The Swiss-Army knife of intellectual instruments
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve focused on how writing can help navigate and ameliorate internal states such as difficult emotions or persistent distractions.
To continue too long in this (albeit useful) vein might suggest that writing is limited to internalized, personal objectives.
Not so.
Writing is the Swiss Army knife of achievement tools. Whatever the task, goal or discipline, writing can help you get there.
STEM
Although I greatly enjoyed many of my science classes (math less so, admittedly) I’m puzzled — and not just as a writing pro — at the obsessive interest in STEM.
All students must code! And build robots! And do differential equations!
As if somehow we are all going to slip our bodies and begin to exist in a digital realm where nobody needs food, clothing or shelter and we communicate by blinking at each other like beautiful disembodied beacons.
The logical absurdity of a wholly STEM-focused world is self-evident but for argument’s sake, let’s say it isn’t. Let’s say every could, should and did study STEM.
How, pray tell, would they communicate hypotheses, investigations and conclusions?
Writing?
Writing.
Not only is writing essential to communicating about science — it is fundamental to the building the cognitive skills that enable science to be done.
Lamb et al. (2017) used functional near-infrared imaging (fNIR) to study students’ brains as they undertook argumentative and summary science writing tasks. They found that, “significant advantages are gained by students [who write] with respect to conceptual understanding of a topic.” [italics mine]
Even pure mathematics (axiomatically, surely, the one field beyond the need of grammar and syntax?) turns out to rely on writing as a form of knowledge exchange and, further, to have developed distinctive “writing practices of the pure mathematics academic community… [wherein] writers are conscious of the need to situate oneself within the norms of the discourse community by adhering to disciplinary writing conventions” (McGrath & Kuteeva, 2012).
Economics & finance
Those who prefer figures to letters may veer towards these courses of study/professions but any bright spark hoping to make a cool billion without having to parse or paragraph will be disappointed.
As with any other field of intellectual endeavour, the currency of economics and finance is writing. Provocative arguments and revelatory findings alike must be shared with — at a minimum — academic peers. And even within that narrow realm where, presumably, content trumps style, style matters.
A comparative study of original and edited economics papers by Feld et al. (2024) found that “writing matters. Compared to the original versions, economists [italics mine] judge edited versions as higher quality; they are more likely to accept edited versions for a conference; and they believe that edited versions have a better chance of being accepted at a good journal.”
Research in this broad area reveals, as with STEM, that writing is linked to better learning outcomes. Templeton (1996), in an article sub-titled ‘Writing to Learn Finance’ notes:
“Finance instructors likely rely largely on lectures, reading, and numerical problem solving….[But] reading and listening are receptive functions…. We fail to organize material and make the connections necessary to understanding because it is not required of us…. Writing, on the other hand, is active; it demands engagement and concentration.”
Fine arts
Been to a museum lately? Noticed those little plaques beside the artworks covered in, you know, words?
Art may be presumed to speak for itself, but tell that to any curator, artist or aesthete.
Writing is intrinsic to the process of art — if not at the moment of creation, certainly at the point at which the artist wishes to engage an audience, the dealer wants to make a sale or the museum committee wants to argue on behalf of an acquisition. even the moment of creation may have its origin in words. Vincent Van Gogh’s letters are as exquisite and heart-rending as his paintings. This, to his brother Theo:
You really ought, if you can, to make me feel that art is alive, you
who perhaps love art more than I do.
I say to myself that that doesn’t have to do with art, but with me, that the only way for me to regain self-confidence and tranquillity is by doing better.
Put in modern, academic terms, “writing has an important role in art and design education: it facilitates reflection and it can provide a context or… the starting point for creative work” (Borg, 2012).
Anything at all
As the great writing teacher William Zinsser argued in his paean to writing across the disciplines, Writing to Learn:
“Putting an idea into written words is like defrosting the windshield: The idea, so vague out there in the murk, slowly begins to gather itself into a sensible shape.”
There is tremendous value in being able to defog our minds. More still in being able to articulate that clear vision to those around us.
***
Just for fun, here are a few things I’ve learned about by writing about them:
Champaign production
Kennedy’s role in Vietnam
Mechanical water filtration systems
Breatharianism
Coca-Cola ad campaigns