Motorcyles give me insomnia

My son has had some overwhelming tragedy in his life this summer. He lost a good friend in a car accident at the beginning of May. Another good friend, who helped Adam get a summer job with her father's construction company, died a week after school got out. A third, Pat, one of his best work-on-landscaping-crew-fishing-hanging-out buddies, was in a motorcycle accident, and has logged a bunch of time in intensive care. Police reports say he was going 110 mph in an urban neighborhood, definitely pushing the limits. He's lost one kidney and most of the function in the other, so it's a pretty sure bet he'll be on dialysis for life. That, in addition to multiple severely broken bones and other assorted internal injuries, ensures that Pat will always live with the repercussions of his reckless decision.

Amazingly, Pat showed up at my house last night. He was on crutches, moving really slowly, with the deliberate speech that gave away high doses of pain medication. Two weeks after nearly losing his life, he was out and about. Except for the crutches and the cast on his leg, you might not have known he was recently close to dead.

It's hard for a 19-year-old to understand the delicate balance of life. My son has had more than his fair share of examples this summer, along with an outright miracle. I hope he doesn't decide to test which category God has put him in.

Medicine is so unpredictable. One minute you're on life support, in intensive care, and then you're out on your own. I know some of this is the work of the insurance company, but the insurance companies wouldn't have much to work with if it wasn't for the miracle of medicine.

Micro communications - micro context?



Courtesy of brittanywriters.com

 The amount that language can be nuanced these days is almost unbelievable to me. Having grown up in a time where writing was a thoughtful, time-intensive effort, usually involving pen, paper and sometimes a stamp, context was almost always a dead give away for overall meaning. Today, where words are dashed off in an e-mail or text message as fast as they cross your mind, readers are more often than not left to infer context, and therefore, meaning. Take for example the difference in the following business e-mail:

Example 1

Please make the changes noted in the attached document.

Thanks.

Example 2

Please make the changes noted in the attached document.

Thanks!

In example 1, I am left wondering what the author is thinking. What was his reaction when he read the document. Was he pleased? Did he hate it? Will I find the draft full of red editor's lashings? What should I be thinking as I open the document? I am left in a sea of ignorance and self-doubt. The need for positive or negative feedback overwhelms me, even before I open it. I want to be prepared for what awaits me.

Example 2 has one single difference, so small that many would overlook it. That difference, an exclamation point, is one that many feel is so overused it is almost meaningless. Exclamation points, I would argue, do have their place in short business communications. Here's why.

In the workplace, e-mail, text messages, instant messages and other short forms of communication have almost entirely replaced longer, more thoughtful missives, and even phone and face-to-face communications. There's no opportunity to read body language, or listen to a thorough explanation of why a business associate has come to a particular conclusion. When you receive hundreds of these communications in a day, learning the art of communicating context in as few characters as possible can not only lead to more concise writing, but also to better business relationships.

In my own workplace, all writing that will be viewed by a prospect or client must be reviewed and approved by our compliance department. Being a part of the sales department, this almost instantly puts me in an adversarial relationship with compliance. It's a government, regulatory thing because we're in the financial industry. So, if I receive example 1 as a response to a writing submission I make to the compliance department, I almost always read it with a negative overtone. To me, a period implies no inflection, no emotion. There's nothing there on which to evaluate not only the work, but the relationship with the particular editor who wrote it. Example 2, on the other hand, by the inclusion of the exclamation point, leads me to think the compliance editor, at the very least, appreciated the effort I put into it as well as the effort it will take to edit it. While I still have to wait to open the document to see the evaluation, I can at least know the person took a millisecond to think about adding punctuation that would give me context. Since there's no tone of voice or body language in e-mail (or text, or instant message), punctuation is one of the few opportunities we have to give the reader context.

So e-mail me, text me, instant message me, I don't care. Just don't forget to use punctuation that gives me context. (At least I didn't get into emoticons.)

Wote - not just a town in Kenya

Hello, my name is Cindy, and I am a ranter. This has been a recent revelation, and I have decided to embrace it. I haven't yet decided if there's a 12-step program that would aid me with this issue. No matter. 

Grammar was the target of my last rant, along with its cousin, proofreading. I was harsh, maybe too much so. From the elevated status of my soap box, I did feel empowered. However, I saw a piece of writing this week that made me think twice about my distaste for grammar.
 

katrich.wordpress.com

In a resume for a writing position in my department at work, we found one in need of some well-placed commas. And then came this sentence starter: "I wote several articles..." Wote gets a squiggly red salute from Microsoft Word. I'm sure if this person ran spellcheck it would have been caught. Research seemed to be the best solution to see if the person had a reason for adding the word wote to the Word dictionary. Here's what I found:

• Wote, capitalized, is a town in Kenya. It is southwest of Nairobi, and sits on the edge of the desert. An unlikely culprit. This person was so white (a picture was included on the resume), unless Wote is the location of a foster child he or she sends money to through a children's charity, it's probably not the cause of the error.
• WOTE, all capitalized, is an acronym for Workshop on Trustworthy Elections, an educational seminar put on by the International Association for Voting Systems Sciences.  Again, based on the briefest of glances at the experience listed in the resume, I just don't see it.
• wote.com is the location on the World Wide Web of Write on the Edge. It is a technical communications company. This sounds more promising. Perhaps this person was a freelance writer for Write on the Edge. Now I have the reason to give him or her the benefit of the doubt.

What ever the case, back to the rant. In an admittedly shallow search of Google, I could not find wote used as a verb. And the number of times I had to stop and divide the sentences in this resume into manageable chunks was frustrating. So perhaps my problem with grammar stems from a few things:

• I have a naturally affinity for language. Subject and meaning still interest me more than grammar, but this resume made me stop and think about the importance of underlying structure. My ear for the natural ebb and flow of language allows me to use grammar somewhat innately, though the details plague me. I would cast it as similar to gross and fine motor skills. I am definitely gross-oriented.
• Second, I am a global thinker. Big picture, big picture, big picture. Say it with me. Big picture. Grammar is definitely on the picky detail side of the picture.
• My attention is generally focused on what comes next, not what I've already done. For me, the adrenaline rush comes with the creation of meaningful content. Once I've got the meaning on paper, I would just as soon leave the details behind and find the next big thing. I get caught up in the rush to move on.

I have had people tell me to just slow down (yawn) and I will do better. As I will be entering the sixth decade of my life in a few short weeks, I'm thinking not so much. A better approach might be to pick up a few more tools here and there so I can do it right the first time, rather than being hauled back to revisit it again. That, and I'm still looking for a good proofreader to call my friend.

Woe is I, with apologies

Patricia T. O'Conner and
her husband, Stewart Kellerman.
From www.grammarphobia.com

I will begin with apologies to Patricia T. O'Conner. I don't know her. I'm sure she's a lovely person. However, in this, and the next few posts, I may have less than kind things to say about grammar, even though she's written a well-respected book about it (Woe is I). Some have even called her book, "Invigorating and entertaining..." (Publishers Weekly). Really? I believe those are two words are as antithetical to grammar as any in the English language.

I really want to like grammar. Apparently, having good grammar is a quality that makes me credible as a writer. Perhaps. If so, then I guess my goal will be to always have a really good  proofreader by my side. But I think credibility for writers is so much more than grammar. Credibility is about making your meaning understood with the words you choose. And by meaning, I mean the ability for a writer to do things like bring the reader into a different reality; let readers in on an inside joke; bring the most iron-souled reader to tears without completely understanding why; keep the reader coming back for more. Grammar has its use in the world of writing, to be sure. But does anybody really CARE whether I used a commas or semicolons as separators when I was listing how I defined making meaning understood earlier in this paragraph? I know what my answer is.

Much to Ms.O' Conner's credit, it appears that even she agrees that some rules are antiquated. Her second-to-last chapter, "The Living Dead: Let Bygone Rules Be Gone" gives me some hope. After skimming the chapter, while I agree with most of them, I'm sure the English majors (for whom I work) will laugh out loud, and I'll still get the nasty red marks on my papers. (Heavy sigh.)

So, Ms. O'Conner, I'm sure you've had to overcome your doubters, and I will join their ranks. I hope you persuade me to see grammar as amusingly as you seem to. Then, perhaps, I will begin to care more about it.

Embracing my reality competition persona

I must admit, when the "Survivor" reality television show first came out, I was not impressed. Half-naked, dirty, greedy, back-stabbing people were not attractive to me. Nothing about them reached out and hooked me. Nothing about them made me want to be there, either in reality or in my imagination. I can't imagine how it's stayed on the air since 1992. Obviously, I am not the target audience.

www.bravotv.com/top-chef-masters

So when I look at my television viewing habits today, I find myself quite surprised by what's on my DVR. "Top Chef Masters," "Project Runway," "America's Got Talent," and "The Voice." And I've been occasionally caught watching a marathon showing of "America's Next Top Model." (Shhh!) So why have I gone whole-heartedly to the dark side?

The answer isn't brain surgery. I can just see myself in each and every one of those shows. I fancy myself a good cook, so I could be a chef if I really wanted to. I can sew, so why couldn't I show in New York fashion week? I love to sing, so why couldn't I win a million dollars? And, of course, I'm secretly a skinny super model in my mind. The common denominator of all these scenarios is me.

Just as in reality television, in writing, the ability for readers to see themselves as a part of the scenario is critical to setting an emotional hook. Finding the right words to make the readers envision themselves in the story you're trying to tell is the difference between forgettable and memorable; action or inaction; the feeling of indifference - or yes - even passion. I suppose that's why the advice I most often hear for writers is, "Write what you know." Drawing on  experience also allows a writer to draw on their own emotion and insights, as well as observations of the others involved in the situation. And while I find writers to be extremely creative, I think experience helps you be believable.