Manage Your Writing

So long, and thanks for all the visits

After 6 1/2 years, 557 posts, and more than 125,000 page views, I am closing this Manage Your Writing blog. I am retiring from actively marketing my training and consulting services, although I will entertain special requests for help.

I continue to marvel at the great number of you who regularly visit this site, and I am ever grateful for your many comments and referrals.

This site will be up at least until the end of 2012. Meanwhile, I will consider any proposals to buy the domains manageyourwriting.com and manageyourwriting.net, as well as the Manage Your Writing servicemark, for use beginning in 2013.

Thank you, and all good wishes!

Ken
kennethwdavis@mac.com

This week: Watch the borders

Speaker Joe Griffith tells a story of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover:

A young FBI man was put in charge of the FBI's supply department. In an effort to cut cost, he reduced the size of memo paper.

One of the new memo sheets ended up on J. Edgar Hoover's desk. He disliked it immediately and wrote on the narrow margin, "Watch the borders."

His message was misinterpreted. For the next six weeks, it was extremely difficult to enter the United States by road from either Mexico or Canada.

This, week watch your borders--not the physical margins of your printed documents, but the much more important and elusive borders between your reader's understanding and misunderstanding. As you revise your messages, ask yourself whether there's any way they can be misunderstood. If so, move the message  across the border into comprehension.

This week: Lose the flab from your rear end

The ending of your letters and e-mail messages may be the last thing your reader reads, so you'll want it to leave a good impression. Avoid flowery, "rubber stamp" endings like "Thank you in advance" and "Begging to remain yours truly." Such endings only sound stilted and insincere.

The best endings are focused and personal. If you know your reader well enough to close with a personal reference, by all means do so:

Thanks for your help with the Oswald project, Carmen; I'm glad we're working together again on this one.

Otherwise, a simple "Thanks" or "Thank you" is usually better than a longer, more formal close.

This week, as you revise, give special attention to how your messages end. Make sure they end effectively.

This week: Lose the powdered wig

An amazing fact about modern business is that some of the same people who like to think of themselves as on the cutting edge of technology still write the way people talked 200 years ago. They choose words that people haven't said to each other since they stopped wearing powdered wigs. When was the last time you heard a coworker say, "Enclosed please find"?

Malcolm Forbes called it as he saw it:

Business jargon too often is cold, stiff, unnatural. Suppose I came up to you and said, "I acknowledge receipt of your letter, and I beg to thank you." You'd think, "Huh?"

This week, as you revise, ask yourself, "Is this something people would actually say to each other?" If not, lose the powdered wig and bring your writing up to date.

This week: Good writers do it three times

Historian Paul Fussell once confessed:

Crappy work I do twice, good work I do three times.

This week, just as an experiment, don't just "do" each piece of work twice (drafting and revising), but take a minute or two to revise again. See if that third time pays off for you.

This week: Use "readability" formulas wisely

A number of "readability" formulas, both manual and computer-based, have been developed to measure the difficulty of written text. Perhaps the most widely used is part of the grammar checker built into Microsoft Word. It and some others claim to report the number of years of schooling required to read a document.

The U.S. Securities Exchange Commission is a leader in calling for plain, easy-to-read language in government documents. So it's worthwhile to listen to what the SEC says about readability formulas:

You should be aware of a major flaw in every readability formula. No formula takes into account the content of the document being evaluated. In other words, no formula can tell you if you have conveyed the information clearly.

This week, if you have a readability checker available, give it a try. If it gives your draft a high grade-level score, take that score somewhat seriously, and look for ways to simplify. But don't automatically take the checker's specific advice. As the SEC says about readability formulas,

Take their suggestions as just that--suggestions. The final test of whether any piece of writing meets its goal of communicating information comes when humans read it.

This week: Separate rules from tools

When we first learned to write, we had to learn a lot of rules. So we sometimes believe that writing consists entirely of following rules. If we learn the rules, we'll be better writers.

Actually, writing has few rules, and we know and use almost all of them already. We know, for example, the rule that says that sentences must begin with capital letters. We know, in almost every case, the rule that singular subjects must have singular verbs.

To grow as writers, we don't need more rules. What we need are tools. And we need them most when we revise our messages.

This week, randomly pick one of the  posts on this blog that have been tagged "revising."  Almost all these posts are tools, not rules, but if you choose one that you're sure is a rule, pick another. As you revise this week, think of that tool as if it's a physical tool in a toolbox. Look for opportunities to pick it up and use it. 

Take as much time as you want others to take

Bill Jensen, in his book Simplicity, writes:

When people are in need of communication, they want others to take the time to listen, and then to take the time to create meaning, clarity, and connections between ideas. But when they have todo the communicating, saving time becomes a priority . . . .

When it comes to communication, business is facing major discipline and accountability problems. It's like the line about change: Taking the time to create clarity is important--as long as it's the other guy who has to do it.

Don't fall into this trap. This week, look at the writing you receive, and ask "What do I wish this writer had spent more time on?" Then, when you write, be sure to take the time you need to communicate effectively.

This week: Draft quick and dirty

The great editor Maxwell Perkins once said, "Just get it down on paper, and then we'll see what to do with it."

This week, take that advice. Draft quick and dirty. If you don't know how to spell a word, just approximate; you or your spell-checker can fix it later. (And please, please, don't let your word-processing program highlight misspellings while you draft.) If you don't know which of two words to use, use them both; you can decide between them when you look at your draft again at the revising stage. For now, just get comfortable with the idea of doing it wrong the first time.

In the end, you'll be a more efficient and effective writer.

 

This week: Don't be ridiculous

Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, also wrote of the first business how-to books in English: The Complete English Tradesman, published in 1745 (!).

In that book, he wrote:

A tradesman's letters should be plain, consise, and to the purpose. . . . He that affects a rumbling and bombast style and fills his letters with compliments and flourishes makes a very ridiculous figure in trade.

This week, as you revise, see if your style is "rumbling and bombast." Make sure it is not, but rather "plain, concise, and to the purpose."