Law and Sausage . . . and Writing
There’s an adage that people who like law or sausage shouldn’t watch either one being made. The quote differs slightly when it is attributed to one of its two likely sources — the German statesman Otto von Bismarck or American writer Mark Twain — but whichever man said it, or how he worded it, it still makes me think, The same could be said about writing.
By the time a book or article comes into a reader’s purview, it may not be perfect, it may not even be appealing or tasteful, but it’s usually neatly packaged, kind of like law and sausage. This happens because writers and editors have done the ugly work behind-the-scenes. Putting the sentences into paragraphs is just as important as putting that ground meat into casings. Just think about how unappealing the same food would be if it sat on shelves in shapeless, fistful-sized clumps. Moreover, think about how confused our society would be if laws came fluttering out of legislatures in scattered fragments of agreed-upon points.
There are two lessons about writing that relate to this need for the form and structure that result from the ugly work behind-the-scenes:
- Writers take on the responsibility so that readers can have the privilege.
- People tend to doubt the quality of things that aren’t cleanly polished and neatly packaged.
Because the aim of writing is to communicate, writers attempt to shape ideas into forms that will be accessible to other people. To do that, we take on the responsibilities of using language. These include respecting the grammatical system, employing accepted spellings, and formatting texts in recognizable ways. On the other end, readers enjoy the privilege of receiving a text that can be understood. The alternatives for the writer are to bumble and rant, to reinvent what already exists, or to scribble text all over the page, while the alternative for the reader is . . . to put the text down without even giving it a chance. Why would a reader do that?
Because formlessness tends create doubts about quality. Shifting my metaphor away from sausage to another common food item, consider cereal. If you went to the grocery store and saw a box of your favorite cereal on the cereal-aisle shelf, you’d be likely to buy it. Yet, you’d be less likely to buy a box that you saw stuck on a random shelf somewhere else in the store. You might assume that something was wrong with it. Furthermore, you’d be unlikely to buy it at all, if it weren’t packaged and there was just a big pile of it on the shelf. Finally, if you saw it flung all over the shelves and the floor, there’s almost no way that you’d gather it into a pile yourself, carry it up front, and buy it. What’s the problem? It’s the same cereal that you love to eat. The successively more severe problem centers on the fact that both the cereal box and the store shelf are conventional ways of organization, which create the impression of quality. We trust the quality of the cereal in its box on the appropriate shelf, but — for good reason — we doubt the quality of unpackaged cereal all over the floor.
Writing can be the same way. If we begin to read a handsomely laid-out text in a source where that content seems appropriate, it is easier to trust it. Using yet another food example, let’s say you saw a banana bread recipe on the Food Network’s website. You might consider cooking banana bread using that recipe. However, if you saw that same recipe on the Sherwin-Williams paint website, you’d be less likely to trust it. Our trust would be also diminished if the contents were hard to decipher, with recipe, explanation, and pictures haphazardly and randomly placed. Finally, if the text was rife with grammar and spelling errors, there’s almost no way that we’d cook the banana bread with that recipe. Why not? It’s the same recipe. Because we would make assumptions about the source of the recipe, and those assumptions would not be positive.
Trust comes from a respect for our systems. In the field of law, our legislatures and courts are not perfect, but what faith we do have in them comes from our expectation that the system should produce the desired results: fairness and justice. By contrast, our anger or dissatisfaction about the law or its applications comes from seeing the system misused or ill-applied, or from trying ourselves to follow laws that are unclear or unreasonable.
The same can be said of writing. No piece of writing is perfect, but our trust in a text grows as we see it produce the desired results and as our expectations are met. If the grammar is correct, if the layout is clean and clear, and if the work appears in an appropriate publication or format, we’re more likely to trust it. These conventions and systems create the impression that the writer of the text has met his or her responsibilities. And we do get frustrated when the messages we expect to receive aren’t clearly or properly conveyed. In short, we readers expect to have these privileges.
So, how do writers take on these responsibilities? By doing the ugly work behind the scenes: coming up with an idea, jotting notes or brainstorming, writing that messy first draft, then revising the words, phrases, and sentences. In doing that ugly work, writers must remove what consumers won’t want, combine the best ingredients with skill, and refine what will stay in. Then comes the need for packaging . . . which should be done with equal respect for readers— and without any of them seeing what a huge mess the whole process was.
