Writing and Melbourne and vampires, oh my.

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It seems obvious to me that writers should also be readers, but according to a September 2011 column in Salon, some new writers are apparently finding reading a bore.  The columnist is trying to find an equivalent attitude in another field. The only analogy that springs to my mind is “Wanting to write without wanting to read is like wanting to sing without wanting to listen to music.”

It’s an issue much larger than ‘how do you keep up with what’s current in literature?’. Reading widely is a vital training ground for all writers, not because of trends in writing, but because of the exposure it gives you to the basic building blocks of writing.

I do not have a degree (in writing or in anything else). I do have a very large vocabulary, though. I have a good, broad general knowledge on a variety of subjects and I’m always picking up bits and pieces of information and concepts, both esoteric and mundane.  I read voraciously before becoming qualified to teach English as a second language, and so absorbed vocabulary and grammar by osmosis before I learned how to label the parts of speech.

You may ask what evidence there is that writers are not reading, but sadly, such evidence abounds: mostly in newspapers. News articles are full of the kind of errors that can surely only occur when the writer has only ever heard a phrase and never seen it written down. How else can you explain the following slips?

• full-proof instead of foolproof
• cries falling on death ears instead of on deaf ears
• and my old favourite, changing tact instead of changing tack

Why is it important? (I assume it is the non-reading writers asking this question.)

It’s important, dear writer, because words are your business. They are the bricks and mortar, the wood and nails, the paint and canvas of your job, which is to communicate. If you do not know how to construct a sentence that people can understand, you fail to communicate. If you don’t know how to punctuate a sentence correctly, you fail to communicate. If you can’t think of the exact word to describe your meaning, or you use the completely wrong word because you don’t know it *is* the wrong word, you fail to communicate. Or you communicate the wrong thing.

In the instance of ‘death ears’ mentioned above, it can take power away from your story and, worse, be disrespectful to people in pain. When I first saw the headline ‘Woman’s cries fall on death ears’, I assumed it was a slightly jokey story about some poor woman who had been locked overnight in a morgue or a crypt. But no. It turns out a young girl being raped had cried out for help, but people had walked past without assisting.  The writer didn’t mean to trivialise her ordeal, but their carelessness and lack of knowledge about a common phrase was awkward, at best.

I don’t have a problem with the average person not knowing the right words for the right situation, but writers? Writers who do not understand vocabulary, punctuation and grammar are, to me, like builders who don’t understand building and attempt to just slap bricks together without first constructing the foundations and frame.

If you don’t know your tools, how can you create the effect you want? How can you communicate your idea clearly if you don’t know the right words or how to use them? How can you depart from the rules of grammar and spelling with creative meaning if you don’t understand the rules to begin with?

You don’t need a writing degree. You don’t need to be able to label a past participle or define a secondary object. But you do need to have a feel for a correct sentence and to have an excellent vocabulary. They are both the tools and the building blocks of your craft.

So please, writers, please. Read.

Narrelle M Harris is a Melbourne-based writer. Find out more about her books, iPhone apps, public speaking and other activities at www.narrellemharris.com.

Some things have been jarring me lately. Jarring me until my teeth ache. So please excuse me while I have a language rant.

I love language. I love learning new words and phrases, and I love discovering how those phrases came to be. Etymology – the account of how words and phrases originated – is of endless fascination to me.

And because I love language, when I see errors in language written by novelists and journalists, I seem to suffer actual physical pain. It hurts me when people haven’t the faintest idea how to use an apostrophe, or how to spell ‘definite’, or that there is a difference between a ‘magic bullet’ and a ‘silver bullet’ when talking about problem solving.

I’m not talking about errors made by your average Joe/Jo in the street, or in casual communications. Friends writing emails aren’t necessarily professional writers and shouldn’t be held to the same standards. Even for writers – well, typos happen to the best of us. But there is a difference between an obvious typo, and when a writer (or their editor) clearly doesn’t know their grammar/vocabulary/punctuation.

My big gripe at the moment is the phrase ‘changing tact’, to indicate a change of approach to a problem.

The expression is actually ‘changing tack’. Etymologically, the phrase is derived from the nautical term ‘to tack’. When ships tack, they change course relative to the direction of the wind – zig-zagging against the wind to move forward.

Knowing the origin of the phrase makes it easier to remember how to spell it. In context of its origin, the spelling makes perfect sense. Using the word ‘tact’ makes no sense to me at all. I’m sure being sensitive and diplomatic (showing tact) is important in problem solving, but you can’t change that kind of tact. Or do people think it is related to the word ‘tactic’?

I know that English doesn’t always seem to make a lot of sense – although, once etymology is understood it does make better sense. That’s what you get with a language that has been built out of a half dozen other languages – Latin and Celtic, Norman French and Saxon German, the language of the Vikings, everything that’s been borrowed from Arabic, Russian, Hindi and more.

The incorrect use of the word ‘tact’ in this phrase indicates to me that the people using it have never seen it written down. They’ve heard – or rather misheard – the phrase and are just having a stab at how it should be written. This happens a lot with other phrases and spelling. People write ‘tow the line’ instead of ‘toe the line’ all the time; or ‘should of’ instead of ‘should’ve’ (the contraction of ‘should have’). The number of times I’ve seen ‘flout’ (often spelled as ‘flaut’) and ‘flaunt’ (which have completely different meanings) confused in print gives me a toothache.

The thing is, I don’t have a university degree in language (or in anything else, come to that). The reason I have a wide vocabulary and an understanding of grammar and punctuation is essentially because I read. Voraciously. I read biographies and histories. I read SF and crime. I read trashy thrillers and Booker Prize winners. I read classics from the 19th century and new writers from the 21st.  I read children’s books and adult fiction. I read newspapers and magazines. I read the back of the box. I read for fun and education. I read. All the time.

When I come across a word or phrase I don’t understand, and can’t work out from its context in the story, I look it up. I teach myself new language.

If you’re a writer, you should be reading. You should be noting words and phrases and exploring anything that is new, to add to your writer’s language toolbox.

But most of all, you should be writing ‘change tack’ instead of ‘change tact’.

Please. I and my aching teeth will thank you for it.