Politics and the English Language, Rule 5
Posted by yoursinwriting in Writing Tips on April 21st, 2009
Rule 5: Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Nobody likes a know-it-all. For convenience’s sake, let’s refer to all language that may baffle your readers as “jargon.” Orwell feels that using jargon is “never” a good idea. In the best case, a writer may use this language with the intent of impressing their readers rather than informing them. In the worst case, a politician may use this language to obscure the truth, or intimidate the reader. Consider terms like “friendly fire” and “collateral damage” and you start to understand the possible abuse. The great fear is that by using the same jargon over time, without explanation, to refer to different scenarios or objects, politicians can slowly expand the meaning of that jargon, until its new interpretation is weaker, stronger, or broader than before. Orwell is correct in his assessment that jargon can do more harm than good when used with ignorance or malice.
I’d point out one exception to this rule, which is hopefully obvious: use jargon when it is natural to the story, but be sure to explain its meaning. For example, if your character is an officer in the Iraq war, it would be odd for him to say:
“We’re finally getting some upgraded vehicles to handle all these improvised explosive devices.”
Much more natural would be something like:
“We’re finally getting some upgraded vehicles to handle all these IEDs,” the general said. Over twenty soldiers had been lost to improvised explosive devices in just the last 60 days.
Unfortunately, IEDs have become part of the common vernacular, so depending on the intended audience, the explanation may not even be needed. But for more obscure jargon, introducing and then explaining the jargon is a great way to give your characters authenticity while building curiosity in your readers. As with most of Orwell’s other pet peeves, the key to using jargon is tactful intent. Using jargon because it exists is almost certain to impair your writing, or make the reader suspicious of your aims. But don’t be afraid to use jargon appropriately, sparingly, and with timely explanation.
WineCollective.ca: Don’t Let “Pour” Writing Sour a Great Service
Posted by yoursinwriting in Examples on April 18th, 2009
I recently became a member of WineCollective.ca; their catchphrase is “Extraordinary wines to your door,” and they have lived up to that challenging promise so far (you can read my review of the service on my personal blog). When they delivered my first package, I was impressed: two beautiful bottles, with a professional-looking insert. The insert was printed on three pages of card stock: one for each bottle (with details like price, region, and vintage, and room for guided tasting notes), plus a third containing a welcome message on the front, and a recipe for Asian Chicken salad on the back (to match the flavour of the included white wine). What a fantastic idea!
Then I read the text, and immediately saw several opportunities for improvement; I took out my Level 4 Pencil of Editing, and started with this sentence in their welcome message:
We appreciate the trust you have put in us and we want to make sure your experience with the WineCollective warrants you keeping it.
from the WineCollective.ca Welcome message
If I put my trust in you, I can’t also keep it. Or does this imply “keeping it… with us?” Of course, we can figure out what they mean by this statement, but the “ownership of trust” theme is tricky to resolve. Sometimes you need to relinquish a theme for the sake of clarity. Here’s my suggested rewrite:
We appreciate the trust you have put in us, and we will ensure your experience with the WineCollective exceeds your expectations.
This next sentence is part of a paragraph extolling the glory of wine:
It can be learned about and studied or perhaps a topic of conversation or a tool used for celebration.
from the WineCollective.ca Welcome message
This is one of those phrases where the author crams several related ideas together without finding their natural fit. You’ve probably written such a phrase yourself, around 3 a.m. the morning your essay was due. The end result usually has either too many words to make sense, or too few. Not to mention the use of the passive voice. Stand back, and let the ideas actively organize themselves:
It can be a topic of study or conversation, or simply a tool for celebration.
Here are examples of wordy and/or vague descriptions:
…we knew that it was a perfect fit for the essence of what the WineCollective is.
…you get a nice lemon-lime component, reminiscent of a Sprite or 7-Up aspect. This wine is showing some nice grassiness to it, and is a bit green, a bit herbal, and medicinal with some nuttiness.
WineCollective.ca Tasting Notes on Man Vintners Chardonnay
In the first case, the writer packs in a bunch of prepositions and other connecting words to try to express an insightful parallel between the wine and his company. If you see this in your own writing, it’s a clue to get out the knife:
…we knew it was a perfect fit with the essence of the WineCollective.
In the second case, while the word “aspect” might be wine jargon (and therefore hold specific meaning), the word “nice” definitely is not. Adjectives are only useful if they clarify meaning; not being a wine connoisseur, I can’t be sure if my edit replaces “nice” with a more correct description:
…you get a tangy lemon-lime component, reminiscent of Sprite or 7-Up. This wine shows mild grassiness— a bit green, a bit herbal and medicinal— with a note of nuttiness.
Obviously I may be confusing the connection between being grassy and being herbal, and the lemon-lime may actually be crisp. However, this confusion only proves my point: I am paying for access to the expertise of the WineCollective.ca, and I was disappointed that they did not allow that expertise to shine through in their writing.
To be fair, I’m sure there were a myriad of logistical and other issues surrounding the launch of their service, and it’s very easy to overlook the seemingly easy details, like copywriting.
But hey, who cares? What counts is that the WineCollective.ca service is excellent and the wines are delicious. The guys running the show are sharp, knowledgeable, and customer-oriented. So does the writing even matter? Probably not; while I hope I was the only word snob to notice, even I wouldn’t cancel my service based on their writing. However, an ability to clearly articulate their wine expertise will not only show they care about the professional details, it will also enrich the customer’s experience of the wine. In the end, it’s this enrichment that is their value-add.
Good luck, WineCollective.ca!
Politics and the English Language, Rule 4
Posted by yoursinwriting in Writing Tips on April 14th, 2009
Rule 4: “Never use the passive where you can use the active.”
For most people, identifying passive voice is like finding a dangling participle in a metaphorical haystack. Let’s look at an example:
Active voice:
Andy embraced Vivian.
Passive voice:
Vivian was embraced by Andy.
Not only does the active voice usually require fewer words (making it play nice with Rule 3), it is also more direct, more clear, and more compelling.
Consider the clarity of this example:
Active voice:
Vivian told Andy to put down the gun.
Passive voice:
Andy was told to put down the gun by Vivian.
In this passive voice example, did Vivian tell Andy to put down the gun, or did some other actor tell Andy to put the gun down near (by) Vivian? Of course, it could also be constructed like this:
Andy was told by Vivian to put down the gun.
but your narrative ear should be screaming in pain from the sound of that.
Remember, the order should always be subject (the person doing the action), verb (the action being performed), object (the target of the action, if it exists). With passive voice, the order becomes object, verb, subject; one good way to look for this is to quickly search your document for common past-tense verbs, like “was” or “had” and check those sentences to see if you have a weakness for the passive voice.
Is there ever a reason to use passive voice? Orwell’s rule says “never use the passive where you can use the active” (emphasis mine), which suggests that there are times when using the active voice is not appropriate. My opinion is that the passive form should only be used if you intend to create a sense of disconnection, vagueness, or confusion. For example, if you were describing a burial scene, it might capture the numb disbelief of the mother of the deceased to write, “Her son’s coffin was placed in the ground. She was taken by arm and led to the car. A glass of water was placed in her hand.” Note that we do not know who placed the coffin in the ground, who took her by the arm, or who gave her the water; we only know these things happen. It is for exactly this reason that Orwell loathes the passive voice: politicians commonly use the passive voice to describe events with the intend of deflecting blame or responsibility:
“To the best of my recollection, my fraud began in the early nineteen-nineties.”
-Bernard Madoff, on stealing billions from investors in a Ponzi scheme
“Universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy.“
-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
“And certainly it was not wrong to try to secure freedom for our citizens held in barbaric captivity. But we did not achieve what we wished, and serious mistakes were made in trying to do so.”
-Ronald Reagan, on the Iran-Contra scandal
Politics and the English Language, Rule 3
Posted by yoursinwriting in Writing Tips on April 7th, 2009
This is part of a series on George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language.
Rule 3: “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”
Editing is the hardest part of writing. If a piece of writing were an iceberg, editing would be the 90% hidden underwater. While editing can involve selecting different words, or adding new paragraphs for clarity or completeness, by far the most valuable– and tricky– editing is reducing the word count.
Cutting words from your writing is valuable because it intensifies your writing. Just like reducing a broth brings out its flavour, dropping unnecessary words clarifies the meaning and sharpens the point of your work. Of course, all things in moderation: good writers know when to stop cutting.
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
-Lord Polonius, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
“Brevity is… wit”
-The Simpsons
Modern schooling ensures we all experience the frustration of finishing an English paper, only to find it is too short. We have the unconscious belief that longer is better, when common sense tells us that someone who can convey the same idea in fewer words, without losing nuance or beauty, is the better writer.
How do you start? A good first step is to start assassinating adjectives. Search for words like “really,” “very,” “kind of,” and “incredibly.” Cut them out, then read the sentence again, and I bet you’ll find it’s stronger. Adjectives are anathema. Used sparingly, they add spice to your work, but slathered on thick and without discretion they leave a bad taste in the reader’s mouth.
Have ideas on how to tighten up your prose? Leave them in the comments!
Politics and the English Language, Rule 2
Posted by yoursinwriting in Writing Tips on March 30th, 2009
This post is part of a series dedicated to George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language.
Rule 2: “Never use a long word where a short one will do.”
There is an important nuance to this rule: Orwell urges for truth through clarity, but not at the expense of the message. He is not suggesting avoiding long words, but rather stressing that when two words are equivalent, the shorter should be used.
A reader should be forced to decrypt a long word when that word enriches the work, but not when it interrupts the flow like a jackknifed tractor trailer. This is what the art of writing is about; mastery of a vocabulary and its tactful application.
Above all, be as precise as you can in your writing. For example, if a character in your story stumbles upon their lover in bed with somebody else, using “upset” over “speechless” or “enraged” would be inaccurate.
(Which is to say, wrong.)
PRK Laser Eye Surgery Two Years Later
Posted by yoursinwriting in Personal on March 25th, 2009
It’s been just over 800 days since I had my PRK laser eye surgery, and I am posting this to let everybody know how it settled out.
My vision is fantastic. I can see clearly, and focusing near and far is not a problem.
I am slightly more sensitive to bright light; this means that when I leave work on a very sunny day, I have to squint a bit unless I have sunglasses handy. I was always more sensitive to bright light than most people, but it’s even more noticeable now.
Any “halo effect” with my night vision is so small I can’t notice it anymore.
I have one major complaint: serious eye dryness.
When I wake up in the morning, my eyes are so dry that they are painful to open. I literally have to use my fingers to gently pry my eyelids apart if I want to avoid discomfort. To be fair, Alberta is drier than most places, and when I visit Ontario or BC, I don’t notice this as much. I have been told that a humidifier can solve the problem, but it didn’t work for me. There are also gel drops you can use in your eyes before you go to bed; these work well, but they are expensive, and I forget to put them in.
During the day, my eyes will dry out a couple of times, so I need to use drops to keep them comfortable. This is exacerbated by the fact that I stare at a computer screen for a large part of the day.
Despite the pain, I still heartily recommend the process. To put it in perspective, the dryness is exactly like what you experience when you’ve had your contact lenses in for too long. The pain in the morning is exactly like waking up after you’ve forgotten to take them out.
So I would say I suffer from slightly more discomfort now, but way more convenience. I can see the time on my alarm clock when I wake up. I can play sports, go swimming, or crash at a friend’s house without having to worry about my contact lenses. I’m very happy with the results.
Extreme(ly Free) Editing
Posted by yoursinwriting in How It Works on March 24th, 2009
This area of the site is where you can see before-and-after case studies of Extreme Editing in action.
There are two kinds of fodder:
- Writing you submit for help
- Writing you find that you know needs help
Working on an essay for school? A cover letter for your job application? Want to get your complaint to XYZ corporation just right? Don’t want to pay for it? You’ve come to the right place. Send me an excerpt of your writing that is giving you trouble, and I will do a first-round edit for you, and feature the before-and-after on the site (we can omit your name, of course). Not only will you get a free, expert second opinion, you’ll also be helping me provide regular readers with real-life examples.
Find some particularly tragic or confusing writing somewhere on the web? Send me the URL and I’ll do a makeover on it here.
So what are you waiting for?!? Send your writing and suggested sites today!
Why WordPress is the Best Blogging Platform, Period
Posted by yoursinwriting in Blogging Tips on March 23rd, 2009
After researching several different blogging platforms, I have finally decided on a stand-alone version of Wordpress. (You can find the hosted version at WordPress.com.) After spending a day migrating my old blog, playing with the user interface (UI), and investigating the themes and plug-ins, I am hooked. If you are going to start your own blog, you should be going with WordPress.
Why Move to WordPress?
Previously, the site ran on a custom (read: “slapped together”) content management system (CMS) I built almost a decade ago, when CMS and blogging were neither cheap nor mainstream. It was a great way to test out new programming ideas, and basically flex my mad geek skillz. It was not so great for blogging; using a custom system means building every new feature yourself, working ten times as hard to get the same search engine optimization (SEO) enjoyed by commercial blogging engines, and spending more time administering the site than blogging.
How To Migrate to WordPress
If you are using another blog engine (like Blogger, MovableType, TypePad, etc.), WordPress has built-in wizards to “import” your posts and media. If you’ve got a custom CMS, like me, you only have one good option: RSS. If you can export your posts in RSS format, WordPress will convert the RSS into posts, and store them in your database. I can’t say how well this will move images and other media; I didn’t bother doing this, as my site is mostly text, and I don’t mind manually re-inserting the few images I have.
The short story is that the import went smoothly, and when I was finished, I had all 348 posts, with their associated comments, categories, and tags intact.
Why WordPress Wins
Whether you are an old guy ranting about the government, a stay-at-home mom documenting her experiences, or a prolific, for-profit pundit, WordPress has you covered.
Ease of use. WordPress is simple enough that you can sign up and be posting in less than 5 minutes. But this is true of most blog communities; what sets WordPress apart is what else it can do.
Customizationabilitynessification. WordPress can be as basic or as super-powered as you want. In one day, I “re-designed” my site by picking a “theme” (a custom site layout, also called a “skin”), and added spam filtering, Google sitemaps, links to social networks, a PayPal donation button, a “maintenance mode” screen, Google Adsense, links to posts related to the one you are reading, and more. Sharing this “platform” lets you leverage all the work that other users put into improving it.
Cost. How does “free” sound? Sure, some other blogs are free (and some, amazingly, charge money), but what the other side of that coin?…
Making money from your blog. If you host your blog on their platform, there are usually restrictions to prevent you from making any money. Wordpress.com is no exception (unless you are really popular, in which case they may allow you to insert ads and other money makers). The beauty of WordPress is that once you’re ready to grow, you can get your own web host, install your own engine from WordPress.org, and customize it with no limitations. All for free.
(Note: MovableType.org has moved to this model as well, but they have fewer plug-ins and related extensions. Expect other blog platforms to follow suit, but not to match WordPress’ momentum. Basically, no other platform offers WordPress’ flexibility for any price, let alone $0.)
Findability. Search engines will find and catalog your posts quicker if you use one of the major blogging platforms. There are lots of things you can do to make your web pages more appetizing for the search engines; this process is called search engine optimization (SEO), and there are dozens of WordPress themes and plug-ins expressly designed to tweak your site to be as irresistable as possible. WordPress blogs– even those not hosted on WordPress.com!– have been shown (admittedly unscientifically) to appear in search engines faster than other platforms.
Support and community. While all the blog platforms have loyal users, support forums, and how-to posts available online, none are as rich and comprehensive (save perhaps ExpressionEngine) as those for WordPress. No matter what you want to do, 99% of the time, a quick trip to the Codex or Google search will get you your answers.
What do you think?
Blog platforms are changing and improving all the time, and if you have newer (or better!) information, please let me know in the comments and I will make any necessary revisions.
Twitter is Dead. Facebook is in Custody.
Posted by yoursinwriting in Blogging Tips on March 16th, 2009
I have been using Twitter for a few weeks now, ever since I gave up Facebook for Agnostic Lent. I’ve also done a fair bit of reading and research into how it is being used by companies and individuals to improve their personal and business lives. It is fun and fiddly, addictive and annoying, complex and simple… in short, it is an emerging social network.
As a blogger, it’s important to understand any new tech tool for communication with readers as a possible way of building and servicing an audience, and I have a lot of respect for the way Twitter has grown its service, and changed the way people communicate. But despite the fact that it has recently raised $35 million (after previous multi-million VC investments), and is “valued” at hundreds of millions of dollars, I believe it will be effectively dead by the end of 2011. (I would say 2010, but they have enough cash in the bank to sit and twitter their thumbs until then.)
Here’s why I think Twitter’s days are numbered:
Twitter is Easy To Copy
My senior high school programming class could build Twitter. This is not to say the idea isn’t great, it’s just mind-numbingly simple. It’s really just the Facebook status update on steroids.
The challenging thing is how Twitter has scaled to support the millions of users they have. But any company with some cash, and/or experience in scale (Facebook… cough.. cough) can duplicate their service in a very short amount of time.
If Twitter’s only offering is easily reproducible, the only way to survive that competition is to have a loyal user base.
Twitter Users Are Not Loyal
Twitterers talk about how much they love the service, but if tomorrow it was purchased by another company (Facebook… cough… cough), how many people would stop using it? (Hint: it rhymes with meero.) Extending that a bit, if Twitterers found that an identical service was available from another social network they were already using (Facebook… cough… cough), and they could easily make the move to the other service, including migration of their tweets, follows and followers, how many would consolidate under that existing social network?
In fact, a popular social network just finished a redesign to address this exact point, and make it much more Twitterish (Facebook… cough… co– well, you get the idea). I haven’t seen it yet, because I’m on a fast, but I just saw a tweet from a friend asking why she would use both services when she can get the same functionality (plus WAY more) from just one.
You get loyal users by constantly adding value, responding to users, and basically being better than the competition. Since 2006, Twitter has had several well-publicized service outages, and hardly changed its user-facing product. Their focus on API has only cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in bandwidth and enabled others to profit from their service (more on this in a moment). This is not a formula for building loyalty.
Twitter Has No Business Model
I have read dozens of articles about how Twitter will “monetize” its service. All of the negative articles I found were by bloggers and media outlets. All of the positive ones I found were written by Twitter co-founders or investors. Hmm.
The main business model seems to be that once Twitter has enough users, any monetization scheme will work. This seems incredibly naive to me, but hey, I’m just a user.
Let’s look at some of the possible revenue streams:
Ads
(First of all, I hereby copyright the terms “tweetvertisement” and “advertweet.”)
Twitter could easily inject ads into their timeline, even ads that are relevant to the topics. This would essentially be Google Adwords, version 2. Considering the inane stuff that clogs up the typical timelines, this will undoubtedly lead to hilarity, but not profitability.
Another ad channel could be their search results; there is a lot of speculation that targetted search, where users would be looking for up-to-the-second tweets on a topic, could be a good space for relevant ads.
I am skeptical about the ad model, because Twitter is about fast access to concise information, breaking news, and tips from people you trust. Trying to break the flow by dangling ads in front of me is unlikely to get my interest. I’ve seen relevant, inline ads in Facebook– where I’m more open to longer visits, surfing around, etc.– and they don’t work either, at least not for me.
Text Fees From Telecoms
In an old post by Markus Frind, CEO of Plentyoffish.com, a commenter points to a podcast explaining that Twitter can make money from Telcos by getting a chunk of the money users pay for text messages.
This makes absolutely no sense to me. Most SMS users have a package that includes “unlimited” text messaging, which means that the effective value of each SMS goes down as the number of texts goes up. So it will be hard for Twitter to convince AT&T that it will drive AT&T’s revenue based on extra SMS charges.
In fact, SMS is likely a cost center; Twitter is probably burning through tens of thousands of dollars a month paying for its out-going SMS service.
Paid Corporate/Identity Accounts
Some companies are using Twitter to drive business. Dell estimates it made over $500K last year through this channel. Still, when asked if Dell would pay “per follower” for a Twitter account, the answer was “probably not.”
The scariest thing to me is that Twitter and it’s backers seem to think it’s obvious that charging for “verified” accounts will make money. This goes against everything we know about the internet, and social networks. Users figure out who is who pretty fast based on the quality of the interactions they have with that user. Barack Obama didn’t need a verified account. Shaq registered as “TheRealShaq” and users figured it out.
API useage
It looks like most of Twitter’s traffic is through it’s API services, which means that most users aren’t visiting the Twitter web site. Other products are piggy-backing on the Twitter service, improving it, and making money doing so. In fact, if Twitter introduces timeline ads, expect all the Twitter aggregators to introduce ad filtering.
API bandwidth is probably Twitter’s biggest cost. This means they must monetize it. Ultimately this means either charging API users (unlikely), or coming to an arrangement whereby API users allow Twitter to control what appears in the stream without any interference (no filtering of ads, for example).
Conclusion
Just today, the Washington Post reported that Twitter is testing out home page advertising. It will be interesting to see the results.
Despite my prognosis, I hope that Twitter proves me wrong, as I prefer having competitive products on the net. However, if I was a betting man, here’s the outcome I would put my money on: Facebook will super-charge their status update service into a viable Twitter competitor, and kill the fledgeling company within 2 years. Twitter will admit defeat by mid-2010, and spend 2011 negotiating their sale to Facebook, which will facilitate the eas
y migration of their users to the Facebook platform.
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