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.

Help Me I'm Reading and I Can't Get Up

I got a letter yesterday from a credit card company telling me of the changes in my "Credit Card Agreement." First, the letter provided a summary of the three changes. I assumed the intent was to use simpler language than the legalese used in the actual agreement. That way they could help me understand what the changes are. Very nice of them I thought. I do a lot of that same sort of thing for health consumers. That is I assumed it until I read the first summary. It felt like I was swimming in a tub of molasses:

Annual Percentage Rate for Variable Rate Accounts
The index for your account is changing from the Prime Rate. The new index will be the highest three month LIBOR (London Interbank Offer Rate) published in the northeastern edition of The Wall Street Journal in its Money Rates table at any time within the immediately preceding three months, including the month in which the index was determined, rounded up to the nearest one-quarter of a percentage point. As of July 1, 2009, your Margin would be the number of percentage points plus the index which would give you the same APR you now have on Purchases and Balance Transfers. This change is effective on the first day of your billing cycle that begins in April 2010.

They don't really want me to understand what they're doing, do they?

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.]

Wordbunnies

Did you know that if you google "dust bunnies" you will get -- in about 0.23 seconds -- close to two and a half million hits? If you google "dustbunnies" you still get 486,000 hits in 0.10 seconds. But it seems there are only 646 Websites that include the word "wordbunnies." Of course, I didn't go to all of them, but the ones I looked at were very vague about what a wordbunny is.

Well let's end the confusion. A wordbunny is one of those clumps of words that you see scattered about the surface of text that do little more than simply hold together as a clump of words. They don't really do anything else. It's like some form of static electricity pulls them together, and they lie there making it clear that the text owner doesn't like to text clean very much.

Here is a list of some of the wordbunnies I see most often:

• at the very least (as opposed to the penultimate least?)
• at the very most (ditto)
• not to mention (oops, it's going to be mentioned)
• that being said (we've already talked about this one)
• suffice it to say (then what is the rest of the text doing here?)
• in the final analysis (?)
• when all is said and done (will we still even be here?)
• as everyone knows (then please don't tell me again)
• that's not to say (yes it is, you just said it)
• every now and then (that means always, right?)
• with no disrespect (hmm, I'll be the judge of that)

Of course the list goes on. And to be fair (see what I mean?), these pesky little creatures have a way of showing up in even the most meticulous text owner's text, and often times right before company. There's nothing technically wrong with them. They just don't add anything to the text.

What wordbunnies would you like to see added to the list?

In case you missed it the first time

Here's today's redundancy gem from another article I'm editing:

Ongoing clinical trials are being conducted . . .

I hate it when you're conducting trials that have stopped.

More Words I Don't Like

Language should be organic. It should be allowed to evolve naturally without the imposition of artificial "rules of rightness." That being said, good language, like a good garden, is planned or laid out with an eye always toward healthy standards. Some people use phrases -- like others toss chemicals on plants -- without thinking of the harm they're doing. Having said that, I want to to point out that certain phrases have no real purpose in a sentence:

That being said; having said that; after saying that ...

I have several writers whose work I've been editing for a project who seem to use some variation of "that being said" in almost every article, and sometimes multiple times in the same article. I hear correspondents and analysts on TV use some variation of that phrase to help them move to the next point. It's verbage. It's used without thinking, and the way you teach student writers not to use cliches is to help them be aware that when there is no thought on the part of the writer, there is no thought in the reader.

Most of the time when I see the phrase, it doesn't add anything to the sentence it starts. When it does, what the writer really means is "but." I'm not interested in the writer proving to me that he or she is clever enough to be aware of a paradox or is so smart that he or she is about to show why the statement that was just made is not accurate (then why did you make it?). If you mean "but" say "but" and get on with your thought. That's what I want to know--what follows the "but." And if you aren't really contradicting or countering what came before, I don't even need the "but."

Redundancy Repeated

I just found this heading in an article I'm editing:

"Should pregnant women undergo testing during pregnancy?"

Well, no. Only if you are a pregnant woman who isn't pregnant should you undergo testing.

Well that's not very nice.

We got our water bill from the City of Smyrna Utilities Department. I've never thought of city utilities departments as being particularly friendly. In fact, my experience with them has been just the opposite. But I was reading through the whole bill, just curious about its tone. In the summary section at the top, there is an explanation of what happens if you don't pay the bill.

"Non-Payment within 30 days of the due date will result in disconnection of services."

Now that's an interesting statement in a lot of ways, but let's just focus on the language. They could have made it a little clearer if they had said "by 30 days after the due date." But I'm assuming they wanted to sound officious. That way you'll certainly believe their threat to cut off your water. But as bad as that sentence is, it's not that one that caught my attention. Immediately after that sentence is an explanation of what happens next:

"Service will be reconnected within 1 working day for non payment of bill after bill is paid in full and payment of reconnection fees is made."

Excuse me. What was that again? Sounds like verbage to me. I'm sorry. I'm just being kind. Because I think to be verbage, it actually has to be translatable. But we're still not to the part that caught my attention. The paragraph goes on to talk about the late fee and then says:

"Failure to receive a bill does not relieve obligation to pay bill by due date."

Okay. Say that one more time. No wait. Forget it. If I don't get a bill, it's my fault? That's the "failure" part. But then within 30 days of some due date on that bill I failed to receive I'd better pay the bill I don't know I have or they will cut off my water.

Whom do these people work for? Oh, yeah. It's you and I, isn't it?

Verbage -- it's worse than verbiage

Okay, here's another one. It's not exactly redundancy, but it is verbage. What's the word "especially" doing in the following sentence?

This is especially important because people with rheumatoid arthritis have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

If it wasn't especially important, would it be important at all?