It's back to work I go

The granddaughters went home today, but not before spending all day yesterday helping S fill the house with Christmas. I do have to admit that the turmoil of Christmas decorating, not to mention the displacement of so many objects that are obviously important as evidenced by their positioning the other 11 months, I'm not so much into. But the kids enjoy helping S so much I kept my bah humbugging to a minimum. It was worth it to be able to watch them, including S, having so much fun.

So tomorrow it's back to working with words.

Signs of the time

There's a dry cleaning shop down the road from us that has hit on the perfect advertising slogan and put it on two signs out front as well as painted it on the window:

Non Toxic Cleaning

That is definitely going to keep me out of all the competing establishments. It also explains what happened to a blue blazer I had dry cleaned a while back.

Friday off

I haven't taken a Friday off in what seems like ages. I took it off today. My daughter made pancakes for breakfast and then I spent the day at the Georgia aquarium with my granddaughters. Tonight, we're all going to eat pizza. I think I'll take Friday off more often.

Today's quote

This came from a Power Point slide show that was forwarded to me by a very good friend:

If you woke up this morning in good health, you have more luck than the one million people who won't live through the week.

There are better ways.

Let our thoughts, positive energy, and prayers be with the people of India today.

Happy Thanksgiving

......45 and Aspiring has a special request on her blog today. It would be nice if you could stop by and offer her a little of your creativity over the holiday weekend.

And speaking of the weekend, whether it's official where you are or not, have a healthy, happy, fun filled Thanksgiving.

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.

Another Sunday fun day

Found the link for this at Gran's.

You Belong in the Baby Boomer Generation

You fit in best with people born between 1943 and 1960. You are optimistic, rebellious, and even a little self centered. You still believe that you will change the world. You detest authority and rules. Deep down, you're a non conformist.

What Generation Do You Belong In?

Back to business Monday

I promise. I'll get back to posting about words and the way they're used on Monday. But for now...

We won! We beat Michigan for the fifth year in a row! That's never been done before.

We don't go to the Rose Bowl, but it's not that we didn't do what we needed to this week. (Sorry, but all Buckeye fans use the first person when we talk about the team. See I'm talking about the use of words already.) And good for Penn State. The Buckeyes will get a good bowl invitation. Probably a BCS one. Not as good as the Rose Bowl. But Penn State deserves it. They beat the Buckeyes in a close game. So, good for Joe Pa. Hope you get USC, and I hope you beat them.

In the meantime, we just have to wait to see where Ohio State is going. So tonight, we celebrate our win over Michigan and our unprecedented fourth Big Ten title in a row (although it is shared). Go Bucks!

It's Michigan Saturday

Thank goodness I got my work done today. Tomorrow is THE GAME. It doesn't matter that Michigan's headed into Columbus 3-8. We're still going to beat them.

Go Bucks!

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."

Please watch and then share

I found this video posted by Electric Barbarella at Hooker with a Heart of Guile. It's one way the language should be used. I wanted to share it. I hope you do too.

Sunday is fun day (even though I had to work)

Just a little fun for Sunday. I found the link on Gran's site. She's showing the end of the Wizard of Oz by the way.

You Are a Cherry Muffin

You are very friendly and sweet. You love to socialize. You have a bit of a fire in your heart, and you secretly love adventure. You are well known for speaking your mind. You tell people exactly what you think. However, you're so nice when you're honest, no one really cares! Even though you're down to earth, you're not exactly the girl or guy next door. You are actually quite worldly and sophisticated. You are well traveled and well read.

What Kind of Muffin Are You?

Just do it

I really like it when people do fun things with words.

I found the following on Gawdess's Viewfinder 365's blog this morning. She was writing about glasses.

when I was a kid
I wore them because I had to
now I wear them because I need them

And here's how Braja at Lost and Found in India headed her post I saw this morning:

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

When I taught freshman English so many years ago, I used to start every term with a story about how I learned to dive.

I didn't learn to swim until I went to college, but then I never spent much time at pools after that. Then one year, when my oldest son was about 10, we suddenly found ourselves one summer with enough time and money to afford a family membership at the local pool.

I'd take the kids over two or three times a week in the morning for their swimming lessons and then we'd spend a couple hours just hanging at the pool. Mainly I'd sit in a deck chair at the edge of the pool reading a novel and watch the kids enjoy themselves in the water.

One day I heard my oldest son shouting at me "Hey, Dad! Look at me!" I looked up from the book but didn't see him anywhere. "Up here! I'm on the diving board!" I looked over at the diving board at the end of the pool but didn't see him. "No! Up here! The high dive!"

I looked up. There he was on the back of the high dive. "Watch!" he shouted and ran forward jumping when he got to the end, legs kicking, arms flailing, splash coming.

He bobbed up out of the water and swam to the edge where I was. "That was great," I said.

"Now you do it!"

"Maybe later. I'm kind of busy right now." (Hey, I was an English major in grad school. So it was actually work.)

"Oh c'mon, Dad. What's the matter? Chicken?" Of course, he said it in that quiet ten-year-old voice that turned every head in the pool in our direction.

Well you can't let your kid call you a chicken in public, so I closed the book and stood up. "Okay," I said. "Keep an eye on your brother while I go up there."

I walked to the end of the pool and started up the ladder of the high dive. About half way up, I remembered I've got this fear of heights. So I stopped, looked up, saw there was nothing to hold onto once I'd get there. Then I looked down, and there were both of my sons standing over by my chair beaming up at me and pointing. So, like an idiot, I went on up the ladder.

I walked out very slowly to the end of the board and looked down--a long, long way down. I don't need to do this, I thought. I don't need to prove anything to a couple of little kids. So I turned around and figured the best way down was the way I came up -- on the ladder.

I hadn't noticed before, but some kind of big truck driver who used to play linebacker in college had come up the ladder behind me. There he was at the top of the ladder, waiting his turn. I thought about saying, Excuse me, but I need to go back down. But before I could get the words out, he said, "Go ahead, buddy, jump."

So there I was, standing at the end of the high dive, looking down -- a long, long way down -- at the pool below, confirming for myself that, yes, I have a fear of heights. I was wondering what makes you stop before you hit your head on the bottom of the pool? And what if a big gust of wind caught me just as I jumped . . ."Jump, Dad!" both boys yelled in unison.

I looked over to where they were standing, and a crowd had started gathering there, some of them shielding their eyes with their hand, and I though I was hearing scattered cries of "Jump, jump." Then I heard somebody laugh.

I looked to the left, and there was the lifeguard sitting on his high chair chuckling at me. The lifeguard was laughing at me. What does that mean when the lifeguard is laughing at you? What's he going to say when you fall into the pool and drown. "Oh I'm sorry. I was laughing so hard I couldn't even get out of my chair." Pretty soon, though, he took pity on me. "Just hold your hands in the air, close your eyes and fall forward," he said.

What? Do I know this guy? Was he in a class I taught? Did I give him a bad grade on a paper? "What?!" I shouted at him.

"Just close your eyes, raise your hands, and fall forward. It won't hurt."

Now when someone tells you it won't hurt, you know they're not telling you the truth. But then I heard the truck driving linebacker behind me muttering. I couldn't tell exactly what he was saying, but it was something like, "Go ahead and jump, buddy, before I come out there and throw you off." I decided it was better to put my fate in the hands of the lifeguard.

So I closed my eyes, raised my hands over my head, and fell forward. For exactly .018 of a second, it felt exhilarating. But then I hit the water. The lifeguard had lied. It hurt. Oh yes.

But at the same time, I felt this wonderful sense of accomplishment. I swam over to the side, pulled myself out of the water and stood facing the beaming face of my son. "That was great, Dad. Do it again!"

Now here's the really stupid part. I thought, Yeah. Why not? Of course by the time I got to the base of the ladder, he'd run off to play with some new found friend. But that was okay. I wasn't doing it for him.

The second time hurt too, but not as much. And the third time hurt a little less. By the fourth falling forward, I kept my eyes open. It's a wonderful feeling to see the world turn upside down like that while you're in free fall. And it didn't hurt, either.

I must have fallen forward another 20 times before we left the pool. Then that evening, I went back over after dinner and fell forward some more. From then on, every chance I got, I would go off the high dive. Of course, I never became an Olympic diver, but I did get to go off the high platform once at the Ohio State varsity pools. (Quite a bit higher than the high dive at the neighborhood pool. We're talking cliff diving in Mexico.) That was a thrill.

Then I'd tell my students, "That's kind of what learning to write is like. You close your eyes and fall forward. Just do it. It may hurt a little at first. But you'll eventually come to actually liking that you can do it."

And that's what I like about the Blogosphere. All these people just falling forward. Just doing it.


And take a look at today's spotlight post (the link's over in the right sidebar) for a nice turn of phrase.

I'm tired and I'm hungry

It's been a hard day. There's a lot of bad writing floating around, and I'm tired. But check out the spotlight post. You could win something. I'll see you tomorrow...

It's a wonderful language

My son sent me an email message this morning because he knows I like exemplary uses of the English language. He said: "This is a sign in a hotel elevator in Mongolia (Ulaan Baatar I believe) taken by a consultant we work with at the bank. Hope you are having a good day!" Yes. Yes I am. Thank you very much.

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.

Nightmare along the Olentangy

This is the story of a word -- nightmare.

I'm a Buckeye. I've been one since I was four years old. That was the year my dad took my grandfather to the OSU/Michigan game known as the Snow Bowl.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Buckeyes, the buckeye tree is a tree that grows primarily in Ohio. It's fruit -- the buckeye -- resembles a horse chestnut, only smaller, harder, and shinier. It has absolutely no commercial value, and is actually poisonous. In other words, buckeyes are a bunch of worthless nuts.

Buckeyes is also the nickname for The Ohio State University athletic teams and their fans. (Again, a bunch of useless nuts -- the fans, not the teams.) For the last few years, Ohio State football fans have been living a nightmare.

It started January 8, 2007. That's when Ohio State was supposed to steamroll the University of Florida to win its 8th overall national championship and its second in four years. Instead, the mighty Buckeyes got leveled 41 to 14. Embarrassing but a fluke, we told ourselves. Ohio State was over confident and had simply under estimated the Florida Gators. They had their guard down, failed to prepare properly, and let Florida get in a lucky punch.

Then came January 7, 2008. The Buckeyes are in the National Championship Game again. This time, they prepared. They were set to show the world that they deserved to be the champs:

LSU Routs Ohio State In Championship Game Buckeyes
Stumble Again As Tigers Win 38-24 For Second BCS Crown In Five Seasons

It was a better game, but still embarrassing. The whole nation was screaming in our ears--"Buckeyes over rated. Buckeyes are losers." We got no respect. It was almost too much to bear.

Then came August 30. Opening day. Ohio State with 20 returning starters, the most sought after freshman recruit in the country, and a highly favored Heisman Trophy candidate was a sure bet to make it to the National Championship game for the third year in a row. And because included among those starters was a cadre of seniors who could have turned pro but chose to return, this was the year that Ohio State was going to silence its critics. All it needed to do was get past USC in the third game of the season. And once again, in front of a prime time National audience, OSU was embarrassed.

Thirty-five to three.

But that wasn't what had made the nightmare so horrible. While OSU won the first two games by large margins, their play was sluggish and unimpressive against what was supposed to be significantly inferior teams. Had we been deluding ourselves all along? Are the Buckeyes over rated? Well it wasn't even a debate any more as far as the rest of the country was concerned.

And it didn't stop there. Sluggish, inexplicable play, consecutive games without an offensive touchdown. We knew what lay ahead was nothing but doom, but we couldn't wake up. And then it happened. we walked right into it. All of our hopes were pinned on one game. Penn State came to town. Ranked number 3 in the country. Undefeated. If we beat them, we get respect back. We don't go to the National Championship, but we win the Big 10. We go to the Rose Bowl and get another shot at USC and redemption. It's the 4th quarter, and we're winning -- 6 to 3. And then we fumble. . .

When you are having a nightmare, you are supposed to wake up. Your heart is supposed to be pounding in your chest, but you're awake, and you can calm yourself. You're not supposed to just keep dreaming the same horrible scene over and over. . .

That was October 25. Less than two weeks before the election, part of another bad dream that had started eight years before with a stolen election. A dream we couldn't wake ourselves out of.
A dream that just kept piling calamity on top of calamity. . .

But we did. We woke up. November 4, the real nightmare ended. And for me, and I hope other Buckeyes, it put things in perspective. This was real. This nightmare mattered. That other nightmare, the one about a football game, it's just a game.

I know that

I was editing an article and just got an interesting message from my computer. I needed to insert some text that's been saved as a separate file into the article I'm editing. So I clicked on insert, and then accidentally clicked on a file other than the one I was after. MS Word sent me this:

"Word cannot insert a file into itself."

Hmm. I wonder why not. Now I can't concentrate on my work.

(Perhaps I'll go have some fun playing with words at today's spotlighted post ==> over there in the sidebar)

Dona Nobis Pacem

I wish I'd found this sooner. Dona Nobis Pacem. I used to sing this when I was in the fourth grade. Not just on Sundays, but through the week. Even though I left the church, it is still my mantra. Let's sign the whole world up to this.

In my post on Blog Action Day, I mentioned a series of articles in the online magazine On Call dealing with healthcare for the homeless. They just published the fourth article in the series. The article by Janet Cromer describes the Street Team in Boston that goes out and finds homeless individuals who aren't in shelters and arranges for them to get the needed healthcare. There is also a photo gallery with the article showing two members of the team working with various individuals. On this day of Dona Nobis Pacem, I think the article is worth a look.

That was weird

I believe I have solved the comment failure problem. Thanks, Gran, for pointing it out. I had changed the comment settings to embed the comment box on the same page with the post. I followed the instructions in blogger, but apparently it didn't work the way it was supposed to. I went back and set the default. So you should be able to leave comments again. Sorry about the mix up.

The Country Wins!

I'm no quitter, part 2

Now as to how I write. . . My dad used to say there were two kinds of people in the world--those who divide people in the world into two kinds and those who don't. Well, I used to like to say there are two kinds of writers--those who overwrite and those who underwrite (and I'm not talking about insurance). Those who overwrite just pour words and phrases into a text and then spend the rest of their time taking away words that don't belong there. Those who underwrite just barely get down enough words to suggest a text and then spend the rest of their time adding the necessary words to flesh it out.

If I were to choose one of those models to describe myself, I would probably be inclined to lean more toward the underwriting side. But the fact is, I'm more of an overwriting underwriter. I once asked S if she wanted to see some poems I'd just done the first draft for. She said sure, but she didn't know whether she would have anything to say about them because by the time I'd get them to where I really wanted them to be, they wouldn't look anything like they did then. I believe she said something to the effect that it would be hard to even recognize the two versions as being the same poem.

I have to admit she's right. I never throw away first drafts of a poem or first drafts of a story because I know I can find something there worth developing if I go back to it often enough.

A few years ago, I "finished" a poem that I started when I was 19. Now when I say started, I don't mean I was constantly working on it all those years in between. In fact there were multiple drafts that I thought -- given my mood at the time -- were either finished poems or proof that I couldn't write at all. But I never really had one that felt complete. The poem began as twenty lines of free verse. The finished poem is 140 lines of iambic pentameter with a very strict rhyme scheme.

So does it always take me that long to write something? No. I write a column for the magazine I edit. I do it in one sitting, which basically means one draft. I also do a series of newsletters for health care providers. Each issue has four short articles about a particular condition. The articles deal with treatments, pharmacotherapy, patient education, and so on. Now these are a little harder to write, and there's a lot of research and note taking that precedes the actual writing. But again, the articles are done pretty much in one draft.

Here's the thing, though. The process is the same as when I'm working on a piece for years. And just for the record, I am a big believer in revision--no matter how good a first draft is, there's something that can be done to it to make it better. The question is -- will it really make a difference in how the text does what it's supposed to do? And more often the real question is when does the piece have to be published? But as I was saying, the process is the same.

As I write, I keep going back over what I've written. Even though I may have known at the beginning what I was after, I'm constantly looking back to see what it is I'm really saying. When I can do that, as laborious as it actually is at times, I can create something with the meaning I'm searching for.

So I don't really underwrite, I write slowly. I suppose when I was younger I wrote a little more swiftly. I certainly remember all nighters in graduate school to do papers that I should have taken at least a month to do. But even then, I wrote the papers the same way--by constantly looking back and wrestling with what I was saying. And that's why I can't do the NaNoWriMo (see yesterday's post). Not that I wouldn't have looked back at what I was saying and been constantly revising it. But that's just the opposite of what the event called for. The emphasis wasn't on creating meaning. It was on generating words. And words without meaning are meaningless.

Not everybody writes the same way. Some people write fast. Some people write slow. Some people write while watching TV. Some people shut themselves in a closet. Some outline. Some wing it. There is no right way to write, except what works for you.

Now, if you want to see some very effective writing, be sure to check out today's spotlighted blog post.

I'm no quitter

I dropped out of NaNoWriMo after only three days into it. The truth is I don’t write that way.

For those who don’t know about NaNoWriMo — it’s a creative writing marathon, a word-a-thon, if you like. All around the world, thousands of writers are sprinting to each complete a 50,000 word novel by the end of November. That’s roughly 1700 words a day. And although I can and have spilled out a lot more than 1700 words in a single day, that’s not the way I write. And the first thing a writer needs to do is understand how he or she writes. And the second thing is understand why. Let’s start with second things first.

There are lots of reason I write. For instance — it’s an old saw (but that doesn’t make it any less true) — I write to find out what I think. Writing is a way of knowing. When I write, I discover ideas I didn’t think I had. I find new ways to think about things. I build layers of understanding as well as layers of misunderstanding. And I sometimes look for and sometimes stumble over connections that create sentences that take on meaning.

I also write because I want to be a part of a conversation. When I write I’m conversing with my readers. But I’m also doing more than that. I’m entering into a larger dialogue. Just take the blogosphere as an example. Sure there’s a lot of drivel. But there’s also a lot of genius. And in between those two extremes, there are people commenting on, questioning, exploring, critiquing, reconstructing the world they are a part of. Just like I’m doing. And I like hearing what those people have to say. I like considering what it means. And I like making a response, with the hope that others will be doing the same with what I put out there.

There are a lot of other reasons I write, but I’ll just mention one more. When I write creatively, whether it be fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, I get great satisfaction out of creating a work of art. And when it’s good, it usually comes at the end of a long struggle. While the struggle can be short, it can also go on for days, weeks, even years. And short or long, it’s always the same thing. There’s always that feeling that I can’t do it. But when it’s over, I don’t feel relief that it’s done. Instead, what I experience is always surprise — surprise that there it is. And I have no memory of the struggle other than the awareness that’s there’s been a passage of time. What is out there, whether it’s on the screen in front of me or on the page in front of me (or, in the case of music, in the notes I just played), has always been there. All I did was make it palpable.

I’ll save how I write for tomorrow.

More Odds and Ends

1) Here's something I didn't know. Atomic Clocks have been in use since 1949. In 1955, they were off by 1 second every 300 years. In 2001, their accuracy had improved to 1 second every 70 million years.

2) We went to the Atlanta Symphony on Saturday. It was our first time there since moving to Georgia. Before we went, I took a look at the symphony's Web site and found a page entitled "New to the Symphony." Here are a few passages from that page.

From a section headed "There is no dress code":

Still, evening gowns and tuxedos are pretty rare unless you've bought tickets for a fancy gala—and if you have, you'll know! If you do decide to dress up, though, go easy on the cologne, which can distract others near you and even prompt them to sneeze — and may distract you.

From a section headed "Plan to arrive 20 minutes before concert time":

Most concertgoers make a point of coming early to read the program notes to familiarize yourself with what you are about to hear. Rushing to your seat at the last minute doesn't really give you enough time to get settled, so you may not fully enjoy the first piece on the program. And there's another good reason to come early: Most concerts start on time. If you're late, you may end up listening from the lobby!

From the last paragraph:

In most classical concerts—unlike jazz or pop—the audience never applauds during the music. They wait until the end of each piece, then let loose with applause. But this can be a little tricky, because many pieces seem to end several times — they have several parts, or "movements." These are listed in your program.

I've added the italics and bold type. Whoever wrote the piece, I'm sure, wanted to be helpful. But whoever wrote the piece, didn't take the time to envision the audience. The tone is condescending, which makes the whole piece insulting to an adult concert goer. A writer taking time to think of who the audience actually is (it's not a group of fifth graders) can make all the difference in how a message comes across.

3) It's great to read writing by someone who actually enjoys it and enjoys being read. James Greer's article about time in the November Discover magazine is a delight to read. You can read it on line here. And when you come back, don't forget to visit today's Spotlight post. It too is delightful.

Saturday is fun day

You've got to go to Phils Phun and watch Brian and Katie's Wedding Dance.

Then when you come back check out the spotlight post. It's over there ---> (on the right). It's a new feature on The Word Mechanic.

This is just fun

It's also an example of great editing. Enjoy.

You're going to like this.

Maybe they're Not The Rockefellers, but Rene's posts are absolutely rich. If you've never been to her blog, don't waste any more time. Use the link and head on over to her "big bowl of quirky with a side of sass." You're going to be glad you did. I guarantee it.

If you know the words . . .

The following sentence has a problem:

Very light pressure on the abdomen is advised, if the belly is massaged at all.

Years ago, I had a friend that used to play guitar and sing at coffee houses in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. One night he got up on stage, sat on a stool at the microphone, and said, "I've been busy all week and didn't get a chance to prepare anything for tonight. So we're just going to have 10 minutes of silence." Then he just sat there with his guitar cradled in his arms. There were a few laughs scattered throughout the audience at first, and they began to accumulate the longer he sat there. Then he broke up the room when he said. "That's okay. If you know the words, sing along."

Over the last couple of years, I've been working sporadically on composing a blues opera based on the execution of John the Baptist. Now let me stop right here and say I'm no musician. I took piano lessons for a few years when I was a kid but quit because I wasn't any good. When my own kids were small we bought a piano so they could take piano lessons. (They're all good musicians. My oldest son and my daughter are fantastic pianists and can play just about any instrument you hand them, and my second son plays bass in a band.) So I played around on the piano and taught myself a few songs so that people didn't laugh any more when I sat down at the keyboard.

My first wife got the piano when we divorced, and it wasn't until years later that S and I splurged and got a piano of our own. She had never played and wanted to, so we both signed up for lessons. And that's how I got into composing a blues opera. I had a fantastic teacher who believed in letting me set my own curriculum. He also made what I wrote but couldn't play sound fantastic when he played it.

There is a point to all of this. One of the hardest things for a non musician and novice composer to do is hear the natural interplay of music and words. So one of the mistakes I kept making was throwing away strong emphasis on weak syllables, or in scoring, I wouldn't hear the incomplete measure at the start of a score. That means I would write the music starting with the downbeat rather than holding the down beat for two preliminary beats. Or I'd have the wrong time signature. For instance I'd think I was writing in 4/4, but when my teacher would look at and play the piece, it would be obvious to him I was using 5/4, and so he'd help me figure out how to correctly count the beats and re score the music. My ear got better, but I still have problems with that. And even though I would play the melody line with the proper emphasis in my head, someone else who is a musician would look at the score and play it a different way.

So what's all this have to do with the sentence at the beginning? Here's another one with the same issue.

It can take up to a year for a couple's normal sex life to return in full bloom, given the realities and stresses of early parenthood.

I studied rhetoric in graduate school with Ed Corbet, and he used to say one of the most common mistakes writers make is not reading their writing out loud. That's because, like music, language has natural rhythms. And when a writer disrupts the flow of those rhythms, that writer creates places where a reader is going to stumble. When I missed the upbeat at the start of a score, I created a place where a performer is going to stumble or at least miss the correct emphasis. And that's very much similar to what's happened in the two problem sentences, each of which was written by a different writer. If you read the first sentence out loud --

Very light pressure on the abdomen is advised, if the belly is massaged at all.

you should be able to hear the violated rhythm. Now move the phrase at the end to the beginning:

If the belly is massaged at all, very light pressure on the abdomen is advised.

The "is advised" is awkward and stilted, but at least the sentence flows more naturally. It doesn't cause a reader to stumble, and the writer gets a bonus after making the change. It's easier to see the need to think about changing "is advised" to, perhaps, something like

If the belly is massaged at all, very light pressure on the abdomen should be used. (or "is best" or is required)

Now try doing the same thing to the second problematic sentence.

It can take up to a year for a couple's normal sex life to return in full bloom, given the realities and stresses of early parenthood.

When you know the words, you can sing along; when you hear the beat, you can play the song.

Another sign of the time

Maybe it's because I don't get my nails done. But there's something about this sign I saw outside a nail salon in one of our neighborhood strip malls (or as they're called now, outdoor malls) that seems to make it fall short of the desired advertising effect:

"The cleanest salon in town"

Is that really a problem?

I stole this

I stole this from Phil's Phun. It's priceless. Don't miss the final image. (If Phil wants me to give it back, I will.)

It's not uncommon in my profession to become frustrated with . . .

I just spent the day taking commas out of where they don't belong in people's sentences and putting them in where they do. I'd much rather be reading and writing poetry. That's my true passion. It's been over four years since my first book of poems was published, and I'm not very close to having a second collection ready to go. Of course, I make more money editing and writing non creative pieces for my clients. That's the first frustration.

Work, as we all know, expands to fill the available time. That's the second frustration. It shouldn't have taken me all day to push commas around. I should have had plenty of time to do something creative. Unfortunately, I always do my best creative work when I have the least time to do it.

And now for the third frustration--it's the way some writers I work with use the language. Consider this sentence I came across yesterday while I was editing an article about chemotherapy:

"It’s not uncommon to lose hair over your whole body, not just on your head."

Why did the writer need so many layers in that sentence? The reader has to peel away two layers of negatives at the head of the sentence to get to the meaning. And the "not" in the beginning sets up a head on collision with the not at the end. Because the phrase at the end seems as if it could be parallel with the opening of the sentence (which it really isn't), the reader has a hard time knowing what's being negated at the end. The fact that what's being negated is an unspoken assumption -- that chemotherapy only causes the hair on top the head to fall out -- only compounds the confusion. Making the sentence work isn't that hard. All the writer needed to do was be direct:

It’s common to lose hair over your whole body, not just on your head.

But it isn't all frustration for me today. I just got an email from a colleague who does the same kind of work I do, only she does it in an office with other people around. In the email she said: "The fog here on the 24th floor is pretty impressive right now." That created all kinds of wonderful images. I knew she meant outside the windows of the 24th floor (it's been raining in Atlanta -- wonder of wonders). But I like what went through my mind when I took her sentence at face value.

Horses and words

I don't know anything about showing horses, and I've only ridden maybe twice, maybe three times in my life. But I found a fascinating blog this morning that I think is worth the visit. It's called Behind the Bit, and it's written by Stacey Kimmel-Smith.

I like reading people who use the language well.

More about location

Emphasis isn't the only reason to be concerned about where something goes in a sentence. Here's an example that illustrates how important location is. It comes from an article I was editing yesterday.

"Remember to drink plenty of water each day, to eat foods high in fiber, and to exercise to prevent constipation."

Technically there's nothing wrong with the sentence -- except the meaning is not clear. Are all three items in the series -- drinking water, eating, and exercising -- related to preventing constipation? Or is it just exercise that prevents it? The sentence could be read either way, and a reader most likely isn't going to stop to work it out. So even if two out of every three readers understand the sentence correctly, the writer is still going to leave one third of the audience in the dark. This problem can be avoided by moving "to prevent constipation" ahead of the series rather than at the end of it.

"To prevent constipation, you need to drink plenty of water each day, eat foods high in fiber, and exercise."

(The "remember to" didn't really add anything to the meaning of the sentence.) Now, preventing constipation has provided context for all three actions in the series, something that's best accomplished at the beginning of a sentence. If the context is left until the end, a reader needs to go back and apply it to what he or she has just read. The effect is like tripping over a crack in the sidewalk.

A Phun Place

If you haven't been to Phils Phun yet, you should go. Then anytime you need a respite, you'll thank yourself for doing so.

Got fleas?

S and I saw this sign over the weekend:

"Humane Society Flea Market"

Hmm...

Location, Location, Location

Just a quick observation about the end of a sentence. The end of a sentence is its most emphatic part. So what you want to put at the end is what you want the reader to come away remembering. Here's a sentence the way it was originally written from an article I recently edited.


"Still, some doctors advise avoiding sex in the last few weeks of pregnancy as a general safety precaution."


What is the most important thing for the reader to focus on? It's not the fact that there's a general safety precaution. It's when sex should be avoided. Moving the final phrase earlier in the sentence, puts the emphasis where it belongs.


"Still, as a general safety precaution, some doctors advise avoiding sex in the last few weeks of pregnancy."

Now the reader has a much better chance of remembering the advice.

Are you smarter than a pre-schooler?

You can find out here.

Blog Action Day 2008 -- Poverty

Forty percent of the homeless population in the United States is made up of families -- parents and children -- who need all the same things the rest of us do -- food, shelter, clothing, and health care. Over the past several months, On Call, which is an online magazine published by the Boston Globe for allied health professionals, has been running a series of articles on agencies in Massachusetts that are working to address the health needs of the members of this underclass. They are well worth the look.

The current article by Susan Wessling describes the work being done by nurses who work with the Mercy Medical Center's Health Care for the Homeless program in Springfield, Massachusetts. The program provides "on-site care at 46 locations—shelters, soup kitchens, job placement sites, transitional programs—and on the street. Services—which include assessment, intervention, episodic care, referrals, follow-up appointments, and education—are delivered in three counties (Hampden, Franklin and Hampshire) across 1,800 square miles."

In an article that appeared in August, On Call writer Janet Cromer and photographer David Stone accompanied a woman who was an inpatient at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program's McInnis House as the facilities were moved to a new location.

And in an April article Janet Cromer wrote an interesting overview of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program's effort to ensure health care for families in the greater Boston area.

On Call's editor Joseph Saling says in an editor's note that the final article in the series will describe the efforts of a street team in Boston that goes out from shelters to find homeless individuals on the street who need care. All three of the above articles are worth viewing. And I'm looking forward to reading the final article in the series.

It's quite a site

E.K. Wimmer is the husband of Maria Rose, aka at little things are big as The Kindness Bandit. They are both artists, and together they've created a fascinating Web site called Planet Wimmer. There is lots to see and enjoy there. It's well worth the visit.

And the prize goes to

A few odds and ends this morning.

(1) Found this sentence yesterday in an article I'm editing:

Strattera is the first medication to receive an FDA indication for treatment of ADHD in adults.

I'm certain the source the writer consulted used the word "indication." The problem is the work the writer was doing is meant for a health consumer audience, not a medical or pharmaceutical audience. It's like the writer simply took the information in but didn't have time to digest it before spilling it back out. Had the writer taken the time to think about what the sentence meant in the day to day language of the audience she was writing for, then she would have at least used the word "approval."

But the problem with the sentence is actually more basic than that. The sentence appeared in a section about what medical treatment is used for adults with ADHD. Here's the sentence before the one in question:

If stimulant medications have bothersome side effects or are not effective, your doctor might recommend atomoxetine (Strattera), a non stimulant medication.

The real problem with the FDA sentence is that it doesn't add anything to the reader's understanding. Since the reader is not going to be writing prescriptions, then it doesn't matter that Strattera is the first -- or only -- medication approved for this use. What question the reader probably will have is, "What is a non stimulant medication, and how is it different than the other medications?" And that's because the real question the reader is going to have is, "How will this medication affect me?"

(2) Speaking of digesting....When I was a young (er, relatively young) teacher, I had a freshman composition class and we were studying the use of figurative language. One of the students asked me what a mixed metaphor is. I stumbled through an answer and searched my brain frantically to come up with an example.

That afternoon, I went to an American literature seminar, and the professor, for some reason, wanted to discuss the value of seminars in a graduate program.

One of the women in the seminar, who had actually passed her generals and was working on her dissertation, said:

Oh, I love seminars. To me they're just like this huge, delicious smorgasbord where I can pick and choose and try things on for size.

It took me a week to get rid of the image of her walking down the street wearing a wardrobe made out of mashed potatoes and caviar.

(3) I got an email this morning with the subject line, "I hate to edit the Word mechanic. That being said...". It came from my son :

From a recent post:
"There are two questions you here all the time in certain circles in places like Birmingham: "Who's your mother?"

I fixed it. Now I'll have to have a conversation with him about the use of internal quotation marks.

I didn't list any favorite music in my profile

She's not every one's cup of tea. But people who like her, really like her.

The first time I saw Bjork and learned who she is was the 2000 movie Dancer in the Dark. S and I were one of six couples in the theater. That was all. By the end, when the lights came up, every single person in the theater was crying--most, actually, sobbing.

More Words I Like

My first nominee for words I like is "Kindness Bandit." You should drop by and check it out.

When S and I lived in Birmingham, we joined the only Unitarian Universalist church in town. It wasn't S's but it was my first time living in the south, and finding the UU community was like finding a safe place while learning a new culture. Now Birmingham is a good place to live. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is a marvelous tribute to the people who struggled and are still struggling for justice and for treating people the way they should be treated. You get a real sense of what happened there throughout the city's history, not just during the fifties and sixties. And there are fabulous (and some not so fabulous) galleries spread throughout the city and multiple arts festivals with some really great artists and juried shows throughout the year.

But there are things that aren't so great. The company that S was going to work for moved us, and the realtor was chosen by the relocation company. We only had a few days to be there and find a house and moving down from New Jersey we were impressed by two things. The first was the size house we could buy for the money we had, and the second was how integrated the neighborhoods are -- at least the neighborhoods in the price range we were exploring. So at lunch on the second day, I asked about how race relations had evolved, given Birminham's history. The realtor's response was there really is no problem and things were never the way they were portrayed by the media. She said things were good and there wasn't any tension now. Then she added, "There are issues. But I don't understand what they have to complain about. They own all of downtown." We let the remark go -- I know, we shouldn't have. We did, though, because we needed to find a house and didn't have time to find another realtor. But we moved off the subject of race. Then the realtor saw a friend whom she invited over to the table and introduced us to. The very first question he asked us was what church we belonged too. And the next thing he did was invite us to attend his church when we came back to town.

There are two questions you hear all the time in certain circles in places like Birmingham: "Who's your mother?" ("mama" actually) and "What church do you belong to?" Now that second question gets asked a lot of different ways, and sometimes kids who don't go to church get targeted by their classmates. It's almost like a contest to see which classmate can get the unchurched kid to join his or her church.

Which brings me to the second set of words I like. We joined the UU church and then were invited to a reception for new members hosted by the church board. At one point we were all out on the patio of a beautiful home of an artist who belonged to the congregation, and the president of the board suggested we take turns introducing ourselves and say something about how we came to be a UU. As we took turns, a board member gave her name and talked very briefly about her religious upbringing and her growing away from the church. Then she explained how she had had happened to join the Birmingham UU community:

"I became a UU," she said, "because I got tired of telling people I home churched my kids."

More Today's Quotes

There are lots of reasons to not like Georgia governor Sonny Perdue. For instance, one of his main responses to the drought we are experiencing was to schedule a day of prayer and ask all the church leaders in the state to lead prayers for rain. Or during the recent gas shortage, Mr. Perdue saw no reason not to go to Spain and leave the supply issue and public panic to resolve itself. On the op ed page of this morning's Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the headline "The Great Sonny Perdue Gas Debacle of 2008," Luc P. Noiset, an associate economics professor at Kennesaw State, took the good governor to task for one of the actions he did take during the shortage. While Noiset's criticism was not particularly justified or on target, he did turn a nice phrase, which the editor recognized and used as a call out:

"When naive voters vote for naive government leaders, they get naive government policies and suffer the consequences."

(The editor did leave out the comma, though.) And now, here's another one from Pearls Before Swine:

"A man's laugh should not sound like a weasel dying at the gates of hell."

They're sneaky little devils

Redundancies are often subtle. Very often they simply carry over from our patterns of speech. But part of a writer's job is to be conscious of how he or she is using words and whether clutter is getting in the way of making the message in the text clear. Here's a redundancy at the very end of an article for new mothers that I was editing yesterday evening:

"Most likely, the women in your life have had those same questions, too."

Now on first reading, that doesn't seem so bad, and it sounds almost right. But it is the end of the article, and the writer wants to leave the reader with a strong impression. Now, read the sentence without the "too."

Today's Quotes

Here are a couple of quotes to get us through the day. The first one's in honor of it being a Saturday in October:

"In Wisconsin, a spread offense means eating bread with margarine instead of butter." (Rob Oller, The Columbus Dispatch)

It will be 52 degrees at game time in Madison.

Now on a more serious note (although some people, including S, would tell you I take few things more seriously than Buckeye Football):

"Which amounts to saying that true union (that is spiritual union, or union in synthesis) differentiates the elements it brings together. This is no paradox, but the law of all experience. Two beings never love one another with a more vivid consciousness of themselves than when each is swallowed up in the other." (Piere Teilhard de Chardin)

Think about it.

This one's worth the visit.

If you haven't seen the blog Lily's Life yet, what are you waiting for?

Even traitors can be heroes

I like spy novels -- John LeCare, Daniel Silva, Len Deighton, Victor O'Reily. I like their existential essence. I get lost in the shadows of their moral border crossings. And I relish the idea that even in such foggy out lands and dreary back streets of a soft October night where, as Eliot says, the yellow smoke curls about the house and falls asleep, there can still be heroes, albeit weary and uncharacteristic ones.

Please share this link

This McCain video link was sent to me by a close friend. I am not endorsing the chain of links to additional videos and I do not recommend spending time following them. It amounts to negative campaigning. But this video is a good example of what skillful editing can do. (Editing isn't just about text.) Although I think that politically the video is accurate (it is, though, a little heavy handed at the end with it's pleading), I know a similar (or worse) video could be created for any of the candidates.

Common Errors in English -- Worth a Bookmark

In my post yesterday I put a link to a list of common errors in English. Since then, I've spent a little more time looking around the site. It was created by Paul Brians, a retired professor of English literature and has had over 10 million visitors since 1997. It's been widely noted and has won awards and recommendations from multiple agencies including Writer's Digest, BBC ONLINE, and Dictionary.com. (I only found it myself yesterday. Where have I been?)

At the top of the list of errors is a search engine that is very useful for finding a particular phrase, and I would recommend doing a search rather than scrolling through the list if you want to check a specific usage. At the bottom of the list of errors you will find a link to other pages with discussion of typical comments he gets, or phrases that aren't wrong, or background information, or additional errors, and more. On that page, Professor Brians asks that if someone creates a link to his site to please link to the home page. So here is the link to the Common Errors in English home page.

I should try and not pick on sports writers

What does "try and. . ." mean? The correct expression is "try to . . .". It's try not to pick on. Or it's try to find, not try and find. It used to be the only time I regularly saw "try and" in print was in student papers. It's a colloquialism that students pick up and carry over into their writing because it's what they've always heard. But I see it more and more in the writing from professional health writers that I'm editing. Then this morning on the Buckeyextra web site run by the Columbus Dispatch I saw the following sentence in an article by Dispatch sports writer Ken Gordon:

"Hines' ascension into a prominent role is just one example of how 14th-ranked Ohio State (3-1) has altered its defense to try and get more speed on the field."

You would think that even if the writer doesn't know the difference, the editor should have. There are a lot of other common errors that can rob sentences of meaning. There's also a very useful catalogue of those errors on the Washington State University web site.

Punctuation Man wears a red cape!

Happy National Punctuation Day, everyone.

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.

What It's Like To Be an Editor

I'm a good editor.

• I know I am because my writers win awards.
• I know I am because I see multiple requests for reprints of articles I publish in the magazine I edit.
• I know I am because my writers tell me they appreciate the edits I made.
• I know I am because I can tell a writer what to do to make a story better and expect to get a better story.
• I know I am because other editors tell me I'm good.
• I know I am because I look on line or look in a catalogue and there's a book I edited. The writer gets the credit, as it should be.
• I know I am because for the most part, I'm invisible.

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.

Ouch

Ohio State lost more than a football game Saturday night. See Tracy Wholf's Blog entry and the comments that followed it.

PANTHERs

Remember Sarah Haskins? She is definitely worth watching. This time she explains what a PANTHER is -- Proud American Needing Token Hillary Estrogen Replacement. Find out whether you're a panther or not at Target Women: Sarah Palin.

Interactivity

A long time ago, when computers and the Internet were still wedging themselves into our lives, I was amazed at how easy someone had made it for us to simply answer questions and upload information about ourselves online -- and how seemlessly we began doing it. Even just saying "yes" seemed ominous. I remarked to colleagues that somewhere in cyberspace someone was conditioning us to simply type in whatever we were asked to type in. Not that I heeded my own wariness. I was as eager as the next person to type in my name, place an order on line, answer a survey.

Now our Google toolbar will fill in forms for us and hand out credit card information without us even having to open our wallets. How many of us are paying a monthly $7.99 charge or $12.00 charge or. . . on our credit card statements that buys us some service we don't even remember we have? Who did we talk to when we ordered it, and who do we talk to to cancel it? And are we even sure all of those companies that are collecting the money are still in business?

We've given Microsoft free access to our hard drives because it's easier than trying to remember to download updates on our own. We let McAfee or Norton Utilities have free access. Who are they? And why can any of them simply shut down our computer at will to "reconfigure" the updates? Why does Dell want me to upload my hard drive to their server in cyberspace -- so I'll be protected when my system crashes? Do I know anybody at Dell? And why does Quicken check to see if I've got the latest financial tools and urge me to go to their website every time I start the program? For that matter, why do they want to pay my bills for me? Do I know anyone at Quicken?

What prompted this reflection was watching my local morning news today. The price of gas in Atlanta rose 11 cents overnight and another 4 cents in a half hour during the broadcast. It's because of Ike, and I just wish I had filled up yesterday. Wouldn't it be great if I could get some kind of warning? And then they said it. If you want instant alerts on what's happening with gas prices, all you have to do is sign up on 11alive.com and they'll send you an alert when there's going to be a change in the price of gas. I didn't sign up, but I assume they'd send it to my mobile phone if I asked. It seemed like it was the perfect solution to a serious problem. Thank God for the Matrix.

Which would you choose?

Here's an entry I made in my poetry journal I don't know how many years ago.

“… for whatsoever the philosopher saith should be done, he [the poet] giveth a perfect picture of it in some one, by whom he presupposeth it was done. So as he coupleth the general notion with the particular example. A perfect picture I say, for he yieldeth to the powers of the mind, an image of that whereof the philosopher bestoweth but a wordish description: which doth neither strike, pierce, nor possess the sight of the soul, so much as the other doth.” (Sir Philip Sidney, “An Apology for Poetry.” )

For Sidney, poetry had two primary functions—to delight and to teach—which made it superior to both philosophy and history. Philosophy presented truths and virtues unadorned, plainly, which made them non memorable. History was restricted by the necessity to show what was done rather than what should be or should have been done. That does not mean that philosophy or history do not have their value. But poetry can do what neither of them can. Sidney uses Christ’s parable of Dives and Lazarus—the one in hell, the other in the bosom of Abraham – to illustrate his point. Christ could have given a straight forward definition of greed or of virtue. But the lecture would not stay in the mind in the same way as the images of the stories he told. Because they delighted, they could also teach. [A particularly interesting phrasing and one that might bear more explication when looking at 20th century poetry is that philosophy teaches those who are already learned. Poetry teaches the innocent.] To illustrate his point about history, he asks where one would look for virtue -- to a historian's representation of Alexander, considering the historian is bound to tell both good things and bad things that happened, or to the poet’s representation of Ulysses or Achilles.

Two contrasting reflections on poetry

Something to think about this morning:

“[G]reat poetry is not inevitable. . . .It seems to result from a providential gift of talent to an individual and to the patient cultivation of that talent by the individual.” (Timothy Steele, Missing Measures.)

“Surely there is good reason to avoid a definition of poetry. The clearer and more concise a definition is, the more poems it leaves out.” (Donald Stauffer, The Nature of Poetry)

Would you buy a used car from these people?

I got an email this morning from a company called Books4mobiles.com. They said they wanted to publish my books on their Web site for free. Then they would sell the books to people who want to read it on their mobile phone and I would get a 40% royalty. Here's a blurb from the email:

"This exciting new website allows you the valuable opportunity to sell your books with ease. We do all the work and you recieve a new income stream direct to your pocket."

So I went to take a look at the Web site. I took these quotes at random from multiple pages where they were telling me about this great opportunity:

• Million of people have a mobile phones, why carry your favourite book,when you can read the book on your mobile phone.
• When submitting your work for publishing either for the mobile phone or print, they are a few checks to be done.
• The cost of publishing your work costs is Free.
• Please contact of sales team if you are interest.

To be fair, they said the books that people submit need to be free of grammatical errors because they do not have a service that can check grammar.

Did you say Books4mobiles? Or was it Books4illiterates? Either way, please keep your stream out of my pocket.

Taking yourself off line

I was listening this morning to the radio show Speaking of Faith. Krista Tippett's guest was Esther Sternberg, author of the book The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health & Emotions. Sternberg's research examined the scientific underpinnings of mind-body medicine, or how our emotions can help make us sick or well. A lot of the conversation on SOF was about the stress response and it's potentially negative effect on the immune system. Stress is a necessary response to certain events. It enables us to react to those events in ways that are protective without needing to go through a thought process first. It does this by releasing certain hormones and chemicals into our system.

Chronic stress keeps those chemicals in our system, and our immune cells are awash in those chemicals, which has the effect of shutting off or tuning down much of the immune system. That, in turn, makes us vulnerable to all sorts of nasty conditions.

Part of the challenge in dealing with chronic stress is to first recognize it and then do something to shut it down. Sternberg's advice was to take yourself off line. Take a vacation. Meditate. Exercise. Do yoga. Do what gets you away -- spiritually and/or physically -- from the environment that's causing the stress response.

I like that image of taking yourself off line. She explained it in terms of rebooting a computer. When I was diagnosed with prostate cancer several years ago, I knew I needed to do something that would provide some sort of outlet for the anxiety and negative emotions. And I knew that as supportive as S is and would be throughout the ordeal of cancer, she couldn't be the outlet I relied on. It wouldn't be fair to her. So, even though years before I had decided I had gotten just about all I was ever going to get from counseling, I looked for a mental therapist.

I went into therapy in a way I had never done before. I viewed it as a chance to begin the process of creating a space for myself. I was very proactive about setting the goals for therapy. I told the counselor I wanted to explore what having cancer meant to me, and I wanted to take the lead in doing it. But that was just the beginning.

The counselor was in the Back Bay section of Boston. We lived in Attleboro, a 45-minute train ride from Back Bay. Despite the fact that I always seemed to be behind on meeting my professional deadlines, once a week, I took the train, and I read. I allowed myself enough time so that I had about an hour in Back Bay before my appointment, so I either went to the library and worked on my creative projects or I went to Au Bon Pain and continued to read while I had a pastry and coffee. Following my session with the therapist, I went out and treated myself to a nice lunch in one of the fine restaurants in Back Bay. I even occasionally met S for lunch. After lunch I'd walk for about an hour. And toward the end of my time in Massachusetts, I even started stopping in at the end of my walk at the First Church of Christ, Scientist on the Christian Science Plaza and spending about 15 minutes just meditating. (I am not a Christian Scientist. But the quiet and the light and the "lightness" inside the church was calming and restful.) And then I'd go home.

For those several hours on Thursdays, I took myself off line. Since we've moved to Atlanta, my level of chronic stress has steadily increased. S tells me she thinks I have an anxiety disorder. I work most weekend days. I seldom exercise. I'm too tired and stressed to meditate when I quit working for the day and feel too rushed and pushed to meditate in the morning. I have all but stopped working on anything creative. It's time to get back in touch with whatever I understood when I created that space for myself in Back Bay, and discover ways to do it here. I'm glad I listened to that radio show this morning.

Check these out

There are two great blog entries this morning. The first is by 45 and aspiring and the second is by Mommy's Nintendo. They're well worth reading.

I changed the music line up slightly. I find that lyrics get in the way of what I'm trying to read. I'm not much of a multi tasker.

It's football time in Buckeye Land. Wish I was there.

45 and Aspiring forwarded me a list of metaphors found in high school essays, some of which she has posted on her own site. I thought I'd share a few of my favorites. But first a DISCLAIMER:

When I taught writing in college, faculty and grad assistants would sometimes share blunders that came from student papers and laugh about them. I found that offensive and counter to good teaching. It would be okay to laugh with a student, but never behind a students' back. Because to teach a student to write you need to try to understand what the student is trying to say. You can't do that if you're going to disrespect the student's effort to say it.

But these metaphors are different. They are funny, but they're not really blunders. In fact, they demonstrate the student made a real effort, not only to understand and use metaphor, but to say something original. So while these aren't metaphors I'd probably use, they're really interesting signs of progress toward writing well. Here's my list.

• He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
• Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
• The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
• The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
• The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
• The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

With Apologies to Yogi

Proof it's never over until it's over. Thank goodness for people who like what they do.

Whoops

See what happens when editors don't think, or at least don't fact check.

First, go here.

Now see this.

My hat is off to Ishmael.

P.S. I certainly hope that by the time anyone sees this, the newspaper has realized it's error and taken the picture down. But it was there.

About death and wind

You hear the weirdest things on TV. Last night I heard an ad from a law firm that was soliciting clients for a law suit involving adverse effects of a medication. A telephone number appeared on the screen and a voice over was reciting a list of adverse effects that may qualify someone to participate in the suit. Then the voice over said:

"If you or a loved one died after taking [name of medication], then call this number."

I hear dead people.

Then this morning I was watching the local news broadcast, and the weather forecaster was talking about the effect of the two tropical storms on local weather when he said:

"Today, I don't see either of them affecting the Atlanta coast."

Talk about your global warming.

Hip Hop and words

There's something interesting happening on You Tube style Web sites. Here's another one exploring the way cultural language shapes the personal world. It's on a site called ill doctrine.

Tofu and spring rolls

Her name is Susan Haskins, and the Web cast is called Target Women. It's about close-reading of the rhetoric that defines the way we're "supposed to be." It's well worth a look.

Another interesting word

Actually a phrase. I found it on 45 and Aspiring's blog this morning. (It's well worth the visit, by the way.)

mindful keening

It means a silent but conscious cry of lament.

How is that fair?

S broke her wrist a while back. She fell off the stool at her mother's house and spent the night at the emergency room. That was Saturday night, so we couldn't get in to see the hand doctor until Monday. When we did, he said she needed surgery in order to put a plate in, which happened late Monday evening. She was supposed to go home afterward, but due to some complications they admitted her to the hospital Monday night. They released her mid afternoon on Tuesday. All that's preliminary to the real topic.

We got the bill from the hospital about a week after she came home. It was a copy of the bill that was sent to the insurance company. The total bill for the surgery and one night in the hospital was $20,476.50.

Yesterday we got the final bill. Our "account balance" that is now due is $170. Now that's not bad. Insurance is a good thing. But as I looked at the bill, I saw that the insurance company had paid a total of $6,931.25. Because the hospital and insurance company have a contractual arrangement, the total adjustment in the bill was $13,375.25. The hospital wrote it off, or at least I'm assuming they did.

On the original bill there was a statement that said if the insurance company did not pay the claim, we would be responsible for the full 20+k. Health care reform anyone?

Order is important

Just found this in an article I'm editing.

--With a doctor’s help, you can find ways to treat vision problems at night.--

Then you can have your days free.

One-a-day

I just got back from a week in California and have lots of words to fix. So I'll catch up later. But I have to share this sign we saw at a fruit farm stand.

Fresh Sweet Strawberry. Picked Daily.

I'm guessing you have to get there early if you want a chance at it.

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?

Interesting word

I just learned the word wordle, and I just wordled Mommy's Nintendo's site. To see it full size, go here.