ABSTRACT
The more I think about writing the more impressed I become that anyone should ever learn to do it. This is not because I think writing requires a great deal of intelligence or a special kind of aptitude; there is no evidence to support any such view. Rather, it might seem that the ability to read and write makes us very much brighter than we otherwise would be. But writing encompasses familiarity with so many conventions in so many areas—in spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, grammar, cohesion, discourse structure, and register—that one wonders how anyone could find the time and the instruction to acquire it all. Even if we write only rarely, and reluctantly, there must still be an enormous lode of competence at our disposal so that we can, when we must, draft a halfway adequate letter, memorandum, or diary entry. It is perhaps especially difficult to explain the ability of people to write who do so only infrequently.
