I truly hate how careless most people are with their words.
“If you are going to write, write consciously, so that what you SAY will be what you MEAN, and it will also be what other people HEAR.”
Maybe I am just incredibly conscious of my writing, or maybe society in general has become lazy. I’m learning that I am one of the few people I know who truly values the weight of words. There are some of us out there. Word fiends, lovers of the English language. People who truly take the time to consider what they are writing.
But I think we are becoming painfully few.
When I write a long message, and I am discussing an important, emotional, or sensitive topic, I am EXTREMELY conscious of what I type onto a page. As best I can, I say exactly what I mean, so that there is not room for misinterpretation, since tone is so difficult to put into text. I have been known to say, “I’m not trying to start a fight,” “I’m not mad as I write this,” “I honestly just want to know, I’m not accusing,” etc, when typing, because I do not want my words read with an angry edge to them. I say. What. I mean.
I’m amazed at how often I get into a fight with someone, often in a debate on a Facebook status, or in a series of messages, and I HONESTLY do not know why the person is becoming mad at me. I regularly find myself rereading what I’ve posted or sent, trying to find if I accidentally said something angry, something with inflammatory wording or a not-clear-enough joke. And I’m amazed, generally, I can’t find out where I went wrong. I can’t figure out why this person thinks that I’m trying to fight with them. Why they think that I’m mad, or being insulting, or saying anything other than exactly what I’m saying. I don’t know how I get lost in translation.
Not to sound pretentious, but…maybe because I have a bigger vocabulary and write much more carefully than most people, they get mad because they think I’m being pretentious. Which I think is just. All kinds of ironic.
I value words. I value the English language, and I enjoy using it to its fullest extent, to the best of my ability. I like pausing to think of the exact word that I’m looking for, and being able to find it. Even now, writing this, I reread a statement, then go back and change a slight part of it so that it reads more smoothly; so that it reads exactly how I want it to when it’s read.
I wish that more people spent time on their words, I wish that our society in general was more focused on our language. I think it’s a sad part of our culture to lose, the beauty of the English language. It’s what separates great linguistic authors from those who write simple but exciting books. The difference between terrific books, and terrifically written books.
Cinematography is to film what language is to writing.
I wish that higher value were placed on each, in each category; I think if people paid more attention to the beauty of the tools we’re given, the world would be a more beautiful place.
“If you are going to write, write consciously, so that what you SAY will be what you MEAN, and it will also be what other people HEAR.”
Give value to what you say.
