And I call myself an editor

After a meeting today for a project I'm working on, I received an email from the client saying that documents being used to create the health tool should be stored in SharePoint -- software that allows documents to be shared and creates a history so that we always know what the latest version is.

I wrote back an email saying among other things: "I’ll put stiff there as soon as I can."

That prompted the following reply from a doctor who is also working on the project:

just remember to bag your bodies before storing them 8-).


Jack

Guess I had that coming.

What did you say?

I was working yesterday on an article about ruptured eardrums and came across this sentence in one of the references I was using. There's nothing wrong with it grammatically or syntactically, but I just hope no one takes it literally.

Teach your children about the damage that can be done by putting foreign objects in their ears.

Help, quick, can we get an editor over hear?

What Wonderful Ears

I was editing an article about yeast infections in dogs and found the following passage in the section about symptoms. In all fairness to the writer, she was rushed, and this was a rewrite, but still...

You may notice your dog scratching his ear or rubbing it on the floor or on a piece of furniture. That's a sign that he may have a yeast infection. You should check his ears for these signs: (2)

• Brown, yellow or bloody discharge that has a strong odor
• Redness or swelling
• Crusted skin on the near ear flap
• Loss of hair around the ear
• Head shaking or tilting
• Loss of balance
• Loss of hearing
• Walking in circles
• Unusual eye movements

*********************

I suppose you could tell if the dog was walking in circles by watching its ears. And even the head shaking and tilting might be evident. But the unusual eye movements? I'm going to be watching my dog's ears this evening. I'll tell you later what they say about her eyes.

Thinking about the reader

Here’s the “lead” paragraph from an article for the web I edited the other day:

For some expectant moms, even the slightest ache or pain can trigger a five-star alarm and trip to the doctor, but other pregnant women may well ignore a potentially serious warning sign because they think it is a normal part of pregnancy or they fear of being the girl who cried wolf.

This is from a professional writer with an impressive list of credits, including Woman’s World magazine, Arthritis Today, and the Wall Street Journal. The writer has a graduate degree in journalism, and has won awards for online reporting. I can only assume the writer was having a bad day. (Actually, what I really assumed is that the writer is used to having her work very heavily edited and simply doesn't care.)

That one-sentence paragraph has 52 words and a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 21.7. And can someone please tell me what a five-star alarm is? I know there is a product called a FiveStar Alarm that can be used to detect levels of dangerous gasses. So the writer may have been trying to use a metaphor, but I don’t think it works. I didn’t know there was such a product until I googled it, and I doubt many readers would know either. But what I really wonder is why a writer for whom English is not a second language would turn in an article with the phrase “they fear of being the girl who cried wolf." All that tells me is the writer didn’t bother to read any of the text before turning it in.

S and I were having dinner a few weeks ago with some close friends who are professional communicators like us, and at one point in the discussion the issue was raised about whether or not every assignment was equally important. J, an editor whose work I especially admire, said, “No, some assignments don’t matter. The job is just to get them out there.” Her point was that if an editor or a reporter treated every piece he or she is working on as if it needed to be perfect, the pieces that did truly matter might never get done.

I tend to agree with J. But that’s because I understand she wasn’t saying that there was any excuse for shoddy craftsmanship from a professional. And it doesn’t excuse a professional communicator for not considering the audience. You put out the best you can in the time you have with the attention it deserves. But if it isn’t clear, if it isn’t accurate, if the language isn’t at least used properly, you don’t present it.

If the writer of the one-sentence paragraph had any concern at all for the readers or for the subject matter, the paragraph might have looked like this:

For some expectant moms, the slightest ache or pain triggers a major alarm and a trip to the doctor’s office. But other pregnant women sometimes ignore a potentially serious warning sign. They may think it’s a normal part of pregnancy. Or they may simply not want to be seen as the girl who cried wolf.

Problem/Solution

I know I haven't posted much about the agonies of editing recently. Wait. Come to think of it I haven't posted much of anything recently. Hmmmm. Well, anyway, as I was saying, I got this gem of a sentence today in an article about feeding an adult dog.

An adult dog's diet can contain up to 50% carbohydrates, including 2.5% to 4.5% fiber, according to the National Research Council, a scientific research unit of the nonprofit National Academies.

So...
.............. let's take a look at that sentence. First of all, it's 30 words. Now 30 words is a long sentence in an article aimed at an audience whose reading skills are defined as basic. The company I'm doing this work for defines basic as high school level. But that may actually be a little high for the general lay audience of adult readers they are trying to reach. When I edit or write for them, I shoot for an eighth grade reading level. (Which has nothing to do with the level of the intelligence of the audience. It only involves the ease with which the audience can take the information in.) The reason I aim for an 8th grade level is that a 6th grade level, which is more accurate, takes more time than they want to pay me for.

But this isn't really about reading level (or how much I get paid). It's about putting information in a sentence the audience can use. Now when we take a look at the sentence, it seems there's some important information in there. How do I know? Because there's a really impressive source being cited. Come on, we all know about the "National Research Council, a scientific research unit of the nonprofit National Academies," don't we?

PROBLEM # 1: Who says this (or "says what," because by the time I get to the end of the sentence I've forgotten what I was being told)? And why am I supposed to believe them? Their name sounds impressive. But who the hell are they? I just formed a group here in Atlanta where the CDC is located. We call ourselves the National Citizen's Healthcare Oversight Committee. Now we're probably going to be able to convince a lot of people about what we say. Why? Because we're right here where the CDC is.

Actually, my group is going to be more successful. Everybody has heard of the CDC. Well, not everybody, but enough. Can I have a show of hands. How many of you out there know what the "National Academies" are, or is it is?

Solution #1: Actually, I happen to know a little bit about both the National Academies and the National Research Council. But I'd have to Google them to be able to tell you who they are and what they do. And there was a paucity of hands raised just a moment ago.

So the first thing to ask as an editor is does the writer explain anywhere in the article who or what these agencies are? No. As a matter of fact, that is the only time their names appear in the article. So the solution seems easy. If you are going to call on an authority to vouch for your claim, then you need to make sure your readers know who that authority is. So the first option is to tell them.

But, no. That's a problem because it's going to take up a lot more space than it warrants and that's going to take the reader farther away from the real point of the article: What kind of dog food should I buy for my dog? (As I type this, Yeats is staring up at me with a hungry look in her eye. But then, she's still a puppy. Puppies are supposed to be hungry.)

The second thing I ask as an editor is do we really need the attribution. The answer is no. This is not a scientific paper for a peer reviewed journal. The website where this article will appear has a major reputation as an authoritative source. And underlying that is a rigorous fact checking and medical review process. Plus they hire good editors who are going to check these things out, even before the article gets to those stages. So we drop the attribution and come up with this:

An adult dog's diet can contain up to 50% carbohydrates, including 2.5% to 4.5% fiber.

Now that's much better. The message is clear with nothing about the National Academies to get in the way. It works because the website and the parent company have believability.

And look at that. I've actually solved two problems. I've cut the sentence in half. It's now just 15 words. A manageable chunk of information.

Problem #2: Yes there is a problem number 2. How do you calculate and confirm those percentages when you buy dog food. And I'll tell you that elsewhere in the article the writer pointed out that coming up with this information is hard because you can't rely on the label. And right. The writer didn't tell the reader how to determine the necessary percentages. Oh, me. An editor's work is never done.

Solution #2: Ignore the problem. Let the readers do some research of their own. You of course know that's not the correct answer. The correct answer is to send the article back to the writer and ask for more information. Taking the attribution out was an editor's call. Explaining how to figure the percentages is a writer's job.

Unfortunately, I didn't send it back. I didn't have time, and this article is part of a major launch, which is scheduled to happen very soon. My decision to let the article go as is was based on the fact that there was enough information in the article to make it useful and interesting and that it was an important part of the launch and needed to get into review. That was step 1 in figuring out a solution. Step 2 was realizing there really isn't enough time to make the article complete. It needs to go into review.

I would never knowingly make that kind of decision with an article that would involve injury. But now you know how articles that are less than perfect end up in print or on the web.

This Fascinates Me

Ok. Cloudia caught me sitting at my desk and really made me feel guilty with her latest comment on my last post. (If you've never visited her at Comfort Spiral you are really missing something special.)

I promise I'm coming back to the Blogosphere soon. But I have been busy writing articles about the health benefits of having pets, Ewing's sarcoma, DTaP, and the like, and editing articles about things like rheumatoid arthritis or how to get your dog to eat dog food. (My days are simply eclectic.)

But I am coming back. In the meantime I found this little gem by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and thought you might enjoy it. (I was looking for a video of the theme to High Noon, but came across this instead and found it fascinating.) Have fun. And in the meantime, please do not forsake me. . .

Thoughts on Being a Freelancer Supplemental

Writer and Editor

A couple of week ago, I said a writer is "someone who knows words and knows language and gets turned on by using both well (and by seeing other people do the same thing). A writer is someone who is curious about a lot of different things, and knows ways to satisfy that curiosity--how to research, who to ask, and what to ask in order to get the right information to share with readers."

An editor is a lot like a writer but different. While a writer's passion is words, an editor's passion is text. A writer uses words for a lot of different reasons--to convey information, to explore ideas, to persuade, to incite, to define the world the writer inhabits, to create meaning. Text is what results from the effort to do those things. But text usually is not an end in itself.

An editor understands there's a special relationship between text and its intended audience. Text without readers, that is text that exists outside a community, has no power. It can't inform. It can't incite. It can define nothing. (Just an aside here. A writer can also be the sole audience for what is written.)

The editor is like a bridge between writer and reader. The editor's first task is to make the effort to understand exactly what the writer is saying and what the writer is trying to do by saying it. And the second task is just as important. The editor needs to understand how the audience is going to respond to the text and whether or not that response is going to be the one the writer wants. Then it becomes the editor's job to bring the two things -- the writer's intent and the audience's response -- as close together as possible.

The jobs are different. But one quality identifies both -- a passion for language, including a passion for using it well. It's no surprise that the best writers and the best editors often do both tasks very well.

Thoughts on being a freelancer, lesson two

Last week's commentary on becoming a full time freelancer was about setting reasonable expectations at the start. This week I want to talk about a piece of advice every aspiring writer hears at one point or another.


So, Lesson Number Two in How to Become a Full Time Freelancer: What do you know--not that it's really all that important.


One of the most common piece of advice beginning writers hear is write what you know. To some extent, that makes sense. After all, if the closest you ever came to understanding a particle accelerator is watching coins disappear down a spiral coin wishing well funnel,



you may find it tough to explain what happens inside the Large Hadron Collider. (And what all the fuss was about -- Some kind of fear that black holes would suck up our world and everything in it from the inside out.)



But why would you try? Well let's see. My first writing paycheck was for $35 from United Way for an article I did for them on the Arthritis Foundation to use in their annual campaign. It had something to do with new treatments and helping people learn about them so they could make informed, competent decisions. My second pay check was also for $35, again from United Way, for an article about a program from the Diabetes Association to help people understand the importance of controlling blood sugar levels.

I had been a political science major before dropping out of college and going into restaurant work. I knew nothing about health care or medicine or managing chronic diseases. But the editor liked the pieces and I had my first professional credits. The key is, I did know something. I knew how to find out what I needed to know, and I knew how to ask questions and listen to the answers; so I could interview people and get the information I needed to write the piece the editor had asked for. In a sense, I did write what I knew. I knew how to learn and I wrote what I had learned.

Now there's all kinds of caveats attached to that. Notice, I wasn't writing for an audience of doctors. And I wasn't writing patient education pamphlets. I've done both those things multiple times throughout my career, but there was no way I could learn enough in a short period of time when I first started out.

So there are really two lessons to learn here. The first is that a would be writer cannot be handcuffed to the admonition to write only what you know. If that's all you do, you'll have a very small niche in the writing world indeed. And will you become a writer? Probably not. You'll be a barista who writes articles about double mocha lattes. Or a rocket scientist who knows how to make space travel interesting to audiences who read your occasional articles in Discover. But you'll always be a writer second.

A writer is someone who knows words and knows language and gets turned on by using both well (and by seeing other people do the same thing). A writer is someone who is curious about a lot of different things, and knows ways to satisfy that curiosity--how to research, who to ask, and what to ask in order to get the right information to share with readers.

That's not to say a writer doesn't specialize. For the last 13 or 14 years, I've made a good living writing about and editing works on health and health care for both health professionals and health consumers. And even though articles about health was what I got paid for when I first started, this one time college drop out glorified waiter and bartender wrote articles about beekeeping, running public parks, building a career as ceramic engineer, opening a general store, how books are bought for the library, subversive curriculum, literacy, writing a collaborative novel.

My first article in a national publication was about crepes. Even though I had worked in restaurants, I had never done anything with crepes (except for crepe suzette). But I was curious, and I created 20 crepe recipes. I even took pictures of the dishes and got paid for the photos. It wasn't that long after the Arthritis Foundation piece. And it made me feel really good about what I could do.

Now the second big caveat (the first was don't let yourself be limited by what you know) is know your limitations. For those of you who are still with me, lesson three will be The Great Hotel Fiasco--Don't bite off more than you can chew. (I'll tell you about my first real failure.)

Thoughts on being a freelancer, lesson one

A long time ago when I was reliable, meaning when I could be counted on to post regularly, and when people left comments, a few readers asked me to blog about my writing career. Truth be told, it's not that interesting. I write and I edit because I like working with words and meaning and ideas, and I like getting ideas across to other people. I'm also good at it. Plus, I don't know what else to do. Everything else seems boring.

[Well that's not exactly true. What's boring is reporting to someone else and letting that someone else dictate how I spend my time. If I'm going to screw up, if I'm going to miss out on life, I want it to be my fault. I don't want it to be because I didn't have any choice but to do what I was told. And there are a lot of other things that are not boring. I miss being an English teacher. I miss running college writing centers. I miss sharing ideas about how people learn with other professionals. And I really miss helping students realize what they're after. I also like to draw and play the piano. I'm not very good at those things, but I like doing them. And I like punching the speed bag. (There was a time in my life when I wasn't bad at that.) And if I could figure out how to make money doing any of those things, I'd give it serious thought. But I digress.]

Next, several people have asked me for advice on becoming a freelancer, and it occurred to me that I could do both, talk about my history as a writer/editor while talking about what it takes for one person to do it.

So, Lesson Number One in How to Become a Full-Time Freelancer: Don't Quit Your Day Job.

In 2006, there were 305,909 people making money as a writer or an editor. That really isn't a very large percentage of the working force. 197, 495 (or 65%) of them were "employed." That means they weren't working for themselves. 108, 413 (or 35%) were classified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as self-employed or unpaid. For 80,000 of those workers, writing or editing was classified as their primary job. And for 28,000, writing or editing was a secondary job.

Now there are several important things to note in the above paragraph. The first is, given the amount of writing that gets done every day, there aren't that many writers and editors who are working, comparatively speaking.

The second thing is that the overwhelming majority of those who are working are working for someone else. They are not self employed. They are not their own boss. They are not masters of their own time. If you want to write or edit and get paid, your best bet is to find a job where that's part of the job description. There are a number of sites on the Internet where those kinds of jobs are listed. Google writing jobs. You'll find them.

The third thing to notice is what I bolded in the paragraph above. BLS labels self-employed writers and editors as potentially unpaid. There are a lot of people out there who will publish what you write and pay you by sending you a copy. There are even some, who will make you pay for the copy. Other people will pay you by the word--often starting around 2 cents. And I know things have changed since I started, and you can write stuff and post it on site on the Web at a site that will pay you based on how many page clicks you get. Well, call your family. Call your friends. Tell them to click through. Tell them to tell their friends to click through. And then wait.............

The unfortunate thing about that is if you don't have a network (meaning connections), and you don't have a track record (meaning publications), you actually have to write for those people [two cents a word/pay by click]. It's the only way to build a publications list. You need that to get jobs.

So when I was in my 20s, I read everything I could about making a living as a writer. I went to college, dropped out, went back, dropped out again, went back ad nauseum. Finally, I dropped out and went to work in the hospitality industry. I was the youngest maitre d' in the history of Brookside Country Club. And I was damn good. But there was one thing that was consistent. I never stopped reading Writer's Digest. [That is not an endorsement. In fact, for those who are serious about wanting to write for a living, I'd recommend not reading it.] And I focused on the things that would make me an instant success. I settled on syndication. That was the way to go. You write something. You send it to a syndicate. They sell it and split the money with you. It's easy living.

So I was a young husband and father. We traveled. [ha!] We went from Columbus to St. Louis. I talked to people in whatever job I had. So I came up with an idea called From Here to There. The idea was I wrote these little essays about the people I met or the sights I saw. And then the syndicate would sell them. We'd be rich. We'd use the money to go somewhere else besides St Louis and write about it. It would be a wonderful life. I sent it off to syndicates. I got rejected over and over again.

That's not the way it works. [To syndicate, you get get your work published in several different local venues. Then you gather data to show that readers are reading it and responding. Then, maybe a syndicate will be interested. The real way it works is the syndicate finds you.] My approach, though, did work for some people (the ones who wrote the articles for writer's digest). For the vast majority of us who were clueless, it was just one more indication that we were not cut out to be writers.

We like to think of ourselves as Ernest Hemingway or Joan Didion. The truth is most of us are Joe the electrician [the plumber was a false identity] or Rosie the riveter. The Romance of writing catches our attention. The labor of writing somehow never peaks over the horizon. Writing, for the vast majority of us who make our living this way, is hard work. And it's work the uninitiated are never told about. Unless you have a track record, you are not going to make it as a full time freelancer. [There are always exceptions.] So keep that "day" job. Or better still, make that "day" job a writing job.

Enough about you. Let's talk about me. I had publications as a kid. Still, aside from a couple of prizes, I really didn't get paid for anything I wrote until I was in my mid twenties [maybe I'll talk about what happened when I first got paid in lesson two]. I didn't go out on my own to become a full time freelancer until I was in my late forties. I didn't feel comfortable at it until I was in my early fifties. But then again, I'm not all that comfortable right now, and I'm a long way past my early fifties. Still, I make a living. I have money coming in. And I have jobs in hand and jobs on the horizon.

For those of you who are still with me, the next lesson (lesson two) may be called "What Do You Know--But It's Not the Only Thing That Matters." And I'll talk a little bit more about what happened when I got my first paycheck.

The trouble with freelancing

A lot of people who do what I did don’t last as long at it as I have. I officially stopped working for the man and became a full-time freelancer in May of 1994. That means I’m starting my 16th year in just a few weeks. I know when I tell people I make my living from writing and editing, it sounds Romantic, like I’m living the life of a knight-errant or, since I do get to write poetry, some type of medieval minstrel. The reality is it’s more like the life of a vagrant, just roaming here and there with no visible means of support and no real goal in mind.

A lot of people I know who made the same leap, do it for three or four years, but then they go back and take a job. That's because we're not making our living by writing the things we love--great poetry, amazing fiction, soaring new journalism essays that fill the pages of The New Yorker. It's a small percentage of writers who get to earn money that way. What most of us do is called contract writing or work for hire. We work for agencies, pharmaceutical companies, health plans. We write very specialized pieces aimed at computer geeks, investment bankers, physical therapists, or people with diabetes. Getting to set our own schedule means never taking a day off because if you don't work, you don't get paid. And if you don't have any work in front of you at the moment, you have to scramble to find a client and pick up another assignment.

After a few years of doing that, of living in a constant state of uncertainty about where your next pay check is coming from, a job with paid sick time and vacation, with a 401K and office colleagues to talk to during the day seems mighty appealing. Even if your client list is pretty secure, it's that not having people to talk to during the day that can get very oppressive. I have, over the past fifteen years, gone back to teaching part time on occasion, not because I needed the money, but because I just needed the human contact.

I had perhaps my best financial first quarter since I started freelancing this year. I was busy. stretched completely to my limits. I was working so many weekends I'd have trouble knowing exactly what day it was. Things are finally quieting down and I can breathe a little easier. Except...

The end of March. Did you hear that crashing sound? That was the roof of my security shelter crashing down around me. Two long-term contracts that formed a solid monthly income base just ended. Just like that. Boston Globe Media decided not to continue publishing a magazine that I had been managing editing for them for 11 years. Not only did I feel I was getting laid off, but I had to contact the writers who wrote regularly for me and tell them I'd have no more work for them in the foreseeable future. Then right after I got that word I found out the newsletter for health care providers I had been writing for the past five or so years was not going to be published anymore, and the publishing company that did them was closing.

That's the the way business I'm in goes. I'll get more work. It's just that right now I'm feeling a little wistful for the job security of a tenured faculty member that I left to follow my dream. On the bright side, I am going to have more time to get back to the blog. I've missed it.

More odds and ends

Just a couple of observations today.

1) I know quality when I see it

This morning S gave me a white coffee mug, the kind you would pick up in the dinnerware section at Target, that had her company's logo on it. (I don't even drink coffee, but that's another post.) It was a nice mug, but as I said, there was nothing special about it except for the gift card that came inside it:

A Gift for You

This beautiful gift is of the finest

quality available. Hand prepared by

true craftspeople, the design is kiln-

fired for permanence and inspected

no less than seven times through

production. All in all, your gift is the

product of our uncompromising

commitment to quality.

*

Now I was impressed. So I turned it over to see who had made such a fine mug. Printed on the bottom:

Made in China

*

2) How old do you have to be to get a job on a newspaper in Atlanta?

*

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta's major daily newspaper, prints teases for stories on the inside down the left sidebar of the front page. This was the first one today:

*

New reason

to look for

life on Mars

We're not sure

anyone is there to

say "excuse me,"

but a mysterious

belch of methane

gas on Mars hints at

possible microbial

life underground,

a new NASA study

found. It also could

come from changes

in rocks, but option

No. 1 is cooler.

Another note on the way the language works, or

I just passed along some erroneous information

I read this sentence today in Discover magazine:

People who grew up watching black and white television are more likely to dream in black and white than are people who grew up watching color.

Then later when I saw S, I wanted to share my new found knowledge with her, so I said:

Did you know that people who grew up watching black and white TV are more likely to dream in black and white.

Now that may be true, but it isn't what the magazine's sentence said. The magazine said if you put two people side by side, one who whatched black and white TV as a kid and one who watched color TV as a kid, if one of them dreams in black and white, the odds are that it is the one who watched black and white TV.

My sentence said if you asked someone who grew up watching black and white TV whether he dreamed in color, chances are good he'd say no.

If you don't find that difference as fascinating as I do, than either you don't hear the voices in your head, or you haven't exhausted your brain by spending too much time working with words.

I didn't say that

The first article that I actually got paid for (winning essay contests when you're in elementary school doesn't count as getting paid) was an article about an education program run by the local chapter of the Arthritis Foundation. I wrote it for the press office of United Way, and I dropped it off to the editor in person. She told me to have a seat and then took the article out of the envelope and proceeded to read it with a red pen in her hand in front of me. When she finished, she looked up at me, smiled, and said, "Not bad. We just need to add a couple of quotes. We'll put one here, one here, and another one here. . . ." As she said that, she took the red pen and put quotation marks on either side of several sentences.

Writing feature articles -- especially "writing for hire" -- is not the same thing as writing news articles where accurate quotations are absolutely essential. Quotes in an article about treating allergies or building model airplanes generally aren't there to become part of the public record. They are there to add authority, offer a particular perspective, make the writing interesting, and accomplish other similar goals. The rules are different than the rules for putting quotes in newspapers or in an article about foreign policy in The Nation.

So what are the rules?

• The first one is you don't make things up out of thin air. If you are going to quote someone, what's said in the quote needs to actually have come from the person who said it.
• The second rule is that while you can selectively use what a person says and actually rearrange the order in which it was said, you provide enough information so you don't take what was said out of context. It's wrong to use it in a way the person would never have intended.
• The third rule is you maintain as much as possible the actual voice of the person you are quoting without making that person sound like an idiot.

So these rules aren't really that hard to understand, are they? So why do I get copy from "professional" writers writing for an educational Web site like this:

"Stress is certainly a factor in individuals with any common disease," Jones says. "Reducing stress with yoga, breathing exercises or diet are all benefits. I would never say don't take your medication for acute disease management, but it's not just about medication or allergy shots. It's about treating the stress and immune systems and we're learning that every day."

Now if I were Dr. Jones, I'd certainly call the Web site publisher and say, "I never said anything like that at all." The truth is he probably did because, for the most part, we don't talk the way we write. And I'm guessing all the writer did was simply copy the quote directly from her notes or the transcript of her interview tape. But even so, if the writer isn't going to take the time to see if the quote actually makes sense, it would have been a simple courtesy to have reviewed the quotation with Dr. Jones and given the good doctor a chance to show that he actually is literate.

But obviously, neither one of those things happened. So the editor's job is to sort out the language that's there, decide what the actual message is, and what part needs the weight of authority, what's not important, and what needs to get the emphasis. Obviously, there's more than one way to handle the information. Here's what I did:

“I would never say don't take your medication,” Jones says. “But it's not just about medication or allergy shots.” Jones tells HealthyNewsSite.com that stress is a common problem for anyone with a health condition. And, he says, using techniques such as yoga, breathing exercises, and diet to reduce stress can be very beneficial.

Moving the quote about taking medication to the start of the passage gives the whole passage an air of traditional authority: the doc says take your medicine. But then, the second quote emphasizes there is more to it than just that. The reader has been alerted -- by the doctor -- to the fact that what follows is the important part of the message. Now there's no longer any reason to put the rest of the message in quotes. The good doctor sounds intelligent. The garbled message has been sorted out, and the reader knows it's important to do something about reducing stress.

[NOTE: Dr. Jones and HealthyNewsSite.com are fictitious names. Why? I need to be able to keep working for this client.]

Odds and Ends Again

Consolidate, Consolidate, Consolidate

Here is a passage from an article about hormone replacement therapy.

The best evidence for the risks and benefits of postmenopausal hormone use comes from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), a large randomized clinical trial of over 16,000 healthy women ages 50 through 79, in which half of the participants took hormones and the other half took a placebo pill (which does not contain any drug). The trial, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was halted early when, in July 2002, investigators reported that the overall risks of estrogen plus progestin, specifically Prempro™, outweighed the benefits. The WHI found that use of this estrogen plus progestin pill increases the risk of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and blood clots. The study also found that there were fewer cases of hip fractures and colon cancer among women using estrogen plus progestin than in those taking a placebo.

The author seems to be trying to get too much information into too little space. The problem is the reader feels as if she were just hit by a truck. Now did I get that license number or not? Consolidate means to bring together as a unit. Now if the writer takes the time to think what the actual intent of this paragraph is, he might come up with something like this.

A lot of what is known about the risks and benefits of hormone use comes from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI). The WHI is a large clinical trial of over 16,000 healthy women between the ages of 50 and 79. Half of the women took hormones. The other half took a placebo. In July 2002, the trial was stopped early. That’s because the data showed the overall risks of estrogen plus progestin outweighed the benefits. Using the combined hormone pill increased the risk of:

· breast cancer
· heart disease
· stroke
· blood clots

On the other hand, women taking the pill had fewer cases of hip fractures and colon cancer.

The important question to ask is what does the reader want to know? And how can I make sure the reader can find it?

Need to know vs nice to know

When you work in the area of patient education, or investor education, or legal client education, or . . ., there is one very important distinction that a writer (or an editor) needs to make. That is the distinction between what the reader needs to know and what is nice to know. Too often, the writer has information he or she wants to share just because he or she has it. But unless that information advances the reader's ability to do what the reader needs to do, it can get in the way of the information the reader needs. Consider this passage from a question and answer article about dietary supplements.

What is a dietary supplement?

Congress defined the term "dietary supplement" in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. A dietary supplement is a product taken by mouth that contains a "dietary ingredient" intended to supplement the diet. The "dietary ingredients" in these products may include: vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, and substances such as enzymes, organ tissues, glandulars, and metabolites. Dietary supplements can also be extracts or concentrates, and may be found in many forms such as tablets, capsules, softgels, gelcaps, liquids, or powders. They can also be in other forms, such as a bar, but if they are, information on their label must not represent the product as a conventional food or a sole item of a meal or diet. Whatever their form may be, DSHEA places dietary supplements in a special category under the general umbrella of "foods," not drugs, and requires that every supplement be labeled a dietary supplement.

Now I ask you, what is a dietary supplement? I'm not sure the following edit clearly answers the question yet, but it at least gets rid of the DSHEA, which really has nothing to do with what the reader needs to know.

A dietary supplement is something you take by mouth that gives you something your diet may be missing. That may be:

· vitamins
· minerals
· herbs
· other botanicals
· amino acids
· substances such as enzymes, organ tissues, glandulars, and metabolites

Supplements can also be extracts or concentrates. They may be found in many forms including:

· tablets
· capsules
· soft gels
· gel caps
· liquids
· powders

They can also be in other forms. For instance a supplement may come as a bar. But by law, the information on the label cannot represent the product as a conventional food. Nor can it call it the sole item of a meal or diet. By law, dietary supplements fall into a special category under the general umbrella of "foods" not drugs. And they must be labeled a dietary supplement.

The edit also got rid of some really distracting redundancies. But that's a different post.

On a personal note

I just finished two huge projects that have been going on for months. One started in May. The other in July. They couldn't have ended at a better time. My daughter and her husband are coming with their kids. That means I get to devote all my time this weekend to being the Grandpa.

I just like the image

This quote came from an article in a medical journal reporting on a study done in Greece. It was clear throughout the article that the author (or perhaps the author's translator) was not a native speaker of English. I wanted to use the article as a source for a piece I was writing for a newsletter. But by the time I got to this sentence, I had already realized I couldn't use the article because the language problems made it an unreliable source:

The blood samples were collected from the antecubital vein between 8 to 10 a.m., in a sitting position after 12 hours of fasting and avoiding of alcohol.

But that's not why I'm sharing the sentence with you. I just like the image of the hungry yet sober lab tech assuming a sitting position to collect the blood sample. I guess it just depends on how much the tech wanted a drink. But I don't think I'd like that person getting near my vein with a needle.

Now the writer's lack of facility with the English language may excuse his use of a dangling modifier. But it certainly doesn't excuse the editor of a scientific journal letting it and even more serious language problems get into print.

P.S. If you miss a spotlighted post (over there in the sidebar) that everyone is talking about, you still have three days to find it. Just scroll down in the sidebar to where it says, "these sites are well worth a visit."

More odds and ends

The right word

Don't you just love it when the right word is right there. And it's so right you don't even realize you are using it.

Tenacious Tess over at The Thoughts and Sarcastic Observations of a Starbucks Addict described a recent oh-no-why-me experience she had at a Walgreen's pharmacy counter, and it reminded me of a time I went in to a Sears Auto Parts store to buy a new set of tires. I told the clerk what size I needed and asked what they had.

He said they had two different tires. One was $78 per tire and the other was $102 per tire.

I asked what the difference was.

He said the second one cost more.

I asked why.

He said because it's a better tire.

I asked what the difference was again.

He said it was $24 more per tire.

I asked what makes it a better tire.

He said because it costs more.

I asked why would I want to pay more.

He said because when you pay more you get a better tire. The $78 tire is not as good.

I asked what made it not as good.

He said because it only costs $78.

I asked if there was anyone else there that could help me.

He said he could help me. Everyone else was busy.

S was with me. I looked at her and said "Let's go somewhere where they want our business because..." then I looked back at him and said , "You're useless."

Outside I was actually feeling proud of myself for staying so calm. I've been known to fly off the handle at times like that. So I said something to S about how reserved I was. She just laughed at me.

What? I asked.

You told the guy he was useless.

Did I? I asked. I couldn't even remember saying it. Then. Oh yes. I did.


More redundancies again where the writer says something more than once and repeats it ...you get the idea.

Here's a sentence I found today while I was editing:

In large doses, some vitamins have documented side effects that tend to be more severe with a larger dosage.

I'm just wondering how large these doses are getting to be.


When there's nothing there

Some writers just don't think what they're saying. But let me interject here first. I do a lot of work for hire editing. That's right. I'm a word whore. (Not an original term. Someone else gets credit for that.) That means I edit the writing of a lot of writers I don't hire. But maybe the good thing is, if any one of these people pitched a story at my magazine, I know what I would say.

Anyway, I was editing a user description for an article on a web site today. (The name of the web site in the following quote is totally made up. Hey! I have to keep eating.) Here's what the writer sent:

Dr. Feel Realgood explains which vitamins are health essentials for women of every age, from the early adulthood to seniors, learn what vitamins your body needs to stay healthy.

I sent this to S because she does this kind of work too. All I said was I needed to vocalize a scream that somebody heard. (I work at home alone.) She wrote back that she thought she'd try to help and do an edit for me but, "I tried to edit it for you, and that helped me realize how stupidly repetitive and empty it is."

I'm not trying to be mean to the writer. But S's response actually calmed me down. I went back to the passage, and realizing there was nothing there, came up with this.

Dr. Feel Realgood explains which vitamins are essential for a woman’s health at every stage of life. Learn what vitamins your body needs to stay healthy at any age - from early adulthood through your senior years.

Now I can sleep tonight.

(Don't forget to check out the spotlight. It's over there in the right sidebar.)

Wow! That's a long sentence

What’s not to like about a long sentence? After all, it takes skill to build one, packing all that information in and holding it there with just one period like a dam that causes the valley to flood and creates the unnatural beauty of a man-made lake, finding voluminous connections between ideas that shimmer like sunlight bouncing from the lake, making them want to hold together as a single unit and defy anyone who wants to tear them apart, showing us the brilliance of the mind that created it.

Or maybe not. I do know I have found long sentences I truly admire. They’re everywhere in literature. Take, for example, this one from The Sun Also Rises:

I wondered if there was anything else I might pray for, and I thought I would like to have some money, so I prayed that I would make a lot of money, and then I started to think how I would make it, and thinking of making money reminded me of the count, and I started wondering about where he was, and regretting I hadn’t seen him since that night in Montmartre, and about something funny Brett told me about him, and as all the time I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time; and then I was out in the hot sun on the steps of the cathedral, and the forefingers and the thumb of my right hand were still damp, and I felt them dry in the sun.

That’s 196 words. And tell me you can’t follow that. I know. Hemingway cheated. He put a lot of short sentences together with commas. But that semicolon at the end — it’s genius. Or consider Frost’s poem “The Silken Tent.”

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
***
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

It’s a sonnet, 14 lines, 104 words, and a single sentence — and a pure work of art. The words and thoughts hold together so well and convey so much imagery and meaning that when you teach the poem you often have to point out to students that it’s a single sentence.

One approach to teaching students about the subtlety of language, about subordination and coordination, about the use of modifiers, and about becoming fluid in its use is sentence combining. That’s the process of taking a series of short sentences and seeing what is the least number of sentences you can turn that series into.

But this post isn’t really about using long sentences. Creating long sentences that are effective and pleasing is an art. But too often writers use long sentences because they don’t take the time — again — to think of their readers. Look at the following sentence. It comes from a letter I got with my city utility bill explaining a change in the trash collection and recycling schedule.

The only exception to the system-wide adjustment is for customers residing in multi-unit buildings of three or more units per building without garages or carports who may elect to continue using the in-ground containers, but service will be once-weekly instead of twice weekly.

That’s 43 words. Compare it to the Hemingway sentence, which is 196 words. Which one’s clearer? I would say it’s Hemingway’s because he never loses track of how his reader processes ideas. The writer of the letter, on the other hand, seems to just want to get the information out and leave it up to the reader to sort through it all. The problem is there is too much information there and no clues for the reader to follow to know how to separate the ideas or even what the important ones are. At least, that's the situation on first reading. And how many readers are going to actually stop and give that sentence a second reading? How might the letter writer have made it easier for the reader to find out what he or she can do about the garbage?

The writer could have started simply by separating the sentence at the comma. It’s a compound sentence, but the two ideas — the exception and the collection schedule (service) — are not closely enough related to have any reason to be joined like that. Not only is there too much information for the reader to hold, but the reader is challenged to figure out why those two complete thoughts are together as one.

The only exception to the system-wide adjustment is for customers residing in multi-unit buildings of three or more units per building without garages or carports who may elect to continue using the in-ground containers.* But service will be once-weekly instead of twice weekly.

Next, the writer can look at the first sentence with the goal of finding discrete bits of information and setting them up as such. The goal is to let the reader focus on the message and not on finding the message.

The first bit of information is that there is an exception:

There is one exception to the changes that take effect in March.

The next bit of information is who the exception applies to:

It applies to customers who live in multi-unit buildings with at least three units and no garage or carport.

And finally, what the exception is:

These customers may, if they wish, continue using underground containers.

Then one last tweak to the first edit we did will give us this:

There is one exception to the changes that take effect in March. It applies to customers who live in multi-unit buildings with at least three units and no garage or carport. These customers may, if they wish, continue using underground containers. The change in service will, though, still apply. That is, service will be once-weekly instead of twice weekly.

Five sentences, and the passage is as clear — albeit not as artistically pleasing — as Hemingway’s one sentence. But since the reader doesn’t have to struggle to get the information, on some level, it’s just as satisfying.

* Note that after the first edit, “elect to continue using the in-ground containers” has the emphasis that suggests it’s the important part of the message.