Hello and welcome to classical stuff you should know a classical podcast by classical educators And you know what Hanenburg because you have been so critical of my intros. I actually wrote down an introduction on paper Oh my word hello welcome to classical stuff You should know classical stuff you should know as a podcast classical stuff You should know is good classical stuff. You should know is a very very very cool and wonderful podcast of learning Classical stuff you should know is what we are going to do now Hanenburg how is my writing you Less critical do you think that that was a well-crafted piece of Pros can't say I did oh man if there was only a way that I could learn to make a well-crafted piece of pros I would I would listen to that if it existed. What am I to do?
Tell you Alright so today Defeated right now. I'm just so sad. We didn't even mention who we are oh sorry So my name is Graham Donaldson. I'm a classical educator at Veritas Academy in Austin, Texas And I joined today with Thomas Megbee hello who is the Dean of fun and with AJ Hanenburg.
Sorry Lord Arthur You're on hand The second the second the second my grandpa was named Arthur I don't know can I count it myself as a second if he wasn't the Lord oh You can you're a Lord after you're born. Yeah, I'm Lord Arthur the second Yeah, I guess I'm great. I would put Thomas ledger maybe the second on the top of my papers But I'm not actually the second I just like the title what is when is the martha and we call them art and then that went to Artie and then Artie fartie. It's just a progression.
That's why I would buy AJ's you don't ever want to be like you're gonna be Artie fartie. There's no way around it. So what is your heraldry? Are you a baron?
No? Are you a of of c-land? I'm a lord. I'm a lord.
I'm actually buying a baron or be a count But count Hanenburg doesn't look good. So good. It's not as barren. Okay Lord Hanenburg.
Okay, cool But like a one of our students was gonna get it and hit Baron sounds better with it. All right, so anyway today we are talking about writing and It's a slight departure from classicism Sort of but here's the thing I've done a lot of studying about or at least my best attempt at trying to find a good style manuals from back in the day And from what I can tell the great majority of writing instruction comes in the form of the pro gymnoms in this model You guys heard of the Pro Gym this model? Yeah, yeah, it's like they have memberships that you can join out at the beginning of every like in January They have like discounts. So it's a wine club.
It's not just kidding. It's Jim the the Pro Gym this model was a Sponsor by was a series of exercises that you would go through every year as you got your education So it's a series of like thirteen or fourteen exercises You start with a fable and then you have to write like a praise of somebody and then you know condemn someone or praise an act Like and it talks about how to do these each of these things and it gives specific prescriptions Like if I'm going to quote someone I have to tell you who they are I have to praise that person I have to say the quote and then I have to say how the quote applies to my life And they go and that's useful right it's useful that it gives you a format I don't question Yeah, I think it has a speaking exercise But there's also like then you take stories and then like memorize the stories and then tell those stories or they're actually writing their own Stuff as they're going through it there. These are writing your own stuff. These are all original things I think the maybe it was like a retelling of a story It's not a label.
I don't know you're writing your own fable. Oh, yeah, and I tried this with my students I did not find it that beneficial It's it's great if we can spend more time on it But it just ended up being this quick thing that was you know And it's supposed to be like coincide with your age as you grow and so having ninth graders write a fable not very helpful Wouldn't be helpful for you as listeners. There's really no Point to sending you there. So I've been looking for a classical way to teach writing or at least how to teach just writing Well, one of the things that I realized after I left college was that I'd I'd been taught the five paragraph essay But that was almost it the rest of my writing instruction came from just mimicking the people that I'd read and to be fair That's a good way to learn to write is just read a ton and then do what they do but you can get better through actual focused effort and learning what great writers have said about these things and Finding a style manual.
So the five cannons of rhetoric are invention arrangement style memory and delivery memory delivery are important if you're gonna speak it But writing is those first three so invention thinking of things to say arrangement putting them in an sensible order And then style making them sound good are all things you can do with practice invention We already did one on the logical fallacies, right? We also do common topics. We also do common topics. That's all invention and then arrangement is we did one on classical or Torquil form that's arrangement but doesn't have to be classical or Torquil form a lot of the ancient writers wrote in what was called a chiasm where the it would slowly ramp up to a Main point dead in the middle and then kind of slowly ramp down from there and the beginning would mirror the end and it would sort of be a mirror mirror each other all the way so my intro would be mirrored by a conclusion and You know as I ramped into my main point I would also ramp out of it in ways that mirror each other So that was arrangement is pick a structure.
Yeah, pick a structure and The tough one the one that I never really learned was style how to make my sentences sound good How how exactly do I construct a paragraph? How exactly do I not make myself sound terrible and these things are taught like there are manuals That tell you how to do this and so today we are talking about how to write well how to make good sentences on paper and And I've sort of compiled some things here But the first thing I want to do is is point you to one of my favorite things on writing and it's by a guy named Mark Twain Might have heard of him. Yeah, and it's it's one of his lesser known writings He actually wrote some stuff that you know wasn't quite as popular I mentioned a couple of podcasts ago a book called the Tennessee Yankee Arthur's Court I read it this summer it was great, but here's one that's nonfiction and he's writing about another writer It's called Fennimore Cooper's literary offenses Fennimore James Fennimore Cooper was the guy who wrote last of the bohekins He wrote the deerslayer series he wrote a few other things and that's our core dear Slayer Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, and it was all these Wild West tales and he's still read to be clear Like James Fennimore Cooper is not some guy that has sort of disappeared in time like last of the Mohicans was a movie that came out in the 90s To great movie soundtrack that is mmm. Yeah, I'm top to do something listen to the last know he can soundtrack You'll bust through a wall but my point would not have approved maybe at the film Oh, I'm gonna read you a little bit at the beginning because he gives some some clues for writing and a little bit of the end Just because it's awesome and I recommend you as a reader go read this thing It is one of the best instances of how to properly roast someone I have ever heard my life So he starts with want me to hum the last little he steamsong in that when while you maybe maybe at the end not to be Okay, so what he does first is he quotes the other professors So I quote the Pathfinder in the deerslayer tale stand at the head of Cooper's novels as artistic creations There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these and scenes even more thrilling Not one can be compared with either of them as a finished whole the defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight They were pure works of art that's professor I praise I praise the next guy the five tales reveal an extraordinary fullness of invention one of the very greatest characters in fiction Nadi Bumpo the craft of the woodsmen the tricks of the trapper all the delicate arts of the forest were familiar to the Cooper from his youth Up as professor Matthews and lastly will he call in another famous writer Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction in America And now playing begins his article It seems to me that it was far from right for the professor of English literature at Yale the professor of English literature in Colombia And will he call in deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having read something It would have been much more decorist to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper And then he begins an aspect next paragraph Cooper's art has some defects in one place in dear Slayer and the restricted space of two thirds of a page Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115 it breaks the record There are 19 rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction some say 22 in dear Slayer Cooper violated 18 of them The 18 require and so he's gonna list some rules for writing which are good for you as a reader But they're more focused on narrative and my rules on it go over today are focused for either narrative or not fiction But here are his rules the tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere But the dear Slayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air number two They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale and shall help to develop it But as the dear Slayer tale is not a tale and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere The episodes have no rightful place in the work since there was nothing for them to develop number three They require that the personages in the tale shall be alive except in the case of corpses and that each and always the reader shall be able to tell The corpses from the others but this detail has often been overlooked in the dear Slayer tale number four They require that the personages in a tale both dead and alive shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there But this detail has also been overlooked in the dear Slayer tale number five they require That the person sorry an update just popped up my computer Number five they require that the personages of a tale deal in conversation the talk shall sound like human talk and be to such talk as human beings will be likely to talk in the given circumstances and have a discoverable meaning also a discoverable purpose and show and a show of relevancy and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand And be interesting to the reader and help out the tale and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the dear Slayer tale to the end of it And then he goes on for a few more one of my favorites is number seven They require that when a personages a personages talks like an illustrated guilt edged tree calf hand-tooled seven dollar friendships offering in the beginning of a paragraph He shall not talk like a minstrel by the end of it But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the dear Slayer tale at the end 12 through 18 or quick Yeah, in addition to these large rules There are some little ones these require that the author shall say what he is proposing to say not merely come near it Use the right word not its second cousin Iskew surplusage not a bit necessary details avoid slovenliness of form use good grammar and employ a simple and straightforward Style and those will actually come up today.
Yeah, so we're gonna talk about those a little bit today And then he goes on a really long diatribe about how the invention is terrible and all of his characters do miracles and can see flies at 150 yards and shoot them with rifles and it's all ridiculous and then I'm gonna Jump all the way to the bottom now I may be mistaken, but it doesn't seem to me that the dear Slayer It does seem to me that the dear Slayer is not a work of art in any sense It does seem to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a work of art in truth It seems to me that the dear Slayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens a work of art It has no invention. It has no order system sequence or result. It has no life likeness no thrill no stir no seeming of reality Its characters are confusedly drawn and their accent word by their accent words prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are It's humor is pathetic. It's pathos is funny.
Its conversations are ho indescribable. It's love scenes odious It's English a crime against the language counting these out. What's left is art. I think we must all admit that It is oh man.
It's a joy to read. Yeah, you should go read it as a listener. It's fantastic And I found a website that has compiled some of you read the dear Slayer have you read it to see if it's as bad as he says I have not yeah partially because of that and partially out of a strangely misplaced loyalty to Twain if Twain hated this guy I really love twain so I'm like choosing sides even though both men are dead and don't care if I like one or the other It's funny because in constellations of illiteracy the author so the author of that original essay that Shaw was writing about like Also has deep love of Mark Twain and like the more she read she's like there's always gonna be more more twain for me to read So that's what you have that love to I have never read Mark Twain. No, it's just I mean It's a blind spot in Canada.
So you're in now never read in and we're here all right we're northerrs Yeah, you're wrong. That's fine. Okay, so I'll come back to Mark Twain He has some rules for writing that were compiled from a few different sources You can find online But today I'm gonna be using two sources that I have sort of after fishing through some books and heating some recommendations Come across one is called the elements of style It is by a couple of fellas strunk and white and it is a wow distilled compendium of how to write well the thing is probably as thick as Seven Dimes stacked on top of each other. It's just not thick at all.
It's really a lot of copy from half-right books a few weeks ago News three dollars You can find it on Amazon for like a book and it is I've read some other books on like how to write well I think on writing well is one of the more recent ones that they've been using colleges and stuff and Censored will sensor yeah, and he he says that every good writer should read strunk and white all the way through once a year Yep, right so it's not just some book I cooked up This is widely renowned as one of the better style manual strunk was the professor and white was a student of his and he compiled Strunks lecture notes essentially into a writing manual and it's old like I think it's drunk I think you the white was in strunks class in like 1913 so it is a it is a Someone's been around for a while and it is a delight. Yeah, it really is good. I mean, it's not exactly It's like a field manual. Yeah, it's like a little dry because I know you don't like unwriting well for the advice It gives but unwriting well is pretty easy to read Yeah, unwriting well is really easy to read But I I feel like I'm waiting through a bunch of stuff to get to the good stuff that strunk and white tells me in half-inch Yeah And then if if strunk and white is the espresso then a prose style by stone and Bell is the latte right?
It's a little easier to read it's more like unwriting well It's not as you know as straight to the brain as the strunk and white is the fun thing about prose style is that I love it? It was clearly written in the 60s two kids that were like stick it stick it to the man Counter culture of counter culture. It's like so I hear you want to stick it to the man But if you thought about sticking it to the man with proper rhetoric Yeah, it's it is really really entertaining all of the student examples They use our students who are like talking about protests in Vietnam and free love and oh, it's fantastic But it's still good. Oh, it's great is incredible.
It would be like if we wrote a modern style guide and it was like hashtag right? Well, and it was like yeah, we did memes and so we'd be I rolling it We'd be rolling your eyes and embarrassed of it in like five years. I'm sure Bell and what's his name? Stone and Bell probably look at like looked at it in the 1980s and they're like oh man, what do we do?
I really wish they would give a modern revision of it because it is a really good manual style It's good. Okay, so I've tried to I have I feel like I can stick it to the man very well It's so sticky it's not very sticky. It's alright number one. So sorry I've sort of compiled a list of rules and just what everybody needs when writing is a little bit rules But I've put together some rules and I will jump back into it I've been back and forth between these books to give you good examples you guys help me out And I'll try to go through them quickly, but here they are so seven decent rules for writing from both stone Bell and Strunk and white so four guys between two books altogether and these clickbaitiest Yes, seven decent rules for writing but as far as I can tell these are rules that every good writer would agree with their ubiquitous most Style manuals I've seen agree with all of these I've never seen someone argue with one of these rules, but rather they're just confirmed Together these two books organized by like a list of rules like they have a hundred rules need to win You're picking the best from each of them.
No, so that the Strunk and white begins with basic Like here's how to do grammar function and then the second piece is principles of composition That's what I'm walking you through and then the last bit is misused words and expresions And then a yeah, it is and then an approach to style like here should be your writing process Number one place yourself in the background number two right in a way that comes naturally number three work for a suitable design So that is like how you should go about the writing process and then there's an afterwards So it's really it's pretty brief the misuse things are like when you use although and when do you use however? Or one I see often mixed up is fewer versus less so you use fewer when it's a countable item You can have fewer golf balls, but you cannot have less golf balls You cannot have fewer salad, but you can't have less salad less water But you're bottles of ketchup. Exactly. I cannot have less bottles of ketchup So fewer versus less is one of those things that's often misused Strunk and white begins with logic and evidence and so they say here's how to collect yourself They actually start with the logical fallacies and walk you through thinking clearly because if you don't have good thoughts You can't write anything good about them then it talks about tone and then it moves into Like progressively smaller bits of writing so it goes paragraphs sentences words and then talks about mere writing versus good pros Well grammar syntax orthography punctuation research and note taking like it really is exhaustive Do you teach the kids that like you read it with some of your students?
I so I try to distill these into exercises they do in writing lab that deal with little pieces of it I would love for them to have this and just walk through it during their time here Veritas, but I'm you know, we're still revising the curriculum sure okay, so to the rules number one It's one of the more boring ones, but use the active voice now This includes a little bit of grammar, but the passive voice is when the The subject of the sentence is the thing being acted upon not the thing doing the action so but the active voice is something I don't want to do So verse so for example my first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me So the verzet to Boston is the thing of being remembered by something else This is worse than I shall always remember my first visit to Boston and you can feel it like even as a listener You can feel the difference in those two sentences one is a little heftier. It's more straightforward. It's easier to understand Here's another version or let's let's do this. I will give you guys the bad version and then you guys try to give me the good Oh, yes, oh I'm gonna lose against the English.
Oh, let's go banker. Yeah, okay It's time the fingers are known for the quality of writing. Yeah, there were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground The number of dead leaves were lying on the ground. Yeah dead leaves lay on the ground dead leaves covered the ground Because grams was more concise.
I'm gonna get you know whatever one of these yeah I also teach this book so I don't know How about at dawn the curling of a rooster could be heard the rooster crowed There you go. The reason he left college was that his health became impaired I The reason he left college was that his health became impaired health impaired his presence at college or something like that sure you do that So those are all good examples of provide both, but okay. Yeah, they give me both is there ever a time when passive voices useful or stylistically acceptable I can think of two instances one instance is scientific writing because you as the actor as the scientist are usually withheld from the experiment Right the mixture was heated to such and such degree it then you know the mixture was mixed with this you don't matter in that case in fact you are supposed to be as Like a different background as possible. Yeah, you're you are not supposed to be there if you can swing it If we could do science without people a lot of our students think that when they go to science class I didn't have to be Exactly so in that case passive voices good or if you want to keep the actor Obscure or sometimes I think I find that students use this when they're trying to sound dramatic the table was set the silverware Was placed next to the place right instead of saying the the servants had set out the silverware and set the table right?
Because they are trying to focus on the objects like there's some instances where passive voices okay, but the majority of the time I'd say probably 95% of the time active voice is better than passive voice right the sentence his face was punched by me is Far worse than I punch in the mouth right and I find that students will will go to the passive voice when they are unsure of the things They're saying or if they're sort of if they're a little if they themselves are nervous about the declarations that they are making They will soften it by going to the passive voice yeah, and that's the thing is the passive voice softens your writing Right, and it's it's not a good definite strong assertion It's sort of like this thing was acted upon by another thing rather than this did this now Do you think I mean it's a rule I don't know I'm just thinking of if there are probably times we want to soften your writing Yeah, if you are like consoling somebody in your speech I know I could see how the passive voice would probably be so this one is simply a preference Yeah prefer the active to the passive if possible right some of these rules have exceptions in writing You know once you've mastered the rules you can find instances where you need to break them right? You just like in military endeavors You don't want to be breaking the rules of engagement because you're ignorant of them You might break some rules about how people typically do war to take advantage But you would never do it because it's accidental right you don't want to be that kind of commander the same is true in writing okay Rule number two mistakes are as high Well, the pen is mightier okay The the next one is only found in skunk and white it is not in stone and Bell But it is put statements in positive form make definite assertions avoid tame non-committal language So the reason we put statements in positive form and what I mean is rather than saying like I'm I'm not tired You rather put it positively. I am I am wired. I'm awake.
I'm alert. I am ready to go I'm about to I'm as like electric as a lightning bolt right those are all stronger than saying I'm not tired and the reasoning for This is a logical one right if I say I am not a I am leaving open a whole bunch of other possibilities Right if I say I'm not tired it could be that I'm just you're kind of groggy I'm a little groggy or maybe I'm feeling completely normal Maybe I've had 35 cups of coffee and I'm literally bursting at the seams right? It's not a definite assertion because you've negated something you've left it indefinite right I don't hate it. Well Do you feel indifferent about it?
Do you just weirdly dislike it? You're leaving a lot of options open and so when you use positive form you are making a more definite assertion about what's going on I love it more than coffee. Yeah, so there you go Whatever it is apart from Amanda. I don't love more than God.
Yeah, so some examples he was not very often on time Opposed to he usually came late or he was usually late. How about she did not think that studying Latin was a sensible way to use one's time She thought something Latin was a waste of time. Yeah, that's exactly the literal wording. So point Maggie.
We're tied Here's one of my favorite and remember so this is tied not just putting things in positive form But making definite firm assertions not tame non-committal language like mediating with maybes and cans and sometimes right? That's kind of a way to hedge your bets and avoid being argued with when you write you want to be Definite is this where your hatred of amplifiers fits in? Oh amplifiers comes a little later. Well, I'm very very excited.
Oh my word Alright, so here's a good example. This is the the port of the area the taming of the shrew is rather weak in spots Shakespeare does not portray Catherine as a very admirable character nor does Bianca remain long in memory as an important character in Shakespeare's works So if we take those in pieces right the taming of the shrew is rather weak in spots There's bad. Yeah, you could say that you can make a definite assertion about why it's bad Shakespeare does not portray Catherine as a very admirable character I'm not saying much there right very admirable is she kind of admirable? I'm just I'm not being definite now the opposing version is far better And it also has the bonus of being short the women in the taming of the shrew are unattractive Catherine is disagreeable Bianca insignificant and you can feel the weight of my calling someone disagreeable calling Bianca insignificant is far more Weighty than saying Catherine is not very admirable and Bianca doesn't stick in the memory Right, it's it's just a firmer way of saying something Yeah, and you'll find this kind of hedging of bets present and a lot of business communication and a lot of I was literally just Think about that just that we would use to have like a form of bingo When bankers would talk to each other of like words that don't mean anything that you would throw in so like people would say at the end The day a lot to add credibility to a thing even though there's no evidence in that when you're asked if it's a good investment or not Well, there are heads and tailwinds what at the end of the day But the other one from investors and you know whatever you want to do it's like well, okay, so you don't know Yeah, headwinds tell wins with the end of the day liquidity liquidity synergy Yeah, um, that's rewarded in businesses because when you are like that you aren't you can't be wrong because you never made a definitive State obfuscation is the it's realm of the scoundrel.
Yeah, it's a way to seem credible when you don't actually know What you're talking about? Yeah, and it's the way for like what I usually find this in student writing when they haven't thoroughly thought through what they want To say and so it comes out as half baked because they don't want to make an assertion that could be wrong about And then I could call them and be like that didn't actually happen in the book. This isn't actually true They said I said maybe yes He said maybe because you don't actually know and the other thing is I found that a poor vocabulary also leads to these Non-starter phrases they don't know the actual word so it's easier to say less than memorable if you can't come up with the word Forgot a significant or if it's right, and I can't I cannot emphasize enough the importance of vocabulary, right? any reader of 1984 will know that like as you read it Yeah, don't speak stuff or you speak and they said having good better best is good more good and most no good plus good and And their goal in deleting words is to take away from you the notion of rebellion by removing the word rebellion Yeah, if I cannot talk about rebellion I can't do it right and and so as we lose words we lose the ideas behind the words is is kind of his You know supposition fun fact This is why it is called the liberal arts is because it frees us by giving us more like by learn like for example A student is trapped in their own mind if they do not have the rhetoric of vocabulary to express themselves Yeah, and they feel it you know that feeling you've had when you just can't get the word you're like I can't what's the word for oh and you get frustrated if that if you can't get the word for anything It is just constant frustration Yeah, and I think Mark Twain's roast of Fenmore Cooper is actually a good demonstration of this right if you don't have the right vocabulary The best you can say is his writing his lame rather than saying I can pick out the specific defects in his art and call it Like one of my favorites is that right at the beginning he says James is What is it his gifts in invention were not substantial but what he does have he exercises well It's actually quite cute and it's just this scathing Invective about how he comes up with stuff to say and mark twink would have done that without the words that he has okay So put him in positive form this comes with a couple of caveats, so You can not is the the word there that doesn't necessarily help it's better to express even a negative in positive form So not honest is better as dishonest not important as trifling did not remember forgot did not pay attention to as ignored And did not have much confidence in as distrusted is it so it's not don't use negative words It's use the specific word you mean not it's not a positive thing Mm-hmm, right yeah, yeah, yeah, and even these negatives are kind of in positive form right rather than ungating a word you are having a Word you are having a word honest you have a word that actually means dishonest Yeah means a specific thing and another thing is that placing a negative in juxtaposition with a positive usually ends up strong So not charity but justice more an example from Shakespeare not that I love Caesar less But that I loved Rome more so showing them the negative and then giving the positive as long as you have that positive there You're not falling into the trap of obfuscation you're giving a definite but you're juxtaposing it for even stronger construction So I'm sorry I called you a scound rule.
I left that world so I I no longer am That's kind of cool. Is that all you have to do change your job and then you're right? Yeah your sins are forgiven. Yeah There you go Okay, so first rule use active voice second rule put statements in positive form use definite assertions avoid tame non-committal language Don't use cans and maybes and mites and may's if you really have something to say right if you are actually unsure You can use those but if you think you know just think and say it I'm people are gonna argue with you one way or the other so you might as well make your stance strong all right rule number three Use definite specific concrete language And I think this is one of the things that takes twain's writing and puts it above others And it does the same thing for Chesterton and Lewis these guys were really good at this and what I mean is that they avoid general vague an abstract in favor of concrete real things I'll read the Bible read the oh, I'm gonna test.
I'm going to read that example. Okay. What go read it Okay, so for example, these are simple juxtapositions a period of unfavorable weather set in Okay, it was a dark and storm night versus it rained every day for a week So when you know exactly what's happening yeah in the second one I know exactly what's happening and it wasn't like the first one sounds fancier It's how we call it fine writing right people or academic writing or academic writing they tend this way because it sounds so high High-floan, but in fact it's much harder to understand people don't easily get it And I don't know why we tend this way in academia when it's much easier to say just it rain every day for a week rather than a period of Unfavorable weather set in how about he showed satisfaction as he took possession of his well-earned reward sounds very fancy What in the world are you? Yeah?
Yeah, how about he grinned as he pocketed the coin? Yeah? Yeah, he smiled as he stuck something in his pocket It's way easier to understand Here are a couple more examples. This is one of the better ones in proportion And this is on the left would be the kind of writing you find in academic writing and I know I'm saying something kind of Controversial here and I think the reason academic writing tends this way is because it deals with abstractions It deals with ideas and getting your point across using concrete is far more difficult than just dealing in the abstractions Right this kind of right figure out what you're saying right?
It's hard It is a hard kind of writing and see if I'm thinking through the ways that see us Lewis does this he will deal in the abstractions And then give you a concrete picture of it right next to it So an example in proportion as the manners customs and Amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous the regulations of its penal code will be severe So if if we're a barbarous nation that likes Our manners and customs are barbarous and cruel then the penal code will also be severe So we'll do cruel things here. Here's a concrete version It says the same thing but it's much easier to understand in proportion as men delight in battles both fights and combats of gladiators They will punish by hanging burning and the rack Yeah, that's a dream using imagery to get it across is a lot more helpful than using like sort of academic buzzwords And the academic buzzwords what really what they serve to do is just drain writing of its blood right But it feels like it should be more profound like it because it's I don't know maybe because like you're using a word as opposed to image maybe the people You're using an image. Yeah, you're being sort of like a showman Yeah, it feels more showy. Yeah, and that's kind of point that you want to show Well, you can you communicate more by showing than by and again I'll bring up that example of I was working in a student's thesis and she wanted to say that putting a doctor in Judgment of other doctors will give him more time as a judge rather than being under scrutiny and you can say it a big High-flute away or just say this way he spends more time on the judges bench than in the defendant's doc right and that's a No, it's everything you need to communicate.
It's much shorter. It doesn't use high-hard understand words like we're humans We deal in concretes better than we deal in abstracts and so if you can figure out a way to say it concretely It's better and here's more examples Other lessons were absorbed through his experiences versus he learned even more from talking to the lumberjacks Right. How about attitudes and opinions that resulted from these environmental occurrences? Versus all you know about Glasgow was that he could see from his window and what his nurse is told him There's no way to overcome the situation of racial relationships versus tensions between whites and blacks are inevitable in a mixed neighborhood Right and this is again from stone and bell so there's a lot of stuff about racing here But like those are really good examples of going from high-flute in academia to decent easy to understand concrete and here's my favorite example Um, and this was Orwell who translated this Yeah, George Orwell who translated this passage from a Bible So here is Orwell's translated version drained of life and blood But it sounds academic and so people people hear this and they want to write this way and oh it listener if I can convey one Notion to you it's that please don't write like those really long articles that don't say anything right?
Sometimes people have to write things for a graduate program because they need to graduate and so they use these big words Don't mean anything without saying anything true or useful or concrete, but here here's in my example Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity But that a considerable element of the unpredictable must inevitably be taken into account what read again Tom, see if you can come up with what Bible or say that's literally no idea. All right Little slower little slower objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits No tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must all must inevitably be taken into account I have no I have no idea what in the world read all right? What about this? Yeah, this is the actual passage from the King James I returned and saw under the Sun that the race is not to the swift nor the battle is strong neither yet bread to the wise nor yet Rich is of men or riches to men of understanding nor yet favor to men of skill but time and chance happiness to them all I think I love it.
It's a thousand times better But it's concrete right he just uses examples and the race to the swift as opposed to competitive competitive advantage Yeah, so once again, let me read the the one drained of blood and this is by this is the kind of writing you hear in academia Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity But that a considerable element of the unpredictable must inevitably be taken into account. It's horrible Yeah, but that's that seems to be what my students think they should write I'm wondering where that comes from because like they have they've been taught Well, I mean very tough does not teach to write in that dream of life. It doesn't I there's a couple thoughts on that I think one of them is the fact that when AJ read it Megby you said wait, I didn't get that and AJ said let me read it slower to you if you wrote that you probably feel like These idiots just can't understand what I'm saying. How about I dumb it down by slowing it down So I feel like for the person who produces that they think that they are Amazing saying something Found and meaningful and the fact the rabble does not comprehend it again Just gives credence to the fact that I'm brilliant when in reality The writer needs to be like the servant of the rabble like he needs to be able if you want to actually communicate what you want to say You need to leave the impression I think a lot of reasons why people in academics write this kind of way is in many ways They don't really care if someone gets what they say they're jumping through a hoop Yeah, or it's our or they're trying to not get nailed to the wall if they were wrong like in business meetings Yeah, and I don't know I heard a quote And I forget where I think I was listening to a podcast But it said there's a type of smart person that can make simple things complex when they're complex There's another kind of smart person who makes very complex things simple And I think it is the latter that is probably the more intelligent right you can take these complex ideas and distill them into easy to remember Remember things I still remember things from C.
S. Lewis's essay the way to glory because of the images Do you guys remember the image about the boy playing with mud? What's the image? He's by the beach playing with mud pies instead of the I'm sorry instead of the holiday at the sea do you remember what it was meant to illustrate?
We are too easily satisfied. We don't know what's offered to us. Yeah, I've got we use ourselves with lesser things Yeah, and if you go back and read that passage you can see that he begins kind of with an abstract And then he takes it He says we fool about with drink and sex and all of these things because we don't know what is offered It is like a boy making mud pies because he doesn't or in the slums because he doesn't know what is meant by a holiday at the sea And it's such a powerful image and everything that needs to be said is said briefly and concretely and easily right? You need to have faith in your reader that they can extrapolate a little bit from the concrete Right.
I get the point of the King James passage. I don't need you to translate it into these Ethereals. Um if you can kind of hide behind the writing. It's kind of like a barrier for people to criticize your ideas There's definitely a bit of like emperor's clothes thing going on You don't want to be the person that says I don't understand what you're saying because your writing is bad because everyone be like oh This guy doesn't understand the writing.
Maybe he's not cut out for like big boy discussions. It's like no you're writing's really bad I mean like that is why Lewis is accessible to a ninth grader and and is sort of poignant because the writing is clear like that is a hard skill to take something like Um something that is obscure or difficult and boil it down to a concrete and a digestible thing But what's weird is that it takes it takes good thought and good writing to boil it down to an example rather than It's sticking in the ethereals right to connect that to the real world is hard But it's but instead of actually explaining the idea like you have to use a metaphor to mediate between the two minds like between my mind I wanted to get to someone else. I don't know for some reason that requires wit and when I'm you know I'm with is it's like a wit is is um Uh the ability to join things together that may not necessarily Uh obviously joined together and that is a skill of composition. Um, um, there is wit what's the opposite of wit the two skills?
Oh, uh Discernment I think judgment just with judging judging knowing knowing what things are and then being able to find the So one is like division and then the other one is being able to see connections So yeah seeing connections is an synthesis I mean it's a hard thing I mean there's probably lots we could say we could probably say that we are living in a more judgmental culture than we are living in a conciliatory culture and therefore that comes out in our writing we have a hard time taking abstract concepts and making them digestible to everybody else because we don't practice being Conciliatory we don't practice wit we don't practice putting things together. Yeah, anyway, okay Uh that was numbers one through three so use the active voice put statements in positive form and commit don't don't you know avoid tame language Three use definite specific concrete language Try not to deal in ethereals if you can help it and number four And I think this was best put by twain because he does it in two words where everybody else does it more Iskew surplusage or in other words a mitt needless words and that's struck and white and then the rule as Given by stone and bell is prefer their shorter version to the longer right so get rid of words that don't matter and here are Some examples see if you can't delete some words for me fellas first one It was clear to have lasek or half lechek on what basis the request for his resignation resignation had been made The guy whatever his name is knew why he was why he resigned that he said he's resigning Yeah, have a check knew why they wanted him to resign that that's the better version number two The fact that Susan had made up her mind to leave college was distressing her parents Susan's parents were distressed by her leaving college yes, uh or to put in the active Susan's decision to leave college distress her parents Uh, that's next one as a result of the labor policies established by bismarck the working class in germany was convinced that revolution was unnecessary for the attainment of its ends Wuf yeah, yeah, you guys might not even caught that so the better version is big bismarck's labor policies convinced the german working class that revolution was unnecessary Which is so much easier than saying yeah, here's more there was nothing for allis to do shorten it Was there was nothing for allis to do allis was aimless allis was aimless allis had nothing to do is a better version Banks and england are more helpful than banks in this country English banks are superior English banks are more helpful than ours is another version right the idea is to maintain the Comparison if we yeah, I guess I mean in my example I was using sort of context like assuming that I was talking previously about these banks and our country and then saying but British banks are far Spirrier yeah, how about it is predicted in the report that many polluted lakes will be pollution free by 1980 But a little bit just that last part of the sentence the report predicts that many polluted lakes will be pollution free by 1980 So hanembrick when you teach us your ninth graders the problem that I had when I talk about this with my tenth graders is the only message They hear is short sentences and therefore they actually lose a lot of context and a lot of So they're cutting the wrong thing. They're cutting the wrong thing So how do you communicate that like it's not just like juvenile sentences that I want but it's omit needless words So I my practice is I have some complex sentences that have a bunch of extra You know stuff wadding and patting and then we go through and we delete and I say you have to maintain the meaning in this sentence If meaning is lost that is bad and the way to do that is to have good vocabulary You need to have one word that means six and this is another instance where vocabulary is important If I don't know the word aimless, which is the one you brought up I would I would have to still say Alice had nothing to do or Alice was without a goal which is worse than the word she was aimless Right or she was yeah Okay, so here's here's some examples from Strunk and White Well, so first it goes through a bunch of words that you can just safely typically delete like the question as to whether is just Weather there is no doubt that should be doubtless used for fuel purposes use for fuel He is a man who I mean how about just he right he is a man who likes cake You say he likes cake in a hasty manner could be hastily this is a subject that or this subject Right, this is subject that confuses me just say this confuses me Her story is a strange one her story is strange The reason why is that just say because because Um another thing that struck in white harps on is the phrase the fact that it is doesn't mean anything Right? It doesn't mean anything you can edit out almost of almost every single sentence it appears in So here are some examples they have owing to the fact that should be since so owing to the fact that he was he liked ladies He used to hang out with girls at times to say since he liked girls he liked to hang out with girls Uh in spite of the fact that you could use it though or although call your attention to the fact that say remind you How about the fact that I had arrived you can just say my rival the fact that I had arrived caused a stir My rival caused a stir right you can delete it from almost every sentence it's in there's almost no reason to keep it I'm just wondering now.
Are these mistakes sometimes like logical fallacies though where they sound good to people hearing them So the point before that people write this way because I think it sounds smarter Well, then does it sound smarter to an audience listening like yeah, it's poor writing rewarded You are you are calling it a fact But but is that um if I tell an audience the fact of the matter is x like i'm priming them with fact and then when i'm telling them Whether it's a fact or not like yeah, I mean i'm writing but could it still work. It's like a shaky scaffolding Right, i'm scaddling my idea and then someone says are you sure that's a fact can you approve it? What's your source and you just go? Because you just said it was a fact and not and and basically we were saying at the end of the day maybe in the day I think the fact that the reason people use it is because it's like an easy box.
I think that they're not the matter is You know, it's like okay. You said nothing when I say the fact that my audience is primed thinking Okay, there's a bucket. He's about to put something in the bucket. That's an idea the fact that I hadn't showered for a week Okay, so I hear the fact that okay, here's the thing that he has and then I I come I wait for the conclusion when I could just say I hadn't showered for a week So no one wanted to hang out with me right?
I don't have to prime them with this bucket because the bucket doesn't actually accomplish anything It's the idea in the bucket that matters. Yeah, that's kind of how I think about it There's a confidence and a swagger needed for making definitive statements. Yes that people are scared to do yes And i'm still scared to do I mean, it's like yeah, it's uh, you are Yeah, you are putting something out there that Is going to be questioned and it's a lot easier to hide it. Yes.
Yeah, all right So you can also usually get rid of who is or which was or that was like his cousin Of the same firm just say his cousin a member of the same firm or trifoger Which was Nelson's last battle you can say trifoger Nelson's last battle The which was and who was and that was can usually just be cut right you can get rid of him And here's a lengthy example of a wordy kind of befuddled set and then that same thing pared down And my students I've kind of become a taurice and ninth grade for being able to just cross stuff out Like they'll turn in these these papers that are you know, just sort of laden with extra words And I can take what was a 20 word sentence and turn it to five and it's because I think honestly It's it's a lack of like clear definite thinking They don't really know where the sentence is going and so there's a lot of extra words there to say something very simple and plus they need to fill A few pages right so having page requirements good So do you think we do ourselves a disservice by saying this needs to be Three pages long that is why I never say and I say you need to write an essay about this That is five paragraphs and they say how long and I say as long as it needs to be I tell them the ontological argument One of the greatest arguments ever in philosophy was half a page. I don't think you can do that golden mountain So that's the ontological argument. Yeah, so But then why does the greatest thing that can be considered? What?
So but thesis has a requirement that's a length requirement It's a time requirement, but 90% of the time we find that what is actually their difficulty is not finding material but cutting material out I'm just yeah Or just the other side of like what if if the requirement is you have to have three pages of well thought out material like that proves a depth of Knowledge of a book or a topic or whatever as opposed to just filthy pages And I know you would never say just just filthy pages, but I know kind of like the idea of I want to quality three pages I mean like we do give page requirements later, but for my freshman I say you need to write well and as long as that takes you it Yeah, it takes you. I mean, you expand the amount of quality I guess myself more. Yes. I mean that's the thing like When but in ninth grade 10th grade even by the time they're 11th and seniors Writing is so hard that I would yeah I have my sort of dream is that every assignment that they would just write perfect paragraphs I think it's right one paragraph that is very well thought out on a topic like that is a much better exercise than if they have a five-paragraph essay I don't like um well, that's why that's why thesis is so valuable right?
We do have a requirement but they turn it in and if I cross out half the junk in your thesis Well, you still got six pages to go and they go through they go through several iterations And I'm gonna cross out stuff that doesn't matter. Yeah, and that's honestly one of my favorite things I love killing words and deleting stuff but like to start to come in three or four drafts Like it's really is all these mistakes you're talking about are like first draft things and you'll be very quickly Yeah, you end up with these like incredible presentations at the end. Oh, man So I hate the fact that I always cross that out and my other pet peeves misused. However's mmm people use however because it sounds fancy Because they don't know how to do another transition.
You know what's a better transition and or but right? Yeah, he did this but he didn't want to instead of he did this. However, he would have preferred not to do it Is he much much more than saying he didn't he wish he didn't have to right? So I of the I think in one paper like I actually kept track and I deleted 18 However, I went through and replaced them with either nothing or a simple and and it worked just as well or but okay So here's my example of a some surpluses that needs to be skewed Mcbeth was very ambitious This led him to wish to become king of Scotland the wishes told him that this wish of his would come true The king of Scotland at this time was Duncan encouraged by his wife Mcbeth murdered Duncan He was thus enabled to succeed Duncan as king.
This was 51 words long The other version encouraged by his wife Mcbeth achieved his ambition and realized the prediction of the witches by murdering Duncan and becoming king of Scotland in his place 26 words means and one sentence and one sentence and easier, you know, I mean it's fairly both fairly easy to understand But it's much less tedious for the reader right all of those three times Duncan's name twice Yeah, as a reader all of that extra stuff. It now it bogs you down It's like walking through snow right the more garbage you have in your words and sentences and paragraphs the harder it is for a reader to get your true thought out of it The other reason why I think a lot of students write in that first way is because that is first draft thinking Like you are trying to just get the ideas out and you're just putting it on paper And then it's midnight and it's due tomorrow and you just you print it off and you're done But um that second thing like no one can really write that second sentence first time You need to get the ideas down and then you need to go back and edit it for style And um and the other thing is with in terms of running a school or running an English classroom those edits for style take it a long time and it means that you need to Have them bring it so it's almost like you need to have them turn in a first draft for ideas And then give it back to them and say your ideas are great Read this thing for style and they need to go back and re-edit it for style Yeah, if I had process rules it would be pick a format and stick to it both of these books Talk about that and also revise you think in revise you have to I do my own writing and I will I will find stuff I missed I will find extra words that don't need to be there I'll have to go through a couple of passes to delete stuff and even then I usually want to show it to somebody else because I'm too close to the project So no one's a perfect writer Go and have it edited this is why and maybe I'll throw this out there because maybe there are people who are listening to this podcast who are educators who Have done this but my goal one of the things I want to do for writing next year is have the students email in PDF draft of their of their of their essay or whatever and then So here's the problem you want to have you want the students if you just write all over a draft and hand it back to them They will shove it in the bottom. They're back back and not care about it If you sit down and talk to a student even for five minutes that had like they will listen and they will pretty much absorb it We don't time to do that for all these students So my idea is that for a couple of writing assignments They email it in a digital way and I do is like a microphone and screen share And I create a little video for every assignment and I walk through it and I edit it and I email it to them And then they have to watch that and it's kind of like having a meeting with me I'm gonna try it next year. I don't know if it's gonna work if there's anybody out there who has ever done that as writing instruction Let me know how that's worked and like things that you've learned about that because I think that could be a really cool way to Help students work on their writing is to have these individual seminars with me that I can't do in class time but I can do after class I mean I do a version of that in writing lab where we all write and then I take two or three students And I put their writing up and then I say here's how I would edit it Here are the things that I would change here would have been my process and here the so we look at it We say all right.
What are the ideas? Can we say that more clearly? So we do that process a little bit, but okay, so we got to haul where Do you want to part two or we don't have that many left where we've already done we're through rule four So use active voice put statements positively use definite specific concrete language excuse or plusage Which is a number four is this is not an order of importance number four is one of the most important and hardest to accomplish I require a good vocabulary number five prefer verbs to nouns You will only find this one in stone and bell but their point is that nouns tend to bog a sentence down whereas verbs tend to make it move And make it do things we're more interested in things that are acting and going somewhere rather than nouns and so some examples So another of Cormax McCormax inventions was a mechanical corn picker We could have said mr. McCormick also invented a machine for picking corn right so in that sentence He's inventing something the machine is picking corn rather than saying it was a mechanical corn picker So we have a tendency to name things and turn them into nouns rather than sticking with the verbs But verbs make for much more interesting sentences like The subject of this book is low-budget sports promotion techniques So this is that it's a linking verb and gives you a whole bunch of nouns the subject of this book rather than this book tells you how to promote local sports without spending much money right so the book is telling you something and it tends to be a more dynamic sentence Things are doing things it's just more fun to read and we tend to just add nouns as things go on right Here's another example the allen hamilton ship in connection represented for the proprietary proprietary party a leadership comparable to that of the pemberton logan orus combination of the quakers though the former exhibited less unity and effectiveness in politics so we have 10 nouns in addition to six proper names or five nouns for each of the sentences two verbs two verbs that is paltry Here's a better version um allen hamilton and shipping serve the proprietary party much as pemberton logan and norus serve the quakers But we're less unified and less effective politically so they did this and less effective and that's even a lot easier understand just listening Yeah, it's it's much easier So here's here's another one with a bunch of nouns There has necessarily been a tendency on the part of researchers to continue studies with equipment now approaching obsolescence Lots of nouns as rewritten it is researchers have necessarily gone on using obsolete equipment Yeah, it's way better right the more we try to pack it with nouns and name things the more it tends to bog us down and So you're walking through like a like a crammed attic like it's just there's furniture everywhere Yeah, it did you just you just get bogged down and this one comes with kind of a kind of a corollary that you should prefer the active verb to a linking verb So instead of our conclusion is that taxes must be increased by 10 percent say We propose to increase taxes 10 percent.
So instead of this is that equalizing something say we are doing this Like we have decided on a 10 percent tax increase even more forceful is we propose right? So see the difference between this is a thing. This is a thing here are some things I can say i'm doing this the things are doing this We are all taking action and it makes for much more dynamic writing. So that's a good thing Right.
So that's number five I'm gonna try to hustle through these last few number six is prefer the personal to the impersonal if you can put people in your sentences It's just like with pictures right a picture of the sunset is interesting a picture with the sunset and one of your best friends with a finger So it's a much more interesting picture. We tend to like things with people in them. So It was necessary to get some sleep that's passive. It's I mean, it's not that great the boys had to get some sleep It's better the drug would be lethal if it were swallowed the drug would kill anyone who swallowed it So that one has people in it.
What was the casualty count versus how many people were hurt right that putting people in your sentences makes them Weightier, right? It just makes them more fun to read. How about the leadership was completely replaced last summer? That's kind of sterile.
What about the leaders were all replaced last summer. Yeah, there's people in it. We fired our boss Yeah, the we've we fired the boss because he was terrible the medical profession considers the practice unsafe doctors Doctors consider the practice unsafe, right? So putting people in your sentence makes it more Interesting the police department soon had the crime wave under control the police soon had the crime wave under control It just makes it more fun.
So prefer the personal to the impersonal and the last one number seven This is kind of implied in all the books, especially in rule number four excuse surplus It's without being outright stated as a general rule. I think because it is so ubiquitous and it's avoid intensifiers Intensifier meaning really very extremely hugely All of these you grinned at me like I had somebody in mind All of these are ways to try to amp up a poor vocabulary. Yeah, right. It's a really really necessary Thank you You just say necessary usually what it does is here.
I'm gonna read you about the word really It's an index of current usage at the end of stonabelle Really is used by young writers either to persuade the reader of the intensity of their response as in I really love that dog Or to solicit his agreement to an argument for which no evidence is offered. We really made a mistake at Yale Invariably the strategy misfires and really comes through as a bankrupt effort to win the reader's respect or attention on the cheap Good writers do not make this mistake. It takes more than an adverb to convey intensity of feeling or persuade the unpersuaded Yeah, but yeah, this is your adverbs don't move me. This is what they do you guys.
This is an extremely huge problem Right. Yes, it ends up sound like they sound immature. It makes you sound immature. It lands like it depends who says it I mean sounds like pillows.
Why not just say this is a problem. Maybe doesn't that sound weightier than this is a huge problem or put a person in there and tell Me how it's a problem for them. Yeah, give me an example I'm not saying it's good writing. I'm just saying that it still can't work with yeah in what it does it means sales Um, yeah, this is a really good vacuum.
Yeah, why not take it out. What's the other version good vacuum? This isn't sound is good. This is a good vacuum But you we also said them both differently.
I don't know these are rules for writing and I don't disagree with them as rules for writing It's just I don't yeah I I can think of almost no instance where an intensifier aids the sentence rather than a why not say instead of a really good vacuum Usually this is a lack of vocabulary You can say this is an excellent vacuum or it excels others or superior right excellent superior better than really good Usually what an intensifier is doing is making up for a lack of vocabulary You don't have the right word so you have to try to prop up the worst one with some extra intensifiers Yeah, or you don't want but the other is not only to look pretentious to someone if you come off as Trying to look better than the other person like using an intensifier means that it's simply language you're using so you're not What's the word for that being pretentious? Yes, but you can use like who doesn't know the word excellent Or this vacuum is better than theirs, right? I'm still saying something concrete I'm saying I'm putting people in my sentence and I'm making a claim about the competition all of which are better than this is a really good vacuum It's a quality vacuum. Yeah, right like that.
I feel like that's not a pretentious. I mean the vacuum sucks And there's some other rules that come along. I don't think there has a wouldn't express Keep related words together as an avoid confusing constructions keep to one tense in summaries put the emphatic word at the end There's all sorts of extra little rules, but I think those are my seven big ones use active voice put statements in positive form use definite concrete language Excuse or plusage prefer verbs to nouns, which is a tough one prefer the personal to the impersonal But people in your senses and avoid intensifiers if you do all of these things which by the way usually happen only in revisions Yeah, right. It is hard to write this way first time through Yeah, you can only do it upon coming back through and cleaning up your ideas Which is probably why you're instinct of well, this happens in sales It's your first time because it's your first time because it's a conversation and you don't get to go and revise it I noticed that sometimes to it.
It is still easy to use the fact that when you're thinking because you you are trying to get the idea You need a second so anyway, those are my rules for writing if you're interested go get the books man They're super good and I don't think that there are many copies of prose style out there So jump on fast as an as-all-cell amount. I had a hard time finding them I was given mine as a gift. Yeah, it's because they're hard to find but strong and white elements of style You can find they're everywhere. I mean Kenny's you can have a thousand of them if you want so anyway, there you go That's my rules for writing well Hanenburg.
Thank you I feel like I need to rewrite the intro to classical stuff. You should know which I will not do right now Do we have any oh in place? I do and it's from Chesterton about this very subject here. Okay So this is from Chesterton's book Orthodoxy He says if you say the social utility of the indeterminable set indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our social Sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment You can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull But if you begin I wish Jones to go to jail and Brown to say when Jones shall come out You'll discover with a thrill of horror that you are obliged to think the long words are not the hard words It is the short words that are hard.
There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word Darn we'll say darn but it's the other word then in the word degeneration. So that's just written on the same subject I mean he's also making a theological point by using the other word which maybe the other word which darn doesn't capture But anyway, right? Well, thank you for listening you can find us on classical stuff.net you can email us at classical stuff at veritasacademy.net You can tweet at us at cool stuff at Twits Twitter's I really hope that's what they call their employees. All right, it's got her up And then thank you for those who are sending us stuff It's great to hear from you if you have fun writing tips that we missed please feel free to email them in Don't be shy emailing them in be we'll not judge your writing of your emails I was gonna return to mark twain's like top writing clues if you just google it like mark twain writing tips They're all they kind of all copy each other but they are pulled from his writings and even from James Stanmore Cooper's literary Failing school cool.
So thank you listeners. This is classical stuff. You should know signing off I'm Graham here with AJ and Thomas saying bye. I'm really really grateful