|
|
| Bette Frick
The Text Doctor®
|
|
|
| Join the Doctor's
Mailing List |
 |
| Quote of the Month |
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your
forehead.
Gene Fowler
1890-1960
|
| Upcoming Classes |
New webinars:
Customer-focused writing Tactics for preparing text for Global English
Visit our webpage to learn more! | |
|
The Text Doctor's Diagnosis
June 2009 |
|
|
|
Greetings!
Tips in this newsletter will help you be the best writer you can be. All of us can improve our communication skills, both written and oral. Thanks for reading these suggestions!
|
Could you make a $70 million error?
|
|
Ten years ago today (June 19), the Associated Press
reported that "A comma in the wrong place of a sales contract cost
Lockheed Martin Corp. $70 million" (from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 19, 1999).
Later that year, on September 30, 1999, preliminary findings about the disintegration of the Mars Polar Lander indicated that the disaster was caused by poor communication: One team used English units while the other
used metric units for a key spacecraft operation.
These two incidents have one common thread:
Communication errors can cost businesses and taxpayers a lot of money.
That's why I was frustrated to read the blog post "Good grammar might derail your career." The blogger claims that it doesn't matter if you use the
right form of "its" or "it's": Just let the reader
figure it out. Further, the author insists: "Why do we need to spend our brain
power learning the rules of grammar if it is not interesting to us? Why not
focus on what we like?"
This reminds me of a letter I recently received as a
board member of our homeowners' association. Because the board was
contemplating a smoking ban in public areas of our condo grounds, we asked
our owners to share their thoughts with us. One young smoker said:
"I do not wish the scents and the smoke of burning
tobacco to build up and to linger inside. Smoking inside my home or in another
enclosed space would cause me, by default, to inhale far more smoke and for a
much longer period of time than smoking outside subjects me to...I recognize that
other people, especially non-smokers, would not want tobacco smoke drifting
into their home; for that matter, I don't want it inside my own home either!
...complainants have a very simple, direct solution available [when I am smoking on my deck]: shut the door or
window."
I think this smoker's startling conclusion that
everyone else must adapt to his smoking behavior is similar to the blogger's
demand that the reader should figure out what the writer means. The smoker demands that neighbors retreat indoors and shut their doors and windows so he can
smoke at will. The blogger wants the reader to substitute the right words and
put in the appropriate punctuation because she doesn't want to do this work herself.
Both arguments annoy me. Now it is MY job to avoid
secondhand smoke by sweltering in a hot condo with no breeze possible? To punctuate someone else's writing? Such poor writing will cause me to derail at the error and have to
backtrack to correct the sentence, then read on. That takes more of MY time, and quickly, I will give up because it is so
irritating.
I believe that the writer is always responsible for
the message--all of it. If I want readers to understand and act on my writing,
I must give them a quality document that they can read in the shortest
possible time and can comprehend instantly. If I'm sloppy with my language, the
best outcome I can expect is that readers will eventually stop reading my text.
The worst outcome is that my errors may actually cost money, or worse, lives.
(The responses to the blog mentioned above seem mostly critical of the blogger's position. And, by the way, we voted unanimously to ban smoking in common areas of our property.) |
|
|
|
|
|
How to vary your sentence length
|
|
Here's a simple exercise proposed by Richard Lanham that may help you analyze your sentence structure and length.
Take a piece of your prose and a red pencil and draw a slash
after every sentence. Two or three pages ought to make a large enough sample.
If the red marks occur at regular intervals, you have, as they used to say in
the White House, a problem. Vary your sentence lengths. Naturally enough,
complex patterns will fall into long sentences and emphatic conclusions work
well when short. But no rules prevail except to avoid monotony.
Richard A. Lanham
|
|
A few of my favorite people:
Diane Blau, CEO of Professional Alternatives
|
|
 I met Diane when we sat together at a professional lunch.
Not only did she liven up the table conversation with everyone at the table,
she requested my card and asked if she could contact me after the event.
"This woman is a good networker," I thought. I was delighted to get an e-mail from her that afternoon saying how nice it was to have lunch together.
Diane owns a recruiting firm in Denver and is one of the best
networkers I've ever met. We LinkedIn and talked on the phone a bit, then met
for coffee. Diane never asked me what I could do for her or pressed for names
of people she could contact. Instead, she provided me with two quality leads
and several links to events that will be very helpful to me. In less than an
hour, she surrounded me with her expertise without being the least bit pushy.
It's no surprise that I want to help Diane in any way
possible! She's consummately professional, really knowledgeable, and fun to
talk to. She models professional networking skills that I want to have; I feel like a long-term
relationship with her will be profitable (even though I'm not looking for
full-time work). To learn more about Diane, visit her website. |
|
For fun: A long run-on sentence promising millions
|
|
|
A client forwarded this sentence from an e-mail he received
and selflessly offered this wonderful opportunity to me. I'm passing on this lucrative e-mail to you:
I have a problem I believe you will be of great
assistance I have a consignment which my late FATHER deposited with a
Banks/security company in fact although He registered it as family valuable and
the money was deposited in his name as the cerfiticate of deposit is with me and
please it has to be secret because you and me knows the secret now I want you
to assist me to retrieve the funds for a
very big joint investment I want to hand everything over to you as you know my
condition right now.
(We should run a contest for the longest SPAM sentence of the year!)
|
Thanks for reading! I'm looking for a few good editing clients; view my capabilities statement on my website to see how I might help you avoid the kinds of mistakes I point out in this newsletter.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth (Bette) Frick
The Text Doctor®
|
New
webinars
Customer-
focused
writing; Global English
|
Customer-focused writing: Learning to write with the customer in mind
Tactics for preparing text for Global English
Visit www.textdoctor.com/webinars
|
|
|
|
