Brilliant Flashes Of Thoughtful Insight

Writing Like Okoampa- Ahoofe Jr. Phd

I hesitate to comment on other people’s writing style, because I don’t have a good style myself. Besides, men of letters say that the style is the man; that is, everybody has a writing style peculiar to him. Like voiceprints, no two people share the same writing style. There could be ‘fortunate similarities’-copying, or unfortunate ones-plagiarism.

Those same men of letters also strike a sharp distinction between listening and understanding. Listening is getting what people are saying. Understanding is getting what they are not saying. When readers and listeners strain to understand what a writer is saying, there is the tendency to confuse what he is saying with what he will never say. When that happens, the writer suffers a ‘communication constipation’ while his readers suffer a communication diarrhoea. The whole business of communication is defeated. There is, in fact, no communication at all. So there is no relationship in the end.

It is only fair to start by saying that Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr. PhD is a good writer. He knows the English language through and through. He seems to have a bank of impressive vocabulary, and he can borrow any amount of words he wants, without interest. He has a rare ability to make a dog of the English language. He could let his words bark or sit still. The words follow him at his pleasure, the same way our dogs follow in our footsteps when we command them.

However, there is a way to make a dog out of a language without necessarily making readers feel like dogs. For, you really feel like a dog when you read something that appears good but leaves no room for stress-free comprehension. Dogs don’t read; they only listen and follow what they understand. They are not as intelligent as their owners.

I have been reading Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr. PhD for sometime now on Ghanaweb. I must admit I can’t match his ability. He is a prolific writer who has incredible capacity to make a contribution on any subject. It is clear he does not lack the ingredients needed to make a fine ‘soup of English’. What, perhaps, he lacks, is the required size of the ingredients in the soup. The meat balls are too big for many people to chew.

I never knew my proof-reader had been reading Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr. PhD, until I gave her this piece to correct my usual mistakes. She made it clear that he is 10 times better than me, in all departments of the language: grammar, syntax, register, mechanical accuracy etc. She, however, repeated the same concerns Ghanaweb readers have been making: Okoampa-Ahoofe is difficult to understand. You know he is making a good point but the language takes the point away. He would do with some toning down.

There is a way to sound profound and scholastic without necessarily sounding verbose and superfluous. When I did the piece on Journalism: the Beauty and the Beast, which was posted on Ghanaweb recently, I mentioned that most of my professors were unhappy with my writing style. They kept warning me about my flowery poetic way of expressing things that have nothing to do with poetry. They told me my English degree is actually doing me a disservice rather than a service. My punishment at the School of Communication Studies, University of Ghana was that, I was made to rewrite my dissertation ‘using simple everyday words.’ On hindsight, I realise my professors knew a lot better. I haven’t become a good writer, perhaps, worse, but I have come to appreciate the value of simple communication. It makes the greatest impact.

A Ghanaweb reader once commented on Okoampa-Ahoofe’s article as thus: If people who have the same qualifications as yours find it difficult to understand you, what do you think readers who profess less proficiency in the English language would do? Another also wrote: I pity your students if this is how you communicate to them.

However, I did not agree with the other who said that Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr. PhD has a habit of flaunting his PhD. A PhD is a good qualification. I am yet to see any PhD holder who buries his PhD under a table and pretends he is simpleton. It is hard work writing and defending a thesis before eccentric academics. Writing a proposal, as part of the requirements for admission onto a PhD programme is a bit like childbirth. I was recently denied admission to do a doctorate degree in a UK university after struggling through a 60 page proposal. They said my research questions were not clear. But Okoampa-Ahoofe has successfully done it, and he deserves his PhD.

I respect people who have PhD qualifications. I also expect them to have at least a 30 page CV, detailing the papers they have presented in academic journals. But PhD holders are modest. They know when to write what in a scholarly academic journal and what to write for public consumption. As an administrative trainee on national service in the civil service, I had the rare privilege of reading the CV of a professor. It was only one page, so I phoned him to fax me the missing pages. He said that was all. Meanwhile, with only a first degree, I had four. I had included the day I shook hands with my Regional Minister.

Just take a minute and look at the topic of this article once again: Brilliant flashes of thoughtful insight. What does it really mean? This is the comment a teacher made on a student’s work. The chap had done a good work and scored a proud A. But the student did not understand how something that is insightful could also be thoughtful. What about the flashes? So he took his paper back to the teacher for explanation. He explained to him that, his work showed he had done some deep thinking and has presented the result in a brilliant way. But the teacher could just have written ‘Excellent or Good work, Keep it up,’ and he would have had no explaining to do.

The writing process is a difficult but interesting one. You wake up one fine morning and suddenly, ideas begin to jostle in your mind for space. You feel they will fall down if you don’t find space for each one of them. So you quickly begin sketching them down. You feel a strange sense of loss when you don’t put them down as they occur to you. You will never get that particular original thought back. Even very good writers confess their difficulty when writing. Some of them use scissors to cut portions of the paper that contained the original idea and stick them with sellotape to other portions. When finally the work is done, and it is good, the joy you experience is comparable to a mother’s relief at the birth of a child. That is why some wired writers never see the need to marry.

There is one thing that is common to all writers, both the good and the bad: They have something to say, and they usually want to say it the best way possible. But, because best is relative, they end up communicating to their readers or above them. Sometimes, they communicate against them inadvertently. They normally would not know how their work fared until somebody reads it and makes a comment.

Thankfully, writers have what it takes to tell a good work from a terrible one. It is, however, humbling to know that readers who appear to have no interest in writing know a good work better than even the best writer. Any time readers comment on my articles, I am humbled by the scholarship they display. I would be a foolish presumptuous person to assume that I know better than them. In fact, I always concede that I should be reading them, instead of boring them with a worthless piece like this.

Happy New Year!