Simple Writing Sells Persuades How to write well

Simple Writing Sells (Persuades): How to write well in English (or in any language) Frank Azevedo frankazevedofaz@hotmail. com Mobile: +47 900 47 921 http: //språkvasking. com Skype: fazmassas

Writing Well Requires Hard Work. • To write well you must be willing to work hard. • Do some of that hard work and you’ll begin working smarter. • Even when working smarter you must never relax. The hard work never ends. • Follow up what I tell you in these 45 minutes and you’ll be working harder – and smarter – throughout your writing life. • Important people – bosses, customers, colleagues, potential employers, journal editors, readers – will notice and appreciate your hard work.

To write well in English (or in any language): • • You must learn how to think. You must learn how to read. You must study the craft of writing. You must practice by reading others’ bad writing and revising it. • You must be self-aware and must have excellent positional memory. • You must apply everything you learn to carefully, systematically revising your own writing for clarity, concision, coherency, and carefulness.

You must learn how to think: To write well you must work as hard as Rodin’s The Thinker works. How many are prepared to work that hard? Few. Why? The Thinker’s thinking is unnatural, difficult, and painful. Try sitting as The Thinker does.

You must learn how to read. • You must read for meaning. • Do the words literally mean what the writer – you or any writer – intended to say? If not, the writing lacks clarity. • Unclear writing forces readers to guess writers’ intended meaning. • Writers lose control when readers must guess. • You must read aloud: You might hear mistakes you fail to see. • If reading aloud doesn’t work, read backwards. • You must read your writing with critical detachment, as readers would read it. • You know what you intend to say. As a critically detached reader of your own writing, you must decide whether you’ve said it clearly. • When you’re reading your drafts with critical detachment, you’re thinking as a reader thinks. You’re focusing on the reader. • And when you’re thinking as a reader thinks, you’re working as hard as The Thinker works.

You must study the craft of writing. You’ll be busy for a lifetime! Most people won’t realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else – Katherine Anne Porter You have hard-earned knowledge in your field: statistics, marketing, psychology, linguistics, math, chemistry, biology, computer programing, engineering, etc. You express your hard-earned knowledge in your writing. Mastering the craft of writing gives you a sharp, precise tool to express your hard-earned knowledge. • Weak mastery of the craft of writing gives you only a blunt, clumsy tool (unclear, wordy, incoherent, and careless writing) to express your hardearned knowledge. • If you lack mastery of the craft of writing, you might as well type with your elbow – or with a hammer!

Common Writing Problems* • Subject-verb agreement (SVA) errors • Pronoun reference/Vague pronoun reference (VPR) • Pronoun-antecedent agreement errors (This writing problem is related to VPR. ) • Dangling modifiers • Misplaced modifiers • Faulty complements • Hyphenation errors • Faulty parallelism • Incorrect comparison • Awkward separation of elements • Subjunctive mood • Possessive before gerund • Generic he or she • Tangled negatives • * Many more writing problems exist than the 14 listed. Google the above terms. You’ll be taken to many excellent websites about writing. Use the terms as search words on those writing websites, and look for the terms in the indexes of the recommended texts below.

Not everyone whose mother tongue is English can write well in English. Shocked? You shouldn’t be. • Who are the writing texts, style guides, usage guides, and writing websites mentioned below intended for? Norwegians? Chinese? Brazilians? Russians? • No, for professionals whose mother tongue is English. • Many in high school and university failed to study the craft of writing at all or learned little in writing courses. • In white-collar jobs about 85% of tasks involve writing. • Professionals who haven’t mastered the craft of writing can’t function well in white-collar jobs. • US businesses spend several billion dollars yearly trying to teach employees to write well.

Good writers may have mastered the craft of writing, but they always carefully check source materials to ensure that their writing is good. Throughout their writing careers they keep writing texts, style guides, usage guides, and dictionaries on their writing desks and use them often when carefully, systematically revising.

You must read others’ bad writing and revise it. You’ll have plenty to practice on. • Your opinion of what your sentence means is always overruled by what your sentence literally says – Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times (http: //opinionator. blogs. nytimes. com/2012/09/24/the-trouble-withintentions/). • • Examples of bad writing: “Standing awkwardly side by side, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila Putina announced Thursday their decision to divorce on Russian television” (http: //worldnews. nbcnews. com/_news/2013/06/06/18804947 -russias-putin-and-his-wife-say-their-marriage-is-over? lite ). • • • Did you see the reality program Divorce Russian Style? Neither did I! “During spring, writing lab directors are undergoing their own ritual. They are gathering names of students from faculty who have been nominated for the job of tutor, interviewing these prospective consultants, and, finally, making job offers to the best and the brightest in order to secure the new crop of tutors for the fast-approaching fall” (writing lab director, Ph. D in English). Who will be tutors? And what’s the difference between tutors and consultants? “Government ministers in Norway are 50% female” (political scientist). And I’m 50% Portuguese! “The Norwegian gender balance law requires that boards have 40% women” (business writer). The other 60% of those creatures’ DNA isn’t female. “Your task is to find out as much as possible about any connection between the late Bob Bradley and Cornelius Behan. Nothing is too small to overlook” (David Baldacci novel). The first sentence tells readers to do a lot of work. The second sentence tells them to do nothing! “An additional measure is lighter breaks. Because of the reduced weight on the breaks of our newest aircraft, we consequently reduce fuel consumption considerably” (Norwegian’s inflight magazine, #06 2010). I hope Norwegian’s mechanics know the difference between breaks and brakes!

Second-rate writing is published in prestigious journals, magazines, newspapers, and blogs. • You seek to publish in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, but notice writing errors in published articles and notice the writing doesn’t conform to the journal’s style. • You notice bad writing in prestigious magazines, newspapers, and blogs, too. • Publishers laid off copyeditors because of cost cutting. • Now publishers must make compromises. • Now writers are on their own. Nobody checks their work. • Errors slip thru. • The quality of prestigious journals, magazines, newspapers, and blogs therefore suffers. • But bad writing by others is no excuse for you to write badly. • Don’t be part of the problem. Carefully, systematically revise all your own writing for clarity, concision, coherency, and carefulness.

You must be self-aware and must have excellent positional memory. • Know your personal writing tics (bad habits). • Keep a list of the “usual suspects” and use it when revising. • You must have excellent positional memory: Are phrasing and usages on page 20 inconsistent with those on page 5? • Use technology. Use Word’s “Reading Highlight” function in its “Find and Replace” window to analyze your writing. Use the “More >>” dropdown menu and the “Special” pop-up menu.

Apply your thinking and reading skills, your self-awareness, and your positional memory to carefully, systematically revising for clarity, concision, coherency, and carefulness. • To be a good writer you must write Clearly, Concisely, Coherently, and Carefully: the four big Cs of good writing. • It’s not rocket science. • It’s harder! • Your first draft is crap. You begin the hard work of writing when you begin carefully, systematically revising – again and again …

Carefully, systematically revise away carelessness. Such revision is the writer’s job, not the copyeditor’s. • Just because there’s a cleaning crew doesn’t mean you get to throw food on the floor – Carol Fisher Saller • “There is now ‘evidence that long term psychodynamic therapies (LTPP) are an effective treatment for complex mental disorders’ ( Leichsenring & Rabung, 2008, p 1551). For example, the Stocholm Outcome of Psychoanalysis Project, demonstrated that patients after ended therapy had gained strength and capacity (Blomberg et al. , 2001; Sandell et al. , 2000). ” • A grownup professional wrote such crap for nearly 100 pages – in her Ph. D thesis. Her carelessness defeated Word’s spelling and grammar checker! • But she sent those 100 pages of crap to a copyeditor! • Memo to writers, from Copy editing for professionals (Rooney and Witte): “Once the draft is completed, every writer becomes an editor. The success of the work depends on how objectively the author can correct, polish, and refine the text. Editing is the last stage in the writing process, which classically is defined as Listen (or Read), Think, Write and Edit. ”

Use technology when carefully, systematically revising. • Use your computer in revising for Concision, Coherency, and Carefulness, three of the four big Cs. • First, set a proofing language (US or UK English) for all parts of your document: text, footnotes, endnotes, etc. • Second, set Word’s spelling and grammar checker to check both grammar and style. The checker does almost nothing if set for grammar only! • Right-click all Word’s underlining and deal with Word’s recommendations. Be careful! Word is often wrong. • Use Word’s “Find and Replace” to look for “the usual suspects”: spacing errors, inconsistencies (e. g. , term switching, mixed spellings, etc. ), wordiness, vague pronouns, pronoun-antecedent errors, your writing tics, etc.

The “usual suspects” • • Use “Find and Replace” to search for abbreviations, signs, and symbols. You’ll find spacing errors, inconsistencies, and other types of errors involving all punctuation marks (period, comma, semicolon, question mark, exclamation point, ellipsis); footnote marks; endnote marks; i. e. ; e. g. ; +; =; >; <; cf. ; ff. ; pp. ; etc. ; et al. ; &; %; °; $; £; €; ≥; ≤; -; –; —; …; etc. Place an opening parenthesis in Word’s “Find what: ” and search for errors and inconsistencies in citations, parenthetical interrupters, etc. Carelessness has many forms: “Japan has banned people from entering within 12 miles of the Fukushima plant, located 240 km northeast of Tokyo” (internet). “BI Norwgian Business School” (email signature). “An additional measure is lighter breaks. Because of the reduced weight on the breaks of our newest aircraft, we consequently reduce fuel consumption considerably” (in flight magazine of Norwegian). “Our Governments have the primary responsibility for follow-up and review, at the national, regional and global levels, in relation to the progress made in implementing the Goals and targets over the coming fifteen years” (UN, 2015, § 47).

Carefully, systematically revise away wordiness. Conciseness is critical to writing well. Many famous people agree. • • • http: //home. wavecable. com/~garblswritingcenter/stylemanual/betwrit. htm “Revising Prose practices sentence-level revision. If you can see how an individual sentence works, you can scale that knowledge up to paragraph and beyond. In this chapter, we’ll try thinking about the individual sentence in a new way—as an economy, an economy in miniature. Economics, according to the usual definition, studies “the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses. ” You might think that, in writing, ideas are the commodity in short supply. Most people would agree with you. But when you are revising, the scarcest resource is human attention. Sentences are attention economies. Ideas have to get your attention before you will pay attention to them. And, as we all know, the alternative uses for human attention multiply by the day. Some economists argue that in our information economy, attention is now the scarcest resource. This shift makes sentence economics more important than ever. It brings prose revision into alignment with our thinking about human effort on a larger scale” (Revising Prose by Richard A. Lanham (Fifth Edition) Chapter 2, p. 21). The Ethics of Style: “We owe readers an ethical duty to write precise and nuanced prose, but we ought not assume that they owe us an indefinite amount of their time to unpack it. If we choose to write in ways that we know will make readers struggle— well, it’s a free country. In the market place of ideas, truth is the prime value, but not the only one. Another is what it costs to find it” (Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams and Gregory G. Colomb (Tenth Edition), p. 199).

Avoid weak verbs and small words. • • • Use verbs, not nouns. Verbs are muscle words. They do the work in sentences. Avoid weak verbs (i. e. , is, are, was, and were) and small words (e. g. , a, an, of, the, in, by, and for). Use Word’s “Find and Replace” to highlight those 11 words throughout your rough draft. The highlighting helps you focus when carefully, systematically revising for concision. It identifies about 90% of the wordy passages in your rough draft. Google “paramedic method” to see what was done before the computer age. Wordiness: In spite of the fact that they are in great need of a solution to the problem, they are not in possession of the will necessary to solve it. (29 words) What problems does a careful, systematic reviser see in that wordy sentence? Small words. Weak verbs. Nominalized verbs. In spite of the fact that they are in great need of a solution to the problem, they are not in possession of the will necessary to solve it. They must solve the problem, but they lack the will to do so. (13 words) Although they need to solve the problem, they lack the necessary will. (12) They must solve the problem, but they lack the will. (10) Despite needing to solve the problem they lack the will. (10)

Revision for Concision of Real-world Sentences I made up the wordy sentence on the previous slide. • • “Thus, there must be some sort of ranking of themes in terms of the most important ones, which we call key, and other themes, which we call secondary. The difference between a key theme and a secondary theme is that whereas the former is fundamental in achieving sustainable development, the latter is not. ” (53 words, 14) “Thus, themes must be ranked according to their importance. We call the most important ones key themes and the others secondary themes. Key themes are fundamental in achieving sustainable development, secondary themes are not. ” (34 words, 5, 35. 9% fewer words) “To use Rawls’ terminology, all key sustainability themes have lexical priority to all other sustainability themes. This is an order that requires us to satisfy the key themes in the ordering before we can move on to the secondary themes (and the second before we consider the third, and so on). ” The second sentence revised from 35 words (8) to 20 (0) (42. 9% fewer words): “This prioritization requires that we satisfy key themes before we satisfy secondary themes (and secondary themes before tertiary themes, etc. ). ” Revision for concision takes time. It’s time well spent! Readers benefit: Concise writing is easy to understand doesn’t waste their time. Writers benefit: Their meanings are transparent, easily accessible, easily understood.

Additional techniques for carefully, systematically revising for concision: • • Use possessive forms: the house he owns (his house), the accomplishments of the brothers (the brothers’ accomplishments), the economy of China (China’s economy). Use gerunds (verbs made to function as nouns): the implementation of (implementing), the analysis of (analyzing), the application of (applying), the dancing of (dancing), the eating of (eating). Use active rather than passive voice. Active-voice writing is crisp. Active-voice writing sells (persuades)! Passive: The door was opened by Bill. Active: Bill opened the door. If set up to check both grammar and style, Word’s spelling and grammar checker underlines passive-voice constructions. Delete “the”: The students must arrive on time (Students must arrive on time). Go plural: Each student must bring his or her books to class (Students must bring their books to class). And by going plural you avoid the generic “he” / “she. ” Avoid expletive constructions (e. g. , there is, there are, it is, etc. ): They kill a sentence before it can get started: It is clear that he is sick (7 words – is twice) (Clearly, he is sick – 4). “Start sentences fast” (Richard A. Lanham). A sentence’s beginning is its point of greatest emphasis. “It is” means nothing. “It is” makes readers wait until the third word for meaning. “Clearly” means a lot! Break up long sentences: “There is no quota on periods. When an idea is complicated, break it up and present it in digestible chunks. One idea to a sentence is still the best advice anyone has ever given on writing” (Bill Bryson). This technique often produces two or three sentences totaling fewer words than the long one had. Avoid redundancies and circumlocutions: See the next two slides.

Redundancies (“usual suspects”) Cut each redundancy to one word. • • • • • Adequate enough Advance planning Aid and abet Big in size Bisect in two Close proximity Complete and unabridged Completely surrounded Descend down Different kinds; different ways Each and every Eliminate altogether Estimated at about Few in number Final outcome First and foremost Flanked on two sides Follow after Future plans; future prospects Habitual custom • • • • • Important essentials Joint cooperation Major breakthrough Null and void Paramount importance Past history Persist still Plan in advance Prejudge in advance Serious danger Sufficient enough To all intents and purposes Total annihilation Trained professional Violent explosion Warn in advance Ways and means Week’s time; year’s time The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug – Mark Twain

Circumlocutions (“usual suspects”) Cut each circumlocution to one word. The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it – Mark Twain • • • A large portion of Are in possession of At this point in time In spite of the fact that In spite of In the not too distant future • In the vicinity of • Made a statement saying • Put in an appearance • Take into consideration • Was of the opinion that • Was witness to • In this day and age

Some academics, bureaucrats, politicians, and businesspeople (shame on them all!) write like this: • • • The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power. (94 words, 26: 27. 7%) If what is at stake is an understanding of geographical and historical variations in the sexual division of productive and reproductive labor, of contemporary local and regional variations in female wage labor and women's work outside the formal economy, of onthe-ground variations in the everyday content of women's lives, inside and outside of their families, then it must be recognized that, at some nontrivial level, none of the corporal practices associated with these variations can be severed from spatially and temporally specific linguistic practices, from language that not only enable the conveyance of instructions, commands, role depictions and operating rules, but that also regulate and control, that normalize and spell out the limits of the permissible through the conveyance of disapproval, ridicule and reproach. (124 words, 25: 20. 2%) The 124 -word sentence has subject-verb agreement errors. The writer should have written “language that … enables … regulates … controls … normalizes and spells …. ” Click on the links below to read some of the debate about bad academic writing. http: //www. denisdutton. com/language_crimes. htm http: //www. soc. umn. edu/~samaha/cases/limerick_dancing_with_professors. html

Revising for Concision: The Writer’s Golden Rule: Write to others as you would have others write to you – Joseph M. Williams A major condition affecting adult reliance on early communicative patterns is the extent to which the communication has been planned prior to its delivery. Adult speech behaviour takes on many of the characteristics of child language, where the communication is spontaneous and relatively unpredictable – E. Ochs and B. Schieffelin, Planned and Unplanned Discourse. [44 words, 9: 20. 5%] That means (I think): When we speak spontaneously, we rely on patterns of child language [11, 1: 9%]. The authors might object that I have oversimplified their meaning, but those eleven words express what I remember from their forty-four, and what really counts, after all, is not what we understand as we read, but how well we remember it the next day. The two paragraphs are from Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (Tenth Edition), pp. 194– 195, by Joseph M. Williams and Gregory G. Colomb. • • Think about what you read. Williams, a reader, distilled 44 words into 11. How much work, how much time do you think he spent on that distillation? Ask 10 readers to tell you in 22, 30, or 35 words what those 44 words mean. You’ll likely hear 10 very different interpretations of their meaning. But is it the readers’ job to do that work, to spend that time? No! If the writers meant to say “When we speak spontaneously, we rely on patterns of child language, ” they should have written those 11 words instead of 44!

Jargon-laden prose: Avoid it! https: //en. oxforddictionaries. com/definition/jargon • “Jargon: [mass noun] Special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand. ” • Like secret handshakes and secret rituals it excludes someone! • Want to sell your ideas, to persuade people: policymakers, stakeholders, politicians, bureaucrats, colleagues, editors, customers, your boss, future employers? • Avoid jargon-laden prose! • And while you’re at it, avoid fancy words, Latin phrases, other foreign-language phrases, and any words or phrases that drive readers to the dictionary. • Don’t exclude readers. • Don’t make readers work unnecessarily.

Coherency (narrative flow) Vague pronoun reference (VPR) damages both clarity and coherency. Avoid VPR. • • Clear pronoun reference is critical to both clarity and coherency. Demanding readers (readers who read for meaning) encounter VPR and go the wrong way. Instead of continuing they go back, rereading sentences, seeking the vague pronoun’s referent. Search words: this, that, these, those, they, them, it, and which. During careful, systematic revision, use Word’s “Find” function to search for those pronouns to ensure that their referents are clear. Be sure to check the box “Find whole words only” in the “More >>” drop-down menu. • • • https: //webapps. towson. edu/ows/proref. htm http: //writing. wisc. edu/Handbook/Common. Errors_Pron. Ref. html http: //writingcommons. org/open-text/style/grammar/419 -avoid-vague-pronoun-references • http: //www. penandpage. com/Eng. Menu/gramref. htm • sentence: “Pronouns stand in for nouns. That's why they're called pro - nouns. When we use them properly, our readers understand what single noun the pronoun stands for. ” https: //www. grammarly. com/handbook/grammar/pronouns/16/pronoun-reference/ But the writing here is terrible! “Pronouns refer to a noun; in a sentence, it should always be clear as to which noun the pronoun is modifying. If the reader has to spend time guessing which pronoun refers to which noun, they may give up reading. ” And the mistakes continue. • Google search page for “pronoun reference”: But oops! See the dangling modifier in the third http: //int. search. myway. com/search/GGmain. jhtml? st=tab&ptb=9 C 47400 B-0 DD 4 -4 EC 3 -A 81 B 35 DA 24 C 1 E 7 D 0&n=781 c 2 c 12&ind=2015112210&ct=SS&pg=GGmain&tpr=tabsbsug&p 2=%5 EHJ%5 Expt 456%5 ETTAB 02%5 Ees&s i=176681&searchfor=pronoun+reference&pn=1&ots=1459676222798

The pronoun this and VPR • The pronoun this is the lazy writer’s favorite vague pronoun. • To keep their narratives going, lazy writers express an idea and then begin the next sentence “This means …”; “This is …”; etc. • Yes, all writers are guilty of such laziness! • For example, “Mercedes Benz’s warranty policy requires that owners use only factory-authorized service providers, buy only factoryauthorized parts, and adhere to a rigid service schedule during the warranty period. This means that …” This what? • This is singular. Which of the three things mentioned does this refer to? • Perhaps the writer means, “This requirement”? But three things are mentioned, so if anything, “These requirements mean that …” or “These three requirements mean that …” is the better VPR solution. • See how VPR damaged both clarity and coherency?

VPR solutions of greater elegance • • • As you just saw, VPR involving “this” can often be solved by simply adding a noun. Three VPR solutions of greater elegance from Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (Tenth Edition), pp. 127– 128: resumptive modifier, summative modifier, free modifier. Resumptive modifier: “Mercedes Benz’s warranty policy requires that owners use only factory-authorized service providers, buy only factoryauthorized parts, and adhere to a rigid service schedule during the warranty period, requirements that …” Instead of the vague “this means that, ” the writer simply continues by echoing a word in the preceding clause. Summative modifier: “Mercedes Benz’s warranty policy requires that owners use only factory-authorized service providers, buy only factoryauthorized parts, and adhere to a rigid service schedule during the warranty period, maintenance costs that …” The writer simply adds a term that sums up the substance of the sentence so far. Free modifier: “Mercedes Benz’s warranty policy requires that owners use only factory-authorized service providers, buy only factory-authorized parts, and adhere to a rigid service schedule during the warranty period, creating significant costs for Mercedes owners to maintain their warranty. ”

Spelling and grammar checkers help little in revising for clarity. They won’t warn you if you write: • • • • “They are gathering names of students from faculty who have been nominated for the job of tutor. ” “Riding downtown yesterday, the bus hit a tree. ” “Our data is more detailed than their study. ” “Government ministers in Norway are 50% female. ” “Your task is to find out as much as possible about any connection between the late Bob Bradley and Cornelius Behan. Nothing is too small to overlook. ” “An additional measure is lighter breaks. Because of the reduced weight on the breaks of our newest aircraft, we consequently reduce fuel consumption considerably. ” “Mrs. Smith gave $10 million along with her husband Reginald to the Red Cross. ” “Nannouk is a 10 -week-old Spitz mix female and will grow to be medium sized. She does well inside. Sterilization is mandatory for anyone wanting to take her. ” “Boys like their studies more than girls. ” “My father died at the age of five. ” All the above mean something – but not what the writers intended. Checkers (and copyeditors) can’t read writers’ minds. Writers must find unclear phrasing by thinking hard, by reading for meaning, by reading with critical detachment, and by using their sharp vision, their sharp hearing, their keen self-awareness, and their excellent positional memory.

Modifiers: location = meaning. Misplaced modifiers change meaning. • • • • Locate modifiers close to the words and phrases they modify. And ensure they modify the right words and phrases. The two first items on the list (wrong). The first two items on the list (right). “Standing awkwardly side by side, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila Putina announced Thursday their decision to divorce on Russian television” (http: //worldnews. nbcnews. com/_news/2013/06/06/18804947 -russias-putin-and-his-wife-say-their-marriage-is-over? lite). Only he said that they could eat dinner out. He only said that they could eat dinner out. He said only that they could eat dinner out. He said that only they could eat dinner out. He said that they only could eat dinner out. He said that they could only eat dinner out. He said that they could eat only dinner out. He said that they could eat dinner only out. “Two of the four attackers even managed to fight their way inside the compound and were only killed after running out of ammunition and detonating explosives belts they were wearing” (internet). (Only killed, not cooked and eaten? Try “killed only after. ”) “They are gathering names of students from faculty who have been nominated for the job of tutor” (Dr. Bonnie Devet, “James Bond Consultants in a Writing Lab”).

Untangling negative constructions (from The Copyeditor’s Handbook) • “You will not be charged your first monthly fee unless you don’t cancel within the first 30 days. ” (Untangled: To avoid being charged a fee, cancel your service within 30 days. ) • “Crime rates will not decline without a citywide effort to reduce poorly lit downtown streets. ” (Untangled: To reduce crime, the city should increase lighting on downtown streets. ) • The writing principle: Generally, positively worded statements are easier for readers to understand correctly than are negatively worded statements. • Indeed, remember this one from our discussion of clarity above? “Your task is to find out as much as possible about any connection between the late Bob Bradley and Cornelius Behan. Nothing is too small to overlook. ” • Search your document for negative verbs (fail, disappear, decrease), negative modifiers (poorly, inappropriate, illconsidered), and negative qualifiers (unless, without, absent).

Hyphenation: It involves art and science, and some voodoo magic, too. • • • He is a newlywed / They are newlyweds (nouns US English). He is a newly-wed / They are newly-weds (nouns UK English). He is newly wed / They are newly wed (The adverb “newly” modifies the adjective “wed”; applies to both US and UK English. ) It is a cost-effective [compound modifier] solution; The solution is cost effective; a long-term [compound modifier] perspective; a perspective that is long term Hyphenate compound modifiers: decision-making problems, policy-making issues, reality-based approaches, etc. But don’t go overboard: “climate change politics”; “climate change negotiations, ” etc. Different hyphenation styles: Decision maker [The Chicago Manual of Style] / decision-maker [Oxford Dictionary] / policy maker [CMS] / policymaker [OD] / policy making [CMS] / policymaking [OD] En dash: Use the en dash in phrases like “pre–World War II, ” “the writer–copyeditor relationship, ” and “income tax–related matters. ” See last bullet point. The hyphenation fun never ends! See http: //owl. english. purdue. edu/owl/resource/576/01/ and http: //www. chicagomanualofstyle. org/16/images/ch 07_tab 01. pdf for helpful advice. Surprisingly, the OWL writers didn’t mention a hard-and-fast rule of hyphenation, that is, the “–ly” adverbs shouldn’t be hyphenated: “newly hired, ” never “newly-hired”; “newly wed, ” never “newly-wed”; “recently abandoned, ” never “recently-abandoned. ” And they got this wrong: “pre-Civil War. ”

Avoiding the generic he or she: avoid he/she, he or she, his/her, his or her, and s/he. • Everyone has his reasons. • Everyone must submit his Everyone has reasons. writing sample by May 16. We all have our reasons. May 16 is the deadline for All have their reasons. submitting writing samples. Writing samples • Every participant must be submitted by submit his writing sample. May 16. All writing Participants must submit samples must be their writing samples. submitted by May 16. Every participant must • Serious, mature writers submit a writing sample. avoid the he/she, he or You must submit your writing sample. she, his/her, his or her, and s/he nonsense as much as possible.

Helpful Books* • Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (Tenth Ed. ), by Joseph M. Williams and Gregory G. Colomb • Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing, by Claire Kehrwald Cook • The Little, Brown Handbook (Global Edition/Thirteenth Ed. ), by H. Ramsey Fowler and Jane E. Aaron • Revising Prose (Fifth Ed. ) by Richard A. Lanham (paramedic method) • The Penguin Guide To Plain English: Express yourself clearly and effectively, by Harry Blamires • Writing with a Purpose, by James M. Mc. Crimmon, has sections on prewriting, organizing, outlining, and paragraphing, and a handbook of grammar and usage, with a glossary that “lists those words and constructions which frequently cause trouble in composition. ” Buy the fourth edition used. • Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, by Patricia T. O’Conner • The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, by Michael Harvey • The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications, by Amy Einsohn, describes what copyeditors do. When you carefully, systematically revise, you’re copyediting. • The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago, by Carol Fisher Saller • Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer’s Guide to Getting it Right, by Bill Bryson. Read the appendix and glossary, too. * Each of the first eight books conveys as much knowledge about the craft of writing as you might receive in a semester-long course at a top US high school or university. Today’s workshop merely scratches the surface. Want to become a good writer? Read several. And keep them on your desk to consult when writing.

Style Guides • • • “Your style guide—or any given ‘rule’ you learned in school—was created so you would do something the same way every time for the sake of consistency, for the reader’s sake. It’s less distracting that way. You learn style rules so you don’t have to stop and ponder every time you, say, come to a number in the text: ‘Hmm. Here’s a number. Shall I spell it out? Use numerals? ’ You know your chosen style by heart, so you just fly by with confidence. Style rules aren’t used because they’re ‘correct. ’ They’re used for your convenience in serving the reader” (The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago, by Carol Fisher Saller). Read Saller’s book to learn how copyeditors should work (to evaluate whether your copyeditor is serving you well) and to learn the writer’s responsibilities in the writer–copyeditor relationship. The American Psychological Association’s Publication Manual, Sixth Edition The Chicago Manual of Style, 16 th Edition Oxford Style Manual Study and follow your target publisher’s style guide. Some publishers say they prefer that writers follow one of the three above. APA’s guide and Chicago’s are mentioned far more often than Oxford’s is. Beware. Publishers often misrepresent what their preferred style guide calls for.

Usage guides tell writers more than dictionaries do. • Modern American Usage: A Guide, by Wilson Follett, Revised by Erik Wensberg http: //www. amazon. com/Modern-American-Usage-Wilson-Follett/dp/0809069512/ref=sr_1_1? ie=UTF 8&qid=1460200924&sr=81&keywords=modern+american+usage%3 A+a+guide • • • This book is not for the fainthearted (or faint-hearted if you consult http: //www. oxforddictionaries. com instead of http: //unabridged. merriam-webster. com). Read Follett’s remonstrations about various words and phrases and you’ll be afraid – as you should be! – to use them. Follett says about the phrase “based on”: “In most uses the phrase is hopeless and best left alone”; “In short, based on, in new figurative uses, fakes a relation between two things when the writer cannot be bothered to see the relation clearly. Hence the epidemic use of the phrase in second-rate writing. ” He’s right! Just a few of the other words and phrases Follett urges writers to ponder: impact, key, due to, utilize, in terms of, that. Some of the words and phrases copyeditors urge writers to use carefully or to replace, relocate, or otherwise modify: more, only, decade (and other parochialisms like in recent years/decades, etc. ), at the same time (do you mean in addition, simultaneously, or nevertheless? ), also (do you mean even? ), etc. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Edited by Jeremy Butterfield: http: //www. amazon. com/Fowlers-Dictionary-Modern-English-Usage/dp/0199661359/ref=sr_1_1? ie=UTF 8&qid=1460201037&sr=81&keywords=Fowler%27 s+Dictionary+of+Modern+English+Usage • A Dictionary of Modern English Usage: The Classic First Edition, by H. W. Fowler: http: //www. amazon. com/Dictionary-Modern-English-Usage-Classics/dp/019958589 X/ref=sr_1_2? ie=UTF 8&qid=1460201037&sr=82&keywords=Fowler%27 s+Dictionary+of+Modern+English+Usage

Helpful Websites • http: //owl. english. purdue. edu/ • http: //grammar. ccc. commnet. edu/grammar/ • http: //home. wavecable. com/~garblswritingcenter/stylema nual/betwrit. htm • http: //www. chicagomanualofstyle. org/home. html • http: //www. oxforddictionaries. com/definition/english/deca de • http: //grammar. about. com/od/blogsandlinks/tp/wconline. htm • http: //www. writing. utoronto. ca/advice/style-and-editing/hit -parade-of-errors • http: //grammarbook. com/

Revising for Clarity, Concision, Coherency, and Carefulness: What is it? Magic? Hard, sweaty work?

Shortcuts: Good writers know there are none. • Just because there’s a cleaning crew doesn’t mean you get to throw food on the floor – Carol Fisher Saller • You’ve written crap and haven’t bothered to carefully, systematically revise for clarity, concision, coherency, and carefulness. • You ask colleagues whose mother tongue is English to have a look. • If you’re lucky, some will know how to write well. • Those who do should tell you, “First, carefully, systematically revise as much as you can for clarity, concision, coherency, and carefulness. Then send your draft to a professional copyeditor. ”

Thank you. Frank Azevedo frankazevedofaz@hotmail. com Mobile: +47 900 47 921 http: //språkvasking. com Skype: fazmassas