Many of you tell me you don’t have time for writing. Help is on the way!
Annoyed by barrages of email requests for papers to “fake conferences” with low standards of peer review, MIT graduate students Jeremy Stribling, Daniel Aguayo, and Maxwell Krohn developed a computer program called SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator, which randomly generates research papers “using a hand-written context-free grammar” complete with charts, graphs, citations, and reference lists.
The three submitted two randomly-generated papers to the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida. To their delight, conference organizers accepted one of the papers, entitled “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy” for presentation. Once the truth of the paper’s origins made the national news, organizers withdrew the invitation.
Sadly for us, SCIgen limits itself to computer science research topics. To generate papers on topics closer to the hearts of UNHCE administrators, educators and specialists, try the Essay Generator. Just plug in your topic du jour—nutrient management, plan of work, positive youth development, food guide pyramid—and voila! Slap on a logo, reformat as you wish, and you’re good to go with that newsletter article or op-ed piece.
Finally, for a mission statement or a pithy quotation to open or close an article, turn to the proverb generator.
When I typed “new revenue” into the proverb generator three times in rapid succession and came up with these possibilities. Take your pick.
• The female of the species is more deadly than the new revenue.
• The proof of the new revenue is in the eating.
• New revenue makes the heart grow fonder.
Many writers choose “prior to” as a classier substitute for “before.” To my ear it sounds affected. I agree with Len Levin, longtime copy editor at the Providence Journal, who spoke to a group of editors at a conference recently. “You wouldn’t say ‘posterior to’, when you mean ‘after’, would you?” he said. “Use ‘before’.”
The word “prior” does serve well as an adjective, though. A person holds prior claim to an invention. I have a prior commitment.
As for the verb “prioritize,” I think it smacks of government reports and bureaucratic memos. Ordinary people set priorities. They do things in logical order. They do first things first.
Thirty years ago, a veteran magazine editor gave me this valuable tip: “Write for the ear,” he said.
We humans come hard-wired for the sounds, rhythms, and concrete images of oral speech. By the age of three or four, most children have absorbed the complex grammar and syntax of their native language(s) and have acquired an astonishingly large vocabulary.
In contrast, we have to learn to read and write through some sort of deliberate instruction. The abstraction and cognitive complexity of alphabetic writing seem to suck the life right out of our words. Tortured and awkward, they fall to the page dead on arrival.
To put life and music back into your writing, write for the ear. From time to time during a writing project, read a couple of your paragraphs aloud. If they sound awkward or stilted, rewrite them to sound more like you talk. “Speak” what you want to say onto the page.
When I sit down to my computer to write, I often imagine myself sitting across the kitchen table talking to someone, typing out the words I’d say, imagining the other person’s responses, keeping the conversation going until I’ve finished what I planned to say.
Writing more like you speak doesn’t mean using slang or the colloquial language typical of informal conversation. Speaking has many levels of formality and sophistication; writing for the ear simply means choosing a level of speech suitable for your topic and a “tone of voice” appropriate for your readers.
Want to learn new words? Sign up to receive A Word a Day (AWAD). This free service brings a new word to your email inbox every day, defines it, and uses it in a couple of different contexts.
Click on the link toward the bottom of each day’s post and you can hear the word spoken aloud, saving you from the embarrassment of mispronouncing your newly learned word.
Each day’s AWAD post also brings a quotation containing some kernel of wit or wisdom. Today’s quote: Shadow owes its birth to light. John Gay, poet and dramatist (1685-1732)
Wordsmith even sponsors a number of lively discussion boards. Visit them if you want to catch literate folks playing with words or join the fun yourself
Warning: Don’t subscribe unless you really want this service, as the words will collect in your inbox. You can catch AWAD's word of the day anytime online.
I love this quotation, attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." Lincoln, a man of big ideas, mastered the art of communicating them in few words. The final version of his famous Gettysburg Address contains only 272 words.
Many veteran editors suggest that most writers, even those struggling to communicate big ideas, can cut half the words from a “final draft” without losing any of its meaning. Consider trying this strategy on your next piece of writing.
For a sobering glimpse of how technology can encourage us to run amok in our efforts to communicate big ideas, see Peter Norvig’s PowerPoint rendition of Lincoln’s famous speech.
If you use PowerPoint, don’t neglect Norvig’s powerful essay PowerPoint: shot with its own bullets.