Using Computers to Improve Your Writing

This article will cover the following topics:

• What do computers have to do with writing?
• Understanding Computers
• Computers and Writing
• Concluding Thoughts

What do computers have do with writing?

One complaint I often here when teaching my courses is that I use computers too much. "What do computers have to do with writing?" students ask. "All I need is a pencil and some paper!" Well, that may have been the case a few decades ago, but now writers are expected to type their documents using a professional word processing program (Microsoft's Word, Corel's Word Perfect, Sun's Open Office Writer, or perhaps Abiword.) Though these programs each have their differences, they perform the same tasks. Though the first word processors required writers to enter all sorts of codes and didn't offer WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) displays, at least it made certain tasks much easier. A good example is copying and pasting. You can't do much editing on a typewriter; if you want to take out a paragraph or add one, you have to retype the entire document. Talk about tedium! However, with a computer, it's a simple matter. It's hard to appreciate how much time and energy a computer word processor can save you unless you've tried typing documents on a typewriter.

Computer software has automated so many of the tedious aspects of the writing process, and recent innovations are offering even more help and assistance. My word processor allows me to right-click on any word and get its definition instantly. The program also scans my document for possible spelling errors and can even automatically correct mistakes. I can instantly get a word count. It'd take awhile just to go through all the great things my word processor makes possible!

Word processors aren't the only computing technology that are changing writing. The Internet has made a huge difference. It's hard to imagine how much more we're writing now that we have the Internet. Whether it's sending instant messages, composing emails, blogging, or interacting on forums, we use the Internet to do lots of writing.

Imagine trying to tell an English professor back in 1970 that just thirty years later, the students in her class wouldn't even be handing in papers. They'd be composing them on computers and then using the "Internet" to submit them to a computer database which the professor could then access from almost anywhere in the world. Such a proposal would have probably been considered the wildest science fiction.

Obviously, computers are very much involved with the modern writing process, and it's important to learn ways they can help us become better writers. However, the subject of this lecture takes a very radical twist: Instead of just talking about how we can study computers to help us humans become better writers, I want to explore how we humans can study how computers "write" to become better writers and thinkers. If that sounds confusing, don't worry, it'll be clear soon.

Understanding Computers

When you hear the question, "What do computers do?", you probably think about things like word processing, web surfing, playing games, and so on. However, the question can actually be answered without having to mention all of these things. A computer really only does four things: It can write a 0, write a 1, move one step left and one step right. It's important to note that it doesn't actually write or move; these are just metaphors. I don't want to get too technical here, but "writing a 0" could be compared to flipping a little switch up, and "writing a 1" could mean flipping it back down. Moving left and right would mean moving your hand from one switch to one beside it. You could "compute" simply by opening and shutting two doors, though your "computer" would be much slower than the "opening and shutting" a modern computer does.

So, you might ask, well, if computers only work with 0s and 1s, how in the heck can they do all of the wonderful things they do? Well, think about a very simple digital computer; say an 8-bit machine. This means that there are 8 switches that can either be 1 or 0. If you do the math, that means there are 256 possible combinations of bits. Chances are that your computer has at least 32-bits, and some high-end models have 64. Simply put, your software tells the computer what switches to flip up and down in response to specific situations. Your computer's hardware (i.e., the monitor, printer, keyboard, and mouse) use this "interface" to receive and transmit information to and from the computer.

There are few important things to realize here. One is that the computer doesn't "understand" what any of the information passing through it really means. If you were to tell a computer, "I love you!", it wouldn't have an emotional response or have any clue what "love" means. Instead, it would only receive certain combinations of 0s and 1s, and, depending on how it been programmed, would respond accordingly. If you were using a word processor, the computer would first turn the signals it receives from your keyboard into 0s and 1s, store them in its memory, then match them up with patterns of pixels and display them in the right place on your monitor.

Okay, so get this. A group of scientists, linguists, psychologists, and plenty of other folks have decided that this is actually how the human brain works: It's a movement called cognitive science. No, there are no 0s and 1s, no monitor, no microchips—but all of these things don't really matter. In fact, as I said before, a "computer" really just means something that "computes." However, remember that the computer doesn't "understand," it merely knows what to do when it gets certain packets of symbols. I could write a program that would cause the computer to respond "I love you, too!" when you typed in "I love you." However, this doesn't prove the computer has human intelligence. It's only responding to packets of symbols and following instructions. If you tell a human "I love you," the human doesn't just shuffle symbols around in his or her head and come back with the proper response. But why can't the computer really understand what love is?

Well, we could be catty here and admit that, really, humans don't know either. Some people argue that love is simply a chemical reaction that takes place; it can all be broken down into chemicals, neurons, stimuli, and so on. Others, however, argue that it's because that humans don't "compute" when interpreting such things. In ways that we don't understand, your brain causes your mind, but your mind is much more than a computer. It possesses understanding. It doesn't just recognize symbols; it understands them; the symbols have a meaning.

Computers and Writing

Imagine for the sake of argument, however, that your brain and mind work together like a computer and a program. Given these conditions, imagine what happens when you read a sentence. Unknown to you, your "software" interprets the input and compares it to a set of instructions somewhere deep inside your brain. Then it communicates these inputs in a way that you can understand. Think about the architecture of the eye with its rays and cones. All this "technology" works together to deliver a signal and help you decide what to do with it. If you see an image of a rose, for instance, you don't "see" these rays and cones in your eye operating or stimulating neurons in your brain. Instead you only see what your software represents for you inside your conscious mind. What seems to separate humans from computers is the complexity of our minds.

Try to keep this model in mind as we think about writing. Think about what writing is to a computer. If you stare at these letters, you might wonder, "How can I possibly know what all these lines, squiggles, and dots mean?" It's because you've been "programmed" to know that a certain squiggle is a P, another a G, and so on, and these, when arranged in the proper order, form words—of which you have learned definitions. If you encounter the combination "GOD," for instance, you not only know what that this a G, and O, and a D, but also that it is a word—GOD. Furthermore, you have an immense web of understanding concerning this word that has been shaped by your experiences, culture, meditations, and so on. The word would mean something much different to an atheist than a devout Christian, though both would be able to use the word in a way that wouldn't confuse each other. If a Christian hears, "There is no such thing as God," he doesn't scratch his head and say "I don't think you're using that word God correctly." Instead, he says, "Yes, there is!" So, you see, even if you don't share the same definition of the term, you know enough to interpret the sentence and make an understandable response.

In some ways, computers are really dumb. If you tell a computer "God is the Creator of the Universe," you're just putting in symbols and instructions. If the computer encounters the symbols "GOD," that is just a short form of "Creator of the Universe." If someone else tells the computer, "God is just an imaginary being who isn't real," the computer interprets that as an error and that's the end of it.

Nevertheless, I don't think that writing for humans is really all that different than writing computer programs. The major difference is that you can take a lot more for granted when talking to a human, whereas the computer has to know exactly what you mean. You could tell a child to pick up a ball without having to specify exactly how many millimeters to move each appendage and where the exact coordinates of the ball are located in real space. Still, when we communicate with humans, we still are just passing symbols back and forth. The human is just much better able to make inductive leaps and has much more experience and data that is useful in understanding what you mean.

Humans communicate in many ways besides just writing. They speak, draw pictures, touch each other, gesture, make sounds—even the way someone sits or the perfume she wears can communicate. The problem is that, unlike with a computer, we don't know exactly how this data will be interpreted by the other human. We don't know what kind of experiences that person has had, for one thing, nor do we fully understand how factors such as mood may affect the interpretation. It's almost impossible to predict with certainty how a person will respond to anything we communicate. If we say "I love you!" we might get a kiss—or we might get laughed at, committed, or even attacked.

How then can we possibly hope to communicate? I mean, if we don't know whether someone will kiss or us or kill us, what the heck good is language? Well, along with understanding, you also have a faculty called "judgment." Judgment, while not perfect, does allow you to determine roughly how someone will respond or interpret what you say. Excellent writers possess both good understanding and good judgment.

Another key problem of writing involves being able to arrange symbols in a way that will be readily understood by the other person. Many writers complain, "Well, I know what I'm trying to say, but I can't seem to put it into the right words." The problem is that the writer does understand, but can't determine the right symbols to use so that someone else can understand as well. Or maybe you read a sentence and think it means one thing, but the writer says, "No, that's not what I meant." Again we have a problem: The symbols; that is, the letters and words that make up the sentence, don't allow you to understand what the writer was trying to communicate.

This is where thinking about how computers read and write is helpful. For the same reason that a programmer has to look carefully at her code when trying to figure out why a computer isn't doing what she wants it to do, you have to look carefully at your words and sentences when someone doesn't understand what you're trying to say. You have to think about what symbols that person is likely to understand (and, beyond that, judge to be appropriate) and use those instead.

In other words, a superior writer is an expert at analyzing symbols. A symbol like "God" will work one way when communicated to an atheist; another way when communicated to a Christian.

So, how can you as a writer become better at analyzing symbols? Well, the best way is to read lots of books and read them often. If you study the way established scholars and writers shuffle symbols around, and practice the same techniques yourself, eventually you'll become better at writing. You also have to think carefully about who you are communicating to and consider the best language to use in that situation. This means getting to know the type of person you are writing for. One reason why I insist that you quote from scholarly journals is so you can study how real scholars organize and present information for each other. You could read thousands of newspapers and magazines and write hundreds of essays without ever understanding what real scholarship is like. The only way to do that is to study the communications of actual scholars and try to imitate their techniques and "speak their language."

Concluding Thoughts

Programmers are notorious for being horrible writers. This reputation isn't very fair. Programmers are, in fact, very good writers. They are trained to be very concise, precise, and clear. However, the audience they are used to writing for is computers, not human beings. In many ways, writing for human beings requires you to come away from concision, precision, and clarity and strive instead for eloquence or grace. A computer doesn't mind if you are repetitive and write the same simple structure a hundred times in a row. In some situations that would be the best way to communicate with it. Reader would soon get bored and think you were crazy if you wrote like that. Humans can also be lazy and skip over important material; unlike a computer, they aren't physically required to read all of their instructions. Finally, humans must often be entertained and amused; you must try to spark their interest and often "baby step" them through material rather than just present them with a short, concise list of statements. Does this mean humans are inferior to computers? Of course, not! What it does mean is that writers have a much different task than programmers.

To put it simply, the programmer has a key advantage—she knows her audience and exactly how it will interpret and respond. The writer can only guess and make crude estimates of how his audience will react. A programmer must be correct; a writer must be effective.