Welcome Friends,
Having been a Professor of English for 22 years and a Dean of the Arts for ten more, I
have been continually amazed by the decay of the English language. Now publishers
want textbooks on English Writing and Grammar “dumbed down”! Dumb down
English? Why don’t they dumb down Math also? Who needs the Pythagorean
Theorem anyhow? Why can’t 2 + 2 = 5?
When I see questions seeking online answers on the Yahoo Web site, and both the
askers and the answerers usually can’t spell, punctuate, put a verb in a sentence, or
know the difference between adverbs and adjectives, I get exasperated. The largest
English-speaking country in the world is now India, and Indians use English more
precisely than we do (with Great Britain, the inventor of English, not far behind us). So,
I became a copywriter, a person who can clean up English for those who mangle or
misuse it.
I wish copywriters would go out of business, but I fear they will not. Besides spelling,
grammar, and syntax, there is still that mysterious element called “rhetoric.” Rhetoric
is actually “the art of convincing.” Writers have to consider the audience being
addressed, then use the correct vocabulary, tone, sentence structure, and many other
elements of English to bring the readers and listeners to their way of thinking.
Consider the following two statements, both written and spoken by Nobel Prize
Laureates. They are written for an audience of the most educated people in the
world. Yet they would not “do” in a third-grade classroom.
Faulkner writes freight-train-length sentences that you can hear whistling in the
distance, rumbling as they pass by, and clickety-clacking as they disappear toward
some mysterious destination.
Hemingway writes much shorter sentences, almost devoid of adverbs, that depend
almost entirely upon what the reader infers from them. Read his story “Hills Like
White Elephants” to know what I mean.
Copywriters do not win Nobel Prizes for Literature. They clarify for the intended
audience what the writer actually meant. This is what I will do for you. Just tell me who
or what your audience is and what you are trying to convince your readers and
listeners to do.
I want the chance to succeed for you. Please review this Web site for all kinds of
writing with which I can help you. I look forward to working with you.
John K. Crane, Ph.D.
Dean Emeritus of the Arts at San Jose State University
have been continually amazed by the decay of the English language. Now publishers
want textbooks on English Writing and Grammar “dumbed down”! Dumb down
English? Why don’t they dumb down Math also? Who needs the Pythagorean
Theorem anyhow? Why can’t 2 + 2 = 5?
When I see questions seeking online answers on the Yahoo Web site, and both the
askers and the answerers usually can’t spell, punctuate, put a verb in a sentence, or
know the difference between adverbs and adjectives, I get exasperated. The largest
English-speaking country in the world is now India, and Indians use English more
precisely than we do (with Great Britain, the inventor of English, not far behind us). So,
I became a copywriter, a person who can clean up English for those who mangle or
misuse it.
I wish copywriters would go out of business, but I fear they will not. Besides spelling,
grammar, and syntax, there is still that mysterious element called “rhetoric.” Rhetoric
is actually “the art of convincing.” Writers have to consider the audience being
addressed, then use the correct vocabulary, tone, sentence structure, and many other
elements of English to bring the readers and listeners to their way of thinking.
Consider the following two statements, both written and spoken by Nobel Prize
Laureates. They are written for an audience of the most educated people in the
world. Yet they would not “do” in a third-grade classroom.
Faulkner writes freight-train-length sentences that you can hear whistling in the
distance, rumbling as they pass by, and clickety-clacking as they disappear toward
some mysterious destination.
- Excerpt from William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 1950:
- “I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work—a life’s
work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for
profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which
did not exist before.”
Hemingway writes much shorter sentences, almost devoid of adverbs, that depend
almost entirely upon what the reader infers from them. Read his story “Hills Like
White Elephants” to know what I mean.
- Excerpt from Ernest Hemingway’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 1954:
“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.”
Copywriters do not win Nobel Prizes for Literature. They clarify for the intended
audience what the writer actually meant. This is what I will do for you. Just tell me who
or what your audience is and what you are trying to convince your readers and
listeners to do.
I want the chance to succeed for you. Please review this Web site for all kinds of
writing with which I can help you. I look forward to working with you.
John K. Crane, Ph.D.
Dean Emeritus of the Arts at San Jose State University
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ELDORADO WRITING
your writing and see others' comments. Growing Up as a Baby Boomer by John Kenny Crane Available at Amazon Hardback $25.99 Paperback $15.49 John Kenny Crane has collected most of his Robert Greenway stories into one volume entitled Growing Up as a Baby Boomer. The short story collection is of Crane's most regular character, Robert Greenway, and his maturation from ages 5-45. He matures from a 5-year-old to a married 45-year-old who owns a British inn in the Dorset village of Abbot's Cernel. In growing up he encounters the same failures we all do. He deems his worst to be a summer job where he totally loses control of a roller coaster he is charged with operating. From this he ultimately moves on to staging a pigeon race for his customers at his British inn. Most of these stories are humorous but a few are poignant. Greenway suffers the failures and successes we all do as he tries to "grow up" into a world he did not expect to encounter: loss of innocence, failure at jobs, disillusionment with his parents. |
| (505) 466-2329 jack@eldoradowriting.com |
