I ran across a little blurb in my newest favorite book (Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite) about political correctness in writing.  It got me thinking how much this influences what ends up on paper.  Like it or not, being PC has to be part of your style or you’re not going to last long writing.

Confession

I hate being politically correct.  I don’t like the concept too much and it really is a burr in my saddle that in conversations and in my writing I need to be acutely aware lest I offend someone.

See?  I was just going to start a paragraph explaining my position so no one would think I’m some kind of bigot/redneck when I realized that writing that paragraph would be done so strictly for PC purposes, so, sorry but I won’t apologize for my sentiments on the topic.

My interactions with people are civil.  I’m a sensitive kind of guy and the last thing I would ever want is to make someone feel bad for something I’ve said or written.  This doesn’t mean I’m a PC hound.  It means that I know how to function in what appears to be our societal norm.

What the heck is normal?

Societal norms are interesting things, aren’t they?  In a post I wrote last month about Harriett Tubman I gave a little salute to PC-dom as I told of my hand quivering as I wrote “Negro Spirituals” on the board for a high school class I was teaching.  Another example happened this week in the same class.  They are reading The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitgeralds bawdy rendition of the early twentieth century’s Jazz Age.  A great tale certainly, and rife with early 1920′s societal norms such as unassuming violence against women, class degradation and the superiority of whites over all others.  From this standpoint, societal norms become a function of perspective and time.

I’m not too worried

There is a great line in the Grammar Snobs book: “Reasonable people… can tell when your heart is in the right place.”  I love that line because it plops things right into perspective for me.

I do tailor my writing to not be offensive to anyone.  Regardless of my feelings about political correctness, I am a realist and I’m loathe to express my second amendment rights by pulling out my gun and shooting my foot.  (which could result in consequences for my first amendment rights)

How about a little self reflection here, folks?  How much do you alter your writing, your writing voice in order to achieve PC perfection?  Or do you even notice?