I try to write well. No doubt I fail a good deal of the time, as I’m sure anyone who searches this blog will be able to prove, but I do try.
I used to think that things like spelling and grammar were measures of intelligence, but now I don’t believe that is necessarily true. There are intelligent people whom I could easily see writing sentences kind of like this: “i could of don with more newance in the caracterization of the protaganist.” (Note: this is a made-up example. I’ve never actually seen this particular sentence.)
These kinds of sentences I find fascinating, because they show that there are people who are thinking intelligent thoughts, but who are not capable of translating them into words in the agreed upon way.
In some sense, this is not that big a problem. After all, thinking hard thoughts is the tough part. Writing them down is something you can learn easily enough if you want. And to some extent, I suppose, there is a trade-off involved. If you want to spend time thinking deeply about important issues, you probably will have to spend less time learning what order the symbols go in to write them down.
And yet… well, I worry sometimes about the extent to which writing skills seem to have degraded these days.
P.S. I know that somewhere in this post, I have made at least one grammatical or orthographic/typographic error, perhaps even in this postscript. I can’t find it, but I know it’s there. I know this because anytime you write something bemoaning poor writing, you are guaranteed to have such an error. So, I know that I have it coming. I can accept that.