Writing, particularly online writing, is one of many enterprises not particularly troubled by etiquette. While I don’t wish to supplant Miss Manners here, I think that our global undervaluing of etiquette leads to a great deal of confusion.
The purpose of etiquette has been expressed as never insulting another individual accidentally. That’s terribly profound, in the wry way that etiquette masters are profound, because what it really means is that with etiquette, when you insult people, they’ll know you meant it.
Etiquette in writing is not the same as political correctness, which is just another way of beating all of the life out of everything you communicate. A writer can be good at writing and incredibly incorrect politically. I’m not sure you can do it in reverse, that is, be excruciatingly correct politically and write well. You may get the grammar all right, but people who are too politically correct simply can’t say anything. So we’re not talking political correctness here, we’re talking about etiquette. Not only are they different animals, they’re different animals who hate each other and snap at each other when they get the chance.
Here are my 7 rules for etiquette for writers.
1. Stop swearing. I know that four-letter words are increasingly common on TV, they’re all over the Internet, and you hear them from the mouths of babes. However, you are a writer. If you want to offend somebody, then you should get good enough at being offensive, objectionable, and insulting that you do not need swear words, which are for amateurs. A real writer should be working from the polysyllabic end of the dictionary, not the words more familiar to the "writers" of graffiti.
2. Do not rage at the typos of others. Every ridiculous diatribe discussion I see on the Internet about the decline of writing is usually written by writers who make grammatical and spelling mistakes in their own missives. If you are sickened, nauseated, offended, and angered by the typos of others, I think that you may be a typo-machine yourself. So buy yourself a manual of style and practice on those lists of commonly misspelled words and forget slamming people who make mistakes. I’d much rather read an insightful, thoughtful, and well crafted article by a writer who occasionally uses some double spaces and misspells a word here or there than read some lunatic ranting that nobody can spell anymur.
(By the way, Babe Ruth, a former "home run king" in baseball, held simultaneous records for most home runs and most strikeouts. Why? He wasn’t schizophrenic, it’s just that he was so good at hitting home runs that he was put up to bat frequently and anybody who gets to bat frequently enough is going to have his fair share of strikeouts. It’s the same with writing. The more you write, the better you’ll get at it, but the higher your error rate.)
3. Take advantage of the small courtesies. It is not a sign of political weakness to use terms like "please" or "thank you" or "I appreciate your help" when corresponding with others. When writing articles, these noble sentiments can be expressed indirectly by writing things that interest people and giving them a payoff for their spending time with you. In other words, write stuff that has value, is clear, has been well thought out, and does not seem too terribly self-serving.
4. If you have to annoy people, do not do it through typography. There is a common convention in emails that states that all capital letters is the equivalent of shouting. All capital letters can make anything hard to read, too. So can too-small fonts, silly fonts, or fonts that do not contrast sufficiently with the background. For instance, if you’re writing an online text on a white background, black is going to give you great contrast. So will a navy blue or dark grey. Light grey, not so much. Right now there is a trend among packagers of cosmetic products to use light type on a similar but only marginally darker background in very tiny (4 or 5 point) type. If you have something to say, give a reader a fighting chance at being able to see it.
5. Resist the short police. Right now, there are people who constantly scream that everything written should be shorter, briefer, more succinct. The "Twitter" rage is about capturing your innermost thoughts in 140 characters or fewer. While brevity may indeed be the soul of wit, some things require more lengthy discussion. Some people actually want to read book-length manuscripts about history or art or business and not just inane tweets. There really is no way to write a manual about considerations for physicians in prescribing narcotic medications in 25 words. You can’t write the history of American art in two 500-word articles. Be free and let your writing’s content and intention dictate its length. Most people on the short police hate to read and should really not be evaluating written works anyway.
6. Empathize. Write from the point of view of your reader. If you are writing about pacemakers for people who just found out they need one, do not explain that the venous incision during implant will likely be subclavian rather than jugular, although jugular vein incisions are sometimes required. That text is true, by the way, but it contains just enough words an ordinary person will understand (cut-the-jugular-vein) to panic him without giving him any useful information. Good writers never dumb-down their texts but they do write with an awareness of what their readers are most likely to know and understand. If that is below the writer’s own level of expertise, the writer adjusts. That’s the key: you, as the writer, adjust rather than demanding that your audience adjust to you.
7. Use your gift. One obligation writers have is to write well, but to that I would add: write often. Writers ought to be writing letters to the editors, blog comments, setting up their own websites and blogs; writers ought to be crafting novels and screenplays; we ought to be sending out queries to leading magazines and trying to get our own newspaper columns. And once you have your soap box, you need to use it responsibly and use it for good and not evil. The world is full of lawyers and lawyerly types who say things like "this may work" or "this could happen" or "it may be that…" We need some writers who have the guts to say, "This is wrong" or "This is right." Take a stand and make your viewpoint clear. That’s why you have the gift of writing!
Etiquette means that you only offend people when you mean it and, if you’re a good writer, in a way that they will know. And, as writers, it is our duty and responsibility to write well, often, and clearly about the things that we know and care about. As we practice our writing to get increasingly more skillful and on-target, we should be using our talents and energy to express our viewpoints. Most writers are good thinkers; writing well and thinking logically go hand-in-hand.
