The conductor came walking down the aisle looking rather spiffy in his blue suit, (it had gold trim,) and wanted to see your ticket. You gave it to him, and then he wanted mine. I looked in my pocket, but only came up with a flower.
“I’d love to,” I said in a little remorseful of a manner, “but my ticket has apparently turned into a rose.” — The Ballad of the Beta Fish, by C. M. Schwarzen
The thing that I chafed at the most in elementary school (that I remember) was diagramming sentences. I hated it. For the most part that was because I was terrible at it, and still am terrible at it. I just can’t wrap my mind around drawing lines and picking words apart from their compatriots via slanted lines and dashes and squiggles. It doesn’t make sense. Sentences hang together, but they never hang separately.
It’s not that I can’t write a good sentence. That was an okay one right there. I can write a paragraph. See above. My work in non-fiction isn’t incredible (my schoolbook by Zinsser this year says that I shouldn’t put this in parentheses) but it’s not all trash. My work in fiction is admittedly my favorite. Twenty-five notebooks sit by my bed, filled with over 1,200 pages of what the Meet the Kids section calls “epic sci-fi novels.” But I’m not Ernest Hemingway, and I’m not Jan Morris. I’m no expert.
But at the same time, I’m not uneducated swine. My best score when I take the SAT this year will be in the reading and writing section. That’s because my parents took the time to teach me to write well.
Mom and Dad were the editors of the same college newspaper at different points in time. Dad spent over a decade in the newswriting industry. Mom has written countless pieces for this blog, with tens of thousands of people reading her posts like My Husband is an Idiot and I Can’t Stand My Kids. Both have written several books, some of which can be purchased in our eBooks section. My parents get writing. Writing is an integral part of their lives. They understand the importance of being able to craft words to deliver a point, and they took the time to teach me what they also loved. Thus, while I knew that it was literarily obscene to say “there was a red small peculiar rabbit,” I had to learn by means of diagrams why that doesn’t work. I can’t show you why, because I would have to draw a diagram, and I’m literally never making another of those again.
So why did I pick up my precious Pilot G2 0.7 to tell you about this? Because I want you to do the same for your children. There are benefits to knowing how to write.
Consider apologetics; The days of public town square debates are long gone. My fellow Millennials and I will live in a world in which the most annoying thing a wannabe terrorist can do (short of hacking nukes) is to take down the internet. Our culture is already dependent on the internet, as the attacks a while back proved. The easiest and most efficient way to spread the defense of the faith is now through a combination of Al Gore’s handy interwebs and the written word. That’s how you came to be reading this, after all. Your children need to be able to use the art of writing in order to take a stand for what they believe, and the internet is where it will happen. If C.S. Lewis were born in 2000, if G.K. Chesterton was just getting his driver’s license, they’d both have internet publishing in their future.
Parents, a young Christian cannot appear to be an ignoramus. I hate people who “wld lke 2 do smthng but it’s 2 l8.” I metaphorically tear my hair out if I see the oxymoronic non-word “irregardless.” Tiny B-52s drop bombs in my brain whenever I am faced with the solid block of 1,200 words that someone neglected to even punctuate. Your children will have to look like they have had access to more than a texting dictionary. They have to know how to spell. They have to be able to complete a thought in writing. If we Millennials don’t appear to know what we’re talking about, no one will listen to what we have to say. Our message of hope and faith will be lost in the shuffle. Ultimately, that’s why you have to teach your children to write—because we live in a world that is dominated by eloquent and wordy writers who, like it or not, are under Satan’s thumb. We have to break into the realm of writing, especially online, and the only way to start is to teach your children to do so!
“I hate people who “wld lke 2 do smthng but it’s 2 l8.” I metaphorically tear my hair out if I see the oxymoronic non-word “irregardless.” Tiny B-52s drop bombs in my brain whenever I am faced with the solid block of 1,200 words that someone neglected to even punctuate.”
This is awesome. 🙂
FTR, I love diagramming sentences. To diagram a sentence is to explain mathematically and scientifically how words work and why they do.
My brain explodes when I read things like, “I seen that, too.” Ack.