Post-it Notes
Post-it Notes represent the perfect low-tech, high-value tool for capturing a flash of insight, a new take on your subject, a good word or phrase or a metaphor you don’t want to forget. Many writers keep a packet of the mid-sized ones stashed in purse or pocket.
Some writers use Post-it Notes to develop the entire skeleton for a piece of writing, a variation on the cut-and-paste method and a much more flexible approach than a linear outline. This method works especially well for visual and tactile learners, allowing them to arrange and rearrange the notes physically, opening up new spaces to add new ideas and insights.
Use the smaller sizes to stick notes to yourself in the margins while reviewing source materials or drafts of your work. This technique works well for editing, too, especially when two or more people will review the same hard copy. Each reviewer can use a different color of Post-it Note.
Lists
Make lists as informal reminders of information or ideas you want a piece of writing to include. Unlike outlines, lists don't mandate a linear order, but simply capture a group of related ideas or a string of points you want to remember. Consider giving your list a title: “Don’t forget these.” “What readers need to know.” “Qualitative outcomes.”
Keep your lists informal so they don’t turn into outlines. Write them on old envelopes, napkins, Post-it Notes, within a computer file labeled “project dump.”
Cut-and-paste
Visual learners usually like some version of the cut-and-paste method of organizing a writing project.
Simply print off or lay out your freewriting pages cut them into segments and begin arranging on a table or floor, like a jigsaw puzzle. (You may want to carve out a private workspace for your organizing efforts other people won’t disturb your work.) Eliminate and rewrite parts that don’t work. Move your cuttings around to accommodate fresh material.
Like branching, the cut-and-paste technique allows you to see your ideas laid out in a single plane, creating less anxiety if you decide to add new material, write a new lead, or give new emphasis to a theme that seemed unimportant when you first began to write.
“Proofing,” the final step in editing a piece of writing for publication, involves the kind of focused attention that will enable you to find the missing period, the wrong homonym (too instead of to; red when you meant read), or the misspelled word (hell instead of heel) that your spell-checker recognizes as a word and doesn’t correct.
Careful proofreading spares you the embarrassment of announcing in your grant application (as a friend of mine once did) that you “plan a statewide program of pubic education,” or missing a dangling modifier, such as this one in an article on emergency contraception that appeared in yesterday’s Concord Monitor: "To work, a woman must take it within 72 hours..."
One good strategy for getting this important job done right: Ask two sharp readers with a taste for detail to check your work. If possible, pick one who knows a lot about your topic and another who knows little about it. Between them, they'll find the small errors your own eye glides right over.
If you have no choice but to proof your own work, try reading your text out loud and backwards. Reading backwards breaks the neurological feedback loop that gets switched on by familiar sequences of words and meanings, enabling your eye to spot more errors. Reading aloud brings your ears, as well as your eyes, to the task.
A smidgen of punctuation can make a big difference in meaning.
This hilarious headline: Squad helps dog bite victim makes sense if you add a hyphen: Squad helps dog-bite victim.
Use hyphens to improve clarity when you use two or more words in sequence to modify a noun: motorcycle-crash survivor, three-year-old sibling, small-business owners, bare-armed performer .
For more information about when to use a hyphen, visit this page at Purdue's online writing lab.
Stuck again! Words won’t come, or those that do feel forced, wooden and awkward. You’ve lost interest in your article. You feel panicky because your deadline looms. You need suggestions for coping:
• Stop trying. Take a break and do something different — for five minutes, an hour, a day or two—whatever you can manage.
• Move your bones. Take a walk, run around the parking lot, jump rope, go to the gym, ride your bike. Even if you’re on a tight deadline, try to get away from your desk for a few minutes. Writing bogs down when the mind starts floundering around in abstractions. Physical activity grounds you, keeps you focused in the present, and fosters a return to concrete words and images.
• Skip over the part where you got stuck and move on to another section of your work. Stop thinking of writing as a linear process. You can knock off or come in at any point along the way.
• Without referring to your text or notes, write the subject of your stuck point in the center of a page and do a branching exercise around it. The nonlinear aspect of branching may put you in touch with fresh ideas and new avenues of approach to that section of your writing project that has you stuck.
• Pick the stickiest, muddiest aspect of your topic and freewrite about it. If you can’t bear working on your topic, freewrite about anything at all. Keep your pencil moving for at least 10 minutes.
• Talk it out. Hold a conversation about your topic, alone or with somebody else. Speaking out loud helps break through the abstractions that bog down writing.
• Whenever you stop writing, stop in mid-sentence. Having to start off by completing that thought may give you the psychological push you’ll need to get moving again.
• Give yourself permission to trash what you’ve written and start from scratch. Your first thoughts and ideas about the project may have gone stale. Begin with branching and freewriting to see what fresh observations emerge.
• Just before falling asleep at night, tell yourself to wake up knowing how to start or get back into the writing project at hand.
If you find yourself procrastinating:
• Create a routine for writing. Comfortable clothes, cup of favorite tea, same time of day, same location. Think of it as spiritual discipline.
• Alternatively, move out of your rut. If you have the option, take your pen and notebook or your laptop to a café, a riverbank. Buy a funky pen and dub it your magic writing wand.
• Write out your resistance. Begin with: “I don’t want to do this writing project because,” or “I can’t do it, because…” Keep complaining for five minutes. Read what you’ve written out loud. Talk back to yourself as if you were a trusted friend offering advice and counsel.
• Join forces with a buddy. The buddy system works well for quitting smoking and maintaining an exercise program. Why not use it to help you keep faith with your writing? Team up with a friend or co-worker who also faces writing deadlines. Make a pact to meet in the office conference room, the town library, or a local cafe at regular intervals to write or review and edit one another’s work.
• Just do it. Sometimes the old nose-to-the-grindstone method works best. Make a pact with yourself that you will freewrite for, say, 15 minutes on your topic twice a day for five days. If you get a good flow going, keep it up longer. But pick up the pencil or sit down to the keyboard for both sessions without fail. Freewrite without concern for the quality of your work.
You’ve branched your topic, produced pages of freewriting, reviewed and revised. You’ve characterized your likely readers and recast your information to meet their needs. You’ve cut some sections and added new ones to reflect your own growing perspective on your topic. You’ve put most of your verbs in the active voice, replaced abstract nouns with concrete ones and your weak verbs with strong action verbs. You’ve cut the flabby words and unnecessary phrases.
You still have reams of raw, unordered text. Your deadline looms. What next? How do you get from here to your finished product?
• Consider making an outline. By now, you'll have a good sense of how you want to arrange your ideas. The outline that often stifles rough drafts can help you order the linear flow of your final draft.
• You might also create a chart on a big sheet of paper. In order of importance, list the main and supporting points your final product should or must include. This will help you develop the flow of your text and tell you what material to condense or leave out if your narrative runs over your mandatory space limit.
• Some writers like to cut and physically rearrange sections of their drafts in logical sequence on a floor or work table. If you compose on a word processor, you can work simultaneously in two word processor files, highlighting and cutting sections of your draft and pasting them into the second file in their new order, to form a final draft. When you close out your original, don’t save the changes. This will preserve your draft in case you want to refer back to it.
• Don’t forget to keep editing. Cut the unnecessary words. Replace weak words with stronger ones. Cut some more. Keep scrutinizing your final draft until the moment you hit send or print and turn your manuscript over to an editor.
Think of text as graphic elements on the page. Writers typically don’t have much say in the design and format of the publications in which their work appears, but they do control the shapes and patterns created by their flow of their words.
A reader's eye scans the page and receives many messages before the words begin to register their intended (or unintended) meanings. A dense block of long words, long sentences and long paragraphs intimidates the eye and paralyzes the mind.
White space creates a restful, inviting visual environment. It helps determine the pace and rhythm of your work. Create white space mindfully as you revise and edit.
Offer generous page margins. Keep most of your words, sentences and paragraphs short. Rather than indenting paragraphs in your document, keep your text flush left and leave vertical extra space between your paragraphs. (Exceptions: adacemic or journal style guides that specify indented paragraphs.)
Two cautions:
Don’t leave too much white space. Readers may interpret too much emptiness as a sign you don’t have much to say.Vary the lengths of words, sentences and paragraphs to avoid a choppy, childish style most readers find annoying.
Unfortunately, the practice of encouraging young people to write in counterproductive ways is reinforced in undergrad schools, and sigh, especially in grad schools….Over time, even people with good training can lose their “ear” for clear writing. My colleagues did a study of writers working for the Internal Revenue Service in which they found that the longer the person had worked there, the more oblivious they were to the needs of a lay reader. Upon reading a sentence with up to ten complex conditionals (e.g., if .... then...) the writer would say “that sounds good to me.”
Karen Schriver
Rewriting and revising encompass the back-and-forth processes of reading your draft material, selecting the strongest parts, reworking those that seem muddy or weak, and adding new material to fill any gaps you find.
The collection of processes called editing hone and refine your writing so your words connect as directly as possible with your reader’s mind.
No matter what your topic or preferred draft-writing technique, you can probably improve your final product by following these suggestions as you reread and revise your drafts:
• As you may have done when composing, imagine conversing with a real person. Try to anticipate the person’s questions, her need for information and clarification. Try to see your own work from alternate perspectives.
• Occasionally read aloud what you’ve written. Remember, humans come wired for the sounds and rhythms of speech. Recast your writing to sound more like natural speech. Always tell a story.
• Use active verbs. With active verbs, the subject of the sentence or clause performs an action. With passive verb constructions, the subject gets acted upon. Active verbs energize your sentence and keep it moving forward, assign responsibility for the action of the sentence, and express meaning more directly in fewer words than passive constructions.
• Use everyday, 5-cent words. Readers must translate uncommon words through a more common word to capture the meaning. A text full of unfamiliar words can make the reading unbearably slow. Great writers occasionally spike their writing with unfamiliar or technical words, especially those that carry precise meanings. When you want to use a 50-cent word for punch, or because you must use it for technical accuracy, try to make its meaning evident through context or a brief definition. Set unfamiliar words in clean, uncomplicated sentences.
• Cut every word that doesn’t perform useful work in your sentence. Experienced editors suggest that most inexperienced writers can cut half the words from their first draft, greatly improving its punch and clarity without sacrificing meaning.
• Make your writing concrete and specific. Choose nouns that refer to specific people, places or things, rather than abstract concepts. Whenever possible, tie words to your reader’s direct experience with specific references to familiar events, places, things or sensations. Choose strong verbs that convey precise meanings that allow you to avoid unnecessary adverbs. Try to avoid forms of the verb to be and the many verbs we often use as substitutes for it (e.g., to exist, to remain).
• Put people in. Make sure your writing reads as if a real (smart, thoughtful, insightful) person wrote it for real, flesh-and-blood readers. Use personal pronouns: we, you, him, her and even I, unless the conventions of your format forbid them. Use active verbs that assign accountability for the action of the sentence. Use direct quotes from real people wherever possible. If the back-and-forth dialogue of a Q & A suits your format, consider using it:
Peg: So, Dr. Schlumpfnagel, can you boil down the hygiene hypothesis into advice for parents of young children.Schlumpfnagel: It comes down to this: Let ‘em play in the dirt and pick their noses. Then wash ‘em up with plain soap and warm water—forget the antibacterial wipes and soaps. Oh, and don’t freak out if you find your child sharing her lunch with the family dog.
Love, honor and cherish your readers. These folks help justify your professional existence, approve or reject your grant proposal, give you the promotion, or decide whether (or not) to publish your work.
A lot of writers believe they've “written” once they’ve disgorged what they know about a topic onto the page. Maybe so, but what have they communicated? If nobody wants to read it, the piece hasn’t communicated much at all.
Unlike your parents, teachers, professors, and students, your prospective real-world readers don’t have to read your stuff. Your skill with words must draw them in and compel them to keep reading instead of moving on to another of the thousand obligations, distractions, irritations, and entertainments that beckons.
At some point early in a writing project spend some time thinking about your intended readers. Consider their range of ages and experience, gender, cultural background(s), level of knowledge and interest about your subject. Ask a colleague who knows little about your topic what it would take to stimulate and hold his interest. Ask another colleague what you’d have to include to make sure she understood your topic.
The more clearly you visualize your intended readers, the easier you'll find the words and images that will connect most directly to them. When you sit down to write, imagine one of your readers sitting across from you at the kitchen table. Speak with her as you write. Imagine what she'd say, the ways her perspective might differ from your own, the questions she might ask. Think of your writing as a conversation, not a broadcast.
Freewriting, a good way to get words from your mind onto paper, follows a single rule: When writing, write.
Pick up a pen or sit down at the keyboard and just get the words out. Put aside your notes. Don’t follow an outline. Don’t stop. Don’t think. Don’t make corrections or rearrange words. Don’t worry about whether what you write makes sense—give yourself permission to write garbage.
Rapid freewriting keeps your internal censors from strangling the flow of fresh thoughts and ideas. Freewriting your drafts produces lots of material from which you keep the strongest sections and throw out or revise the rest.
You can return to freewriting at any point in the writing process to refocus any aspect of your work. Many writers use freewriting to escape writer’s block, plan complex projects and help solve life problems.
Here, professional writer-teachers describe the benefits of freewriting:
“Remember the key to writing fluently is to separate writing from editing. Rapidwriting—letting the words spill out without stopping to critique or correct or rearrange—is one dependable way to keep the two functions apart.” Henriette Klauser
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“Put your notes away before you begin [to write]. What you remember is probably what should be remembered; what you forget is probably what should be forgotten...What is important is to achieve a draft which allows the writing to flow.” Donald Murray
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“Keep the hand moving…If you keep your creator hand moving, the editor can’t catch up with it and lock it….Lose control…Don’t worry if it’s correct, polite, appropriate. Don’t worry about punctuation, grammar….Be Specific. Not car, but Cadillac. Not fruit, but apple….Don’t think. We usually live in the realm of second or third thoughts, thoughts on thoughts, than in the realm of first thoughts, the real way we flash on something. Stay with the first flash. Writing practice will help you contact first thoughts…Go for the jugular. If something scary comes up, go for it. That’s where the energy is. Otherwise…it will probably be abstract, bland writing because you’re avoiding the truth. Hemingway said, 'Write hard and clear about what hurts.' Don’t avoid it….It’s better to figure out what you want to say in the actual act of writing. Writing is the act of discovery. If I knew everything ahead of time, why bother writing?” Natalie Goldberg
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“Control, coherence and knowing your mind are not what you start out with but what you end up with. Think of writing then not as a way to transmit a message but as a way to grow and cook a message. Writing is a way to end up thinking something you couldn’t have started out thinking. Writing is… a transaction with words whereby you free yourself from what you presently think, feel, and perceive….
“What looks inefficient – a rambling process with lots of writing and lots of throwing away – is really efficient since it’s the best way you can work up to what you really want to say and how to say it….
"Another reason for starting writing and keeping writing: If you stop too much and worry and correct and edit, you’ll invest yourself too much in these words on the page. You’ll care too much about them; you’ll make some phrases you really love; you won’t be able to throw them away….
“In freewriting exercises, you should not stop, go back, correct, or reflect. In a sense this means to ‘be careless.’ But there is a different kind of carelessness: not giving full attention, focus, or energy. Freewriting helps you pour more attention, focus, and energy into what you write.” Peter Elbow
Many…if not most, writing teachers insist that you prepare an outline before you write. Since the majority of them mean a linear outline, you are doomed before you start. The very problems that plague you in getting words on paper will impede the fluency of your ideas as you outline.
Henriette Klauser, Writing on Both Sides of the Brain: Breakthrough Techniques for People who Write
The standard outline has many disadvantages as a technique for organizing the flow of thoughts and ideas at the front end of a writing project. Chief among them: its linear format commits you to a sequential progression of ideas that becomes almost impossible to change if you come across important new material or gain a fresh perspective on your topic during the writing process.
A technique called “branching,” which you may know as concept mapping, mind mapping, or clustering, offers a non-linear alternative to outlining as a method for developing and organizing material for writing. Long used for brainstorming, the technique also works well for taking notes, solving problems, planning a speech, harvesting ideas for a collaborative project, breaking through writer’s block and re-framing a piece of writing when your perspective shifts during the writing process.
To branch, simply write your topic or title (or the name of a section of the piece) in the center of a sheet of unlined paper. Then, as rapidly as possible, without referring to your notes or other source materials, connect as many ideas, aspects, concepts, and images as possible on “branches” that stream out from your central topic.
Use this as your master sheet; develop it further as you reread your references and discover new material along the way. Or start fresh at any point in the writing process. Use branching to reframe your topic when your initial thinking about your topic changes.
For complex writing projects, try creating one overall branching exercise, moving on to separate branching exercises for each major section of the project.
This technique works well because it doesn’t order ideas in linear or hierarchical fashion but puts everything on a single plane, connecting all ideas to the center. The single-page layout encourages your mind to make connections it might not otherwise notice and to notice gaps you may need to plug with further research.
Instead of the rigid control and linear progression implicit in the outline, branching develops ideas in abundance and maintains an open relationship among them until the editing process, when you must finally commit to a linear order. Says Henriette Klauser:
[Branching]…begins at the middle, goes back to the start and on to the end, and then moves back to the middle again. The process physically begins in the middle of the page, then juts out ideas in outrageous random fashion into a pattern that is not apparent until the exercise is done. The organization of the ideas comes from internal logic; it grows out of the ideas themselves. Rather than being imposed from the outside…it allows the idea to dictate the form, instead of forcing the form to dictate the idea.
Branching can feel chaotic at first to writers long accustomed to working from an outline. If you can’t imagine writing without one, try branching your topic before developing your outline.
Branching can improve your focus and clarify muddy thinking whenever you feel stuck at some point in the writing process. Feel free to interrupt your research, organization or writing at any point along the way, write a few words in the center of a piece of paper describing the topic that’s bogging you down, focus and spend ten minutes branching out whatever comes to mind about the topic.
The words “utilize” and “utilization” appear much too often in Extension publications. In nearly every instance, the plainer “use” makes a better, less pretentious choice.
We utilize quantitative methods whenever possible.
We use quantitative methods whenever possible.
We’ve increased our utilization of on-demand computer publishing.
We’ve increased our use of on-demand computer publishing.
“Utilize” does have its place, in the narrowest sense of “to turn to profitable use.” For example, writing “The car mechanic couldn’t use the computerized exhaust analysis equipment,” could imply that the mechanic hadn’t figured out how to use the new equipment, whereas, “The mechanic couldn’t utilize the computerized exhaust analysis equipment,” implies that the mechanic couldn’t make practical/profitable use of the new equipment, perhaps because of a software glitch or an equipment malfunction.
Speaking of “use,” it puts me off to read or hear or read it referring to people. To my ear, “using" people implies “taking advantage of” them.
Instead of saying or writing “We’ll use Carol for the clerical work,” you could write “We’ll move Carol from reception to data entry.” Rather than “They use an engineer from Cornell to review the data,” consider revising to “They hire an engineer from Cornell review the data.”
One day this week, two of you told me you never know whether to write it’s or its. A lot of folks have this problem.
How can you decide quickly? Ask yourself if you could replace the word with the verb phrase it is. If you answer yes, use it’s, the contraction for it is.
It’s (it is) raining.
It’s (it is) too early to tell.
It’s (it is) not in our best interest.
If you answer no, use its, an adjective indicating possession.
The research team checked its data.
The cat scratched its ear.
The tree sheds its leaves in October
The confusion arises because we ordinarily add 's to nouns to indicate possession: the team's data, the cat's ear, the tree's leaves.
After the Normans invaded England, Latin words became preferred by the country's royalty, clergy and scholars. Latin words were, and still are, more formal and indirect than their dirt cheap Anglo-Saxon equivalents. On the other hand, Anglo-Saxon, the honest language of peasants, packs a wallop. In Anglo-Saxon, a man who drinks to excess is not bibulous, but a drunk, a man who steals is not a perpetrator, but a thief.... Direct language is powerful language. Then comes Greek, the language of science. Science is nice. Science is good. But using complicated scientific words can make copy dense and difficult to understand. Moreover, it can make it sound pretentious. Of course you cannot -- and should not -- drop all words of Latin or Greek derivation from your work. Many times they will be perfect. But first, try to think of a down-home Anglo-Saxon substitute.from Writing Tight
In English, we generally use small words to describe the biggest, most important things. Think of birth, growth, death, love, hate, wound, heal, use, make, do, help, try, know, think, feel, win, lose, eat, home, food, war, peace. These short, everyday words, almost all of them of Anglo-Saxon origin, offer many advantages to writers.
For starters, everybody knows their meaning. They “pack a wallop,” because they communicate directly and immediately. Big, important-sounding “professional” words that derive from Latin, French or Greek rarely pack the punch of these little words of everyday speech, because they have their origins in languages elite groups used to distance themselves from the daily discourse of ordinary people.
Research shows that readers typically form an opinion of the writer and the institution behind him or her. You probably don’t want readers thinking of you as pompous and self-important.
The same research shows that readers often form opinions of themselves as they read. When wrestling with tortured academic prose or hard-to-follow instructions, readers may think of themselves as too stupid or undereducated to understand the topic. (Haven’t you had this experience yourself? Next time, blame the writer.)
Finally, frequent use of “big” words slows down the forward momentum of the reading process. When confronted with a big word, even one we know, our brains typically translate the word back through a more common word we use in everyday speech. Sometimes readers have to return to the beginning of the sentence or paragraph to regain the flow of meaning. Since each little translation or backtrack forces a brief pause, a document full of big words bogs down the forward momentum of the reading process. Even sophisticated readers may get tired from wrestling with such prose and simply quit reading.
Politicians, administrators, bureaucrats, and academics may use third-degree words deliberately to evade or confuse. Some writers choose pompous words to puff up their writing when they don’t have much to say, don’t understand the topic very well, or want avoid the appearance of taking a stand on a controversial topic.
Revising your written drafts to replace longer, “professional” words with more common, everyday words doesn’t mean never using a big, fat, juicy word that delivers a precise meaning. It also doesn’t mean lowering the intellectual level of your writing or reducing the complexity of your topic.
Just think of it as writing that people might actually read and enjoy.
Some of you use the word “notorious” as a synonym for “famous” or “well known.” While it does mean "distinguished, notable, remarkable, conspicuous, celebrated, famous, or renowned," notorious also carries a connotation of "unfavorable, crooked, or unscrupulous."
So you might write of a notorious jewel thief, a company notorious for its persistent failure to comply with air quality permits, or a scientist who gained notoriety for altering the results of his research to produce an outcome more favorable to his funders.
But you probably wouldn’t want to write, “Notorious Extension water resources specialist, Al G. Bloom, received the 2005 Warriors for Water Award for his work on the Squam Lakes Project.”
Do you sometimes write sentences like these: “The fact of the matter is that we don’t have effective remedies for that problem.” “The fact that he lied on his resume didn’t enter into our decision.” “The truth of the matter is you can’t grow those cultivars in New Hampshire.”
If you have a fact (a truth, a reality) to introduce, just bring it on: “We don’t have effective remedies for that problem.” “His dishonesty didn’t affect our decision.” “You can’t grow those cultivars in New Hampshire.” Fewer words, greater clarity.
No matter how compelling the plea, how hilarious the jokes, or how time-sensitive an email chain letter seems, resist the urge to pass it along.
Some chain mail delivers malicious code that can wreak havoc with your computer and infect the computers of everyone on your mailing list.
Even clean email may:
Since most chain mail you receive doesn’t bear much, if any, relationship to your work, passing it along (with your name and signature intact) might come back to bite you if an obnoxious message ends up in the wrong inbox.
If you receive chain mail from a colleague, hit the Reply button and ask him or her not to send chain mail, citing the above reasons.
Learn more about chain email and online hoaxes.
“I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short,” wrote French philosopher Blaise Pascal.
“Writing tight” typically takes longer and feels more difficult than having a good ramble, especially when you have a complex topic you know and care a lot about. It takes time to get it right.
Give yourself a break when someone asks you to write a “brief” something-or-other. Only people who don’t write much, or well, think writing less also takes less time. For starters, the research and information collection take just as long, sometimes longer. You have to know a lot about a topic to summarize it briefly and intelligently.
One tip for making writing tight easier: Don’t begin writing until you’ve narrowed your topic to the point where you can summarize it in a single sentence or two.
Calling it assistance rather than help doesn’t make the quality of the help any more impressive, important or professional. Help usually works better, even in scientific and technical documents, because it sounds more like what people want (and get) when they need it.
We rarely hear people say, “Do you have time to assist me in loading my car?” or “Thanks for your assistance.” The best writers write for the ear.
Can you call a piece of writing “unbiased and objective”?
Consider that every time you speak or write, you make a subjective decision to choose one set of words instead of another, based on your skill with language, your cultural background, your experience, your knowledge of the topic, your beliefs, values and emotions, the circumstances that gave rise to your words, what you want listeners or readers to take from your words, and a host of other factors.
Every time you, the listener or reader, take in someone else’s words, the words pass though similar invisible filters before they translate into meaning.
These subjective filters at each end of the communication process make it possible for one piece of writing to influence different readers in dramatically different ways. They help explain why one set of words can fall dead on the ear or eye, while another set of words presenting the same idea rouses people to act.
Balanced, thoughtful, mindful, easy to understand? Perhaps.
Research-based? Maybe.
But “objective and unbiased”? Probably not.
Most writers find it difficult to uncover the assumptions hidden in their writing. Yet unacknowledged assumptions often come through clearly to readers who see the topic from a different point of view.
The paragraph below introduces an Ohio State Extension fact sheet entitled Gardening with the Elderly. Can you identify some assumptions hidden in what the writer presents as objective and factual prose? What clues reveal his unacknowledged biases?
Many changes occur as a person ages. These changes impact a person's physical, emotional and cognitive abilities as well as social roles. Gardening can be used in a therapeutic way to address these issues and improve the elderly person's physical and emotional conditions, cognitive ability and social interactions. However, many of the changes involved in aging must be addressed by modifications in gardening practices, situations and tools. Changes that occur with age are listed in the following chart as well as the impacts of the changes and the gardening adaptations that can result in continued participation.
Your perspective on a topic may have become so bred in the bone you can’t get enough distance to identify your assumptions and biases on the topic at hand. It helps to ask others, especially members of your target readership, for help rooting out your own assumptions.
To examine a piece of writing (including your own) more critically, it also helps to ask questions like these of the text: