People tend to gravitate toward their talents. If someone is better at hitting a baseball than catching a football, they’re probably more inclined to pick up a bat in the future.
It’s the same with writing.
Many writers start out as avid readers. It makes sense. You inhale so many words from others that it’s only natural to want to vomit out your own. But that’s not the only path to writing. Nor is it guaranteed to produce good writing.
Some people write because they are good at writing. Not necessarily good at telling a story or creating a character or building drama. Just, writing. The act of putting one word after another and doing so in a productive way.
Maybe this started in school with Language Arts or English or whatever-it’s-called for the equivalent of learning how to write in this language.
For those people — myself included — we learned an important lesson on writing as a tool. Use proper grammar.
Yes. But no.
I’m going to perform an experiment in the text of this article. It will be subtle. But you can’t miss it if you read good.
I lied. It wasn’t subtle. It was laughably bad. Still, its an experiment, so I had to keep true to what I am trying to accomplish.
That one was a little more subtle.
Whether you caught the blatantly obvious “read good’ or the misuse of “its,” I urge you to answer the following question to yourself. “What happened when I read those grammatically incorrect sentences?”
I’ll give some possible answers.
You may have narrowed your eyes. Maybe you laughed slightly. Maybe you were appalled.
Whatever you actually did in response to those mistakes, there is one universal result shared by anyone who caught at least one of the two: you paused.
This is the critical value of grammar and why it does or doesn’t matter.
Your job as a writer is to capture the attention of a reader and hold it for as long as possible. It’s a monumental task, but the easy expectation is that the content is the key ingredient to this mix. The assumption that, if the writing is good enough — or the story or message is compelling enough — people will read.
They will until you break the concentration.
As soon as a reader doubles back on a sentence because of poor grammar use, you have taken them out of their trance and back into reality.
Now ask yourself a second question. Before the two grammatical errors, how many times did you pause or stop reading during the article?
Probably none.
And there were plenty of opportunities.
I started the article with analogies to sports. Maybe you don’t like sports. Still, you read.
I change point-of-view constantly, even in the same paragraph! I address “many people” and then I address “you.” Still, you read.
I have a paragraph that consists of three words and no actual sentence structure in “Yes. But no.” That’s an entire paragraph. And still, you read.
I broke countless rules, used incorrect grammar, and wrote content that might not grip everyone. But the flow of the article was completely acceptable until I made an egregious mistake.
Because my path — ahem, a paragraph, let alone sentence, starting with “because” — came from doing well in writing-based classes as opposed to being a voracious reader, I always cared about grammar. I was a slave to it, and I still can’t break some habits.
But it isn’t about me or the ability to follow rules. The purpose of written communication is to communicate, and the only influence grammar has is to get in the way. Or not.
Your job, as the writer, is to keep the reader engaged. Clear out the hurdles, and let the journey be as smooth and convenient as possible.