It’s often said that it’s virtually impossible to write something without making a single mistake (or lapse) while writing. Even professional writers such as university professors, journalists, and authors continually make mistakes when writing (only very few people seem to have the talent or ability to write ‘perfect’ texts).
Newspaper articles, for instance, are often “proofread” by the journalist, then by a copy-editor (who, in addition to correct grammatical mistakes, also edits the text) and then by a proofreader. The proofreader’s part is important even though the text has been gone through twice. And still errors occur in print. In an academic context professors and university lecturers seldom come across papers without the need to underline anything in the text, and theses and dissertations are proofread by professional copy-editors that actually need to make changes.
It is thus interesting to ask oneself whether it’s possible or realistic to aim for perfection in one’s writing, and I would very much appreciate any of your opinions concerning this. And, is it a necessity to be perfectly accurate in one’s writing? Or is it enough that your text is intelligible, that your target-group understands you?
NB! I’m referring solely to the grammaticality in a text here, but without forgetting that clumsily chosen words and expressions count as ‘errors’ (just like in school-compositions). I do not refer to the content in a text.
People can always quibble about whether or not this fine point or that one is right or wrong, so there’s always going to be someone who objects to something in a text that other people think is perfect.
I can think of two random reasons why people should aim for perfection even if they can’t always achieve it:
When I worked as an editor of magazines and advertisements, even tiny errors would damage the client’s public image and require a reprint (if we caught the error on time). Such reprints generally cost about a quarter million dollars.
People in the working world can’t stop and give you a scientifically developed intelligence test, so they use people’s writing as a quick proxy measurement of intelligence. If a person’s language is full of errors, people assume he has not mastered basic skills, and they tend to judge him as incompetent to some degree. It’s a real career killer.
Your favorite argument: Who is the judge of that? Who is to judge whether the text is understandable or not?
Thanks for your reply. I cannot answer the question “Who is the judge of that?,” I’m sorry to say. But the thing is that no matter how much you polish a text, there will always be people critisising it which isn’t very nice. It’s sometimes claimed that it’s twice as hard to spot errors in your own text than in texts written by others (did I mention this already?). What do you think about an argument like this?
I should also mention a couple of problems that translators have:
Native-speaking translators living outside their own countries may have a particular problem with editors and translators back home. The translators in the homeland will sometimes get hypercritical of the text and claim that it’s written in terrible, absolutely unacceptable language. Of course, a person living away from his home country can get some degree of interference from the language of his new country, but not to the scandalous extent that some translators back home will claim.
In the Czech Republic I was often given English texts written by Czechs and asked to edit them. The Czech writer or translator was always a big muckity-muck with a PhD in English, a Czech state English proficiency certificate, etc. In general, the texts were in HORRIBLE English, by the standards of any educated native speaker from any English-speaking country. They could have completely wrong verb tenses; no articles; odd verbs and nouns that had come from the imagination of the Czech writer; idioms translated word for word from Czech that didn’t make any sense in English; clich?s from Beatle songs; just a lot of terrible language. By the time I finished correcting the text, my red pen had made the paper look like it had bled to death. The reaction of the Czech author of the horrible text was nearly always to say that the text had been written in perfect “British” English, and that all I was doing was Americanizing it. Anyone from the UK who saw the text would have laughed at this, but nonetheless I had to provide a serious response to this accusation almost every time.
Native-speaking translators living outside their own countries may have a particular problem with editors and translators back home. The translators in the homeland will sometimes get hypercritical of the text and claim that it’s written in terrible, absolutely unacceptable language.
Comment:
Yes, I just can’t understand why translators and editors back home have misbeliefs like this. A qualified, professional translator-editor is, in my opinion, a professional, no matter of his/her country of residence. Interference is seldom an issue for such people.
Jamie:
The Czech writer or translator was always a big muckity-muck with a PhD in English
Comment:
I find non-native speakers of English with a doctorate in English particularly interesting to discuss. I think that it depends very much on the country, once again, how qualified they are. For example in most non-English-speaking Western European countries already English majors are highly proficient in English, or at least they should be basing on how demanding the entrance exams are. I’m not acquainted with the texts written by these Czech Doctors myself, and thus won’t discuss him (I believe that what you say is true), but I would assume that most doctors in Europe are experts on what they do. I don’t think that there is much of a difference between native and non-native Professors of English in terms of expertise: many non-native speakers of English have conducted valuable research that native professors have found useful as well. I’m getting a bit sidetracked here, I must admit, but I hope that it’s going to be OK with all of you.
Why then delete all your posts? You live and you learn. Isn’t it better to face your minor flaws. We all make mistakes, and learning from them will make you stronger.
Some grammatical issues are under debate (as different style manuals have different rules… as in the plural pronoun/singular subject debate, in which case one must choose between being culturally sensitive and gramatically correct). Since not everyone can agree on all grammar-related topics, everyone will not agree on a paper’s grammatical merit.
On the other hand…
One could write a paper to satisfy a certain grammar/style book (like MLA) – you could write a perfect paper according to a certain style guide.