Feeling intimidated by a looming writing project? Try imagining a reader as you sit down to write.
Imagine a back-and-forth conversation between you and someone who knows little or nothing about your topic.
Imagine what might make this person curious, “hooked” on what you have to say. Imagine what he or she might need to know as background and context before you can broach the topic at hand. Imagine what your reader might already know about some dimension of your topic. Imagine what questions the reader might ask.
Then, as you begin to write, “talk” onto the page. No matter what format you’ve chosen, put yourself in the role of a reader and ask questions. Taking the role of writer, pose questions. Ask your reader to reflect from his or her own experience.
Practiced regularly, "reader imagination" exercises can improve your writing immeasurably. At the very least, it will help you appreciate the writing process as a two-way (or even multi-directional) conversation between and among human beings, rather than simply disgorging what you think you know.
The next step, of course, involves getting real readers engaged with and responding to your drafts early and often. I’ll blog more about readers next week.
Add the quaint ahold to your list of words that shouldn’t appear in writing except as colloquialisms or direct quotations. I see it a lot in print these days: She got ahold of him on the phone. Damon got ahold of the ball.
Dictionaries do list ahold as a noun meaning “hold” or “grip,” but qualify the word as characteristic of colloquial or dialectical speech.
Drop the “a” when you want to express the same meaning in writing: She got hold of him on the phone. Damon got hold of the ball.
Associate Press writer John Leicester’s account of Lance Armstrong’s seventh consecutive victory in the Tour de France bicycle race delivers this gem: “I’m finished,” Armstrong told a motorcycle-born TV reporter as he rode a victory lap of the Champs Elysees….
“Motorcycle-born” conjures a hilarious image.
Leicester’s editors should have caught this one and added an “e” to make the word "motorcycle-borne," past participle of the verb “to bear,” which means “to carry or support.”
“Born,” on the other hand, has to do with birth: e.g., Swedish-born, born in captivity, Born in the USA.
Writers get into a lot of trouble with personal pronouns, especially when talking about themselves. A few reminders:
Use "I" as the subject of a sentence: I broke my collarbone in a bicycle race last Saturday.
Use “me” as the direct or indirect object of a verb: Give it to her and me. He sent it to Martha and me.
Use “myself” only for emphasis, when you refer back to yourself: I’d rather do it myself.
A good rule of thumb: Use “myself” only in sentences containing the subject “I.”
I’ve made the same mistake myself many times.
I myself have seen the performance at least half a dozen times.
I don’t like talking about myself.
Lately, I’ve seen a lot of “alots” and “alrights” in print.
Although written English has evolved to fuse the words “together” and “ready” with “all,” creating “already” and “altogether,” correct usage still requires two words for the expressions “a lot” and “all right.”
We lost a lot of money. The flower arrangement looks all right to me.
Don’t confuse the non-word “a lot” with the real word “allot.” Allot means to “give out or distribute shares of something, to accord or assign.”
The moderator allots only three minutes to each speaker.
An article in the Arts & Entertainment section of yesterday’s Concord Monitor quotes painter Melissa Miller: “The photographs are dull. If you saw them, you wouldn’t see anything in them. But the beauty is there.”
“If you saw them, you wouldn’t see anything in them,” doesn’t make sense unless the reader understands something of the idea of scales (or levels) of meaning in language.
Here, the first “see” means simply taking in the visual image with the eye. But, “you wouldn’t see anything in them,” refers to a psychological level of seeing—appreciating, comprehending, understanding, or interpreting aspects of the image beyond the purely representational.
I use the words scale and level to describe an important property of language we might call its “verticality.”
In the example above, the first use of “see” describes a single type of seeing: what happens when the eye registers the image. The second use of the same word incorporates the sensory act of seeing, but also transcends it, by suggesting that the mind, the emotions, and/or the moral sense could become engaged in interpreting the image using a different type of “sight.” This places the second instance of “see” on a different (higher, richer, broader, denser) scale of meaning from the first.
Good writing always features strong, concrete language that delivers unambiguous literal meaning. But great writing takes readers beyond the literal meanings of words, engaging readers' psychological (non-literal, non-sensory) responses to deepen and amplify the meaning of the message.
I found a great resource today, the Librarian's Index to the Internet
Would you like to read a newspaper in India? The Kashmir Times Online
See the flag of Botswana? Flags of the World (FOTW)
Learn more about the invasive plants of New England? Invasive Plant Atlas of New England (IPANE)
The Librarian's Index to the Internet (LII) Mission Statement is, "The mission of Librarians' Index to the Internet is to provide a well-organized point of access for reliable, trustworthy, librarian-selected Internet resources, serving California, the nation, and the world."
On the "About" page, LII says, "We at LII have a rigorous commitment to data quality. Every site entered in the LII database is reviewed at least twice--sometimes three or four times--before it goes 'live.' An active weeding program keeps us current--while sites change and die all the time, our weekly report nearly always has under 100 'dead' sites. To best serve our public and library users, we focus on gathering and organizing high-quality resources. We do not include sites that are purely commercial with no informational content."
There are many web sites that are not listed, but they welcome suggestions for new sites. You can also sign up for a free subscription to "LII New This Week," a weekly email newsletter of the most recently added resources.
The July 8 Concord Monitor had a catchy headline above the story reporting the retirement of long-time state veterinarian, Cliff McGinnis: A hands-on veterinarian heads off.
The headline’s catchiness derives from its pairing of two idioms referring to body parts: the adjective hands-on and the phrasal verb, heads off.
The term "idiom" refers to a use of words outside the literal meanings of the core word or words. Knowing the literal meaning of the words can’t help people understand the meanings. We have to learn them as essentially new words.
American English makes free use of human body parts to create hundreds of colorful, meaningful idiomatic expressions—leg up, heads-up, elbow your way in, a heady experience, a pain in the butt, eye candy, nose in the air, thumbnail sketch, nose out of joint, stick your neck out, a hand up not a handout, hanging by the skin of your teeth, knee-jerk reaction.
Idioms differ from slang in that slang refers to the often colorful expression of informal speech that often defines an age group or a culture. Idioms, which might have started out as slang, have passed over into common written usage, and may appear even in formal texts.
Phrasal verbs, two-word verb phrases that contain a verb plus a preposition or adverb, create meanings different from the original verb. Think of the subtle shades of meanings communicated by each phrasal verb created from the original verb fall: fall in (line with), fall out (with a supervisor), fall back (on your parents for support), fall on (hard times), fall between (the cracks), fall by (the wayside), fall to (pieces), fall under (a spell), fall wide (of a mark), etc.
Non-native or near-native English speakers, children, and others with limited reading comprehension skills get meaning from written texts by deciphering the literal meanings of words. They may not understand an idiomatic expression, and may have difficulty extracting an idiom from the rest of the sentence. When your target audience includes these groups of readers, try to minimize or eliminate idioms or make their meanings explicit from context.
I recently came across a delightful Web site that publishes eggcorns, a name given to those often-hilarious new words or turns of phrase that result when someone mishears or doesn’t understand a word or phrase and tries to reproduce it either orally or in writing.
The term eggcorn came via a September 23, 2003 post to a blog for linguists called Language Log reporting that someone had written “egg corn” instead of “acorn.”
My all-time favorite eggcorn came from a high school essay: “In 1957, Eugene O'Neill won a Pullet Surprise.” Other favorites: My daughter Molly’s rendition of America the Beautiful: “America, America, God spread his drapes on me.” And who can forget Round John Virgin, he of Silent Night fame.
Many eggcorns make semantic sense, and reveal the mind at work to make sense of what the ear has heard. Some notable examples:
The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects. (pistil)
They said their wedding vowels in front of 300 guests. (vows)
She suffered an eggtopic pregnancy. (ectopic)
We planted high bred tomatoes. (hybrid)
J.D. Salinger’s most famous book was Catch Her in the Rye. (Catcher)
The great wall of China was built to keep out the mongrels. (Mongols)
Pompeii was destroyed by an overflow of saliva from the Vatican. (lava from Vesuvius)
Socrates died of an overdose of wedlock. (hemlock)
I love these little gems. They reveal our humanity as we struggle to understand others and to make ourselves understood. The delightful juxtapositions of meaning eggcorns deliver can deepen our understanding of language.
We’ve all laid our share of eggcorns and pullet surprises. The simple act of “getting” someone else’s overdose of wedlock or high bred tomatoes can also spark a flash of empathy and a moment of self-remembering.
Rhetoric is the study of effective speaking and writing. And the art of persuasion. And many other things. — Gideon O. Burton
If you have an interest in effective oral presentations and writing to deliver maximum impact, I recommend visiting Silva Rhetoricae (The Forest of Rhetoric).
I love this online textbook of classical rhetoric, created and maintained by Gideon O. Burton, an assistant professor of early British literature at Brigham Young University, for its spare and elegant design and its density of quality content.
Many people use the word “rhetoric” in a pejorative sense (“Oh, he’s just spewing rhetoric.”), but this 2000-year-old discipline concerns itself with the art and science of communicating to persuade through the construction of sound arguments and careful documentation. Propaganda more appropriately describes a systematic attempt to persuade through deception. Rhetoricians study propaganda techniques in order to understand and counter them.
You might think you have no interest in rhetoric, until you begin poking around in Silva Rhetoricae and clicking on a few of the glossary terms or opening some of the content pages. The site’s intelligent design and succinct writing lends itself to casual browsing. A visitor can learn something important in just a few minutes at Silva Rhetoricae.
Left and right frames called Trees and Flowers form the site’s navigation bars. Burton displays the content itself in a central panel in brief, manageable tidbits, each rich in detail and cross-links to related ideas or concepts. The “trees” link to content segments; the “flowers” offer a huge glossary of rhetorical terms. Each flower gives you not only a definition, but a pronunciation, examples, links to related terms, and links to primary sources.
Although the site itself serves as a complete textbook of classical rhetoric, Burton understands the rhetoric of the Web, which demands a nonlinear approach that puts the reader in charge of navigation. I can’t recommend this site highly enough as a model of good visual rhetoric.
Small errors can create enormous shifts in meaning.
Header on a small news item in the Concord Monitor July 5, 2005: 1 bugler suspect arrested, 2nd sought.
Karen Blass gave us a thoughtful post on media literacy July 8, describing the importance of teaching ourselves, and then our children, to reflect critically on the barrage of messages flowing from our media-saturated environments.
Many of you may not know that Karen has spent the past four years taking courses, attending conferences, researching participating in discussion groups to develop special expertise in media literacy. She’s on the topic, specifically targeting parents of teenagers. She has plans to launch a media literacy blog soon. I look forward to it with great anticipation.
The vast and loosely-integrated field of “literacy studies” recognizes many forms of literacy, which include the traditional prose literacy , document literacy, and quantitative literacy (also known as numeracy). We also have the visual and media literacies Karen introduced, the new and rapidly-evolving field of digital literacy, and the essential arena of health literacy. The list goes on.
An overarching discipline called critical literacy examines the power relationships implicit in all media by asking the kinds of questions Karen poses at the end of her post.
Beginning this fall, I plan to develop blocks of blog posts that introduce various aspects of literacy in manageable tidbits. I hope they will accumulate to become a cohesive online literacy resources collection I can organize on a separate Web page for your use in informing yourself and the many publics with whom you collaborate.
If you have an interest in literacy issues, or you’d like to contribute to this literacy project, either by guest posting or by sending suggestions for good resources, please call (225-2205, ext. 321) or email me: peg.boyles@unh.edu.
Bravo to Thom Linehan’s excellent July 7 Waking Up Writing post, “There’s a buzzin’ in my ears.” Thom touched both eloquently and humorously on one of my favorite topics and poses some important questions.
Jargon and buzzwords (“jarbuzz”) infect academic, professional, corporate, and government cultures alike. We encounter it so routinely in both popular and professional literature that we accept it as normal speech and lapse into using it ourselves. We lose our capacity for critical reflection on our own and others’ words.
Unlike propaganda, jarbuzz doesn’t so much distort facts or deliberately attempt to deceive as it robs both oral and written speech of its meaning.
Some buzzwords originate as jargon or street slang—words people who share a common profession or culture coin to describe aspects of their common experience. This jargon can serve as a potent social binding force; sometimes it coalesces spontaneously and spills out of its origins to become an important cultural force in its own right–think Hip-Hop, Rap, ‘Netspeak, etc.
But it can become pernicious when it escapes the cultural confines of its origins, as when academics use it to puff up their prose and distance themselves from their listeners or readers.
I think a lot of what ends up as jarbuzz, such as Thom’s example of “learning organization,” starts off as straightforward, sincere attempts to articulate new concepts, ideas, methods, or outlooks. The people who invent these words and phrases generally do so within a carefully-described context.
The terms pass over into jarbuzz when, as Thom says, “they move from one context to another without understanding what is implicit” in the original. Devoid of its original context, the new term moves around willy-nilly, expropriated by users who like the sound of it, but don’t bother checking its origins and carefully articulating their own meanings for it.
A word acquires “buzzword” status when people begin using it reflexively, stripped not only of its original context, but of any meaningful context at all. Stripped of all context, once-meaningful phrases becomes jarbuzz, empty of meaning, increasing a reader’s cognitive load, wasting our time, wasting space on the page.
Many culture-watchers concerned with the dilution of language through the spread of jarbuxx have created games that go by catchy names such as buzzword bingo (and the less-elegant b…sh.t bingo).
I like the Systematic Buzz Phrase Projector developed by retired Philip Broughton, a retired U.S. Public Health Service official fed up with the jargon of government-speak. (I spent time last winter working on a UNH Cooperative Extension version I haven’t finished. I invite your submissions of words and terms to round it out.)
Meanwhile, you may find Broughton’s model useful. Next time you find yourself at a loss for words during a staff meeting, pull out a 534. Want a name for a new model of behavior change? Try 772. POW troubles? Boldly propose a 263, or a 751.
Many thanks to Steve Judd, Gillian Hodges, Thom Linehan and Karen Blass for taking over Waking Up Writing while I took a few days of vacation. Such good stuff.
I want to respond briefly to each of your posts. Steve and Gillian today, Thom and Karen tomorrow.
Re: Steve’s July 5 entry, Bottom Line Up Front
Great tip. Adding a Bottom Line Up Front section—whether you call it that or not— to almost any communication has the added value of forcing the writer to think clearly and succinctly about the major point(s) of the memo, fact sheet, or other written communication.
Most writing improves by using a lead line or paragraph that lets the reader know what to expect if he or she keeps reading. I think leading with an abstract becomes especially important for Web documents.
Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen, who conducted the original research on writing for and reading on the Web, stresses the importance of following the journalistic convention of the "inverted pyramid” style when writing materials for Web distribution.
Journalists have long adhered to the inverse approach: start the article by telling the reader the conclusion ("After long debate, the Assembly voted to increase state taxes by 10 percent"), follow by [sic] the most important supporting information, and end by giving the background. This style is known as the inverted pyramid for the simple reason that it turns the traditional pyramid style around. Inverted-pyramid writing is useful for newspapers because readers can stop at any time and will still get the most important parts of the article.On the Web, the inverted pyramid becomes even more important since we know from several user studies that users don't scroll…so they will very frequently be left to read only the top part of an article. Very interested readers will scroll, and these few motivated souls will reach the foundation of the pyramid and get the full story in all its gory detail.
A person … who flings about him the splintering lightning and sturdy thunders of admonition till he resembles a bunch of firecrackers petulantly uttering his mind at the tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a mild, melodious lay, soft as the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the evening star. Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack up some pathos.
I love that turn of phrase, “whacking up some pathos!” I must find a place to use it myself.
“Language gives us ideas, including ideas of experience. Images give us experiences, including experiences of ideas.” Brian Stonehill
“Visual literacy puts a virtual squeegee in our hands -- a way of keeping the windshield clean as we hurtle down the information superhighway."
Brian Stonehill
Critical thinking has been identified as an important skill in state school standards for decades. However, it is mostly in regard to print media. Increasingly, educators are recognizing the importance of expanding our notions of literacy to other media, especially for our children who have grown up surrounded by visual media and high end technology to enhance that media. The focus of media literacy is to provide youth with the knowledge and skills to develop critical thinking in regard to the powerful media messages that surround them.
Yesterday I came across a great website, an online library dedicated to the individual who began the media studies program at Pomona College.
He was killed in an automobile accident back in 1997. Before his death he was putting together notes for a book entitled “Screen Smarts: Visual Literacy for the Age of Multimedia.” A section of the Brian Stonehill Online Library contains much of the information he was planning to use in his book. It is an informative and entertaining introduction to media literacy. He describes the need for individuals and the culture at large to become aware of the methods of visual manipulation. “Media literacy begins, therefore, with visual literacy – with a way to recognize, that is, the rhetoric of images. Behind all images lie a dozen basic elements of visual communication – the alphabet, as it were, of our pictures. A grasp of these key elements can help to unlock the arts of visual persuasion.” He was passionate about the need for medial literacy, and used the analogy of “the sea of images” and the need for “swimming lessons” to keep us afloat. He defined media literacy as “the ability to view audiovisual material (media based) skeptically, critically and knowledgeably.”
“How to avoid drowning in the oncoming flood of trivial images --that's a question that we all face today. Between the 500 channel cable universe that lurks menacingly in the near future, to the profusion of pictures already pouring from our TVs and computer monitors, it's suddenly sink or swim in a flood of mostly trivial images. Visual literacy offers, in a sense, a series of swimming lessons, a way to turn the couch potato in each of us into a wised-up watcher.” Brian Stonehill
One of the most important values we cherish as Americans is the freedom to make our own choices and direct the course of our lives. The field of media literacy gives us the tools to consciously consume media, to participate actively in the "reading" of the messages, to teach our children to question the messages they see and hear. Here's a place to begin....
Deconstructing media
Who created this media message? What is the purpose of the message? Who is the intended audience? How can you tell? What techniques are being used to grab the attention of that audience? What techniques are being used to persuade?
I have been wondering about buzz words. You know, new words or phrases that emerge and seem to capture something that had been missing. Suddenly the phrase is everywhere and it is difficult to imagine talking about that topic without using the buzz word.
An example:
I was recently at a very productive work team meeting where the phrase “learning organization” came up as the perfect way for us to get an idea on paper. At the time I thought I knew what that meant and it seemed to express something of great import. Whilst driving back to the office I began to reflect on the matter and was not so sure I knew what was meant by a “learning organization.” A quick Google search revealed no less than 51,700,000 links and numerous definitions.
Some observations:
Buzz words seem to be linked to a social group, profession or other specialized knowledge community.
The original knowledge group context that created the phrase has imbued the buzz word with implicit assumptions and values.
There can be a disconnect between the everyday “self-evident” meaning of the words in a buzz word phrase and what the people who invented the phrase mean when they use it. I know what learning means I know what organization means but do I really know what is meant by learning organization?
Carrying a buzz word from one context to another without understanding what is implicit in the phrase could mean being misinterpreted.
Some questions:
Does a buzz word describe something or actually shape our understanding of something?
How much responsibility does a writer have to research a buzz word before using it?
Are buzz words and jargon the same thing?
Perhaps if you respond we can generate some aggregate synergistic functionalities!
For the cynics at heart, I introduce you to Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary (formerly known as The Cynic's Word Book).
This irreverent collection of alternative dictionary definitions is of interest to any person (writer or otherwise) fascinated by the derivation of words; awed by quotations of poetic waxing; and possessed of an acerbic wit.
This book humorously illustrates how one's perspective colors the meaning of words.
Bottom Line Up Front: When communicating with others, try using the Bottom Line Up Front technique to make it clear what the thesis of your communication is and what action is expected of them.
Have you ever finished reading a memo or position paper and find yourself unsure what the point was or what you were expected to do about it? Do you think anyone might have felt that way after reading one of yours?
The Bottom Line Up Front technique states clearly, at the beginning of a communication piece, the crux of an issue and what you are asking the reader to do with the information. I use this method in constructing memos by including a paragraph titled "Bottom Line Up Front" write after the "Subject:" line. If the reader were to ignore the entire body of the memo, but read the Bottom Line, they would still know what issue I was addressing and what action they need to consider. The body of the memo is used to layout the situation, possible and recommended courses of action, and the consequences of various responses.
Try the Bottom Line Up Front technique the next time you need to write a memo or lengthy communication, it really helps frame the issues and bring clarity to what needs to be done.
Have you ever compared a press release to a newspaper article that summarizes its contents? If so, you may have noticed many fewer capital letters in the newspaper account.
Press releases tend to use capital letters in abundance, to indicate or emphasize the importance of people, organizational units, products and procedures.
Newspapers use the uppercase sparingly, to improve ease of reading. Text flows horizontally across the page or screen, and each uppercase letter interrupts the visual flow.
In matters of style and usage, UNH Cooperative Extension uses The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law. “In general, avoid all unnecessary capitalizations” the entry on capitalization begins (in the 2000 version, pp. 39-40, and scattered throughout the styleguide in specific listings).
Some special instances:
When referring to places, capitalize each word in a name: State of New Hampshire, Merrimack County, the Connecticut River, the Democratic Party. But in subsequent references, when the common names stand alone, put them in lowercase: state, county, river, party.
When referring to people by title, follow this general rule: Capitalize each word in a title when it comes directly before a person’s name: Professor Ackworth, Captain Wilson, Dr. Brown, President Bush. Lowercase the title in subsequent references: The professor spoke too long. The captain left before we said goodbye. The president left the White House on Tuesday. The doctor saw more than 50 patients yesterday.
When referring to academic departments or units of government, use caps only when referring to the department as a formal title: The Dartmouth College School of Medicine, The Whittemore School of Business and Economics, the Department of Agriculture, Markets & Food. At other times, use lowercase (except with proper nouns): the history department, the English department, the plant science department, the business school; with govermnet units, the department, the bureau, the office.
So, you’d write: Robert Bosworth, professor of marine science… Dr. Ross, a professor in the sociologydepartment….
Also, Dean and Director John Pike, or Dean Pike, but John Pike, who’s served as dean and director since….
For more detailed information about capitalization and other aspects of grammar and usage, please refer to the AP stylebook. Email Holly if you’d like to order one for your office or department.