08.04.08
Posted in write tight, writing craft at 6:21 am by Bill Brohaugh
Over at StorefrontBacktalk, Eric Athas and Evan Schuman write that “J.Crew Apologizes For ‘Too Many’ Mistakes During Launch, Then Redesigns Its Apology.” Athas and Schuman compare the apology posted on July 30, 2008, and its July 31 version. “By Thursday morning, the apology had sharply shrunk—to less than one-fourth of Wednesday’s size. . . . Wednesday’s apology told customers, ‘We know we’ve let you down.’ That knowledge was apparently erased overnight, as Thursday morning had J.Crew knowing no such thing.”
Then Athas and Schuman write:
A more nitpicky change: On Wednesday, the retailer said: “We want to say that we’re sorry for any issues you have experienced.” On Thursday, the J.Crew team thought about it and decided to be more honest, having concluded that they really did not want to say any such thing. Thursday’s version became “We are truly sorry for any issues you have experienced.”
The Write Tight editor in me disagrees that such a change is in any way nitpicky, and if it is, J.Crew certainly chose a nit that needed picking. I want to commend them for getting to the point. Rather, “I commend them.”
On the other hand, maybe such truncation was just a way of marketing “fleece cut-offs.”
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07.27.08
Posted in poetry, style, write tight, writing craft at 12:02 pm by Bill Brohaugh
This post is too long delayed:
A couple of weeks ago, I was once again honored to give a presentation at The Antioch Writers Conference, a venerable gathering with some fine instructors. The staff is marvelous, as well, and I thank them for their hospitality.
I also had the pleasure of co-presenting with mystery-writer Sharon Short. Her latest, Tie Dyed and Dead: A Stain-busting Mystery
, was published in February of this year. We spoke about “The Writing Life: How to ‘Pitch’ to an Agent,” though we covered other types of submissions as well.
My stay at the conference was disappointingly short. It’s a week-long affair, and schedules allowed me to sit in on only a couple of sessions the first morning. But I managed to catch one of the more compelling presentations I’ve seen at a writers conference: Robert Morgan’s introduction to a week of lectures about poetry.
Morgan is the Kappa Alpha Professor of English at Cornell University, and author of such poetry books as Topsoil Road: Poems
, such novels as Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage
(an Oprah Book Club selection), and the recent Boone: A Biography
. He spoke eloquently of traditional poetic forms from two standpoints: Memorability, and power. He told of a poetry class in which he asked students to recite lines of poetry off the cuff. Morgan was offered no free verse from the students, only classical meters and rhymes. Here was a group studying modern poetry, but had no modern poetry living at the tips of their brains.
As for power, one example. Morgan noted that “Language spoken with great emotion tends to become iambic.” For example: “Do not go gentle into that good night.” You can clearly hear the “da-DUM da DUM” rhythm, the “the-DRUM the-DRUM” beat of the iambs.
Note that Morgan didn’t say “poetry,” but “language.” Poetic tools and forms, rising from instinctive rhythms in how people express themselves, should be the prose-writers’ tools, as well. I have neither the space nor the poetic training to make this any sort of poetry class. Suffice to say that classical poetic forms are often more natural expressions of language than less-disciplined prose diction, and to write tight—to write so the reader swiftly understands—understand the power of infusing poetic diction appropriately into prose.
And because that’s pretty serious stuff there, and this is supposed to be something of a smart-ass blog, let me leave you with another memory from Antioch. Last year, Paul Dickson, author of many books, including several on word use (like The Hidden Language of Baseball
), was talking about Hemingway covering the aftermath of a storm that had wrought horrific human damage. Dickson said, “Hemingway was so moved, he used an adjective.”
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07.25.08
Posted in redundancy, write tight, writing craft at 6:38 am by Bill Brohaugh
Miscellaneous observations with the cynical goal of bamboozling you into thinking that I’m doing some actual writing and not just tossing unfinished notes at you:
- Quoted in a news story: “It’s just a very unfortunate tragedy.” Not many tragedies are fortunate.
- In an early part of a news story: “there are two opinions about the untimely death of . . .” If any given death were “timely,” now that would be news.
- Seems I spend too much time commuting (and watching the needle on the gas gauge appear to not descend, but topple, even at 30 miles a gallon highway)—overheard in a radio commercial: “Are you tired of car dealers treating you like a puppet on a string?” Yes! Treat me like a puppet without a string! What does the phrase “on a string” add, other than a visual image? And an incorrect image, at that, as marionettes have multiple strings, and hand puppets have no strings.
- Spotted in a press release: “Handling over 39,737 online transactions annually . . .” Wouldn’t “over 39,737″ be, um, 39,738? Matching the vague with the specific is mentally jarring, and slows reading. “Odd” numbers, indeed.
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07.23.08
Posted in concision, write tight, writing craft at 5:33 am by Bill Brohaugh
Over at the Seekerville.com blog, I recently spotted a succinct set of lessons in writing tight. What made them particularly powerful was that they were real-world lessons. Author Cheryl Wyatt discusses how she went about chopping 4,000 words out of a book-length manuscript to get it to length. Here’s a couple of the examples she gave (presenting the original phrasing first, and Cheryl’s commentary in parentheses):
He stood to his feet. (Uh . . . as opposed to what? Standing to his elbows?)
BECAME: He stood.
Nolan unfolded his arms and strode in looking very much like a warrior on a lethal mission.
BECAME: Arms unfolded, Nolan tanked in.
(Plus it gives us a stronger image. Warriors don’t stroll. They march. Sneak. Tank. Stronger, more defining word. Certainly didn’t waltz.)
Nolan grinned impishly with the giddiness of victory.
BECAME: The imp grinned with giddy victory.
In the first example, Cheryl applies the “As Opposed To” flab-finding test. Test your phrasings with it, and be smart-alecky about it. Better you do it than the reader.
The second example demonstrates compressing imagery into an active, forceful verb.
The third spots the warning-signal word of and snaps two unneeded words out of the end phrase in eliminating of, drawing the powerful words together at the same time.
But a deeper shortening has emerged from the third example, as well. Note how she changed “Nolan” to “the imp.” Though this runs contrary to two good concision guidelines (”user fewer words,” “use specifics”), this change significantly shortens the sentence. Read the two versions aloud. Which flows most easily, both off the tongue and in the mind? The second, of course, in very large part because of the subtle assonance of the short-i sounds, assonance that’s bolstered by removing the “of” and the “the” at the end of the sentence and replacing long-o Nolan with short-i imp.
To improve their craft, writers must do more than simply read widely and voraciously. Writers must listen to what they read. Turning on one’s critical sonar is quite natural when reading text intended to be spoken aloud, such as playscripts, or to writing that adheres to meter—poetry, of course. With pure prose, tuning the sonar isn’t quite as easy, but it’s just as important. Writing that flows with rhythm and sound feels shorter to readers.
And in Cheryl’s demonstration of that principle, I stand to my elbows and applaud.
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07.22.08
Posted in spelling, write tight, writing craft at 6:32 am by Bill Brohaugh
The Mr. Write Tight in me should like a recent website discovery more than he’s amused by it, but right now he’s weighing which side to fall on. You see, Thsrs.com am(us/az)es me.
Thsrs is likely not pronounced thissors (which is how you’d pronounce the word describing that dangerous pair if as a kid you ran with them and stabbed yourself in the tongue rather than poking your eye out). It’s pronounced, I presume, thesaurus, because in a clever but still somewhat shaky marriage of form and function, thsrs represents Thsrs.com, a site that bills itself as “The shorter thesaurus.” Type in a word, and you’re presented with a list of synonyms, all shorter than your source word. And shorter is good, right Mr. Write Tight?
To a point, but more on that in a moment.
I decided to play the meta-reference game at Thsrs.com. Meta-reference—referencing referencing—is the sort of thing you see in increasingly tired and repetitious quips: Why is the word abbreviation so long? Monosyllabic isn’t. What’s another word for thesaurus (other than thsrs, of course)? Meta-referring, I typed in sesquipedalian at our designated vowel-less site, half expecting that “sskwpdln” and fully expecting that “verbose” or “wordy” would be among the returned synonyms. What I got was:
polysyllabic
long
pretentious
sesquipedalia
polysyllable
Well, long is shorter (which sounds like an aphorism, doesn’t it?). And I like pretentious—which is only marginally shorter, yet has its special implication. Grandiloquent is but a letter shorter, but should be included, too. The lessons here are twofold: 1) A thesaurus is but a suggestion tool, and 2) the right word is the right word, and the right phrasing is the right phrasing. Shorter is an admirable goal only if shorter communicates as effectively or more effectively.
But back to meta-reference fun. Let’s look up thesaurus at Thsrs.com. But one word is returned: wordbook. Not returned is treasury, or any of the several “other words” for thesaurus, shorter or otherwise (and more on that in another post).
Now, in final meta-reference fun, let’s look up shorter, which returns this result:
Aha. “Shorter” doesn’t exist. And in some senses, it should not exist for writers, especially when it displaces “concise,” “precise,” “exact,” “evocative,” “communicative,” “meaningful,” “poetic,” “powerful” or plain-ol’ “perfect.”
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07.20.08
Posted in write tight, writing craft at 10:09 am by Bill Brohaugh
My Write Tight
discusses the problems of adding “mental length” to a piece of writing—material that confuses or sets the reader thinking off in the wrong direction. Numbers often open up potholes in otherwise smooth writing, if they’re not communicated efficiently, or if the reader is simply not numerically inclined. My favorite true numbers story involves sitting at a Cincinnati Bengals game years ago. In a row in front of me, another fan turned to his buddy and asked, “How far to go for a first down? About half a yard?” His buddy studied the field, then replied, “Not that far. About two feet.”
Here’s a small pothole I spotted in an AP story about the tragic crane accident in Houston on July 17.
The 30-story-tall crane, capable of lifting 1 million pounds, . . .
I paused. This was a story of tragedy, yet I was suddenly thinking about crane-lifting-capacity: A million pounds? That’s, what, how many tons? Divide by 2,000 . . . toss out some zeroes . . . um, how many tons is that? I resorted to scratchpadding the math. I had stopped reading.
The writer may have chosen to express the capacity in pounds—allowing her to use a much higher number—for drama; or she may have simply relied on the phrasing used by a source. Doesn’t matter. We’re so accustomed to speaking of massive weights in terms of tons that this variance from an invisible communication convention drew attention to itself, and in doing so slowed the reader and disserved this tragic story.
By the way, how many tons is a million pounds? 500. No, not that many. Two feet. Of mental length.
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07.13.08
Posted in verbal stupidity, word misuse, write tight, writing craft at 4:28 pm by Bill Brohaugh
Though the advice seems oxymoronic in the light of its Write Tight context, I regularly tell writers that longer can be shorter (and, yes, “more is less,” more or less). Longer phrasings and sentences can make for shorter reading—when additional length brings clarification, background or context. Here’s a couple of examples of short-as-ridiculously-long from recent radio news items I heard:
“People with hepatitis A fears . . .” When I first heard that, I pictured diseased people, people with hepatitis A, fearing ungrammatically. Quickly enough (in terms of my brain, anyway), it clicked in that fears was a noun instead of a numerically inconsistent verb. Longer, but mentally shorter, would have been “People who fear hepatitis A . . . ”
“A pit bull was put down after biting an 8 and 9 year old.” Wow—a kid who’s simultaneously 8 and 9. He’s not 8 going on 9. He’s both! Of course, we’re really talking about the pit bull biting “an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old,” two youngsters whose unfortunate circumstance is brought to life by investing in just a couple of extra words.
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07.11.08
Posted in typographical errors, writing craft at 3:48 am by Bill Brohaugh
I love the smell of irony in the morning.
Like any written medium, blogs must respect not necessarily the craft of writing, but the craft of communication, which in turn respects its component tools—one of which is writing. This basic concept doesn’t seem to resonate with some who think that blogs must be raw to be true to their form . . . to the point that blogs aren’t really blogs if they’re “too polished”—which means what? Breathless prose? Redundancies? Typos? Doesn’t this world have too much of those already?
For a strong rebuttal of such “thinking,” see this “Bad Advice From a Marketing Guru” post from Ron Shevlin’s Marketing Whims blog. Ron primarily talks marketing in the financial services arena, but he dabbles in the pitfalls of modern communications in general, as well.
But back to the morning’s cup of irony, from (of course!) a blog:
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07.10.08
Posted in redundancy, write tight, writing craft at 7:30 am by Bill Brohaugh
Should you question questions? Could question leads signal flabby writing? Did you have any doubts?
I ask these inane questions to demonstrate the futility of trying to draw the reader into a piece of writing by posing questions. For a real-world example, here’s a quote from near the beginning of a course description, designed, I would imagine, to help entice possible matriculators to sign up:
What are the benefits of old age?
Excuse me while I pause to consider the multitude of snappy retorts that don’t involve socks and sandals. Let’s just revert to the classic, then: “Avoiding the alternative.”
The fact that I’m pondering potential snarky answers demonstrates one of the more severe detriments of using questions to begin articles or establish transitions: they can set off readers’ smart-aleck radar, slowing the reading experience. A less flashy but equally severe problem is that facilely stated questions often signal that the writer is warming up or searching for a way to enter the story and choosing an easy tool rather than working to enter at a more compelling moment.
The question is one of a number of hackneyed signals of wordiness or simple authorial floundering. Other hackneyed forms include:
- One-word opening declarations. For example, “Pretentious. That’s a perfect word to describe articles that begin with a single pretentious word—in this example, the word pretentious.”
- Describing the very beginning of a story. For example, “George woke up that morning . . .” Oooh! Tell me more!
- It should be obvious, but any sentence beginning with the word it. For example, “It was a dark and stormy night before George woke up that morning . . .”)
Because, you see, waking up in the morning is one of the benefits of old age.
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07.08.08
Posted in grammar, language change, myths and misconceptions, persnickitors, unfortunate English, writing craft at 12:12 pm by Bill Brohaugh
Persnickitors would have it that you might incur a pox upon your lineage should you use the word and (or but or because or . . . yes, or) to begin a sentence. Rhythm be damned. Meaning be damned. Flow of ideas be damned. Rules are rules! And if you go swimming within an hour after beginning a sentence with a conjunction, or you’ll get cramps!
That’s why I’m pleased when I encounter reason regarding the language, and, in the case of today’s post, reason refuting the conjunction superstition. Michelle at the Write or Wrong blog provides insight into the intent of the conjunction guideline, and guideline it is, and no more.
Before adding a comment to Michelle’s post, I zipped over the the Oxford English Dictionary online to double-check the definition of conjunction. In the grammatical sense, quoth the OED, conjunction means “One of the Parts of Speech; an uninflected word used to connect clauses or sentences, or to co-ordinate words in the same clause.” (Emphasis added.)
But (oops) because (oops) I love words, I lingered on the OED’s other definitions of conjunction—to the delight of the Unfortunate English
author in me. The earliest meaning of conjunction in English was generic “joining.” This led to a couple of obsolete figurative meanings of joining first recorded in the 1500s, including “marriage” and “copulation.”
So, let’s amend the “rule”: Don’t begin a sentence with a conjunction . . unless you’re writing porn.
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