Writing Matters!

Like you, my to-do list gets longer and sometimes a bit vague and perhaps overwhelming...(or knee-dropping...in that it leads me to dependent-prayer!)

But just read the following, and it is good stuff for us all.....Communication is such a huge part of our lives; whether in email to a kid, our normal newsletter, etc...Here is some good advice:

Why Good Writing Matters – And How You Can Improve

from Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life by Ali

In today’s world, being able to write well is of vital importance, whatever your industry. You could be a computer programmer, a small business owner, an administrator ... whatever your job, it’s likely to involve a lot of words.

Just think of the things you might write in a typical working day:

• Emails to clients
• Internal memos or reports for colleagues
• Instructions for a subordinate
  
• A presentation for a seminar
• Notes or action points from a meeting
• New content for your company’s website

I’m sure you could extend the list. The fact is, text is the currency of the web: although video and audio content is slowly becoming more popular, text has massive advantages (like being searchable, very easy to produce and edit, easy to scan, and quick to download).

So why is it so important that every time you put fingers to keyboard, you write well?

Your Writing Must Give a Good First Impression
In many situations, the first contact someone will have with you is through an email or through reading a website. This could be when:

• You’re applying for a job, with a cover letter and CV
• You’re replying to an email from a prospective customer
• A client is reading your website
  
• A colleague passes on the email address of someone they want you to contact

There are also plenty of non-work contexts where this applies too, such as:

• You need to write a letter of complaint, and want to be taken seriously
  
• You’re creating a profile on a dating site
• You’re writing content for a community or hobby website

Again, these lists could go on and on. In all these cases, the quality of your writing and the way you express yourself is going to form a strong impression on the reader. You want that impression to be good!

Poor Writing Won’t Be Read
How many times have you skimmed blog posts, ignored pages of jargon on a company site, or even stopped reading as soon as you saw a badly-worded or confusing headline?

It’s probably not news to you that we live in a world saturated with information. If your emails are long-winded and rambling, if your blog posts are vague and ungrammatical, or if your website is full of corporate jargon, people simply won’t read it.

You’re Using Social Media – And You Can Be Found
I’d be willing to bet that you have some sort of online profile or presence. That might be on LinkedIn, for business; it might be a Facebook account, a Twitter stream, or even your own blog. It could be posts on a public message board.

If you’ve never tried this before, give it a go: type your full name, in quotes, into Google. What comes up? (If you have a common name, you might try adding your profession or location.) Would the results impress a prospective client or employer? Bear in mind that almost anything you write online can be found by people searching for you. Again, you want to give them a good impression with well-written content – even if that’s just your bio on LinkedIn.

So, if you know that your writing isn’t your strongest point, what can you do to improve?

Step One: Practice!
If you ever learned to play a musical instrument as a child, you were probably encouraged to practice regularly. Writing is no different: the more you write, the more confident you’ll become. If you need a primer on grammar or if you need to revisit some of the rules, here is are 50 writing tools that can help and here are another 40+ tips on punctuation.

For those who aren’t natural writers, it can seem like a chore to sit down and put words on the screen. Try spending just five or ten minutes each evening writing about something that interests you. Don’t be afraid to experiment with your use of language: no-one needs to see this except you.

Step Two: Read It Aloud
One of the most powerful ways to “hear” any flaws in your writing is to read it aloud. If you’re someone who’s a fluent speaker but who struggles a bit with writing, this is a great way to make the most of the way you prefer to communicate. Problems which your eye skims over on the page can become very obvious when you hear them.

When you read aloud, you’re also much more likely to notice convoluted, overlong sentences – they’ll be the ones where you run out of breath!

Step Three: Get Feedback
When you have an important piece of writing that needs to be right, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. That could be as informal as asking a colleague or friend to read it over – ask them to let you know if it was confusing at all, or whether any of the sentences were hard to follow. It’s also worth asking them to look out for “clunky” words that just don’t sound right.

In some cases, you might want to consider hiring a professional writer or editor to look over what you’ve written.

Do you find writing a struggle, in your job or business? Have you got any tips to share?

Written on 9/28/2009 by Ali Hale. Ali is a professional writer and blogger, and a part-time postgraduate student of creative writing. If you need a hand with any sort of written project, drop her a line (ali@aliventures.com) or check out her website at Aliventures.

Write for Lazy Readers

If you are "on support" the Lord is your source, as He is for every one.

But, if you are "on support," your newsletter is your lifeline. As I've said before, a monthly letter is, in my mind, mandatory...assuming, of course, you'd like your donors to invest at least monthly?

It is ideal if they actually read your letter...prayer cover is priceless...

Interesting commentary from the guys at "Magneto Communications," a "secular" outfit:

I'm amazed you're reading this. I mean, it's hard work, isn't it? You're having to drag your sorry eyeballs along the line, making meaning of all these letters and words. Outrageous!

Actually, you're probably NOT lazy. BUT if you assume your readers are lazy, you'll write in a much more engaging, interesting way. People will be more likely to start reading, read more, and act on what they've read. Apply these tips to light a fire under your lazy readers:

• Pique their interest: Half the battle is getting people to start reading. Once they start, they'll probably continue (if you've done a decent job). To pique their interest, consider big, benefit-oriented headlines and subheads; large, interesting pictures, graphs or charts; and bullet points instead of long sentences.
• Short chunks: Long, dense blocks of text scream "hard work" to lazy readers, so chunk them down.
• Do the work for them: What work will they have to do when they read your writing? Do it for them. Readers will love you for including a short summary of the key points, interpreting results for them, partially filling in forms for them, and making the next steps clearer.

Writing Matters!

Like you, my to-do list gets longer and sometimes a bit vague and perhaps overwhelming...(or knee-dropping...in that it leads me to dependent-prayer!)

But just read the following, and it is good stuff for us all.....Communication is such a huge part of our lives; whether in email to a kid, our normal newsletter, etc...Here is some good advice:

Why Good Writing Matters – And How You Can Improve

from Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life by Ali

In today’s world, being able to write well is of vital importance, whatever your industry. You could be a computer programmer, a small business owner, an administrator ... whatever your job, it’s likely to involve a lot of words.

Just think of the things you might write in a typical working day:

• Emails to clients
• Internal memos or reports for colleagues
• Instructions for a subordinate
  
• A presentation for a seminar
• Notes or action points from a meeting
• New content for your company’s website

I’m sure you could extend the list. The fact is, text is the currency of the web: although video and audio content is slowly becoming more popular, text has massive advantages (like being searchable, very easy to produce and edit, easy to scan, and quick to download).

So why is it so important that every time you put fingers to keyboard, you write well?

Your Writing Must Give a Good First Impression
In many situations, the first contact someone will have with you is through an email or through reading a website. This could be when:

• You’re applying for a job, with a cover letter and CV
• You’re replying to an email from a prospective customer
• A client is reading your website
  
• A colleague passes on the email address of someone they want you to contact

There are also plenty of non-work contexts where this applies too, such as:

• You need to write a letter of complaint, and want to be taken seriously
  
• You’re creating a profile on a dating site
• You’re writing content for a community or hobby website

Again, these lists could go on and on. In all these cases, the quality of your writing and the way you express yourself is going to form a strong impression on the reader. You want that impression to be good!

Poor Writing Won’t Be Read
How many times have you skimmed blog posts, ignored pages of jargon on a company site, or even stopped reading as soon as you saw a badly-worded or confusing headline?

It’s probably not news to you that we live in a world saturated with information. If your emails are long-winded and rambling, if your blog posts are vague and ungrammatical, or if your website is full of corporate jargon, people simply won’t read it.

You’re Using Social Media – And You Can Be Found
I’d be willing to bet that you have some sort of online profile or presence. That might be on LinkedIn, for business; it might be a Facebook account, a Twitter stream, or even your own blog. It could be posts on a public message board.

If you’ve never tried this before, give it a go: type your full name, in quotes, into Google. What comes up? (If you have a common name, you might try adding your profession or location.) Would the results impress a prospective client or employer? Bear in mind that almost anything you write online can be found by people searching for you. Again, you want to give them a good impression with well-written content – even if that’s just your bio on LinkedIn.

So, if you know that your writing isn’t your strongest point, what can you do to improve?

Step One: Practice!
If you ever learned to play a musical instrument as a child, you were probably encouraged to practice regularly. Writing is no different: the more you write, the more confident you’ll become. If you need a primer on grammar or if you need to revisit some of the rules, here is are 50 writing tools that can help and here are another 40+ tips on punctuation.

For those who aren’t natural writers, it can seem like a chore to sit down and put words on the screen. Try spending just five or ten minutes each evening writing about something that interests you. Don’t be afraid to experiment with your use of language: no-one needs to see this except you.

Step Two: Read It Aloud
One of the most powerful ways to “hear” any flaws in your writing is to read it aloud. If you’re someone who’s a fluent speaker but who struggles a bit with writing, this is a great way to make the most of the way you prefer to communicate. Problems which your eye skims over on the page can become very obvious when you hear them.

When you read aloud, you’re also much more likely to notice convoluted, overlong sentences – they’ll be the ones where you run out of breath!

Step Three: Get Feedback
When you have an important piece of writing that needs to be right, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. That could be as informal as asking a colleague or friend to read it over – ask them to let you know if it was confusing at all, or whether any of the sentences were hard to follow. It’s also worth asking them to look out for “clunky” words that just don’t sound right.

In some cases, you might want to consider hiring a professional writer or editor to look over what you’ve written.

Do you find writing a struggle, in your job or business? Have you got any tips to share?

Written on 9/28/2009 by Ali Hale. Ali is a professional writer and blogger, and a part-time postgraduate student of creative writing. If you need a hand with any sort of written project, drop her a line (ali@aliventures.com) or check out her website at Aliventures.

Don't Obfuscate Either in Teaching or Newsletters

Dear Jack,
Has this ever happened to you?


You're listening to a high powered speaker give an
impressive presentation. But at times it's like you are
hearing a foreign language. You have a good vocabulary, but
you feel like you should have brought a dictionary. You find
yourself jotting down words to look up later, and discover
that you've missed key parts of the presentation.


You've been bamboozled by an obfuscator.


Obfuscation: "The activity of obscuring people's
understanding, leaving them baffled or bewildered. To make
so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive or
understand." {www.Dictionary.com}


Beware of obfuscators. They sound brilliant. They must be
brilliant because their vocabularies are so superior. Their
incomprehensible erudite commentary must be important
because no one can understand it.


I first learned the "value" of obfuscation when I decided
to major in philosophy in college. I was searching for the
meaning of life. I began with introductory classes. I read
the assigned readings and wrote papers analyzing what I had
read. My papers were clear, easy to understand and to the
point. I received grades of "C" or "B-". Those grades
confused me. What was I missing? I thought I understood what
I was reading. I was not accustomed to getting poor grades.
I was upset.


I decided to try an experiment. I used my thesaurus to find
obscure words to replace my clear ones. I obfuscated
everything I said. I replaced my easy to understand
paragraphs with cognitive opaqueness yielding professorial
accolades: grades of B+ and A.


I learned to communicate at a college level, using the most
opaque words I could find in my thesaurus. My professors
were impressed. Many business journals are written in this
academic style as well. When I began to write computer user
manuals and train people, I discovered that my language
needed to be more accessible. I had to unlearn my college
lessons and use language people could readily take in and
remember.


As a communicator, is your goal to sound impressive? Or is
it to deliver information that people can understand and
use?


If you really want people to understand you, if you really
want to make your point, don't force people to reach for a
dictionary when you speak or write.


Warmly,
Sally

The Work of Writing

For some, the newsletter is a chore likened to a root canal; for some it comes fairly easy.

None of us have "arrived."

I found the following to be helpful as regards writing, whether a newsletter, a blog, or just a note of encouragement:

By Mary Jaksch

Do you want to be a boring writer? No, of course you don’t!
But how to avoid it?
Do you sometimes read a piece that moves at an agonizingly slow pace? I do. Well, let me be honest here - I tend to read only the first paragraph, and then I put the boring book aside or flick over to another website.

Boring is bad. Boring is slow.

Enter Sol Stein. A master-editor who knows a trick or two. His book “Stein on Writing” lies on my bedside table and is a source of constant inspiration.
Stein’s take on ‘boring’ is that we need to accelerate the pace of our pieces. This means compressing the perceived flow of time.

Pace is often the deciding factor whether what we write is read, or not.

That’s especially true when it comes to stuff we publish on the Net, as internet savvy readers all seem to suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder.

The good news is that we can learn to control pace in our writing.

Sol Stein suggests three techniques to speed things up which can be used in fiction as well as nonfiction.

1. Use short sentences

   Here is an example:
   I stopped. The silence was awful.

2. Use frequent paragraphs

   Frequent paragraphs move the reader forward. One way to use frequent paragraphing is to use dialogue. Because each line is really a separate paragraph. While it’s enlivening to use direct dialogue in non-fiction, it’s sometimes difficult to find a way to place it. Another way to use dialogue is as a conversation with your reader. Here’s an example by Brian Clark in this Teaching Sells Report:
   

   Want to have a profitable online business?
   Here’s the part where I tell you all about how fabulous it is to have a purely online
   business.
   And then I tell you how you can have the lifestyle you want, live where you want,
   and have unlimited income potential-all from publishing online.
   What’s that?
   You mean you’ve already heard all that stuff?
   Oh… You’ve already been sold the dream, over and over.
   Now you’re looking for a way to make the dream come true that actually works?
   OK.
   Let’s just jump straight to that part.

That’s beautifully written, isn’t it? It’s engaging and enlivening. The reason it’s enlivening is because of the pace is accelerated through ultra-short paragraphs.

3. Use jump cuts

   Sol Stein suggests skipping about two thirds of your words in order to increase the pace. Here are two of his examples:
   

   Version A:
   In the morning he would shower, brush his teeth, shave, dress in a suitable business suit with shirt and tie, get down to the kitchen I time to have his coffee and then rush off to the station, but he’d frequently missed his train anyhow.

   Version B:
   He washed his body, shaved his jaw, drank his coffee, and missed the seven-thirty-one.
   (This is what John Cheever wrote in his celebrated story “The Country Husband”)

So, here are Sol Stein’s three techniques to accelerate the pace - all ready to put into your writer’s tool box. But don’t just leave them in there. Bring them out and use them next time you wonder whether your piece is boring.
Do you think they would work for you?