The Lazy Reading Curse?

Is anyone else a fan of those long flowing narrative passages from the classics, back when authors were allowed to love words for what they were, for the momentum they provided, for the images they conjured, before editors came along and said, “HALT!”

I am. I like words. I often go to the dictionary, and I mean my print dictionary that sits beside my keyboard and strains my eyes with tiny print to fit as much as possible in as small a space as possible, to double check a spelling or a meaning and find myself perusing through other words. I like words. I like flowing sentences. I like to escape into someone else’s thoughts, and I mean their full-blown filling and free-flowing thoughts. Too many thoughts are fallow these days. Too many stories are like gardens, prepared and set up and possibly seeded to some extent, but otherwise rather flat and bare. The author’s voice, her inner deep thinking feeling sensing curious wonder-filled voice, is too stifled. Too many words, editors said. Don’t use more than you need.

Hm. Why? Do we have a shortage of those, also? Should we be given ration cards? No, you can’t talk anymore today; you’ve used your word count already.

Some things don’t decrease when you use them. Some things grow and bloom the more you use them. Words are included. Thoughts are most definitely included.

I shared a photo on my personal Facebook page the other day of a text comment sent where someone asks for a book recommendation. At least it looked like that’s what he was trying to say. The image underneath was a book recommendation: The Oxford English Dictionary.

Our word curtailing has gone to an extreme recently. We seem to have so much to say that we can’t write full sentences – it takes too long. Heaven forbid we ask our message receiver to spend more than a second reading what we took the time (or didn’t) to write.

Question: if it’s not worth the time to take to read it, why bother to take the time to write it at all?

I know, readers are in a hurry these days. Publishers want short and to the point, with no extra words. Readers won’t take the time.

Won’t they? Is this true? Or are readers not taking the time as much anymore because they’ve been so conditioned to expect short and to the point that they think they have to want that? Reading is supposed to be pleasurable, right? If they enjoy it, why do they need to rush through it? Do they put such time constraints on, say, watching television? With as much time as people spend in front of the TVs doing nothing but that (which takes less mental power than sleeping, by the way), I have a hard time believing they aren’t willing to spend the time being entertained by a good book.

Granted, it takes more brain power to read than to sleep, but the brain is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it is. The more widely you use it, just as with going from weight lifting to aerobics to Pilates to yoga instead of doing only one of those things, the more able it is to perform a wider range of tasks better.

I’ve been editing recently, to include formatting for print. One thing that came to me is the possibility that those who format books prefer shorter words. Why? It makes the print fit better on the page without big gaps when you justify the text. Long words are hard to work around. I had to wonder: is this what started the call for simple word use? Did it start with lazy formatters? I understand it, as I often rearrange sentences in the book I’m editing to make it look better on the page without losing meaning or flow. It’s not easy. And of course editors can’t just change an author’s words without conversing with that author. Sure, it could be a lot of hassle. But who loses?

The readers.

And society in general.

They say the average American adult reads at about a fifth grade level. That’s truly sad.

I say we stop pandering to short and to the point and start filling our stories with glorious luscious full free-flowing words and sentences of all lengths and in long thoughts and start re-stretching the minds of our beloved readers.

Time to fill the fallow fields and strengthen our crops.


~~

Technorati Tags: writing,reading,word use,essay,language,opinion,story length