We are all writers. Think for a moment about the writing you have done during the past 24 hours—perhaps texting friends on your phone, writing a shopping list, entering words and other data into a computer, or making marks with a pen or pencil on a tablet, whiteboard or sheet of paper.
A lot of our writing may seem natural, instinctive, spontaneous. But it is learned. At some point early in life you transitioned from illiterate to literate status by learning the basic skills of reading and writing, and you have continued to enhance those skills and to learn additional writing skills ever since.
We can break down those skills into five areas. I call them the five pillars of writing. Master these and you will be a competent and effective writer, communicator and influencer. In The Little Red Writing Book, Brandon Royal suggests that “writing has four pillars—structure, style, readability, and grammar.”[1]
I believe the addition of a fifth pillar, vocabulary, is warranted. The key quality of each pillar is outlined below, following Royal’s definitions:
- Structure is about organisation and deciding in which order to present your ideas.
- Style describes how one writes, including how to use specific examples to support what is written.
- Readability is about presentation, or how to make a document visually pleasing and easy to read.
- Grammar, including diction, is about expressing language in a correct and acceptable form.
- Vocabulary is the raw material on which grammar works to convey meaning.
My reason for adding a fifth pillar is explained by Edward P. J. Corbett and Sheryl L. Finkle in their classic work, The Little English Handbook:
Grammar may be defined as the study of how a language “works”—a study of how the structural system of a language combines with a vocabulary to convey meaning. When we study a foreign language, we study both vocabulary and grammar because, until we can put the two together, we cannot bring meaning to language. Considerations of both vocabulary and grammar are important to us as writers and readers of our own language for the same reasons. When we know the grammar of a sentence but not the meaning of each individual word, it can be difficult to make sense of the sentence.[2]
In my next two posts I’ll say more about vocabulary and grammar.
Dr Rod Benson is an ordained Baptist minister presently working as Research Support Officer at Moore Theological College, Sydney. He enjoys preaching, cooking, bush walking, and reading a good book.
References
[1] Brandon Royal, The Little Red Writing Book: 20 Powerful Principles of Structure, Style, and Readability (Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 2004), 7.
[2] Edward P. J. Corbett & Sheryl L. Finkle, The Little English Handbook: Choices and Conventions (eighth edition; New York: Pearson Education, 2008), 18.
Image credit: ParentsWebsite
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