Writing a Difficult Letter? See Your Library's Page

When did you last explore your public library's web page?  Library membership is, of course, free.  And members get $$$ resources free.

Let's say you must write a difficult letter, warning an employee about possible discipline. You want it to be legally correct.  Go to your library's home page, sign in with the barcode number on your library card, and click on Online Resources:

At my library's site, I found free access to commercial databases, including Consumer Reports, the Chicago Tribune, and an astonishing 1,555 legal forms I can use. 

What can you find for free online at your public library?

Don't Use Online Proofreaders or Plagiarism Checkers

Warning.

Do not use online "free" or "free trial" sites that promise to proofread your writing or check for plagiarism. 

Virtually all of them require you to click "Agree."  In the fine print of the agreement, you give them rights to your document.  And they have an affiliate that sells papers to students.

Here is some typical "fine print" from dictionary.com's "proofreader free trial":

By making any material or information available through the Site, you automatically grant to Dictionary.com a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, distribute and sublicense any such material or information (in whole or in part) and/or to incorporate it in other works regardless of form, media, or technology. By making any material or information available through the Site, you also grant to users other than yourself the right and license to access, view, store, or reproduce your material and information for that user’s personal use.

Flawed Guide to Style

Dictonary.com has added advice about punctuation, capitalization, how to address people, etc. 

This advice is accessible here.  Sadly, those pages are written in a British style.  Lists  use single quotes with commas outside the quotes.  The writers use “e.g.” liberally, without explaining what e.g. means (it means for example), and without adding the comma that should follow in U.S style.

The best style guide is still the back of a good U.S dictionary, such as Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate. Do not buy it today; there will be a new edition in 2013.

Better still, you can get complete advice about grammar, punctuation, usage, and style from the famous Gregg Reference Manual.)

Computer-Graded Essays

By now, everyone knows that the college-entrance tests require that students write essays.  Those essays can now be scored by any one of many software programs. 

One such program, Educational Testing Service's e-Rater, is described by Michael Winerip in a New York Times article.  His informant, an MIT writing instructor, easily trips up the program.  After all, it can only base its evaluation on "surface" features of the essay.  It gives higher scores to

• Longer essays
• Essays that use formal words such as however and moreover
• Longer sentences
• Longer paragraphs
• Essays without sentences that begin with Or or And.

According to Winerip, defenders of the software argue that if you are smart enough to "game" it, you deserve the high score it gives.  They acknowledge that a student could excel by writing nonsense and/or using impressive words, long sentences, and long paragraphs.  The software cannot check facts or notice silliness.  Defenders add that, for graduate-school entrance exams, the software is "backed up" by human raters. 

Essay-scoring software is objectively discussed by another college prof who lays out the pros and cons and offers an up-to-date bibliography.

As e-Rater and its competitors gain popularity, will writing instructors encourage the high-scored characteristics? 

If so, would these longer documents with fancier words add up to obfuscation?  And if pedagogy and product changed to suit the software, would anyone notice? 

Writing for Grad School

So many people today are earning a graduate degree.  Grad school requires writing, and in disciplines like nursing and business, papers must follow APA (American Psychological Association) style. 

Rosemary Camilleri teaches a one-day introduction to analyzing and writing a grad paper that gets you the best grade possible.

Intro to Grad Writing and APA6    September 14, 2012, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm
Lots of practical tips, interaction, and a handout that will guide you as you write.

$175 payable to UIC        Earns 7 hours of CEUs (continuing ed units).
Class meets at the College of Nursing, 845 South Damen Ave, Chicago, IL.
To register, go to http://uic.edu/nursing/ihi and, in the News & Events window, scroll way, way down to 2012 Graduate Writing Courses.

For details on the class's content, email Rosemary.

Microsoft Word Partially Checks Spelling and Grammar

In the passage above, I deployed Microsoft Word (Mac) 2010's spelling and grammar checks, but they failed at 11 places.  If you would like a more legible copy of this illustration, just email me at rosemary@WritingSems.com.

Do use spelling and grammar checks. They are important.  But remember that they are not enough.

First Person in Academic Writing

Dr Christine Webb has published a scientific paper in which she argues effectively that researchers should use the first person (I, my, we, our).

In helping professions, writers have tried to seem objective by writing in the third person: they, it, he, she.  But the impersonal pretense belies the real nature of knowledge, which we all know is socially constructed.

Of course, a social science or nursing paper should not read like The Confessions of St. Augustine.  Most sentences should not start with "I." 

And when I write about evidence I gained by reading, or I describe an objective fact that someone else could replicate, I use the third person:

Of these heart patients, 16 recovered;
After six minutes, the lead melted;
U. S. children with asthma use inhalers;
The emerald ash borer kills ash trees.

But when I record a fact that would differ if someone else did it, I should use the first person:

I hypothesized that...
My previous research had shown that...
This patient's mother approached me privately and said ...

In such cases, anything else is at best less accurate and at worst deceptive.

What Is an Idiom, and Why Does It Matter?

“When I worked at BigTech, we pushed the envelope on real-time global trading.”  

Push the envelope is an idiom because you can define push and envelope and still not understand the phrase. 

Idioms are not always explained in a U.S. dictionary such as Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate or the American Heritage Dictionary.  Yet learning idioms is vital to newer Americans, who benefit from an advanced learner’s dictionary (ALD).  In fact, these dictionaries may well deserve a place on everyone’s desk.

In job interviews, if applicants misuse an idiom, they may disqualify themselves.  If I misuse an idiom on my CV, résumé, or website, my prestige will plummet.   And graduate students may be writing to a higher standard, so they might appreciate a resource that builds their confidence.  Further, Americans who come from Scotland or Nigeria may want to know which British idioms (such as ticking over) puzzle Americans.

ALDs and learner’s dictionaries (LDs) represent the same category, and you choose a level from basic to advanced. The category includes editions from

Cambridge

CollinsCOBUILD  

Longman

Merriam-Webster available as an app via iTunes

Oxford also available as an app

The Cambridge Intermediate LD is even searchable online.

Before you buy an ALD, you might want to look at a web page by Tomasz P. Szynalski.  He has exhaustively compared five of these dictionaries, not including the Merriam-Webster’s.  He finds no clear winner.  Your choice may depend on whether you will use the dictionary online, as a book, or as an app or DVD.

As always, I have no financial interest in any of the products mentioned here.  I currently own the Cambridge ALD, and I’m contemplating adding a Merriam-Webster’s and a Longman to my collection.   New idioms appear often, and, sadly, my Cambridge ALD (2003) does not include “push the envelope.”

In the Plain Writing Act of 2010, Congress ordered the federal government to write clearly.  But few Americans realize that we have had plain-language executive orders, agency guidelines, and a website at least since the Clinton Administration.  Why are we still reading and writing dreck?

The Plain Writing Act resulted in updated federal guidelines that we can all use to write clearly. They live at a fine website.  

Moreover, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has long enforced plain-English standards when companies disclose information to investors.  You can download the SEC's own 83-page "Plain English Handbook.” 

And the federal agency that runs Medicare (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services or CMS) has published its own “toolkit” for writing clearly and inclusively.   This toolkit advises us how to design a document and collect feedback before we publish; and it warns us that readability formulas do NOT ensure readability.  Bonus: It even helps us write appropriately to older adults and people from other cultures.

But if you scan any of these guidelines, you will recognize most of them from high school, if not grade school, English.  They reflect common sense, such as

·      Write short sentences,

·      Use active-voice verbs,

·      Write short paragraphs,

·      Use words that your audience knows, and

·      Test your document with its audience before you publish. 

Why, after decades of good advice, do we still write impressive but ambiguous documents?  Does bafflegab still lure us with the power of avoiding readers who criticize because we avoid readers who understand?

Years ago, I helped a famous professional person write a document.  I cut it drastically and transformed key noun actions into active verbs.  I kept the nouns consistent, and topic sentences led most paragraphs.  The author gave the result to another professional who made suggestions; then I received the resulting document for a second round.  It was again long and inflated; evidently, inflation spelled prestige.

I gave up. 

Today, I hope, I would persist.  I would keep on editing for clarity until the author fired me.  But I wonder.  When will clear English be prestige English?

Flesch Readability Index:  56.5 

Grade Level: 8th grade, 6th month

Dr. King and the Topic Sentence

Dr King did not read his speeches; he spoke them.  So when we read them, someone inserted the paragraph breaks.  But Dr. King made it easy.

Dr. King started each chunk of his speech with a main idea, and then he elaborated it.  In written form, his speeches exhibit nearly perfect paragraphs, each beginning with a “topic sentence.”  This pattern is an amazing feat of rhetorical ability.

On Dr King’s Day in 2012, I studied one of his speeches (as is my custom). They are all available to us at http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documents_contents   I chose his April 3, 1968, speech, I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.  

This speech’s point sentence was  “Strangely enough…‘…in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.’ ”

Here’s how the next paragraphs begin:

Now that’s a strange statement to make because the world is all messed up.  [Rest of paragraph illustrates the mess.]

And another reason I’m happy … demands didn’t force them to do it.  [Rest of paragraph: how demands force us to protest nonviolently.]

I can remember … Negroes … scratching where they didn’t itch and laughing when they were not tickled.  [Rest of paragraph: we work toward the opposite of that unnatural behavior.]

Now what does this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together.  [Rest of paragraph: how staying together foils white power.]

Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice.  [Rest of paragraph: injustice.]

When I write paragraphs, I try to announce a topic sentence and then support it.  To do so reliably, I must work retrospectively.  I draft the document first; then I go back and relocate or add the topic sentences. 

Dr. King, on the other hand, did so many things brilliantly.  He told moving stories.  He verbally embraced and emboldened his audience.  He told the truth, but always in love.  And, intellectually, his speeches could announce a topic, and support it, and move smoothly to the next. 

He made it seem easy.

Each time he spoke, he built, in the air between him and his audience, a structure so perfect it can still instruct us today. 

The "However" Sandwich

Too often we all see sentences mispunctuated like these:

1.  WRONG He arrived 15 minutes late, however, he found a seat.

2.  WRONG He arrived 15 minutes late, however he found a seat.

Each of these sentences consists of an independent clause, then the conjunction however, and then another independent clause. 

Rule:  When however is sandwiched between two independent clauses, it requires a semicolon either before or after it—usually before.

Why?  Because however is one of the conjunctions that may either begin or end the clause.  

Example:

3. “My work is like a diary,” Picasso told me, and I have taken him up on this.  One has to tread carefully, however.  Diaries are nonetheless interesting for embroidering upon the truth.  (House & Garden magazine, March 1991, p. 28)

The second sentence ends, quite correctly, with “however.”  The period could (also correctly) have been a semicolon.

If however appears between two independent clauses, the reader needs to know whether it ends the first clause or begins the second one. This information is provided by the semicolon:

4.  CORRECT   He arrived 15 minutes late; however, he found a seat.

5.  ALSO CORRECT:  He arrived 15 minutes late.  However, he found a seat.

Other “two-direction” conjunctions or conjunctive phrases include therefore,

consequently, in fact, and of course. 

© 2012 Rosemary Camilleri. All rights reserved.