Writers and Their Egos

OK, I wasn’t going to blog today…this being Labor Day. But an ongoing discussion on the Self-Publishing Yahoo Group drove me to my keyboard. It has been one of those almost ridiculous grammar debates. Grammar aside, it brings to mind one of good writing’s worst enemies — the writer’s ego.

The discussion centers on the following sentence:

Almost one in three students falls asleep in class.

Dozens of posts later, the real issue has been thoroughly obfuscated. Some insist that it should read “Almost one in three students fall asleep in class” (using the plural verb form) while others say the original is just fine.

My initial reaction was that it would be far better to rewrite the sentence, regardless of what the pedantic grammarians among us think about it. I suggested:

Almost one-third of students fall asleep in class.

My reason? The original sentence was just plain awkward. However, the academicians in the group just won’t let the issue go, arguing “prepositional phrases” and what word is the actual subject of the sentence.

All grammar rules and parsing aside, in effective writing the single most important issue is how it falls on the reader’s “ear.” In this case, it matters little whether you use the singular or plural verb form in the original sentence. The result will still grate on the “ear” of at least half of your readers, primarily because it is an awkward sentence.

Any time I find a sentence with inherent problems like this, I rewrite it (if it’s my own writing) or recommend a rewrite (if it’s somebody else’s). There is ALWAYS a better way. An unwillingness to reconsider what we write and how we write it is an indication that the writer’s ego has gotten in the way of the need to communicate effectively.

When writing and editing, I recommend you keep two things clearly in mind:

• Your ultimate goal is effective communication. Anything that interferes with that (such as a phrase of sentence that causes readers to hesitate or wince at something other than the ideas) should be rewritten.
• Don’t fall in love with your own words. They’re not always as golden as you think they are.

That’s my opinion. What’s yours?