Fountain Pen on Parchment Zen and the Art of Pen on Paper

Now hold back on the delete key, please, because I have a most important message to impart. People can’t write. I have taught writing and communication courses in higher education for 12 years, and each year the situation becomes more dire indeed. The worst part of it is is that students don’t care, well most of them anyway. Some days I want to stand in front of the classroom and scrape my fingernails down the blackboard out of sheer frustration!

The real challenge in teaching students how to deal with the language correctly is teaching grammar sans terminology. Students look at me with eyes crossed, or they don’t look at me at all, eyes paralyzed by their cell and frantic text messaging if I start tossing around around terms like participle phrases and dangling modifiers.

You’d think the texting would help, after all, it is a form of writing. Form is the operative word, my friends. R u 4-getting r w1nderful, gr8t time?

We all know what the translation here is: Are you forgetting our wonderful, great time? Admittedly, when I’m texting, I use the shortcuts just as frequently as the next guy. But, another operative word, I know the difference between the casual, fast-track-texting language and the English language as it is meant to be written.

I admit it. I am a grammar maven. I cringe when I see a list that is not parallel in construction. My stomach lurches when I read sentences containing comma splices or sentences presented as such that aren’t! So when I’ve read enough papers loaded with these and myriad other errors, up to the black(white) board I march, chalk/marker in hand, and away we go with sentence diagramming.

It amazes me that out of a class of 25 students, maybe 2 or 3 have ever even heard of sentence diagramming, so evidently it has become a lost art. But thanks to Sister Felicitus and her sentence diagramming lessons where we all shook in terror lest we be called up to the blackboard to diagram, I learned how to put a sentence together. I actually loved it. I found it to be like a puzzle!

And now I have the puzzle of figuring out how to teach college students to write the language correctly in an era where you are what you write!