Free Writing Tips

Last week (http://www.normfriedman.com/blog/precision/), I suggested that when we write we might want the melody of “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof playing softly in the back of our heads as “Pre-ci-sion!” Let’s continue the discussion.

Many people have told me they are not strong writers because they write the way they talk. My reaction? I applaud. I say the tone of our writing should be somewhat conversational (less so in a formal report than in many of our emails, of course) because I believe readers want to feel that we are talking to them, not communicating in the style of a textbook.

But here’s the catch: While we want a fairly relaxed style to come across in our writing, we do not want to relax our standards on key aspects like correctness, brevity, and, yes, precision. So to write with greater precision, which words might you change in these sentences?

Bonus: Notice that in each case you can improve the imprecise word on two levels. You can use more sophisticated language, or you can convey more.

1. I attended the meeting only to hear Dr. Patterson’s speech, but it wasn’t that good.

2. The board agrees that Peter appears to be an ideal candidate, except for one thing: his erratic college grades.

3. I am sending you a link to an election article you should find interesting.

The culprits

1. I attended the meeting only to hear Dr. Patterson’s speech, but it wasn’t that good.
Saying the speech “wasn’t that good” isn’t overly informative, so we might want to pay more attention to two words we’ve used since we were toddlers: “good” and “bad.”  Changing “wasn’t that good” to “was disappointing” or “was lackluster” is an improvement, but can we do better? How about writing that the speech had no central theme or nothing new or no sense of urgency? Now our reader starts to understand why the speech was disappointing.

2. The board agrees that Peter appears to be an ideal candidate, except for one thing: his erratic college grades.
“Thing,” a word we use a lot when we talk, can often be improved when we write. “Factor,” for instance, takes our writing up a notch, but in this sentence a word like “concern” or “drawback” starts to get to the heart of the matter. We could even use a figure of speech: The board agrees that Peter appears to be an ideal candidate, except for one red flag: his erratic college grades.

3. I am sending you a link to an election article you should find interesting.
Handy substitutes for the ubiquitous “interesting” are “fascinating” and “intriguing,” but neither explains why the article is worthwhile. Instead, saying the recipient ought to find the article “eye-opening” or “unusually balanced” expresses what we really want to say.

Many of us play music in the background while we work. When we edit, imagining “Precision!” playing for a moment helps get us in the right frame of mind to polish our writing.

In addition to presenting workshops on writing in the workplace, Norm Friedman is a writer, editor, and writing coach. His 100+ Instant Writing Tips is a brief “non-textbook” to help individuals overcome common writing errors and write with more finesse and impact. Learn more at http://www.normfriedman.com/index.shtml.

Picture Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof singing “Tradition,” but with different lyrics. The song is now called “Precision,” and it’s his advice on writing in the workplace. (Maybe Tevye even dreams of writing ad copy – “If I Were a Pitch Man.”)

Last week, we covered a few words that often do not communicate with sufficient precision. I picked on “incredible” and “awesome” because – while they are compelling adjectives – they do not specify why something or someone is outstanding. “Downhill” and “peruse” can be ambiguous. “ASAP” fails to specify if we mean in the next five minutes or by the end of the day. And I noted that dollar figures, such as salaries, might not mean much without a context.

So let’s reinforce this topic with a few more words and situations that should sound alarms. How might you alter these examples to achieve greater precision?

1. Cathy made some excellent contributions at the meeting except for an inappropriate comment toward the end.

2. I’d like to talk with you about the launch event to ensure a positive outcome.

3. In addition to serving in three health-related internships during his four years, Eric graduated with a 3.6 GPA.

The hit list

1. “Inappropriate” is a handy word to use with children to acquaint them with proper behavior in a restaurant or at a family gathering, but it can be a lazy word in workplace writing or discussion. How was Cathy’s comment inappropriate? It veered away from the main point? It betrayed a confidence? It was politically incorrect or off-color? It was potentially divisive?

2. As noted in other posts, the words “positive” and “negative” often lure us into redundancies (“negative downturn”) or signal that we have an opportunity to dress up our language. For example, a “positive quality” might be termed an “asset”; a “negative result,” a “setback.” Here, however, the point is what do we mean by a “positive outcome” for the launch? Outstanding attendance? A smooth program? Broad media coverage?

3. Ah, statistics again. Handling them with care helps put our writing a cut above. In this instance, how impressive is a 3.6 average in an era of grade inflation? If possible, expressing the GPA comparatively enhances precision: “… graduated in the top 20 percent of his class.” Now that’s impressive.

Postscript

I’ve talked about “setting alarms” before, in connection to rooting out common errors. But it also behooves us to infuse our alarm system with words and situations that often rob us of precision.

In addition to presenting workshops on writing in the workplace, Norm Friedman is a writer, editor, and writing coach. His 100+ Instant Writing Tips is a brief “non-textbook” to help individuals overcome common writing errors and write with more finesse and impact. Learn more at http://www.normfriedman.com/index.shtml.

Clearly, clarity is paramount in writing effectiveness. But even if we understand that and commit to it, we’re bound to send fuzzy messages from time to time.

The antidote? Allocating ample time to organizing the message is crucial, but it also helps to set mental alarms on words, phrases, and subjects that are vulnerable to misunderstanding.

Read my mind

See if you can guess what I believe is imprecise in each of the following sentences. To do this, imagine each sentence as part of an email exchange and assume that any ambiguity is not cleared up in an adjacent sentence.

Word search

1. You ought to hire Beth before you choose your paint colors because she is awesome.

2. After the speaker got a nice laugh on her opening story, it was downhill from there.

3. We had incredible weather almost every day of our trip.

4. Please give me a quick summary of Barney’s employment record ASAP.

5. I perused your proposal and have a few questions.

6. In 1965 the starting teacher salary here was $5,600.

Six alarms

1. You might object to awesome because of its overuse – or love it for its energy – but I have a different perspective. If Beth is awesome, is she artistic, deeply experienced, personable, highly responsible, extremely affordable? What? Sometimes “awesome” leaves the reader wondering why we’re so enthusiastic.

2. Ordinarily, the use of downhill is clear because of context, but watch out. In the example above we might mean the rest of the presentation went “down the tubes” or for the rest of the way the speaker was coasting. She had the audience in her hands.

3. Incredible weather? How so? Glorious? Gloomy? Unseasonably warm? Tell us.

4. Hmm. ASAP. Get it to you by the end of the day? Drop everything and do it immediately? (The other issue with “ASAP,” of course – having nothing to do with clarity – is that it can sound demanding. And tone is right up there with clarity in importance.)

5. Peruse is commonly used to mean “scan,” but the dictionary tells us the preferred meaning is the opposite: to read carefully or examine. So unless we know our reader uses “peruse” the way we do, we should choose a different word.

6. Income ambiguity, like a $5,600 salary without any context, occurs in news stories with surprising regularity. How does it help me to know what a starting teacher made 50 years ago if that isn’t translated into 2015 dollars? Similarly, we often read that a certain kind of worker in another country makes just $x a day. So we get the writer’s point – that the country is poor – but knowing the cost of a pair of shoes or loaf of bread there would enhance our grasp of conditions.

As maintained in other posts, editing our writing is essential, and it really helps to do so as if we were the reader. That role-playing serves us well in catching lack of clarity.

In addition to presenting workshops on writing in the workplace, Norm Friedman is a writer, editor, and writing coach. His 100+ Instant Writing Tips is a brief “non-textbook” to help individuals overcome common writing errors and write with more finesse and impact. Learn more at http://www.normfriedman.com/index.shtml.

Are editing and proofing different? I think so. I see editing as sharpening our content through means such as reorganizing, elaborating, cutting, and rephrasing. I see proofing as rooting out errors in usage, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and facts. And although these two tasks are quite different, most of us perform them simultaneously.

Many of my posts have spotlighted common writing errors we would hope to catch while proofing, but I haven’t said a lot about editing – and there’s a reason for that. Proofing is more tangible, right? We realize we should have written “is” instead of “are” and that we omitted a comma, and now we move on to the next paragraph.

But editing isn’t about right or wrong. It’s about goals like clarity and style and impact. And to meet those goals it helps to think about our editing approach – about steps we can take to edit our work more effectively.

Eavesdropping on one of my workshops

A few days ago I devoted the concluding part of a writing program to editing tips. Here are several of the editing steps I recommended – with more coming next week.

Be the reader. Identifying with the reader is a cornerstone of successful writing and editing. As we review our document, we need to drop our agenda, our baggage, and our need to impress the reader with extensive background or dazzling style. The more we can truly “be the reader,” the better our decisions about adding, subtracting, and revising.

Devote particular scrutiny to the opening. Does our reader know right away why we’re writing? Do the initial sentences of an idea we’re proposing entice the recipient to keep reading? When our most important point is buried in the third paragraph, we need to reorganize the message.

Emphasize solutions and opportunities. Sure, sometimes the point of our email, letter, or report is to illuminate a problem, but we should try to accentuate the positive. Belaboring bad news can mean our message won’t be well read. Suggesting solutions makes our writing more inviting while demonstrating our ingenuity and helpfulness.

Assess the tone. We need to make sure we’re not coming across as too formal, chummy, or flip. Editing gives us another chance to make sure we won’t distract the reader with inappropriate tone – especially one that is condescending or emotional.

Prefer specifics. The editing stage gives us an opportunity to make copy more compelling or informative by eliminating generalities. This could be as simple as getting rid of “a while ago” and substituting “last March” or using an apt detail, such as changing “the program was highly successful” to “the program drew 30 more participants this year.”

In addition to presenting workshops on writing in the workplace, Norm Friedman is a writer, editor, and writing coach. His 100+ Instant Writing Tips is a brief “non-textbook” to help individuals overcome common writing errors and write with more finesse and impact. Learn more at http://www.normfriedman.com/index.shtml.