Manage Your Writing

This week: Go "which-hunting"

This week, as you revise, follow the advice in Strunk and White's Elements of Style, and go "which-hunting." That is, look for places you have used the words which, who, or that to introduce a subordinate clause, and see if you can eliminate the need for that clause.

For example,

Count the chairs which are in the room

can be revised to

Count the chairs in the room.

Not only have we eliminated two words, we have kept the reader's brain from having to process a whole extra clause.

As Dorothy found out, not all whiches are bad. But watching for them is still a good idea.

Top 30 writing blogs

A hearty, if belated, thanks to the Delaware Employment Law Blog for naming Manage Your Writing as one of The Top 30 Blogs on Writing.

This week: Try five W's and an H

This week, before you start drafting each writing job, list six questions on a piece of paper:

• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• When?
• Why?
• How?

Briefly answer each question, even if only in a word or two. You may find that after doing that,  you can draft faster and more effectively.

This week: Write for just one reader

I always recommend picturing your readers as completely as possible, using the "PACK" acronym: What's their personality? What's their attitude? What circumstances are they in? What's their knowledge of the subject? But what if you're writing to someone you don't know?

Daphne Gray-Grant, in her newsletter Power Writing, has a great solution: write for just one reader. She recommends identifying the characteristics of a "core reader," then giving him or her a specific identity. She writes,

The biggest benefit of creating imaginary people . . . is that you stop thinking about yourself. Instead of focusing on your own needs and problems, you're suddenly thinking about what the client or the reader cares about. And by giving your core reader a name and a face you transform him or her from an anonymous mass into a real human being.

This week, give Daphne's advice a try. When you're writing to a reader or readers you don't know personally, create a core reader, with his or her own name, personality, attitude, and circumstances.