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| Bette Frick
The Text Doctor®
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| 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
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The Text Doctor's Diagnosis
Happy 2010
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Greetings!
My new resolution: To get this newsletter to you earlier in the month than in the past! Hope you benefit from this month's offerings.
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Communication tips for 2010
Tip #1: Three key words that will help your writing
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Years ago, I taught a college class in Business Writing at a male maximum-security prison in Minnesota. At the end of the quarter, one student asked as he left the room for the last time: "What is good writing, anyway?" I had certainly failed to communicate in this instance.
From that class forward, I have immediately defined good writing as Complete, Consistent, Clear, Concise, and Correct. We've all known people who were overly complete and not concise. On the other hand, parents of teens know how concise a teen can be at the expense of complete, clear, or correct:
"Where did you go?"
"Out."
"What did you do?"
"Nothing."
("Nothing" in this context might mean, "I totalled the car" or "I toilet-papered Brittany's house," events which only reveal themselves through communication with the police or other parents.)
Of course, you're not a teenager--you're an adult who needs to communicate clearly and completely. One of the best ways I know of doing that involves three key words: "Tell me more..." For example, if your boss asks you to write a report on the XYZ issue and you have no idea what to write, ask, "Can you tell me more about what you want in the report?" Or if your child asks, "Where did I come from?," instead of launching into a detailed description of human reproduction, you might ask, "Can you tell me more about what you want to know?" The answer may be, "Well, Tommy came from Chicago. Where did I come from?"
I had a boss who varied the "tell me more" phrase by saying, "Help me understand..." Steve's communication skills validated us as employees, because those words implied that he really wanted to know what we really wanted to tell him.
When you use phrases like these to get as much information as you can, you'll be much more complete in all your communication.
More tips coming in future months: During 2010, I'll include tips that I usually teach in my writing classes.
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Tour de Style Manuals:
APA Manual, 6th edition
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 Often, students in my technical writing classes will try to persuade me that they should use the APA (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association) as a style manual for their technical writing at work. "I still have my copy from college," they plead.
I think it is wrong to use APA to guide style choices for technical writing in organizations, as the manual is intended for writers of scholarly manuscripts for publication in psychology and other behavioral and social sciences. Eighty percent of the manual is devoted to guidelines and requirements for publishing psychology and social science articles in journals; the remaining 20% covers grammar, writing, and style. It's just the wrong tool for a business or technical writer to use, although it does get kudos for requiring the serial comma!
Nevertheless, if you must use APA style for bibliographies, there are some excellent website references that will help. The OWL at Purdue is one of the best. Science Buddies is helpful, too. Finally, the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University has a colorful cheat sheet on APA bibliographic style.
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For fun: Ban these words, please!
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Perhaps you love your "apps" or you crave "transparency" in your government and personal relationships. You might enjoy the "tweets" that you receive from those who have "friended" you.
Don't be offended, but Lake Superior State University (LSSU) has
banned some of the cool words you might be using. My favorite banned
term is "in these economic times." One of the comments about this term
asked: "Aren't ALL times 'these economic times'?"
History of this list: Officially titled "Banished Words List: List of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness,"
this list has been a tradition of LSSU since 1976. The general public
nominates the terms throughout the year, and an LSSU committee votes on
entries in December. The list is released on New Year's Day. You might anonymously forward the 2010 list to those whose overuse of these words annoys you most.
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These are a few of my favorite things: The word "that"
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Recently, my 4-year-old grandson said, "I'm not a big fan of broccoli..." I immediately recognized how often I use that phrase around him. (This is a good example of how children mimic, then learn, language.) Actually, I AM a big fan of the syntactic cue "that" when used to introduce independent clauses (a group of words that contains a verb and its subject and can stand alone). Here's an example: Part 11 requires that the identity of a user cannot be reassigned to anyone else.Here, the word "that" introduces the independent clause "the identity of a user cannot be reassigned to anyone else." Without the word "that," the sentence might trip the reader:
Part 11 requires the identity of a user cannot be reassigned to anyone else.This sentence as written makes "the identity of a user" appear to be the direct object of the verb "requires." However, once readers finish the sentence, they realize that there is a second clause involved. Then they backtrack and mentally add the word "that." Whenever readers have to reread and reconstruct your sentence, they've lost time and you've lost credibility. Syntactic cues like the word "that" also help non-native readers keep track of the structure of your text, and they help save translators time and money. Still not buying my argument? Here are a few (confusing) examples where the word "that" is omitted: - It is important everything under those streets be checked to ensure safety is not compromised [needs "that" in two places].
- It has been proven the number one antidote for stage fright is preparation.
- This will signify each employee completed all required training.
Still resisting? Some people argue that the word "that" adds to the word count. My counterargument: Delete another word, please, to minimize word count.
Please take our poll on the word "that." I'll report results next month. (To learn more about syntactic cues, read John R. Kohl, "Improving Translatability and Readability with Syntactic Cues." Technical Communication, Second Quarter 1999: 149-166.) |
Thanks for reading! Please take a moment to respond to two one-question polls (see links on left), and I'll share your answers next month.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth (Bette) Frick
The Text Doctor®
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