Wednesday February 22, 2006
Babies and bathwater
I\’ve spent the last two weeks traveling the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal circuit, leading a series of my Eight-Step Editing workshops. These workshops help writers and editors identify factors that cause readers to lose interest, and then teaches techniques for fixing those problems.
(Relax – the rest of this column is not about grammar!)
To my surprise, long-time colleague Chris Blackburn showed up for a Toronto session with the original handout materials I had supplied way back in 1986, for the second Eight-Step Editing workshop I ever did.
It must have been the second, because it included eight different steps. The first time I did one of these workshops, I still didn\’t know what the last three steps would be.
Looking over those old notes, I was astonished at how much had changed in 20 years, and yet how much remained the same.
The length had certainly changed. That early handout was little more than a dozen pages – covering both principles and exercises – churned out on a dot-matrix printer that could produce only one typeface. Today\’s handout booklet is coil-bound, 80 pages, and will probably grow soon to 100 pages.
Several of the steps have changed. I\’ve replaced one step completely, as irrelevant to modern English usage. I\’ve modified two more quite extensively, as I\’ve learned more about how language works.
But the basics remain. The program that I teach today clearly is directly descended from the one I taught 20 years ago.
Keeping the best To receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to [email protected]. E-mail subscribers also get excerpts from correspondence about these columns. Please forward a copy of this column to anyone who might be interested in subscribing.
If you want to order my books, you can call 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-328-0200 in the U.S., or order them on-line at the Wood Lake Books website.
For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to [email protected].
It\’s also worth pursuing Richard Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
I find that reassuring. It reminds me that even in the tsunami of change flooding over our world, we\’re retaining much more than we\’re discarding.
A friend worries that in the current religious ferment, for example – where we are painfully learning to be aware of, and sensitive to, other world faiths, and where radicals and progressives often challenge long-held tenets of our own faith – we may be “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”
In fact, we\’re keeping a lot more than we\’re challenging. We just find it harder to name the important things we\’re keeping.
In my youth, for example, I was taught to speak to my elders using terms of respect. I could call my parents\’ friend “Uncle Bob” or “Mr. Clark.” But never just “Bob.” Today, an airline attendant one-third my age flips my boarding pass under a bar-code reader, glances at the name that pops up on her screen, and says, “Thanks, Jim, have a good flight.”
Part of me resents that easy, unearned, familiarity.
But I also need to remember that it preserves something more important – the fact that I am a person, not a confirmation number. I am an individual. I have a name.
So at the same time that we\’re questioning some historic doctrines, we\’re regaining the importance of belief in God.
Sometimes, it\’s too easy to focus on what we think we\’re losing at times of social stress and upheaval. It might be a more useful exercise to identify what we\’re keeping – even what we\’re enhancing and emphasizing.
=====================================
Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
=====================================
PROMOTION PLUGS