Post 6: Texting vs. Academic Writing

I was intrigued by your posts about the differences between texting and academic writing, and I want to add some points of clarification to what you have said.

But first, I want to point you to a few excellent posts that, first, illustrate what I'm looking for in a blog post and, second, will teach you something. Luke Maloney-Grimes offers up the best description of the problem with documenting sources in academic documents by imagining what our texting would be like if we had to document our sources. The post is funny, engaging, and insightful and well worth reading. Then, Robert McKenzie explains why texting is so much easier than academic writing. Again, this is insightful writing that will teach you something worth reading. Finally, Madisen Mitchell challenges all of us to step up our game by writing beyond our comfort zone (texting, for most of us). This is basically what this class is attempting to do for you: get you to move beyond the familiar to learn something new.

I've been so impressed with the posts you have been writing, and I thank you for the serious efforts. It's paying off.

Now, what about comparing texting to writing academic documents? First, I want to go on record by saying that texting IS a form of writing, and it is by far the most common form of writing ever devised by humankind. Actually, no other form of writing even comes close. The most reliable data that I could find says that, as of 2017, the world was sending over 8 trillion messages a year (Portio Research). The math majors in the class know that this is an astronomical sum. The human race is writing its collective tail off. No generation has ever written this much, and we have genuinely entered a new stage of human development. 

Still, texting isn't the form of writing that gets you through college, and that's why all of you are here. So why is texting so preferable to you? Because it's more comfortable. Texting is like having coffee with your family or friends. You can wear your old jeans and a raggedy tee-shirt or stay in your pajamas. Academic writing, on the other hand, is like a job interview for a job that you really want. You should dress up, shake hands, avoid four-letter words (imagine how awkward it would be if you were to offer to shake your spouse's hand over morning coffee).

Does a suit and tie make you smarter? a better potential employee? No. But it recognizes the formality required to negotiate and navigate relationships between people who don't know each other very well. We rely on conventional cues and customs to make our first meetings with new people go well, but this formality is a bit awkward if we try to maintain it for too long. MLA and APA are the conventional cues and customs that academia uses to formalize communications among scholars. We scholars don't use formal citations when we are talking over coffee in the snack bar, but we do use them when we are making formal presentations or writing formal documents. We want you new scholars to do the same.

Some of you say in your posts that you prefer texting because it is so loose, casual, and formless. For instance, Ms. Mitchell says, "Texting is easier than academic writing because it doesn’t have to have any structure." But this isn't quite so. Texting has a definite structure and order. It has its own grammar, punctuation, and spelling, and if you violate the rules, then people will not understand your texts. All of you have received texts that you couldn't understand, and often, it was because the text broke the rules of texting. The rules for academic writing are indeed different than for texting, but both have rules. Communication depends on structure. Structureless texts are nonsensical.

But perhaps the biggest difference between texting and academic writing is the context: the reader, writer, and subjects. Usually, we text to people we already know about issues we already know something about. This means, for instance, that when I text my son: Jason says no, I can be brief because my son already knows who Jason is and the question that Jason is answering. Think of how much context — the background story — I would have to supply one of you if I were to text you that my nephew Jason is not joining us for Christmas this year because the tickets to the Bahamas are too expensive. Context is critical to understanding, and academic writing requires much more context building than most people are used to supplying. 

So of course texting is easier, but only if you are texting to the right people about the right issues. Imagine how confusing this blog post would be if you did not already share some context with me: I'm a writing teacher, you're a writing student, and I'm discussing your seventh class blog posts. I would have to give my son lots of back story and context for him to fully understand this post, which most of you already understand.

Finally, Ms. Flanders says:

Writing for academic purposes is often put off until it seems like an almost impossible task. With so many rules to follow, it becomes a struggle to feel free as a writer, instead you feel trapped in a cage.

I insist that any kind of writing — texting included — is a kind of cage. It has to be. Think about it: a text is trapped into a tiny little screen in the palm of your hand with exchanges bouncing back and forth from one side of the phone to the other, and don't dare confuse the sides. My stuff is on the right, their stuff on the left. Mine is blue background, theirs is gray. Don't change it, or you get confused and annoyed. So texting doesn't feel like a cage because you are accustomed to it — you do it every day.

And that brings me to my concluding point: if you want to be comfortable with the constraints of academic writing, then do some every day. It's the only way to learn how to write anything.