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rules of the game
Feb. 23rd, 2025 02:17 pm I've been thinking lately about a few different conversations I had about 15 to 20 years ago.
That strikes me as being roughly analogous to the DOGE issue, or to most of the "disruptors" out of Silicon Valley. In most industries I've ever known, the rules aren't just there to slow your roll. They were created in response to problems. Get rid of the rule, and the problem comes back.
Back then, I floated around several websites and companies as an ersatz copy editor. It was typically by virtue of being the only one who cared to do so. In the land of the blind, the guy who can identify a comma splice is king.
That put me in contact with several different people who wanted to write professionally, but who didn't want to learn how to use English. It didn't matter if their entire article was a single paragraph, or they didn't use any punctuation besides ellipses, or they frequently misused words: the important thing, they'd argue, is that you understood their point.
Invariably, I'd have to explain to them that the guidelines for written English were not in place because editors enjoy pissing people off with rules. They're there for the purpose of efficient communication. You have to learn how the language works first before you can break it.
(It's an underrated part of the argument that writers have to read. 90% of my English skills come from reading every book I could when I was a kid. I can't name a lot of the individual rules of syntax or grammar off the top of my head, but I've read 5,000 professionally edited books, so I know when a sentence doesn't look right.)
(It's an underrated part of the argument that writers have to read. 90% of my English skills come from reading every book I could when I was a kid. I can't name a lot of the individual rules of syntax or grammar off the top of my head, but I've read 5,000 professionally edited books, so I know when a sentence doesn't look right.)
That strikes me as being roughly analogous to the DOGE issue, or to most of the "disruptors" out of Silicon Valley. In most industries I've ever known, the rules aren't just there to slow your roll. They were created in response to problems. Get rid of the rule, and the problem comes back.
