estebanana -> RE: less of the back-biting guys! (May 29 2013 1:50:42)
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I remember when teachers used to send your papers back to you with red marks and notes on them. Notes with circled phrases and sentences, punctuation marks where none existed, heavy angry underlining where you knew you messed something up, but it was so obvious they left no words to describe the grammatical offense. Teachers would prescribe Strunk and White's 'Elements of Style' to solve punctuation and tense issues. The same teachers where tedious yellow toothed old bastards who would implore students to reduce, reduce, reduce clutter in the structure at all times. They would send you to the library to fetch yourself a copy of the William Zinsser masterpiece 'On Writing Well' in hopes that you weed through your language and pull up the water wasters. No, not in hopes of, they would actively red mark you and brow beat you until you rewrote those sentences clearly. I am glad I had those teachers who would not praise me for writing in a style that was based in excessive verbiage and emotional posturing. I was lucky because they taught that English was never set, they wanted you to leave the semester understanding that they would not be with you to pat you on the back. They turned you out and you knew you were never done learning English. It is a struggle and you cannot rest on your alma mater laurel leaf cluster and delude yourself that that is communication. Perhaps I should make some guitars in which I leave off the tuners, half the frets and glue the seams with grease instead of glue? That would not go over well I think; those guitars would lack detail, proper process, integrity, correctness and fail to communicate themselves as guitars. Guitars are just like English, the cruel Iron Mistress; each medium simply demands honesty, simplicity and clarity from the maker and user. There is no yesterday, there is only now. Gene Clark the guitar maker said to me: "The difference between good work and great work, is rework." _____________________________________ How's that for 'emo'? [;)]
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