Free Writing Tips

Tips that illuminate and liberate

Mirror, Mirror …

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Norm Friedman

When we look into the mirror, we see ourselves as others do, right? With that cryptic hint as your guide, find the clarity problems in the following sentences.

1. Having perused several evaluations of the latest vacuum cleaners, I think I’ve made my choice.

2. Once the speaker’s opening observation drew a huge laugh, it was downhill from there.

3. Jody began the meeting by saying she wanted to throw out a few of the suggestions she’d received for refining the marketing plan.

Just as mirrors give us the opposite image of what we look like to others, a few words and phrases in our language have meanings that contradict each other.

1. The actual meaning of “peruse” is “to read closely,” but it is commonly used as a synonym for “scan.” So did I narrow my vacuum cleaner decision by reading casually or intently?

2. “Downhill” can translate as the negative “down the tubes” or the positive “coasting.” Did the speaker falter after her strong opening or keep the audience in her hands?

3. When we “throw out” an idea, are we offering it for discussion or rejecting it before it’s had a chance to fly?

Contronyms

Words like “sanction,” which can refer to permission or a penalty, are called contronyms (also spelled “contranyms”). Fortunately, we don’t have many in our language, and when we do use them, the context often makes clear what we mean, but not always. So it behooves us to be aware of words that fall on this short list.

In addition to presenting workshops on writing in the workplace, Norm 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.

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The “Basics”

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Norm Friedman

Watch out for these common slips when using words related to “basic”:

1. I was basically on hold for more than 20 minutes until a customer service rep solved my issue. What is “basically” doing in this sentence? If we’re saying we weren’t really on hold the entire time, we might say “intermittently on hold.” If we mean we could be exaggerating, we might say “what seemed like 20 minutes.” Or maybe we should just delete “basically.” That’s often the case.

But note that “basically” does serve a purpose when we truly mean “fundamentally,” as in “I find all of Smith’s complaints basically the same.” This conveys that his complaints are a bit different, but they are variations on a theme.

2. At the beginning of the season, it seemed Coach Jones was reshuffling her lineup on a daily basis. This lack of conciseness is not serious, but we enhance our writing (and speaking) when we avoid it. We don’t need “on a daily basis” because “daily” can stand on its own (as can “weekly,” “hourly,” etc.) All we need is “… Jones was reshuffling her lineup daily.”

3. For every camping trip we create a new list of basic essentials. Did you catch the common redundancy? All we need is “basics” or “essentials.” Choose one.

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All Ears

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Norm Friedman

Our daily paper just ran two complementary pieces filled with advice for grads seeking jobs. I was gratified by the articles’ accent on “soft skills” and this statement: “Communication skills are ranked first among a job candidate’s ‘must have’ qualities, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.”

In defining soft skills, one of the articles noted the desirability of empathy. But how do we show empathy in our day-to-day writing, which for many of us is dominated by quick email exchanges?

Before addressing that, let’s establish that the dramatic times to express empathy are self-evident, and that those cheers about good news or consolations regarding bad news are generally delivered most effectively in person or on the phone. But subtler opportunities to express empathy abound, and I believe the key is simply showing we are “listening.”

Empathy examples

• Suppose a supervisor emails you about an event that was not wholly successful and asks you to come up with ideas for improvement in the future. It’s smart to offer a fresh idea right away, if you have one, and to pledge your commitment to ensuring success next time, but it’s also smart to acknowledge your supervisor’s feelings. So maybe you respond with this beginning: “Yes, I’m disappointed (or frustrated), too.” Then, having demonstrated empathy, proceed with the matter at hand.

• A different way to show empathy is organizing a message according to your reader’s priorities. Let’s say that, left to your own devices, you’d start an update on a multi-faceted project by discussing the aspect of the project that is nearly complete … but you’ve been listening! You have observed that your reader is anxious about the financial picture. Therefore, wouldn’t it be wise to use a subject line like “Still on budget” and offer budget details in your opening paragraph?

• Another skillful move in emailing is replaying a key word. Suppose a colleague, in evaluating a job candidate’s interview, has written that the “chemistry” was great. You could express your own interaction with words like “personable” or “enthusiastic” if you agree – or “flat” or “rehearsed” if you don’t – but why get inventive? Echoing the word “chemistry” in your response demonstrates that you are listening.

In my writing workshops I preach, “Be the reader.” Just “Identify with the reader” or “Think about the reader” isn’t emphatic enough for me. When we write – and edit – our job is role-playing that we are the reader. That helps us make sound decisions and show empathy.

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Quiz Time

Posted on May 23, 2016 by Norm Friedman

Correct weaknesses in each of these sentences.

1. We both went to the same high school for a period of time until Jack won a scholarship to a private school.

2. The meeting is set for 8:30 am tomorrow morning, please meet me there at 8:20.

3. Joyce and I were introduced for the first time at a party hosted by the Snyder’s.

4. Let’s try and play a trick on Jerry like the clever ones he continuously pulls on us.

It’s about time

I hope you caught my not-so-subtle hint and saw that each sentence contained a weakness related to time – but each had an additional issue. Here are the traps I set for you.

1. A) Because “period of time” is a common redundancy, we’d usually want to choose “period” or “time,” but here we need neither because “until” provides the time context. B) Watch out for the “both … same” redundancy.

So we might wind up with this: We went to the same high school until Jack won a scholarship to a private school. But if we want to name the school, we should delete “same” and use “both”: We both went to Wilson High until Jack won a scholarship to a private school.

2. A) Using both “am” and “morning” is redundant. B) The comma after “morning” is inadequate because what follows qualifies as another complete sentence. We can solve this common error by using a semicolon, starting a new sentence, or using a conjunction. Here, a conjunction works well: The meeting is set for 8:30 am tomorrow, but please meet me there at 8:20.*

3. A) We don’t need “for the first time” with “introduced.” B) The apostrophe in plurals of last names is a common error. All we need is an “s” (or an “es” if making the name plural adds a syllable, such as in “the Weisses” or “the Wertzes”). So our corrected version is this: Joyce and I were introduced at a party hosted by the Snyders.

4. A) Old-school writers reserve “continuously” for something that is ongoing, like your heartbeat or the sun’s heating of our planet. When something is intermittent, we want “continually.” (This means that companies boasting of “continuous improvement” as a core value might want to change that to “continual improvement.”) B) Watch out for “try and” where it should be “try to.” So we wind up with this: Let’s try to play a trick on Jerry like the clever ones he continually pulls on us.

*Should I go with “AM,” “am,” or “a.m.”?

I doubt that anyone would call you wrong if any of these is your preference. A few authoritative resources prefer “a.m.” because we are writing an abbreviation for “ante meridiem.” I lean toward “am” because the absence of commas seems consistent with the way we are writing in the digital age (and it’s quicker), but, of course, on occasion it could be confused with the word “am.” And there’s no confusion with “AM,” but many designers like using lowercase wherever possible.

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Getting It “Wright”

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Norm Friedman

Here’s another chance to flex your editing muscles. See what refinements you might make in these two paragraphs from an article quoting a Wright brothers authority. The publication will remain anonymous, and we’ll call the authority Smith.

Although neither Albert nor Orville Wright had a college or even a high school degree, they were relatively well educated for that time period, he said. Both attended high school during a time when most people did not, says Smith.

“So compared to the average person on the street they were relatively well educated,” he says. “They had taken the requisite classes in mathematics … and it gave them the technical skills they needed.”

My edits

In the first sentence, we don’t need all of “had a college or even a high school degree”; “had even a high school degree” will suffice. And “time period” is a common fat phrase; just “time” or “period” will do.

The second and third sentences are dripping with fat. Most of what is expressed has been established in the opening sentence. (And note that “average person on the street” is redundant. When we say “guy on the street,” we mean the average person.)

The final sentence is by far the best one, but what is “it”? That refers to “requisite classes,” which is plural, so “it” should be “they” (or “which”).

One other glitch is “said” in the first sentence and “says” in the second and third. Either is fine, but we shouldn’t wobble. We need to pick past tense or present tense for a particular piece and stick with our decision.

New & improved

Although neither Albert nor Orville Wright had even a high school degree, they were relatively well educated for their time, Smith says. Moreover, they had taken the requisite classes in mathematics, which gave them the technical skills they needed.

The edits cut the word count from 73 to 39.

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Hit Your Target

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Norm Friedman

The December 2, 2015, post focused on the relative weakness of the verb “to be” and the recommendation to look for a livelier verb in the editing process. (For example, instead of Several of us were wondering who will be the new captain, we can make that Several of us were wondering who will emerge as the new captain.)

But even when we don’t fall back on that go-to verb “to be,” we can sometimes do better. Analyze these three cases in point.

Our new, four-tiered homework policy for high school students has affected grade-point averages. The verb in this sentence is a verb phrase, “has affected.” Can we improve this? Yes. The perfectly good verb “affect” sometimes misses the target because it can be vague. Did the new policy discourage students somehow and backfire, or did it light a fire, resulting in better report cards?

Because “affect” cuts both ways, let’s say what we mean. We can use “has increased” or “has raised” if the program is working, but “has reduced” or “has lowered” if the program needs fixing.

Ever since Betty altered her speeches, she has been getting many more engagements. What kind of alteration did Betty make to heighten her popularity? Sometimes, when we read “altered” or “changed” we need the next sentence to complete the picture. But our readers are in a hurry, so why tease them? Maybe Betty shortened her speeches or integrated videos in them or found a way to enhance them with pop culture references. Then let’s say that instead of “altered.”

We can document that the increase in team meetings is impacting* production. Hmm. Are the more frequent meetings helping or hurting? If we write “is boosting production” or “is improving production,” the reader will know. And if we write “is slowing” or “is hampering,” the reader will also know.

* Note that some fussy writers (yeah, I’m one of them) almost never use “impact” as a verb because in its strictest sense it refers to an actual crash. (“The shell impacted the abandoned schoolhouse.”) But I like using it as a noun (“… made an impact on sales”), as long as there’s no ambiguity about whether sales went up or down.

In addition to presenting workshops on writing in the workplace, Norm 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.

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Play Copy Editor

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Norm Friedman

Several rough spots jumped out at me when I read Friday’s newspaper. What would you have caught as copy editor?

1. From an entertainment column: The other reason I’m fond of the jacket is because KSU was one of the places in the late 1960s and early ’70s that symbolized the anti-war movement.

If you read last week’s post, you probably caught the redundancy in “reason … because.” Also, you might have found it odd that “1960s” and “’70s” don’t match. Shouldn’t each decade be expressed the same way? So, with editing, we might end up with this: I’m also fond of the jacket because KSU was one of the places in the late ’60s and early ’70s that symbolized the anti-war movement.

2. From a movie review: Based solely on the genre and my past experience, I really should have hated “Green Room.”

Another common redundancy is “past experience.” (Haven’t you found that most of your experience occurred in the past?) In addition, “solely” works better when introducing one factor, not two. Let’s delete “solely” and “experience,” leaving us with this: Based on the genre and my past, I really should have hated “Green Room.”

3. From a different movie review: All the people in this movie are beautiful, wealthy and have gorgeous homes.

We’ve tackled this kind of clumsy construction before. The writer says three things about the characters in the movie, but the first and third are set up by verbs, and the middle one seems to be sharing the verb “are.” We can fix this lack of parallelism by giving the middle element a verb or establishing a single verb for all three:

All the people in this movie are beautiful, enjoy wealth and have gorgeous homes. OR All the people in this movie possess beauty, wealth and gorgeous homes.

Extra credit

From a sports article: The Cavaliers made themselves very difficult to guard in their four-game sweep of the Pistons, including Kevin Love taking (and making) wide-open 3s, often off of passes from LeBron James.

By now you know I get annoyed by the common error of needlessly using “of” after other prepositions, such as “off.” That’s one glitch, but it may be harder to spot that the word “including” doesn’t really work as the link between the two sections of the sentence. See what I mean? And, while we’re putting the sentence under the microscope, we might question if “very difficult” is so different from just “difficult.” See if this is better:

The Cavaliers made themselves difficult to guard in their four-game sweep of the Pistons – especially when Kevin Love was taking (and making) wide-open 3s, often off passes from LeBron James.

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Fly High

Posted on April 25, 2016 by Norm Friedman

See if this title of an online article grabs your attention.

9 Reasons Why Flying is Getting Better

Your response might be “Really?” Does the person who wrote this always fly first class? Does the writer know a secret to avoiding arrival at the airport hours before a flight? But, of course, I questioned a couple of other aspects of the title. Can you read my mind?

What jumped out at me first was the disrespect of “is.” All important words in titles should start with a capital letter, and “is” is a verb. Verbs are pretty important.

As discussed in a previous post*, the rules for capitalizing in titles are tricky, and a common error is using lowercase for short** verbs like “be,” “get,” or “aim”; short nouns like “boy” or “toy”; short pronouns like “she” or “her”; short adjectives like “big” or “old”; and short adverbs like “too” or “very.”***

Oops again

The other slip that distracted me was “reasons why,” a common redundancy. A reason tells us why, so using both words is unnecessary.

Generally, we need to watch out for the use of more than one of these three words in a single sentence: “reason,” “why,” and “because,” as in The reason why I selected Sheila is because she recently asked for more responsibility. All we need is I selected Sheila because she recently asked for more responsibility.

Incidentally, if you questioned the use of a numeral, “9,” to begin the title of the article, kudos. You are thinking the right way. But the rule is that we are not supposed to begin conventional sentences with numerals. Doing so is well accepted in titles and headlines.

The footnotes

*To learn a bit more about correctness in composing titles and to take a short quiz, go to www.normfriedman.com, click on “Blog,” and go to the post from March 11, 2015.

**What constitutes a “short” word in a title? Some style guides instruct us to give initial caps to every word of four letters or more, even if it’s just a preposition, such as “with.” Others say the threshold is a five-letter word, like “after.” So decide if your threshold is four letters or five and hold your ground.

***If my punctuation in this paragraph seemed inconsistent, remember the illogical but ironclad rule: Quotation marks always go outside commas and periods, but always inside semicolons.

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Alumni Reunion

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Norm Friedman

If you took Latin, maybe you get cranky, too, because you can’t go on a trip anywhere and chat in Latin – unless it’s to your old Latin teacher’s house. But what really perturbs me is pulling up at a light behind a car (that could have gone through on yellow) with one of those license plate holders saying something like “QZU Alumni.”

Oh, really? Well, I see just one person in the car ahead of me, and “alumni” is plural. So what is this license plate holder saying? That QZU alumni are … mainly clueless Spanish and French speakers?

But you’re right. I shouldn’t get all huffy with the driver. It’s the folks in the school’s alumni office who deserve the blame. All they need to do is order some holders that say “OSU Alum.” That shorthand works for a gal (an alumna) and a guy (an alumnus), and it’s singular.

For the record, then, here’s the rundown:
Alumna – female graduate.
Alumnus – male graduate.
Alumnae – female graduates.
Alumni – male graduates or male and female graduates.
Alum – convenient shorthand for any grad regardless of gender.

So is “criteria” singular?

Although “alumna” is singular, “criteria” (coming from Greek, not Latin) is plural. The common error is using “criteria” when we want the singular, “criterion.” Note the difference:
Let’s rank the potential contractors on these five criteria.
If the only criterion were cost, the choice would clearly be Hit-or-Miss Plumbing.

(Treat “phenomena” and “phenomenon” the same way.)
Several of these weather phenomena can be traced to El Niño.
What is the most dramatic weather phenomenon resulting from El Niño?

A PS on pronunciation

Pronouncing “alumna” and “alumnus” is easy, but what about the plurals? You had to ask. The last syllable in “alumnae” is pronounced “nigh” in Latin class, but just about anywhere else it’s anglicized to “knee.” And “alumni” is the opposite: “knee” in Latin class but “nigh” outside class. Now you can talk about your alumni weekend with confidence.

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In the Spotlight

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Norm Friedman

The word “just” has been highlighted this past year as a prime illustration of the female tendency to apologize too much in written and oral communications. (“I’m just wondering if you’ve had time to review my idea.”) According to some workplace communications experts, women tend to be more empathetic than men, and that trait often shows up in messages that overuse words like “just,” “I think,” and “sorry” to avoid ruffling any feelings.

In fact, in an article for Slate, writer Christina Cauterucci noted, “The Just Not Sorry extension, which is downloadable at the Chrome app store, underlines self-demeaning phrases like ‘I’m no expert’ and qualifying words like ‘actually’ in red” (as if they’re spelling errors).

Armed with this insight – whether you’re a gal or a guy – what catches your attention in the following paragraph?

I’m somewhat frustrated with Jack’s rather nonchalant attitude toward proofreading. I almost think I should probably mention this pattern to Jill. Maybe she has been a bit disappointed in Jack’s attention to detail herself.

Okay. Too easy, right? The paragraph is loaded with tentative language (“somewhat,” “rather,” “almost,” “think,” “probably,” “maybe,” “a bit”). That’s way too much waffling for three short sentences.

Sweeping generalizations

Here’s my take on tentative writing and gender differences. See if you agree.

• Words and phrases like “fairly” and “I’m guessing” are essential because we so often want to allow for shades of gray, but all of us need to watch out for overuse of tentative language.
• Many women would benefit from emulating men to write with more directness and confidence.
• Many men would benefit from emulating women to write with more courtesy and warmth.
• Women and men do themselves a favor when they write with conviction.
• When we edit documents of any importance, we should pay attention to each use of qualifying language and determine whether we want to express ourselves more assertively.