“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ― Ernest Hemingway

In keeping with the theme I've been stuck on writing about for the last couple of weeks, I'm going to give some more insight on my opinions about what makes for good writing. And, I guess, what makes for bad writing.

Ken Macrorie, in his article from Telling Writing, coined a term that describes dull, stilted, lifeless prose. This bloated and pretentious language that most students have learned to use in secondary education and college level writing courses is called "Engfish." According to Macrorie, because teachers have been trained to correct writing rather than read it and analyze its quality, students have followed suit by puffing up their writing in a manner that they feel will impress the teacher, rather than just being honest with themselves and adhering to their own skill level in writing. Teachers unconsciously reinforce this behavior in their push for formality in their students’ writing by only making corrections on punctuation and spelling, so the students think that’s all that matters and what they then produce is Engfish.

Macrorie discusses how teachers don’t want Engfish in their students writing, but their approach toward getting rid of it is ineffective. They feel that by assigning the students to write on subjects that are more interesting to them, the students will open up and be a bit more honest, but more often than not this method is used in vain.

His main argument is to tell us what good writing truly consists of. To summarize his words, the main points he makes are that good writing should be clear, vigorous, honest, alive, sensuous, appropriate, unsentimental, rhythmic, without pretension, fresh, metaphorical, evocative in sound, economical, authoritative, surprising, memorable, and light . To be more to the point, bad writing doesn’t tell the truth, while good writing is honest, and every single word pulls its weight.

Macrorie discussed the benefits of free-writing, but suggests doing it with a focus in mind to both keep the writing from wandering and becoming nonsensical, and also to try to dig out honesty in that writing.

When I read this article, I said to myself, “This is fantastic!” What I felt he was really saying is that teachers should stop forcing their students to write papers about concepts or topics that they don’t actually know anything about. Furthermore, teachers should make the effort to ask students to write more about things they care about. Then, upon further inspection, I realized that this article does show examples of teachers issuing assignments where the student is urged to write about something closer to their own interests, and the Engfish still persisted in those writings, such as the instance where a student wrote, “The co-captains of the respective teams are going out to the middle of the field for the toss of the coin.” Macrorie shows that this is still Engfish because only two teams play a football game, so there is no reason for the word “respective” to be used aside from the student trying to use impressive language.

After a second reading, I realized in my years as a college student how many papers I have peer reviewed and judged harshly. These were not just in a research setting where the student was assigned a topic they might not care one bit about, but even in creative writing classes where the student is urged to write autobiographically, or on something they’ve created in their own imagination. These still had an overabundance of Engfish. I spent a good while being judgmental of these other students while I was critiquing their papers, saying to myself, “I’ve talked to her and there is no way she knows what that word means.” Or, “That guy just used seven words in a row to express the same feeling.” It wasn’t until I read Macrorie’s article a few times over that I realized that I was completely guilty of fluffing up my own papers, too. And not just one time, but it became a regular habit, and so second nature that I didn’t even see it at first.

This whole idea begs the question: Is Engfish necessary? Part of me wants to say yes, because even though Macrorie’s article states that teachers don’t want Engfish, there has been a general consensus that most students feel like they have to write Engfish in order to receive a good grade from their teacher. This makes me feel that Engfish is mostly the fault of the teachers who not only accept it, but train students to use it in their writing in order to pass a class and move on with their lives. If they simply marked down a paper and specified the unnecessary word usage, this would help eliminate the problem. It is also partially the fault of the student who feels that they can’t write a clear and concise piece of work without fluffing it up to the point that it’s unrecognizable to them; as if it’s not even their own work.

Becoming somewhat offended by this realization, my defenses kicked in to try to find Engfish in Macrorie’s own article, but the guy knows what he is doing. His article does exactly what he expresses; it is completely honest writing, and it is good. Because of his practicing what he preaches, it’s easy to see that it is possible to do away with Engfish, and it isn’t necessary to fluff up a written work with words we don’t understand in order to make an effective point and/or argument.

Overall, Macrorie poses an excellent argument for expressionism, but not in such a flighty way as can be seen in some articles that basically say, “It’s all about free expression, man!” His idea of focused writing that stays within the confines of one’s own experiences and skill level is a great idea...on paper. While it can still be argued that students do need to be pushed beyond their boundaries and understand the concept behind all of the discourse communities, and the validity of their place in composition in general, a good foundation to start with is getting a student comfortable with writing about what they know and care about in a focused way.