Manipulation after quantification

It depends on how it is used, but most of the time I cringe at the use of the title Language Arts.  It apparently became fashionable when the free thinkers of the 1960s and 1970s decided that the expression of English was purely aesthetic in nature.  Free form of English standards in poetry led people of that time to consider that there should be styles of writing in every genre independent of forms and standards.  Thus, the idea of English as an art form began.  That worked its way into the normal way of titling the subject taken in school.  Teachers wanted students to learn the art of expression using words.

If anyone were to come to me for writing help, the first thing I would want to do is quantify it - turn words into numbers.  Numbers don't really allow for art form.  They lead one to draw certain conclusions.  Style comes after conclusions have been made.  Style comes as a manipulation of pieces of thought within the parameters set from conclusions drawn from numbers.

Quantifying words?  Yes, and there are two measures of language that act as an index number that tell the general health of writing.  They are reverse measures of each other, and they speak of the maturity and comprehensibility of one's writing.  After taking these two measures from samples of one's writing, then a person can understand style.  A person has to know what to fix in his or her personal development of maturity and comprehensibility before (s)he really knows when, where, and why to create a particular style.  The quantification process factors in complexity of sentence, that is, clause use, and comprehensibility, length of clause beyond what is expected.  Vocabulary is a different issue and is not figured into the quantification of the clause, or the terminal unit.

These two measures chart growth accurately much like taking a child to the doctor to show growth by getting height, weight, and general health condition.  Once maturity is reached, then one can begin to enhance the physical features such as cosmetic qualities of teeth appearance, face lifts, wrinkle control, breast size, and lap band surgeries.

Language arts can happen for those who know how to control when, where, and why a particular feature of a clause is expressed in a certain way.  But, language arts doesn't really happen for those learning to write.  In the learning stages, one learns to plan and organize thought and throw in a little vocabulary to make the paper shine.

There is one more benefit to quantifying writing.  The process helps one understand the bigger picture of communication better.  When the digital world emerged, color, pictures, and music all became binary code for transmission purposes.  Communication is largely oral and thought.  Writing only makes for a small percentage.  Communication is enhanced in different ways.  Musicians write songs with a video in mind that will match the words.  They also make music that is much clearer or that can be repeated because the electronic world makes repetition easier to mix into  a song (like a copy and paste function for word processing) and the notes don't taper off at the end making the tone sharper or flatter.  The digital code is simply one note, not the sharp or flat of the note.  Social media allows for most ideas to be communicated in pictures.  Uploading, downloading, and sharing are the skills used, not writing.  People merely put short captions with the picture in order to ferret out a particular part of the picture to comment about.

So, the  environment for language use has changed from the days of descriptive writing for stories and persuasive writing for artificial and hypothetical topics.  Quantification of language helps a young person to realize the limitations placed on writing and helps in the transition of the worded environment into the digital environment, which is the real key to the future.