Cut the Crap: The Importance of Metacommentary and the Weakness of Clutter
I am a chronic overwriter. My drafts are sometimes double the word length. Even worse, I hate cutting my writing because I struggle to know what to chop. I love writing elegant, ‘pretty’, clutter-filled sentences, which rarely add to my argument. Although these sentences should be the first to go, they often make it to the final draft. While looking back at my papers from this semester, I’ve realized how my ‘pretty’ writing weakens my arguments because I neglected using enough metacommentary. In They Say I Say, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein define metacommentary as “mak[ing] a point of explaining something [you’ve] said or written. (Graff and Birkenstein 138). In short, metacommentary is explaining what you’re saying. Metacommentary is essential to helping your readers understand an argument. In my essays, I often neglected metacommentary for a befuddling hash of adjectives and prepositional phrases. Essentially, I wasted my word count on making my writing sound good and didn’t focus enough on ensuring my readers understood my argument. In my future writings, I want to cut much of my ‘pretty’ clutter and focus more on explaining my arguments better with metacommentary.
While editing my essay, I always ask: “What should I cut?”. I often struggle to chop my ‘pretty’ sentences. At the time when I write something elegant, I think it sounds great. But looking back, it’s seldom as good as I thought it was. In my second essay, I started a paragraph with, “Exit West is more than a fact dictionary about migration – it’s an artful story with a love story nestled at its center”. Reading this sentence now, I want to vomit in my mouth. I feel like I’m standing in a living room with five differently scented Yankee Candles. Weeks later, I can see how weak this sentence is, even though I couldn’t in the moment. Although at the time I loved this sentence, it added nothing to my essay. I only kept it because I thought it made me sound like a better writer. My elegant writing, when only used to boost my ego, hurts my essays, and I need to dial back its usage in my essays.
Instead of writing to make my work sound ‘pretty’, I need to expand on my arguments with metacommentary. They say/I say explains the purpose of metacommentary by explaining it as “telling an audience how to interpret what they have already said or are about to say” (Graff and Birkenstein138). This is important because metacommentary helps your readers understand your argument. I like to think of metacommentary through the lens of an art gallery analogy. While I might gain some insight walking through an art gallery myself, I understand the art and the purpose behind the paint more with an artist explaining as we walk. What I’m arguing is that in my writing, I need to strive to not just present an art gallery but explain the art to my readers while we walk through my argument. Unfortunately, I failed to do this to varying degrees in all three of my essays. In my first essay, I found two sentences that both made significant points to my argument and are well-written but are almost useless because I didn’t explain my point well. My original text read, “Anything worth reading required a vast amount of effort, struggle, failure, and perseverance (Chiang, 3). AI robs us of logically thinking through what we want to write, and it hinders our creativity to express our ideas in an individual voice”. These two sentences are 40 words of almost straight confusion because I didn’t take the time to help my readers see my argument. Instead of simply telling my readers my argument, I needed to lead them through my line of reasoning. By simply adding five words, I was able to rewrite these sentences to be a little bit more comprehensible (I italicized the metacommentary to make it more visible): “Anything worth reading requires struggle and perseverance (Chiang, 3). To put it another way, it’s important to grapple with your writing to produce good work. AI is problematic because it robs us of thinking logically about our argument and writing in our individual, creative voice”. The extra 5 words are valuable to make my argument clearer. Metacommentary is worth the word count, but ‘pretty’ writing often isn’t. It’s better for my readers to understand my writing, even if it comes at the cost of a useless poetic phrase.
One might argue that in academic writing, especially when using metacommentary templates, it’s difficult to express your original voice. Graff and Birkenstein address this argument by explaining that everyday speaking can help simplify essays. They comment, “Translating academic writing into ‘everydayspeak’ can be an indispensable tool for clarifying and underscoring ideas for readers” (Graff and Birkenstein 131). Although they discuss a process to use our original voices to simplify writing, they don’t address how you could use your original voice to express your writing personality. I enjoy writing elegantly. In my opinion, my ‘pretty’, emotion-wrought writing is my original voice coming out – formed through years of reading authors like Emily Brontë and Donna Tartt. They Say/I Say does not address how I can include my voice because, unlike others’ writing styles that use ‘everydayspeak’, my writing style adds confusion, not clarity.
I would argue that instead of using my elegant writing too often, I need to use it purposefully. Instead of keeping the long, graceful, useless sentences, I should keep the elegant writing that adds to my essay’s argument while expressing my writing style. After all, my favorite authors whose writing style I’ve drawn from didn’t become famous through writing befuddling texts. Just like they successfully did, I can express my voice in a clear, (sometimes) concise way. In short, I need to supplement my ‘pretty’ writing with metacommentary. I want to be a conscientious writer who helps my readers understand the argument, not simply convinces them that I’m a good writer. In this very essay, there are probably a multitude of ‘pretty’ writing instances or unclear arguments that I failed to notice. But as I continue writing, I want to remember to balance my favorite ‘pretty’ writing with metacommentary to ensure my writers understand my arguments. In other words, I want to cut the crap.
Essay Annotation Link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ky_OA-QbMFG9_Sr7xshdg6cYFyOBugo1lWHOBSBSqTA/edit?usp=sharing
Works Cited:
Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say/I Say. 5th ed., W.No Norton & Company, 2006.
Honor Code Pledge:
“Pledge” KRP