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It’s Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
Sylvia Miller Sr. Communications Analyst, Elsevier
STC Fellow
Does writing quality matter to you? Does your blood pressure rise when you see
errors in grammar, usage, or sentence structure?
Do you recognize your own writing faux pas, or do they slide through and end up embarrassing you?
This session might be for you.
“Jamaican me crazy!”
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
Discuss ways to eliminate the following from our writing:◦ Wordiness◦ Redundancies and clutter◦ Dangling and misplaced modifiers
Consider how these writing offenses unintentionally reveal our attitudes toward readers.
Work in teams to practice fixing these types of writing errors.
Session Objectives
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
Finish this: The latest, greatest, coolest technology and presentation in the world doesn’t matter if...
Even in an edgy multimedia piece, wordy, redundant, or ambiguous writing slowly deflates a discerning reader’s awe.
Hope you share my perspective
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
Use short words and phrases when they work as well as long words and phrases.◦ within with◦ listing list◦ request ask◦ you have the option you can◦ in order to to◦ unavailable for use unavailable
Use the least number of words necessary to convey your meaning.
1. Shop the Petites Department
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
BEFORE: If a publication is unavailable for use, use this list to provide a reason as to why the publication is unavailable. (21 words)
BETTER: If a publication is not available, select the reason from the list. (12 words)
Example of shopping the Petites Dept.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
I want to impress you with all the words I know, especially all the big ones.
Because I write for a living, you expect me to know and use a lot of words.
I don’t care if I make readers wade through unnecessary words to get the point.
Impressions of writers who don’t shop the Petites Department
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Albert Einstein
“Even highly educated, sophisticated readers do best with plain English writing. They are often the busiest and most impatient of your site visitors [readers], so words that they recognize most quickly work best.” Ginny Redish. Letting Go of the Words, 2007.
K.I.S.S.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
When fried, I like okra. Flying over the African plain, the elephants
were a wonderful site. Having laid an egg weighing two pounds,
the farmer proudly displayed his favorite ostrich to the photographers.
2. Umm…You have something dangling, Madam
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
The system ignores filter options when selecting a letter from the alphabet bar.
When referring to a specific function in an application, a topic should always be associated with a book.
By entering information in the available entry fields, the system will provide a search results listing based on entered criteria.
More dangling and misplaced…
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
The writer is the provider of hilarious entertainment.
The writer is careless or too rushed to proofread.
The writer’s attitude is, “It’s okay. The readers know what I mean.”
Impressions of writers who use dangling or misplaced modifiers
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
“I try to make what I have written tighter, stronger, and more precise, eliminating every element that’s not doing useful work. Then I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am always amazed at how much clutter can still be cut.” William Zinsser. On Writing Well, 2006
smile happily absolutely essential still remains end result very unique unplanned emergency
3. Clean up your act!
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
Zinsser drew brackets around “any component in a piece of writing that wasn’t doing useful work.”
Unnecessary preposition: fill [up] Unnecessary adverb: might [possibly] Unnecessary adjective: [tall] skyscraper Little qualifier that weakens: [a bit], [sort of] Phrase: [in a sense] Entire sentence
To cut the clutter
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
Underline or italicize key words in a sentence. “Look carefully at the remaining words so you can determine which are unnecessary, and then eliminate wordiness by deleting them.” Kriszner and Mandell. The Wadsworth Handbook, 8th ed., 2008.
WORDY: Once information is posted into the tab, the Import button is then clicked to import the information, and as a result, a summary opens. The Import Summary is a system review or checkout of the information to be imported and verifies items to be included in the new group. Also, items which cannot be imported for one reason or another are also listed in the summary.
Another clutter-cutting method
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
WORDY: Once information is posted into the tab, the Import button is then clicked to import the information, and as a result, a summary opens. The Import Summary is a system review or checkout of the information to be imported and verifies items to be included in the new group. Also, items which cannot be imported for one reason or another are also listed in the summary.
BETTER: Click Import. A summary opens showing the information that was (or was not) imported.
Clutter before and after
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
I want to impress you with long, complex sentences.
I don’t care if I make readers wade through unnecessary words to get the point. They’re probably going to skim anyway.
I don’t have time to reread or use techniques to cut the clutter.
Impressions of writers who don’t clean up their act
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
“We are not writing clearly because people are dumb. We’re writing clearly because we respect their [readers’] time, interest and attention.” Sarah J. Richards, Dumbing Down, blog, 4/28/2014
Good Tech Comm in a nutshell
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
“If you make your content easy to read, you aren’t ‘dumbing down’, you are opening up your information to anyone who wants to read it. You are making it accessible. You are trying not to exclude people based on their education, cognitive function or reading ability.” Sarah J. Richards, Dumbing Down, blog, 4/28/2014
It’s all about accessibility
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
Work with others at your table to:
Shop petites by shortening and tightening wording
Clean up and cut clutter
Rearrange to eliminate dangling or misplaced modifiers
We’ll compare results.
Try shopping, cleaning, and undangling
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
My contact information:
Thank you
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
About.com Grammar & Composition – Richard Nordquist (weekly email) http://grammar.about.com
Grammar Girl - http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/top-ten-grammar-myths
Zinsser, William. On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. Harper Perennial, 2006.
Redish, Janice. Letting Go of the Words, Second Edition: Writing Web Content that Works. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2012.
http://www.sarahjrichards.com/1/post/2014/04/dumbing-down.html
Recommended sources
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing
