Sometimes I’m honestly surprised at my own command of the English language. Whether English or Russian, I come from the new generation that hardly ever reads books. I do read a lot, though, but pretty much all of my reading comes through online resources, articles and blogs. I play virtually no video games at all whatsoever (other than an occasional hit on iOS).
Not like I should be proud (or that it’s even something to be proud of), but I don’t recall ever reading Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, in neither English nor Russian. However, when I look back at some of the documents I’ve written, forums posts I’ve spend time on, extended cover letters, student grant proposals and applications, or even love letters, I’m honestly surprised by the quality of the work that I see, and I can read it over and over again, in the end nearly knowing what the next word is prior to even reading it again. (I even caught myself re-reading my own email replies considerably more often than I would read the letters the replies reply to.) The surprise effect of one’s own prior work can especially be seen when you read a document you’ve composed a few years back; in such case, you can really appreciate whether the work has been good or not.
As I pay very close attention to the details, I regularly notice how various people I communicate with, either pay much less attention to the stuff they write, or, alternatively, simply don’t devote as much time to proofreading as one might wish they wood. I’m learning to be a little bit more like them in some respects, trying to not spend as much time on writing. In fact, with Twitter, proofreading is difficult to accomplish, as you have to make commits with the limited number of characters in mind, where some thoughts have to span more than one commit. Also with Twitter, if you’re on a mobile device, multitasking and copy-paste can be more annoying than otherwise, and you might as well skip on that extra research you may have done otherwise. As such, I’ve found that some of my tweets are not as typo-free as I’d wish they’d all be.
I’m sure some other people may find my writing style weird or even annoying; still, I think it’s funny to engage in it in such a way as to be able to look back and be confident in the thorough work that has been accomplished.
