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The very first article of this blog talked about writing. In particular, it talked about the deterioration of writing skills as a result of humanity being preoccupied with superficial things. Of course, this has been a theme echoing through future articles as well. To name just a couple, remember my article on mediocrity and the one on having too few readers and too many (mediocre) writers.

The Deterioration of Writing Skills as a Result of Self-Imposed Time Constraints

I am appalled that people are too bored to make an effort to produce a text. Platforms like Instagram are popular because they require no effort of any sort. People upload a photo, then instead of writing an interesting story behind it (since on its own it’s usually too bland and mediocre to inspire any reaction), they bombard their audience with hashtags. These come not in the form of surgical strikes (3-5 keywords that are relevant), but as carpet bombing (dozens and dozens of tags, perhaps copied from other sources).

The deterioration of writing skills in the work of professional writers

What truly disgusts me, however, is when professionals – people who are paid to write – like journalists are too bothered by the act of writing to do it properly. Too often I see texts that are either not idiomatic or even outright ungrammatical.

The other day I read an article on a Greek news website, reporting on some American diplomat’s statements. The diplomat, naturally, gave his statements in English. As I was reading the Greek-language text I read the phrase “I don’t have a crystal ball” (literally translated in Greek). The diplomat expressed himself the way any English-speaking person would. The problem is, the proper phrase in Greek is “crystal sphere”, which (you’d think) any native speaker should know. To read “crystal ball” in Greek makes me think of a basketball made of glass.

The reason such things happen is a perceived and self-imposed lack of time. People don’t bother with accuracy. They don’t take the time to do a proper job, lest someone else (a Twitter user!) gets to the news first. As a result, it has become a sad habit to rely on automation and sloppiness overall. The example with the crystal sphere/ball above is, I’m willing to bet, a result of a journalist simply copy/pasting the diplomat’s statement in Google Translate.

What about Writing Fiction?

To an extent, the problem of deteriorating writing skills can be seen in fiction as well. However, the dynamics are a bit more complex there. As I had mentioned here, the issue with writing fiction is less related to actual quality and more to promotion. To quote myself:

When you have a vast ocean of noise, the only thing that surfaces is flotsam and jetsam. In other words, it’s not the best but the loudest that are heard.

In absolute terms, I think that we’ve actually seen an improvement in the better-quality books. The truly good books today are probably more well-paced, better-written, more engaging than at least some of the books published 100 years ago. The problem is, these truly good books are a smaller percentage of the total compared to their older counterparts. This comes as a result of the massive amount of works published today.

Conclusions

The deterioration of writing skills is probably an inevitable consequence of the way we’ve structured our lives. Of course, this also entails the possibility of a reversal, as long as we are willing to undergo such a process. If you want better texts, better writers, more words and less blabbering, then stop supporting the platforms that deter texts in favor of noise. Stop being sloppy in your own expressions. Demand more from others but – first of all – demand more from yourself.