BAD IDEAS
ABOUT WRITING
Edited by Cheryl E. Ball & Drew M. Loewe
BAD IDEAS ABOUT WRITING
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BAD IDEAS ABOUT WRITING
Edited by Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe
West Virginia University Libraries
Digital Publishing Institute
Morgantown, WV
The Digital Publishing Institute believes in making work as
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This book was set in Helvetica Neue and Iowan Old Style and
was rst published in 2017 in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
forthcoming
ISBN-10: 0-9988820-0-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-9988820-0-0
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe
BAD IDEAS ABOUT WHAT GOOD WRITING IS
Rhetoric is Synonymous with Empty Speech 7
Patricia Roberts-Miller
America is Facing a Literacy Crisis 13
Jacob Babb
First-Year Composition Prepares Students for Academic Writing 18
Tyler Branson
First-Year Composition Should be Skipped 24
Paul G. Cook
You Can Learn to Write in General 30
Elizabeth Wardle
Writing Knowledge Transfers Easily 34
Ellen C. Carillo
Reading and Writing are not Connected 38
Ellen C. Carillo
Reading is Not Essential to Writing Instruction 44
Julie Myatt Barger
BAD IDEAS ABOUT WHO GOOD WRITERS ARE
Writers are Mythical, Magical, and Damaged 53
Teri Holbrook and Melanie Hundley
You Need My Credentials to be a Writer 60
Ronald Clark Brooks
Only Geniuses can be Writers 64
Dustin Edwards and Enrique Paz
Some People are Just Born Good Writers 71
Jill Parrott
Failure is Not an Option 76
Allison D. Carr
There is One Correct Way of Writing and Speaking 82
Anjali Pattanayak
African American Language is not Good English 88
Jennifer M. Cunningham
Ocial American English is Best 93
Steven Alvarez
Writer’s Block Just Happens to People 99
Georey V. Carter
Strong Writing and Writers Don’t Need Revision 104
Laura Giovanelli
The More Writing Process, the Better 109
Jimmy Butts
BAD IDEAS ABOUT STYLE, USAGE, AND GRAMMAR
Strunk and White Set the Standard 117
Laura Lisabeth
Good Writers Always Follow My Rules 121
Monique Dufour and Jennifer Ahern-Dodson
Writers Must Develop a Strong, Original Voice 126
Patrick Thomas
Leave Yourself Out of Your Writing 131
Rodrigo Joseph Rodríguez
Response: Never Use “I” 134
Kimberly N. Parker
The Passive Voice Should be Avoided 139
Collin Giord Brooke
Teaching Grammar Improves Writing 144
Patricia A. Dunn
Good Writers Must Know Grammatical Terminology 150
Hannah J. Rule
Grammar Should be Taught Separately as Rules to Learn 155
Muriel Harris
BAD IDEAS ABOUT WRITING TECHNIQUES
Formal Outlines are Always Useful 163
Kristin Milligan
Students Should Learn About the Logical Fallacies 168
Daniel V. Bommarito
Logos is Synonymous with Logic 174
Nancy Fox
BAD IDEAS ABOUT GENRES
Excellent Academic Writing Must be Serious 181
Michael Theune
Creative Writing is a Unique Category 187
Cydney Alexis
Popular Culture is Killing Writing 194
Bronwyn T. Williams
Popular Culture is Only Useful as a Text for Criticism 202
Mark D. Pepper
The Five-Paragraph Essay is Rhetorically Sound 209
Quentin Vieregge
The Five-Paragraph Essay Transmits Knowledge 214
Susan Naomi Bernstein and Elizabeth Lowry
The Five-Paragraph Theme Teaches “Beyond the Test” 220
Bruce Bowles, Jr.
Research Starts with Answers 226
Alison C. Witte
Research Starts with a Thesis Statement 231
Emily A. Wierszewski
The Traditional Research Paper is Best 236
Alexandria Lockett
Citing Sources is a Basic Skill Learned Early On 242
Susanmarie Harrington
Plagiarism Deserves to be Punished 247
Jennifer A. Mott-Smith
BAD IDEAS ABOUT ASSESSING WRITING
Grading Has Always Made Writing Better 255
Mitchell R. James
Rubrics Save Time and Make Grading Criteria Visible 259
Anne Leahy
Rubrics Oversimplify the Writing Process 264
Crystal Sands
When Responding to Student Writing, More is Better 268
Muriel Harris
Student Writing Must be Graded by the Teacher 273
Christopher R. Friend
Machines can Evaluate Writing Well 278
Chris M. Anson and Les Perelman
Plagiarism Detection Services are Money Well Spent 287
Stephanie Vie
SAT Scores are Useful for Placing Students in Writing Courses 294
Kristen di Gennaro
BAD IDEAS ABOUT WRITING AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Texting Ruins Students’ Grammar Skills 301
Scott Warnock
Texting Ruins Literacy Skills 308
Christopher Justice
Gamication Makes Writing Fun 315
Joshua Daniel-Wariya
The More Digital Technology, the Better 320
Genesea M. Carter and Aurora Matzke
Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants 325
Phill Michael Alexander
BAD IDEAS ABOUT WRITING TEACHERS
You’re Going to Need This for College 333
Andrew Hollinger
Dual-Enrollment Writing Classes Should Always be Pursued 338
Caroline Wilkinson
Secondary-School English Teachers Should Only be Taught
Literature 344
Elizabethada A. Wright
Face-to-Face Courses are Superior to Online Courses 351
Tiany Bourelle and Andy Bourelle
Anyone Can Teach an Online Writing Course 356
Beth L. Hewett
Anyone Can Teach Writing 363
Seth Kahn
BAD IDEAS ABOUT WRITING
INTRODUCTION
Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe
Beginning in 1998, Edge.org has asked a diverse group of schol-
ars, intellectuals, and artists the annual Edge Question, a ques-
tion designed to spark arguments about provocative ideas to be
published online and collected into print volumes intended for a
general public audience. Edge Questions have included such ques-
tions as “What is your dangerous idea?,” “What have you changed
your mind about? Why?,” and the one that inspired this collec-
tion: “What scientic idea is ready for retirement?” That last ques-
tion was the 2014 Edge Question, published in a book titled This
Idea Must Die: Scientic Theories that are Blocking Progress. Drew rst
saw the book in a publisher’s exhibit at the 2015 Conference on
College Composition and Communication, a big annual conven-
tion of writing teachers and scholars. After reading the book, espe-
cially in the context of an academic convention, Drew suggested on
social media that the eld of writing studies should publish its own
collective eort to name particularly unhelpful or backward ideas
and argue directly to the public about them. Cheryl replied right
away that she would be on board, and thus this project was born.
This project is necessary because while scholars in writing stud-
ies (just as in any academic eld) argue to and against one another
in scholarly journals, books, and conference talks, those forms
of knowledge-making don’t consistently nd their way into the
public’s understanding of writing. Yet “the public” in all its mani-
festations—teachers, students, parents, administrators, lawmak-
ers, news media—are important to how writing is conceptualized
and taught. These publics deserve clearly articulated and well-re-
searched arguments about what is not working, what must die, and
what is blocking progress in current understandings of writing. So
our call for proposals sought contributions that provided a snapshot
2 Bad Ideas About Writing
of major myths about writing instruction—written by experts for
the educated public—that could collectively spark debate and have
us rethink our pieties and myths. This collection is an attempt by
a varied and diverse group of writing scholar–teachers to trans-
late our specialized knowledge and experiences about writing for
a truly wide set of audiences, most of whom will never read the
scholarly journals and books or attend conferences about this topic
because of the closed nature of such publications and proceed-
ings. In keeping with the public purpose of these writings, it was
important to us that it be published open-access. Because there are
so few options for trade-like academic books that are open access,
we decided—in consultation with the authors of this collection—
to publish Bad Ideas About Writing as an open educational resource
through the Digital Publishing Institute, which Cheryl directs. Bad
Ideas will join other books in West Virginia University Library’s
nascent digital publishing project, where it will be supported by
librarians for a long time to come.
We intend this work to be less a bestiary of bad ideas about
writing than an eort to name bad ideas and suggest better ones.
Some of those bad ideas are quite old, such as the archetype of
the inspired genius author, the ve-paragraph essay, or the abuse
of adjunct writing teachers. Others are much newer, such as
computerized essay scoring or gamication. Some ideas, such as
the supposed demise of literacy brought on by texting, are newer
bad ideas but are really instances of older bad ideas about literacy
always being in a cycle of decline. Yet the same core questions such
as what is good writing, what makes a good writer, how should writing
be assessed, and the like persist across contexts, technologies, and
eras. The project has its genesis in frustration, but what emerges is
hope: hope for leaving aside bad ideas and thinking about writing
in more productive, inclusive, and useful ways.
The individual entries, which we came to dub as both opin-
ionated encyclopedia entries and researched mini-manifestos, oer
syntheses of relevant research and experience along with cross-ref-
erences to other entries that take up related subjects. Instead of
the typical trappings of academic citation styles (APA, MLA,
Chicago, Oxford, etc.) that are specic to certain disciplines, we
asked authors in the Bad Ideas collection to summarize the avail-
able research and present it in a way similar to how a newspaper,
introductory textbook, or podcast might deliver such research—
not through individual citations, but through a list of resources
and further reading that would point readers to follow-up material.
Introduction 3
The authors of these entries are often published experts in these
elds, so searching for their other work at a library or online will
produce additional information on these topics. We have provided
keywords for each entry as well, which correspond to the academic
terms that would appear in other peer-reviewed, published research
on these topics.
The entries cohere around eight major categories of bad ideas
about writing that are tied to the production, circulation, cultural
use of, evaluation, and teaching of writing in multiple ways. The
categories are bad ideas about:
• The features of good writing
• What makes good writers
• How grammar and style should be understood
• Which techniques or processes produce good writing
• Particular genres and occasions for writing
• How writing should be assessed
• How technology impacts writing
• Teachers of writing
Although we have categories (and there are thematic clusters
visible within the larger categories), we encourage readers to read
the entries with and against each other, looking for productive over-
laps and disagreements. For instance, there are at least three entries
on the ve-paragraph essay—the genre perhaps most known by the
various publics reading this book, and the most maligned by its
writers—and each entry takes a dierent perspective, disagreeing
as needed where the research and the writer’s experience pertain.
Without forcing a weak consensus or attening out the indi-
viduality of the chapters, together they oer a practical, action-ori-
ented group of rational manifestos for discontinuing unhelpful
or exclusionary ideas about a subject and activity that all have a
stake in. We hope that the collection is a conversation-starter, not
a conversation-stopper, and we hope that it provides a catalog of
support for productive conversations about how and why to stop
the bad ideas about writing and start the good.
BAD IDEAS ABOUT
WHAT GOOD WRITING IS
