesting reading, make the piece credible, make it work, make it clear just what the experience was, make the story believable to the reader.

It makes you and what you have to say AUTHENTIC.

In my essay “Boyhood,” I could have said things like: “I had a happy childhood,” “I had a sad childhood,” “I loved baseball,” ‘I hated school,” “I had nice friends,” “my brother was mean to me,” “I loved music,” “I liked to visit my grandparents,” “my teachers were good,” “my teachers were bad,” and so on; and left it at that.

Instead, I have built my essay around carefully selected and minutely described particulars. It’s left to the reader to decide — make his or her own mental construct — what kind of childhood is being described and what he or she (the reader) might be inclined to think or feel based on the piece.

I do intend for words to be used to convey my experiences and meaning, of course, but not generic writing (aside from the occasional summary statement or editorial comment).

 

— Roger W. Smith

   April 2016

My English Teacher, Robert W. Tighe

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Bob Tighe.jpg

Robert W. Tighe

 

The following is a message of mine posted on Facebook in response to a daughter of my former English teacher Robert W. Tighe.

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In your Facebook post of March 23, 2016, you said, regarding your father: “[his] chosen occupation aligned with his passions, in his case for learning, and sharing his love of learning with others, as well as for language and the role language plays in shaping our understanding of the human experience throughout history and the role it plays in the present as a tool for influencing the thoughts and actions of others.”

Very true, I believe.

From my experience of your father as a teacher, I would say that some things that drove him were:

a love of books, reading, and language;

hatred (if one can use such a strong term) of pomposity and obfuscation in writing and in written and oral expression in general; an abhorrence of cant.

It seemed that this would cause him at times to be impatient and to be a harsh critic.

He was no phony or fake and he didn’t like it when others “put on airs,” so to speak, when writing, declaiming, or participating in a conversation or class discussion; when someone would try to conceal their lack of knowledge, or grasp and penetration of issues, behind a “smokescreen” of bad writing.

He had no use for mawkish, flowery, or overblown language when used to impress the reader or show off.

He was constantly inveighing against excess verbiage and wasted words. His summum bonum was clarity.

I had a close friend from another town in New England. His father was chairman of the English department in the local high school. Once, when I was visiting, my friend took me upstairs and showed me some of his father’s students’ papers. There was an A paper by a star student, a girl. My friend’s father had written comments praising it highly. I read some of the paper and, being a student of Mr. Tighe, immediately realized that it was a God awful paper. It was insipid, mushy writing of the kind your father would have detested.

A few additional comments.

Your father loved Samuel Johnson. I was told by someone that he had read Bowell’s Life of Johnson something like nine times. One can see why this affinity existed. Samuel Johnson hated cant and hypocrisy, and would skewer with verbal repartee — with his (Johnson’s) legendary wit and sarcasm — anyone who engaged in it.

Your father taught me to read poetry. Sort of. Which is to say that I never really had an ear for poetry or much of an ability to understated it. But, your father would have us reading John Donne, William Blake, or T. S. Eliot and understanding it, getting to the heart of the poem, and, once I could manage to do this, loving the poetry for its ingenuity and beauty.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   March 25, 2016

An Early Lesson in Writing

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When I was around 13 and still in junior high school, we had a discussion at the dinner table in our home in Massachusetts one Sunday afternoon that was intellectually stimulating, as was often the case.

My older brother was telling us an anecdote about Mr. Tighe, his English teacher at Canton High School.

A girl student had written a paper for Mr. Tighe in which she used the archaic word yclept, meaning named or called. It was used by Chaucer and Milton.

Mr. Tighe ridiculed her for this. He observed that the simplest and clearest word was always desirable.

Being only 13 and not savvy, I was quite surprised to hear this. I spoke up at the dinner table, and said, “I thought that writers were supposed to use big words.”

“Oh no,” my father, Alan W. Smith — who, besides being a musician, was superbly articulate — said, “you should always use the plainest, simplest word.”

I never forgot this discussion and remark. It was a revelation to me, the start of learning how to write well.

It was a salutary “lesson.”

 

— Roger W. Smith

     March 2016

Roger Smith, “Learning How to Write”

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During the summer of 1962, between my sophomore and junior years at Canton High School in Canton, Massachusetts, a summer school course was offered taught by my older brother’s English teacher, Robert W. Tighe.

I had had practically no writing instruction during my first two years of high school. I was interested in writing and motivated to become a better writer. So I decided to take the course, although my grades in the first two years in English had been straight A’s and the summer course was not required.

But, prior to taking the course, I did self-instruction. I bought a paperback book, Shefter’s Guide to Better Compositions by Harry Shefter, and studied it intently. This, along with the course that followed, was a decisive juncture in my development as a writer.

Shefter stressed the importance of having an effective opening to your composition. He counseled and explained how to write an effective lead paragraph, like a journalist would do. Once you had an effective lead, you would state your thesis and develop and expand upon your ideas from there.

In my first composition for Mr. Tighe’s summer course, I began by describing a recent game that took place on June 18, 1961 at Fenway Park between the Boston Red Sox and the Washington Senators — I saw it on television– in which the Red Sox, in the first game of a doubleheader, scored eight runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to win 13-12. They won it on a grand slam home run by catcher Jim Paglioroni.

I ended the opening paragraph of my composition with the words “the ball nested in the nets.” Mr. Tighe liked this and commented to the class on what a felicitous phrase it was. (There were only three students in the class, including me. The other two boys were taking the class as a requirement, because they had failed English.) I followed by saying something like, “that’s why baseball is my favorite sport.”

I was off to a good start with Mr. Tighe. He said, in his sardonic fashion, rubbing his forehead and pushing back his glasses, “I hate to have to admit it, but you’re good.”

I did an awful lot of writing in the next few weeks, and got very close attention to my papers. I put a lot of effort into them.

My last paper was entitled “The Folly of Frugality.” We had been given the assignment of reading a writer, in my case Vance Packard, and trying to emulate his style. I began the paper with my lead (à la Harry Shefter) describing an incident where my best friend’s mother, when I was in the sixth grade, would not let him go on an outing to a neighboring town the two of us had planned because she thought it might be unsafe. Mr. Tighe asked me whether I had made the story up. I told him that the story was an actual one.

The course was invaluable to me, and I did not at all mind the hard work.

Mr. Tighe had been an inspiring teacher and crucial mentor of my older brother. I had him for English in my junior and senior years. I worked very hard in his class and paid close attention to anything and everything he had to say about writing. I could never figure why he gave me a C+ for the first marking period in my junior year. I think he was trying to take me down a peg, to send me a message. (But, I was not by any measure conceited.) Also, I heard years later that it was his policy to give practically everyone a low grade the first time they had him for a teacher.

 

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The Three Basic Elements of Good Writing

Mr. Tighe said that there were three elements to good writing: unity, coherence, and emphasis.

The first, UNITY, means that you must stick to the point, be it in your thesis statement (at the opening of a composition) or in a topic sentence.

One of our first assignments was a standard one for beginning writing students: describe something. I wrote a paper describing my bedroom. The emphasis and details were meant to convey what a snug, cozy place my bedroom was — how I liked to be there reading or studying, for example.

When I had nearly finished, I inserted an additional sentence in which I referred to the room’s “long windowless walls.” Mr. Tighe, in grading the paper, underlined this sentence and gave me a low grade. The sentence had conveyed the impression of a dreary place, at variance with the impression created by the other descriptive details. I had violated the principle of UNITY.

The second element of good writing was COHERENCE. Mr. Tighe explained that this was sort of like glue. You had to tie all your paragraphs and sentences together by using transitional words that guide the reader: on the other hand, in contrast, furthermore, however, and so on. I got the idea quickly and was soon larding my essays with such words. It became a little heavy handed. When I became a more experienced writer, I learned that you can achieve this in more subtle ways. But, I have never forgotten or neglected the importance of coherence.

The third element of good writing, EMPHASIS, is the hardest one to achieve; to perceive the presence or lack thereof in a piece of writing; or to explain. It is akin to what a composer strives to achieve in music. A myriad of thoughts, observations, or details in a piece of writing without the proper emphasis can leave the reader disoriented and confused.

Emphasis is achieved by placing weight or stress on certain key points or sections in the essay and on the conclusion. The skillful writer can achieve this sometimes without being obvious. A key point might be made to emerge where one wouldn’t expect it.

Ground Rules

Mr. Tighe taught us to make an OUTLINE before writing. As I grew older and became a more experienced writer, I found that I didn’t have to do this anymore. But, it helped me a lot in school. Even when I had an essay exam, I would jot down a quick outline before starting to draft an answer. I did this on college essay exams, and it helped me get good grades even when I was not that well prepared.

Once I wrote a paper for Mr. Tighe in which I began by making an outline, as usual. Then, at the last minute before beginning to write, I decided to use the outline, but in a totally different order. Mr. Tighe gave me a poor grade and commented that there was a major problem with organization.

I learned a lot about GRAMMAR and STYLE from Mr. Tighe — what you might “Strunk and White precepts” — including precepts about writing that stuck in my mind. For example, when to strike out words. He told us to avoid cumbersome phrases like “the fact that.”

He was strict in grading and it was said he would lower a grade due to a couple of spelling errors, but I didn’t see him do this.

My older brother got at least one A+ from Mr. Tighe on a paper. It was said to be very hard to do. I recall how proud he and my parents were on that occasion. Late in my senior year, I finally got an A+ from Mr. Tighe for a paper on the Romantic poets. (I criticized them. Mr. Tighe did not particularly like the Romantic poets.)

Writing on Demand

In my senior year, we had Mr. Tighe for first period. Often, he would have us start off by writing. It was very difficult to do that — especially, it seemed, at that hour.

He would usually start off by quoting from some piece of writing, an excerpt from The New Yorker or the Atlantic Monthly, for example. Then he would say, with what seemed to be fiendish glee, “say something clever and witty about that.”

The next day, he would have prepared for the class a rexograph sheet containing excerpts — which he had typed up from our handwritten work — from four of the pieces submitted on the previous day. Then he and we the class would discuss and critique the writing samples. It was invaluable instruction in writing — trained me to critique my own work.

I learned to write on demand, which served me very well in college on essay exams (as noted above) and in writing last minute papers, which — due to severe case of procrastination which I suffered from — I usually had to resort to.

Senior Research Paper

In our senior English class, the term paper at the end of the year was a big deal. Mr. Tighe taught us how to do research and keep track of our sources using index cards. My paper was on J. D. Salinger. I did research in the Boston Public Library. But, being a procrastinator of the worst sort (as noted above), I had to stay up all night the night before the paper was due and barely got it written and typed. I wrote the paper in one draft on my older brother’s typewriter without revision.

I recall that I got a B+. The title of my paper was “Salinger and Utilitarianism.”

From the research paper assignment, one learned how to write a college paper with footnotes. It was the first time I had ever done research, and I enjoyed it. The only Salinger book I read for the assignment was The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger’s Franny and Zoey had been published by then, but I did not read it for purposes of the assignment. (I did read it later and didn’t particularly like or understand it.) I included some criticism on Salinger, which I had read as part of my research, in the paper. I really enjoyed doing research in the Boston Public Library, reading early published fiction by Salinger that most people didn’t know of.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  December 2015