Sunday, June 14, 2009

Reading Comprehension - Pet Peeve

One of my pet peeves is the lack of reading comprehension among writers on writing forums. I've seen people post a question on a forum, get ten or more responses, none of which answers the question the person posed. It makes me want to shout, "You see the sentence with the question mark at the end? This mark: "?" That is the question. Not the rest of it, which you responded to."

And I've learned over the years to never use an example to illustrate a point that I am trying to make. Because people will zero in on the example and miss the point. I'm an engineer, we use examples to discuss concepts. It drives me nuts not to be able to do that when discussing concepts in writing.

And then there are the comments that come out of left field leaving me scratching my head and asking "Did I say that? Where in that post did I say that? How did they come up with that from what I said?" And boy, have I read some crazy responses to things that I have said. I'd give some examples, but I've learned not to do that.

All of this leads to the question: "Can a person, who lacks the ability to comprehend what they read, write a story or article that is comprehensible to others?" I don't have a definitive answer to this question, but my gut tells me "no."

5 comments:

  1. Diana, I cannot possibly agree with you any more. :-) You are so right. It's amazing how people only see what they want to see (whether it's actually there or not). And, of late, it seems to be they're just looking for something to either complain or argue about, not so much looking for good discussion or to actually help.

    I have more to say about this, but since I don't know who else is going to read this, I'll keep it to myself. :-)

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  2. Too true. And what about the I'm having a problem with my plot.... questions? Its like uhm... that's your problem. You want someone else to fix your plot?

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  3. Hah, yes... I so know what you mean here. It does get annoying when someone asks a question that seems generally interesting and the topic goes around everything but the actual question...

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  4. I don't know what a peeve is, or why it lacks reading comprehension, but I've got three dogs and I plan to sell lots of fiction novels. :)

    Fred

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  5. Somebody give that guy a "best comment award".

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