Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1874 — Writing Good English. [ARTICLE]

Writing Good English.

The beginning of the school year is an appropriate time for making suggestions in regard to teaching. We propose, in this article, to speak of what no one will deny to be an exceedingly important part of a complete education- We mean the art of writing our own language correctly. If we were to assert that not one college student in four could write half a dozen pages of his own composition in such a manner that any well-known printing establishment would be willing to publish them without alteration, it it would doubtless seem to many persons like a very strange statement. We do not make this assertion. Perhaps it would not be true. But if it were made by anyone else we should by no means feel sure enough of its incorrectness to contradict it. It is certain that, a very large part of our educated youth of both sexes are unable to put their thoughts on paper without numerous inaccuracies. Perhaps the most frequent errors of educated people in writing are those connected with punctuation. That many mistakes of this kind are made is not at all wonderful. There is a good deal of difference of opinion as to what constitutes correctness in this respe.ct. But the circumstance that it is not always easy to determine what point should be used in a particular place is no reason for writing as if punctuation had never been invented. If a man is in doubt whether to wear a light coat or a heavy one on a September day, it does not necessarily follow that he should go in his shirtsleeves. The diversity of theories in regard to punctuation does not render, for instance, a long letter on several independent subjects without a single fullstop, except the one at the end, creditable either to the education of the individual who writes it or to the institution at which he or she has been taught. Another class of errors which must be mentioned is that of mistakes in grammar. These, it is true, are much less frequent among young people of education than deficiencies in respect to punctuation. Yet there are thousands of such persons who would be highly indignant at the charge of writing ungrammatical English to whom a gentle hint, that, for instance, the objective case of the pronoun “who” always ends with an m, or a little instruction in regard to the proper use of the auxiliaries “ shall” and “ will,” might be of material service. Quite as common as errors in punctuation, and much mdre common—among educated people at least—than mistakes in grammar, is the misuse of words, and especially of adjectives. A splendid dinner is a dinner at which there is a large number of guests and a great show of silver and other handsome table furniture. The expression is not appropriate when employed to indicate a nice piece of roast beef and well-cooked vegetables for half a dozen individuals. This is but one illustration, among many that might be given, of habitual misapplication of adjectives. Such a misuse of words is bad enough in talking. It is still worse in writing. If the more advanced students in some of our colleges or female seminaries were each to be required to write, without assistance, a letter or a composition of any kind, and if then what had been written should be printed without alteration, and distributed among the parents and friends of the authors, it would constitute a species of examination of which, we venture to s&j, few institutions would be proud. We by no means recommend such a test. On the contrary, we should denounce an attempt of the kind as utterly heartless and cruel. No instructor could for a moment be justified in thus exposing to ridicule his students. But it would be in some respects an excellent criterion if professors and teachers in our higher educational institutions, on perusing the compositions submitted to their inspection, were to ask themselves how these productions would look in print. And here we would make a suggestion which may be valuable to some of our college students who are indulging hopes of distinguishing themselves in literature. It is often the case that if these young men were to submit their experiments in writing to the examination of some good compositor in a printing office he would be able to give them valuable instruction which their professor of English literature would not, and perhaps could not, impart. At all events, if instruction of this kind is furnished by the professors in our colleges, many of the students appear to profit remarkably little by it.— New York I'imes.