The Gap (Or Why My Day-To-Day Disturbs Me)

I just finished writing a fairly scathing email to my fellow classmates and professor over a conversation we're having online debating whether a general audience understands mrems (I would explain mrems but until I research them myself, I don't know what they are either). My email was provoked by an assignment that we as technical editing students have to do for class. The assignment is asking us to solve equations related to physics, calculus, and chemistry. I have never taken physics or calculus and I took one entry-level chemistry class at age sixteen. My beef is that my professor and classmates are seriously going back and forth about what the best way to express these equations would be for the general public (my teacher arguing that most people know what mrems are). I not-so-gently explained (as I do sometimes when frustrated with either extreme idiocy or extreme intelligence that, through detachment from commonsense, lends itself to idiocy) that only 27% of Americans have a bachelors degree and 6.9% have a graduate degree and that a large chunk of these degrees are in business fields, liberal arts, and social sciences. As an English major I argued that because I have never seen equations like the three pages worth that I'm supposed to solve for homework (through magically learning three specialized areas of math and science in a week) that there is a good chance most average people have not either. As technical writers and editors our job is to break down technical information into a digestible format for average people. To do this, it seems to me that we need to be a little more in touch with what average people understand.

The bigger picture of my frustration comes from working all day with severely mentally ill people living in public housing. Every other day I hear the worst story I've ever heard in my life: voices, hallucinations, sexual abuse, physical abuse, animal abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, jail, psychiatric hospitals, grandparents raping their grandchildren, self-mutilation (sometimes of genitals)--you name it. I help these people attempt to "tune out" their ailments for an hour a week and focus on cleaning, organizing, cooking for themselves, eating something besides fast food everyday, etc. Then I get on my bike for a brief reprieve from the madness and ride to the university where I squabble over comma usage, and whether a verb is placed too far away from its subject and the evil of all evils: dangling modifiers! NO!

I understand that both realms are important. For instance, I sat down for my morning coffee the other day and started reading a newsletter that came in the mail from our state senator and had to get my editing pencil it was so bad. It made me think less of him and his competence as a senator, and was distracting from the substance of his ideas. So, I get that a well crafted document is a significant aspect of the professional world; it's just that: A) It seems rather trite in comparison to what I hear about during the earlier part of my day, and B) At some point, good enough is good enough. Most people are too busy to give a goddamn about proper grammar; they just want to access the information they need quickly and move on.

I only share this story because I think it points to the gap between what some Americans are very worried about versus the much larger chunk of people who are just trying to get through the week (and how one does very little to help the other). I consider a job well done as a writer if no one notices errors in a quick read over my material and walks away with the information they needed. In the context of say, a 1500 page technical book, which I may write or edit at some point in the not-so-distant future, an occasional typo or misplaced comma isn't going to kill anyone. Me setting off a vulnerable client at work might. The difficult part for me is that the people in my classes have no idea that people like those I work with exist in the world--no clue. And the people I work with have zero interest in the things my classmates and profs will spend thirty minutes of a class period arguing over. I don't know that this is a problem, or can be remedied, or is just life, but it definitely disturbs me on a weekly basis. How we get one privileged group of people to reach out to a struggling group of fellow citizens instead of splitting hairs over obscure information is beyond me. If you have ideas, you're a better person than me.