The Great Debate, Content Vs. Mechanics

The Great Debate, Content Vs. Mechanics

The Great Debate, not the one about astronomy in 1920, but the one about writing. It is about the message and the mode. The quality of writing is mostly dependent on the message, the content, not the mechanics. So, what makes good content? Most importantly the writer has to have an idea that leaves the reader thinking and possessing a greater understanding of the world. An example of this could be memoirs from athletes or other well-known people who don’t have a career in writing. They often tell great stories with amazing content that does not rely on the structure of the writing. For example, Tommy Caldwell’s The Push, a story of his climbing career, emphasizing his journey up the Dawn Wall on El Capitan in Yosemite, is exciting but definitely doesn’t intend to teach anyone sentence structure or grammar. “If you don't own your grunt work, can you really say you've done the climb” (Caldwell, The Push). Caldwell uses simple language and still gets his point across. Of course he had an editor, but the editor realized that the reader wants to hear Caldwell’s story, not a lesson in brilliant writing. Again, Caldwell’s writing is not particularly amazing regarding sentence structure, word choice, or grammar but the story and the message behind it is among the best I have ever read. And there are examples when excellent grammar and structure exist in a piece that is totally lacking in valid content.

Some non-fiction writing may have good grammar and structure that can actually deceive readers, distracting them from evaluating the content properly. The content in a piece may be a lie but if, presented with flawless wording, can convince the reader of its credibility. Recently, the term “Fake News” has been used in reference to the journalistic invention. For example, TIME Magazine’s writer Zeke Miller reported that President Donald Trump had removed a bust of Martin Luther King from the oval office. Miller has written many articles for TIME with excellent grammar, word choice and whatever else typically constitutes good writing in an egotistical English class, which is most of them, but in this case, Miller wrote a technically well-written piece that was entirely false. Another example of deception would include the statistic from Everytown for Gun Safety that there have been 18 school shootings in 2018. Everytown for Gun Safety tweeted: “Our hearts are with all those impacted by the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida today. This is the 18th school shooting in the U.S. in 2018” (@Everytown). While this tweet may seem correct and is a clear and concise statement, it is factually incorrect, as proved by The Washington Post. And though a tweet may not seem like much, those few sentences reached thousands of people. This statistic was also reported by CNBC, who later changed the incorrect information but not before presenting false information to even more of the population.

 

The importance of content should be obvious. Spelling, grammar, and structure should aid the content not be used as distractions. Correct information helps humanity to progress. In his memoir, Caldwell recounts the long journey of his climbing career up to the point of completing the first free ascent of the Dawn Wall. Caldwell’s narrative of his life was clear and very empowering but his writing was nothing of note:

"I've always loved the idea that passion breeds success. I now realize, much to my chagrin, that telling someone who doesn't feel the fire to simply follow his passion is a little like telling someone who doesn't have any legs to run to the fridge and get you a sandwich" (Caldwell, The Push).

There is no elegance of vocabulary or complex grammatical structures. This is also true in the memoir Living with a SEAL in which Jesse Itzler documents living with David Goggins for a month in preparation for an ultra-marathon. The 300-page New York Times bestseller summed up in few words: motivation comes from within and to succeed is to get better at being uncomfortable. Both of these books are critically acclaimed, but neither is magnificently well written in a technical sense, “every day do something that makes you uncomfortable. —SEAL” (Itzler, Living with a SEAL). Nothing too complex about that right? It is their messages that make these books great.

It can also be seen in shorter works that content matters more than the even mechanics of the piece. The quotation below is an effort by the writer to explain why FDR’s New Deal was ineffective. “As a whole the New Deal did not address unemployment very well, it never reached below 10% until the eve of the second world war in 1941” (Sagar, “New Deal Effectiveness”). The point is very well formulated, that FDR’s New Deal failed to decrease unemployment, but there are some grammatical errors. Here is what the correct sentence should look like: As a whole, the New Deal did not address unemployment very well: it never reached below 10% until the eve of the Second World War in 1941. Another example could come from a recounted memory; this student wrote about a hike into the mountains, “the approach was beautiful, though I don't remember much of it, the rest of the day took up all the memory storage there is” (Sagar, “Personal Flight”). The student speaks about the beauty of a hike, but he also alludes to that fact that there is more to come in the piece, an approach that makes for a good hook sentence which draws the reader in. However, the sentence is flawed; between the “it” and “the rest,” the comma should be replaced with a semicolon. In other words, a sentence may communicate the information effectively even if it is structurally incorrect may. But structural perfection does not guarantee that the sentence is truthful, as seen in the following sentence about democracy: The best kind of democracy allows for people to better themselves, in turn gaining more power to direct in whatever way the government should move forward. While this is a grammatically correct sentence and may seem correct because democracy is about the people’s ability to hold power, after more consideration, this is not a true democracy. In a true democracy every person has an equal say in voting and governmental issues, and even though some may be better off than others, everyone is still equal. The whole idea of writing is to convey a message, and if that message is untrue it is not helpful to society.

The point of this blog is not to completely discount the mechanics of writing, but to show that content is the essence and style should support it. It all comes back to the ultimate goal of conveying a message, the reason why writing, and communication, was created. Logos, pathos, and ethos, according to Aristotle, these are the three main components of rhetoric. The two that are most important are logos and ethos: the logic behind an argument and credibility of the source. Even thousands of years ago, Aristotle understood that the content is what is important in forming a good argument. Be it to win an argument, recount a story, convey scientific information, or write a letter to a loved one, the content is what matters as long the reader can understand the piece.