My Musings

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Sunday, May 18, 2003

Why the Formality?

I don’t, and probably never will, understand why things always have to be written in a formal tone. If you don’t know what I mean by formal tone, then simply take one of those stupid letters we periodically get from school and you’ll see exactly what I mean. Very dry, very boring, uses lots of big words to make something sound important and fancy when it’s really not, etc etc. The difference between a formal tone and a casual tone is a lot like the difference between an opera and a musical. And I ask this—which is more fun to watch? Sorry, opera fans, but you’ve gotta admit that that stuff is BORING. I’m allowed to say that, too, because I otherwise quite thoroughly enjoy classical music, and I’m not just some redneck hick who doesn’t “get it.”

Anyway, my point is that I really don’t like how writing has to be formal all the time. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could be chatty in your formal letters and fill them with casual words and smiley faces? Wouldn’t everybody have a lot more fun that way? To prove my point, I offer the following example:

Last spring, the air conditioner in my grandparents’ apartment broke, as did the light bulb in the stairway. They called the people in charge and requested that a repairman come and fix these two things, because the apartment had become a raging inferno and they had to risk falling down the stairs in the dark every time they wanted to leave it. A repairman came early on Friday and quickly fixed the bulb. He next checked the air conditioner and concluded that a faulty compressor was behind its lack of function, and said that he’d be back later in the day to fix it. An hour later the new light bulb burned out, and the repairman never returned, so we were back to square one. Later that weekend, my grandpa decided to write an angry letter to the landlord so that things would be fixed once and for all, but as you all probably know, I am Russian, and that makes my grandpa Russian as well, and so his English is not very good, and his writing skills are even worse. Thus, he enlisted my aid in writing up a letter to the landlord. Here is what I came up with:

***

[heading the letter is my grandparents' address, which I don't want to include here because I'm afraid that some psycho madman will read my blog and come after them with a bayonet. Actually, if a psycho madman reads this blog, then him coming after my grandparents with what is really a rather futile and outdated weapon is probably the least of my problems, because by the time he gets around to me, he will probably have learned his lesson and gotten an M16. Dang, looks like I'm in trouble. Oh well.]

First of all, I would like to say that I am very pleased that a repairman came over as a result of my complaints. You were very prompt in addressing these issues and I thank you for your quickness.

The first thing that the repairman did was fix the light bulb, which burned wonderfully. For about an hour. Then it died. This light bulb did a fantastic job of providing light, but if you plan to continue using hour-long bulbs, then I suggest that you replace them with greater frequency.

The second thing I must address is that I was mistaken in diagnosing the root of the problem with our air conditioner. It was not, as I suspected, the fuse that was at fault, but rather, as the repairman pointed out to me, the compressor. The repairman caught my mistake and did not repair the fuse, which is fortunate, because doing so would have been terribly wasteful. Instead, he left. Before doing so, however, he promised that he would fix the compressor later that day, that is, Friday. He never returned. I can only hope that, while we were roasting alive in our apartment for the last two days, the repairman was kept away by serious amounts of work, and not by a pack of rabid wolves that pounced on him after he accidentally wandered into a forest. If that is the case, then please send our condolences to his family, and while you’re sending those, please also send another repairman to fix this air conditioner.

Another slight point of note is that an inspector is coming tomorrow at noon, so I suggest that you fix this light bulb soon or else he won’t find the apartment. Also, it might be a good idea to use a longer-lasting bulb this time. The inspector is staying for an hour; thus, if the light bulb only lasts that long, there is a chance that it will burn out before he leaves and he will fall and break his neck on the way down the stairs. This would be most undesirable. You may also want to fix the air conditioner before he arrives, unless your intent is to cook him and have him for dinner later. Under current conditions, if he enters our room with an apple in his mouth then he will be a good medium-rare when he leaves.

Thank you very much.

***

I was quite pleased with my work and proudly showed it to my grandpa, who chuckled heartily and said that I did a fantastic job. But, he hastened to add, it wasn’t quite what he was looking for. He “couldn’t” really send something like that, you understand. I had been afraid of this. I grudgingly toned my letter down and came up with the following, which was what my grandpa ended up sending to the landlord:

***

[address]

Thank you for sending over a repairman so quickly. Unfortunately, we are still having some problems.

1) The repairman fixed the light bulb, but it burned for only about an hour before dying out.

2) The repairman said that the problem with the air conditioner was not the fuse, but the compressor. He said he'd come back later that day—Friday—to fix the compressor, but it’s Monday now and he still hasn’t come.

3) An inspector from Section 8 will come today at noon. You may want to fix the light bulb before then so that he can find the apartment. It might also be a good idea to fix the air conditioner before then as well, or else the inspector will be very uncomfortable.

Thank you,

Abram Bulkovshteyn

***

Which version do you like better?

All the life has been sucked out of the second draft. I had no fun writing it and I’m sure that whoever was in charge of things had no fun reading it. Writing in such a formal manner reduces human interactions to terse, boring affairs that people grudgingly dispense with before moving on with their lives. How sad.

Another case in point: earlier this semester, I had to write a paper about Shakespeare’s tragedy, Othello, for my humanities class. This wasn’t exactly the hottest topic for a paper, so I did my best to make it interesting and funny while at the same time trying also to perhaps say a few moderately intelligent things. When I got the paper back, it had no grade; instead there was a note from Ms. Lamuth saying that my paper was too informal and didn’t have an evident thesis, and could I please redo it and turn it back in. Mad as heck, I went through the paper, spelled out what the thesis was in terms that most truck drivers would understand, removed anything remotely resembling something that might possibly perhaps be mistaken by someone as a joke, and resignedly returned the paper to Ms. Lamuth, who liked it and gave me an A. She said she actually liked my first paper, too, but that that kind of thing would never fly in college, and that we all needed to learn how to write “proper” papers.

If any of you out there know the address and preferably also the name of the person who came up with what a “proper” paper should be like, and who decided that papers for professors and letters to landlords are not allowed to be too “informal,” then I would be very grateful if you could email me that information so that I could go over to his house and whop him one over the head with an empty Snapple bottle. What, I ask, is wrong with putting humor into a paper that would otherwise be tear-inducingly boring? What is wrong with taking on a personal and friendly tone in letters to colleges, banks, corporations, or whatever? What is wrong with writing in words that actually might be used someday in regular speech? I don’t even read letters from the principal anymore; they go directly into my recycling bin. Maybe I would read them if I felt like he was actually trying to communicate with me, and not covering up obvious issues with a clever use of big words and complicated sentence structure. Maybe people and businesses and governments would work with each other a lot better if they wrote clearly and normally. And maybe kids would have a lot more fun writing papers for class if they could use words like “ass.” I say to hell with being formal. What do you think?

.: posted by Boris 7:46 PM

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