How to Think Like a Genius 14-Writing
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Rick Rosner)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/08
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We talked about math. We talked about Google search. What about writing?
Rick Rosner: The best way to acquire writing skills, writing obviously is changing drastically because most writing is now in the form of texts — I don’t know what the statistical breakdown is, but if you go by the number of written messages communicated somehow. I’m sure texts overwhelming everything else by sheer number of texts, if not in total number of words.
Texting places a premium on error where — they did a study that if you properly punctuate your texts and emails, people kind of think you’re a jerk. You are kind of tight-assed and with a stick up your butt, and so you want to leave out periods whenever possible. Which makes sense, texts are meant to be sent in haste, and so with terrible grammatical errors, autocomplete, awful spelling errors, and the statistical or I don’t know what the statistical say- say after the comment articles on news, which is a really bad habit, but somewhere in the area or on the order of 90% of post-story comments have some kind of error.
I’m not talking error in thinking because it was posted by a tea party, but just plain language error. It is rare to get through those. Anyway, so, I don’t know — you could argue although I don’t think this is accurate that we’re reverting to Shakespearean English, where people spelled things however they thought made sense. there were no set rules, I don’t think, back in the early 17th century. I think eventually dictionary makers or somebody came along and decided that let’s put English on a firm footing and make some definite rules, but those rules are kind of super-eroded right now.
However, all that aside, the best way to acquire writing skills is to read all the time starting when you’re as young as possible. Find stuff you like to read, it doesn’t matter if it is junk, but it should ideally have done, well-done thoughtful junk. Even though it has little educational value, at least somebody did a lot of hard thinking to make it as good and entertaining as possible. You’re not going to learn any math or science from the harry Potter books, but they’re really well written and edited, but find the best of the stuff that you like and then read that all of the time.
Just if there are certain websites that generate a lot of written material, go there, read them all of the time, just — as, you can spend as much time looking at the printed word in a day as you do looking at other visual media that isn’t written word based. And eventually, you will inevitably absorb a sense of or you’ll acquire a sense of good writing, of smooth writing, of many of the — of most of the non-written rules of grammar.
People who 20 years ago people who taught the SAT to tell people that if you want to read one thing read the WSJ because they have a lot of SAT vocabulary words, and that’s obsolete information and going to be a little weird to have a kid reading the Wall Street Journal, but extensive reading is still the key to eventually turning into a competent writer, and eventually you have to write. Worry more about — over the course of your life, you should spend at least ten times as much time reading as writing.
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