The paragraph is where writing happens. But exactly when does a paragraph happen? That’s the question that my approach to scholarly writing tries to answer — and to answer every day. It’s not that you have to write every single day, it’s just that you should answer the question every day, even if the answer is that you will not write anything. Crucially, you should know the answer yesterday. In this post, I want to try to unpack all this as straightforwardly as I am, at the moment, able. It’s going to take a few paragraphs.

Begin with two simple observations: every day comes to an end and tomorrow is another day. That’s just how it works. If you’re living a reasonably orderly life, we can draw a sharp line between one day and the next, but only if we ignore the rich experience of sleeping, dreaming, and waking. What we should not ignore is the evening. You should let your day end at what is sometimes called a “reasonable hour”. And what I mean by “let your day end” is simply that you should put down the burden of learning; you should recognize that you have reached a point, usually in the late afternoon or early evening, every single day, when you are not going to get any smarter. Tomorrow, you’ll start learning again, but at this point in your day you should admit that you will not acquire any more justified, true beliefs and not become any more conversant in your discipline until you go to sleep. Until then, you can relax.

Wherever you are, a lot things happen during the day, and, as students and scholars, much of it will in some way or other contribute to our learning. I won’t say too much about the variety of actions and events that make up our learning day, but for most of us it involves some combination of reading, thinking, talking, and listening that, when done right, satisfies our curiosity and makes us more knowledgeable. Notice that I’m leaving writing on the side for now. I want to distinguish it sharply from learning even though I know that it certainly contributes to your overall project of learning. I want to suggest that your writing, ideally, represents what you have learned, so you must do at least some of your writing after you have learned something. It’s that kind of writing I want to encourage you to find time for.

We have drawn a line between one day and the next, and another between the end of the “learning day” and the beginning of a “relaxing evening”. Doesn’t that sound nice? Doesn’t that sound like the life a scholar should live? Isn’t that what you promised yourself you were getting into? I’m not going to tell you how to spend your evenings. I’m going to leave that up to you, except to say that you should make sure that, on most evenings, you are actually relaxing, and not, let’s say, “attending” — a gathering of some kind, an all-night party, or concert, or rally. In the morning, you should feel rested. Enough said.

Just before you relax, I want you to prepare yourself for the next day’s writing. This is a crucial part of the writing moment. A writing moment is only a writing moment if you have prepared it the day before because you must tell your unconscious what you will be doing tomorrow. If your unconscious mind learns to trust that you will in fact write about what you said you will write about at the time you said you would, you will find that it shows up “composed” and ready to work, ready to deliver a coherent prose paragraph about something you know. I’m not promising you that this will happen right away, but, with time, you’ll be surprised at how fortune rewards what is, literally, the prepared mind of the writer.

Needless to say, you must choose to write about something that you actually do know something about. To this end, do not choose to write about something you learned today. There’s a good chance you’ll find out tomorrow that you still have something to learn about it. You might even discover in the moment of writing that you don’t know what you’re talking about at all. Instead, choose something that you knew already last week. You will learn better today if you are not under pressure to come up with something to write about tomorrow. Whether you learn something interesting today or not will not affect whether you’re going to write well tomorrow. You might not learn anything. You might make no progress at all. But tomorrow you will write about something you knew comfortably last week. And, no, I will not believe you if you try to tell me you didn’t know anything last week.

After your learning day is over, then, and before you begin to relax, take five minutes to decide what and when you will write tomorrow. First, take two minutes to call some objects of your knowledge to mind, some “things you know“. Confine yourself to one-, two-, or three-word names, don’t unpack them into descriptions or claims about these entities yet. Just make a list of, say, five things that you feel you could say something intelligent about in the company of another knowledgeable person, a peer. Then, spend three minutes writing some sentences you know to be true about them that you could use as a key sentence for a paragraph tomorrow. I’ll say more about what a key sentence is in tomorrow’s post about the actual writing moment. Knowing what’s coming, as you will learn from experience much better than you will from this blogpost, will increasingly help you get the most out of these five minutes. Finally, book 30 minutes into your calendar at the start of tomorrow, before your “learning day” begins anew. It should be the first intellectually challenging thing you do. Resolve to show up ready to work on your writing for that half hour.

Now you can relax.

My title is inspired by Anna Mill’s thought-provoking Twitter thread and Charles Knight‘s excellent reflections on the potential of large language models to undermine “the integrity of the essay”. If you don’t know anything about the issue that this experiment is addressing, then I highly recommend watching his talk first (embedded below). I agree with him that artificial intelligence can (and will) be used to “attack” the essay as a core competence of students and scholars. (See a recent tweet by Marc Watkins if you’re in any doubt about what’s coming.) It will certainly force us to assign more essays in-class to ensure that the students we’re giving university degrees to can actually write sentences about their subject. (See Charles’s follow-up reflections here on that question.)

Anyway … I produced the 900-word essay below in ten minutes of messing around (lying on my sofa before dinner) with GPT-3. The bolded sentences are my contribution. The only other contribution was to gather loose sentences together into paragraphs (until GPT-3 caught on that I wanted paragraphs). I have not changed the order of any of the sentences or words. (See my earlier experiments here and here.) Note: I mean ten minutes literally. That is all it took.

I didn’t begin with the title but with the first key sentence (except that I added the in-text citations at the end of the process). At the start, the results came somewhat haltingly, two or three sentences at a time, hence the more frequent prompting. Adding the title seemed to inspire more essay-like results. And once it had generated the four factors, and I had prompted it to go through them, I was able to get the rest simply by resubmitting the whole text as a prompt twice. After the text had been completed, I added the in-line references (I made up the dates for for Friedman, Galbraith, and Krugman, and have no idea what I meant by “Jones 2010” and “Smith 2012”) and then prompted it one last time by writing “References” at the end. Except for some oddly placed spaces, which I have removed, it produced the reference list exactly as posted below. (Yes, do check those references out!)

I post it here without further comment, though I’ll probably repost an annotated version at some point. I’d love to hear what you think of it, both in terms of style and content. Imagine that a student submitted this as an answer to a relevant prompt (e.g., “Write 500-1000-word essay about the causes of the Great Depression”). Suppose you could be certain that it was not autogenerated or plagiarized (i.e., that was actually written by a student who had been given, say, 72 hours to write it). What grade would you give it? I imagine it depends on what class you imagine you’re teaching. Imagine getting this from a first-year economics student, or perhaps a history student, or a student in your freshman composition course. How good is it? Be honest.

Please post your reflections in the comments. for my part, I think it’s a great example of the potential of AI to “automate the C”. Preventing this will indeed “disrupt” our educational practices in higher education.

The Causes of the Great Depression: An Economic Perspective

Milton Friedman (1964) and J.K. Galbraith (1972) had very different views of the great depression. Friedman believed that the great depression was caused by the Federal Reserve's policy of not providing enough money to banks. Galbraith believed that the great depression was caused by a lack of demand for goods and services. This was debated for many years by subsequent economists. Friedman's view is generally accepted by most economists today, while Galbraith's view has been largely discredited. But recently interest in Galbraith's position has rekindled.

Some economists (Krugman 1992; Jones 2010) now believe that both Friedman and Galbraith were partially right, and that the great depression was caused by a combination of factors. They point to the fact that after the stock market crash of 1929, there was a severe lack of demand for goods and services. This led to a decrease in production and an increase in unemployment. At the same time, they argue that the Federal Reserve's policy of not providing enough money to banks contributed to the problem. This made it difficult for banks to lend money, which further decreased demand and added to the problem of unemployment.

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 brought things to a head. The bursting of the housing bubble and the resulting increase in foreclosures led to a decrease in demand for goods and services. This, combined with the Federal Reserve's policy of keeping interest rates low, led to a decrease in production and an increase in unemployment. The result was the Great Recession, which is often compared to the Great Depression.

There are a number of other factors that may have contributed to the Great Depression. These include:

The high level of debt that consumers and businesses were carrying;

The increasing international trade imbalances;

The over-extension of credit by banks; and,

The stock market speculation that preceded the crash.

In this essay, I will look at each of these factors in turn.

First, then, let's look at the question of debt. In 1929, consumers and businesses were carrying a high level of debt. This was partly due to the easy credit that was available at the time. Consumers were able to buy cars and houses on installment plans, and businesses could borrow money for expansion. The problem was that when people lose their jobs or their income decreases, they have trouble making their loan payments. This can lead to defaults and foreclosures, which further reduces demand and contributes to unemployment.

Second, international trade imbalances also played a role in the Great Depression. Before World War 1, Europe had been the dominant economic power. But after the war, America became the leading economic power. America had more money than it needed, while Europe struggled with heavy debts from the war. To repay these debts, European nations began borrowing money from America. As a result, America began accumulating large amounts of foreign debt.

This situation came to a head in 1929 when an American stock market crash led to a decrease in demand for European goods. To make matters worse, American banks started calling in their loans to European nations (a process known as "contraction"). This led to a decrease in production and an increase in unemployment in Europe - which further decreased demand for American goods! The combination of these factors led to a sharp decline in international trade - which made things worse for everyone involved.

Third, banks also played a role in causing the Great Depression by extending too much credit before 1929 . When people are given easy access to credit , they tend to spend more than they would otherwise . This can lead to an increase in demand for goods and services , which can lead to inflation . In the years before 1929, banks were lending money to people who wanted to buy stocks . This led to an increase in stock prices , which encouraged more borrowing and more speculation . When the stock market crashed in October 1929, many people were left with worthless stocks and large debts . This led to a decrease in demand for goods and services , which further contributed to the problem of unemployment.

Fourth, it has been argued (Smith 2012) that the Great Depression was caused by a lack of aggregate demand. Keynesian economics argues that total spending (or aggregate demand) is what drives economic activity. If there is not enough total spending, then production will decrease and unemployment will rise. One reason why there may have been a lack of aggregate demand in the early 1930s was because of the high level of debt that consumers and businesses were carrying. Another reason was the international trade imbalances mentioned above. When countries are not buying American goods, this reduces American exports - leading to a decline in production and jobs.

So, what can we learn from all this? First, it is important to remember that economic recessions and depressions are complex phenomena with many causes. Second, we should be careful about using monetary policy (interest rates) as our only tool for dealing with recessions and depressions - as Friedman (1964, 1968) argued. Third, we should be aware of other factors that can contribute to these problems - such as excessive debt levels or international trade imbalances. And fourth, we should always be prepared for potential downturns by having strong financial systems in place - such as banking regulations or social safety nets.

References

Friedman, M. (1964). Money and economic development: The Horowitz lectures of 1957. New York: Praeger.

Friedman, M. (1968). The role of monetary policy. American Economic Review, 58(1), 1-17.

Galbraith, J.K. (1972). Economics and the public purpose. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 

Jones, C. (2010) Galbraith on the great crash revisited. Challenge, 53(2), 17-40. 

Krugman, P. (1992) It's Baaack: Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2, 137-205. 

Smith, A. (2012) What caused the Great Depression? Econ Journal Watch 9 (3):449-469.

I’ve now written about the ideal paper, the ideal paragraph, the ideal sentence, the perfect inflammatory word, and the importance of spelling. It’s only fitting that I conclude this series with some reflections on font choice and handwriting. The latter is, of course, fast becoming a lost art or, at least, a niche craft, while the former is an object of both confusion and indifference. As we pass from the age of mechanical reproduction to the age of digital automation, I want to argue, we must retain our sense of the fundamental humanity of the written word, the phenomenology of literature, the aesthetics of writing, or what Roland Barthes called simply “the pleasure of the text”. We have to care what it it feels like to read our work.

In my writing workshops, I get participants to write a paragraph that they then have one of the other participants read out loud to them. Some of them work on paper, which provides a particular challenge. Some portion of the half hour that is devoted to actual writing in the workshop must produce a clearly legible draft. This normally means they have to devote two or three minutes at the end to actually rewriting the 100-200 words they have usually composed. Otherwise the difficulty that the reader faces will not indicate issues of composition but defects of calligraphy. If you do want to work mainly by hand, then you should certainly work on your handwriting. There may be all kinds of good reasons to do this.

Many people swear that they write (and even think) better with a pen in their hand than sitting in front of screen. Some people swear that they can only write well in front of a noisy typewriter punching the letters firmly onto a white sheet of paper. Much of this is no doubt a matter of habit. Already in high school, I was writing most of my papers on a word processor, so I’ve never felt any strong relationship between my handwriting and my stream of consciousness. I learned to touch type at the same age, so I really do feel that the words appearing on the screen are a natural extension of my mind. This is clearly a personal preference, however, and everyone should find a way to work that gives them pleasure. My point is just that, whatever means of writing you choose, resolve to do it well. Practice it. Become “good at” forming the letters and words in your chosen manner. You will enjoy it more.

But once you have written a text in a way that gives you pleasure you must also make a deliberate effort, a conscious set of decisions, to make your text pleasing to your reader’s eye. Many years ago, I found Josef Albers’ wonderful textbook Interaction of Color in a used bookstore and it has profoundly affected the way I teach writing, i.e., the interaction of words. At one point, he makes the connection explicitly: “The fashionable preference for sans-serif fonts in text shows neither historical nor practical competence,” he tells us, reminding us that sans-serif fonts (like Arial) are meant for captions not prose, while serif fonts (like Times New Roman), are based on the idea that “the more the letters are differentiated from each other, the easier the reading.” I always tell people to present their work for feedback in 12-point, Times New Roman, double-spaced, with no right justification (i.e., with a jagged right margin). It doesn’t look like a published page; it looks like a draft. It is optimal for reading and giving feedback.

Writing this post, I’m reminded of my poor habits. I have terrible handwriting, and I’ve been thinking about changing the font for the posts on this blog for years. Let me know what you think of this blog’s look in the comments, please. I’ve basically left it all up to WordPress until now, but I should take my own advice and take control of my aesthetics. Typo-graphy is an interest in the (blow by blow) impression of that the shapes of letters make on your reader; calli-graphy is a cultivation of the beauty of letters on the page. These issues are neither trivial or vain. Take some pleasure in dealing with them effectively.

Two quick very true, very embarrassing stories. As an undergraduate, I once found myself in the campus pub being gently corrected in the middle of a profound philosophical argument by a sorority girl, who explained to me that the word I was trying to use to devastating effect was, in fact, “construe”, not, as I seemed to think, “conscrue”. That same year, no doubt, I tried to shock a professor by comparing consciousness to an ordinary bodily process like, “e.g., a bowl movement”. He did not fail to point out in the margin that my attempt to be witty had been undermined by my inability to spell. Some words we learn the hard way.

Orthography is the study of the right (ortho-) way of writing (-graphy) words. In my two examples, I understood the word I was using correctly, but I did not know how to spell it. It is possible that, though I had said it often, I had never in my life written the word “bowel” before using it in that paper. And I may never have “construed” anything explicitly before I heard — and did not read — my professor doing so. My error stemmed from what Steven Pinker has called the Igon Value Problem: “when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert.” In fact, this reminds me of a third embarrassing tale: the time I wrote about “Göbbel’s” (!) incompleteness theorem on the basis of lecture by W.V.O. Quine that I had attended. I really did mainly squander my learning opportunities as an undergraduate. Words aren’t just sounds we make to sound smart, they are signs we read to actually become smart. Learn how to spell them.

I know this is tough love. I hope it’s clear that I have a great deal of empathy for undergraduates and their struggle to learn the curriculum. My point is that there are lots of lessons hidden in seemingly trivial details. Sometimes spelling is a clue to a word’s etymology, sometimes a way to avoid confusing it with another. Do you mean “free reign” or “free rein”? Are you “the sun and the air” or “the son and the heir”?

And then there’s the spelling of names. I mentioned Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions the other day and the auto-generated closed captioning on the YouTube video apparently heard me say “Thomas Coons”. If I had been teaching the philosophy of George Berkeley, it would no doubt have captioned it “George Barclay”. If your discipline is organized around the works of Barbara Czarniawska (who my browser can’t even spell) or Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who it actually can!) you’re going to have to take spelling seriously. Even relatively simple names like Bourdieu or Ricœur are worth learning well if you’re going to be using them often.

Students sometimes ask whether “spelling counts” and, of course, it matters less and less as spellchecking becomes better and better. But poor spelling can reveal that you’re not very familiar with the material you’re so confidently holding forth about. By the same token, taking the time to look closely at how big words are put together at the level of the letter is actually a good, if very simple, way to build some intellectual confidence.

If I put ‘blue’ after ‘stones,’ that’s because blue is
the right word, believe me.

Gustave flaubert

Leonard Cohen once asked us to imagine the reunion of two old lovers in a hotel room, somewhat embarrassed by the “outrageous hope and habits in the craft” as they search for the “special caress, the perfect inflammatory word” that might prove that they’ve “survived as lovers ([if] not each other’s)” and now “own [their] own skins”. Scholarship is perhaps not so romantic, but it is important to remind ourselves of the aesthetic pleasure that follows from finding just the right word, le mot juste, to describe what we have learned from our studies, and imagine, as Nabokov imagined, the hairs on the back of the reader’s neck standing up. If only for a moment, we feel that we have found a way to preserve our knowledge forever. “What thou lovest well remains,” said Ezra Pound, from whom Cohen got his title: “the rest is dross.”

Of course, just as there is no ideal paper, no ideal paragraph, and no ideal sentence, there is no such thing as the perfect word. Words are simply imperfect when compared to the things they name, which, though perhaps themselves inevitably flawed, are nonetheless exactly themselves, exactly what they are. We might of course also say that words are always true to themselves; but what will always be imperfect is the relationship between words and things. (“What relation must one fact have to another,” asked Bertrand Russell, “in order to be capable of being a symbol for that other?”) Finding the right word is part of the struggle with what Robert Graves called “the huge impossibility of language,” the effort “to depict not the thing but the effect it produces,” as Mallarmé put it, or, again, the delicate search for Cohen’s “perfect inflammatory word”.

“The mission of the poet,” said Borges, “should be to restore to the word, at least in a partial way, its primitive and now secret force.” Heidegger would no doubt have agreed. “The ultimate business of philosophy,” he said, “is to preserve the force of the most elemental words in which Dasein expresses itself.” Both were concerned that what Borges called the “usury of time” was deflating the meaning of our words; indeed, Heidegger reminds us that we’re disposed to think of our guilt in terms of a “debt” we owe to “Them”. We must recover the force of language, one word, perhaps, at a time. We must know what they mean and insist on their meaning. That may be exactly what good writing is.

Again, I know you’re not as romantic about your words as the poets and philosophers of yore. But yesterday I attended a talk about foreign language studies at business schools that reminded me that we should encourage students to learn languages, not so much because it will give them access to foreign markets, but because it will give them access to exotic pleasures. You don’t need to spend a whole day, as Flaubert is reputed to have done, trying to decide whether a stone is “azure” or just “blue”, but there is a real satisfaction in finding a word that means what you want it to, both semantically and etymologically. Once you know what, say, “trenchant” and “salient” really mean, you can begin to deploy them in your writing to produce precise effects for the knowledgeable without too much confusion for the ignorant.

“I see that we no longer follow fashion,” says Cohen as he “makes a gift of necessity.” Many of our words enter the vernacular as fashions of the moment and leave it as they came. To insist on using a word, not because that is what “one” says (what “they” say) but because it is the word that means precisely what you want to say, is an essential part of the discipline of writing. Sometimes this forces you to write the sentence in a way that accommodates the word in question, sometimes it means finding another word that works correctly in the context you have already established. Make your gift of whatever is needed. Remember that “blue” is only the right word after “stones”. Believe me.