Here is a safe, simple tool that transforms a crowded web page into a beautifully readable one.
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
At that website, select your settings and drag the Readability button into your browser's toolbar. That's it.
Now open a web page shrieking with content, ads, color, and animation, all competing for attention. Mouse up to "readability" and click.
Goodbye Barnum & Bailey. Hello Easy Reader.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Introductions: Layout Matters
Have you ever tried to introduce a manual or an online course? Too often, readers skip introductions. Here is one that most people can read quickly:
Congratulations! You are in the Acme Focus Group’s (AFG's) Course for Group Leaders.
From this online course (and this workbook) you can expect:
Here’s how the course works:
All course content is organized into modules. Each module appears in a folder that you will see whenever you log on to Whiteboard. These folders contain links to:
Flesch Kincaid Grade Level: 6th grade, 2nd month
A draft version of that introduction required more reading effort:
When the Acme Marketing team in Houston began training leaders of focus groups, the training was done in-person at a 3-day workshop. What the Acme team quickly discovered was that it was difficult for people to get away from their normal office duties for that length of time. It was expensive to train small groups of people and to offer trainings outside of Houston. It was at that moment the Acme On-line Group Leader Training Course began to take shape!
Staying true to the practice of the Acme team to consult with experts, this on-line training course was developed in collaboration with expert Acme group leaders who provided feedback about the content and structure of the course, the learning activities, and this workbook.
Trainees enrolled in the course have 8 weeks to work at their own pace to learn the Acme Focus Groups (AFG) content and skills to effectively run the focus-group program. As an on-line learner, you make your own “class schedule.” You have a course facilitator to answer your questions, and you have this workbook to guide your learning.
Here’s how the on-line course is set up. All the course content and activities are organized into “modules.” The content of each module is described below. Within Whiteboard, there are Module Folders with links to slide shows, Word document, and video clips to help you learn the course content. As part of each module, there is a “Discussion Board” where you can type in (“post”) questions or comments. There are practice test questions to help you know whether or not you are learning the AFG principles and strategies. If you discover you are answering these questions incorrectly, you can review the course content another time.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8th grade, 9th month
Congratulations! You are in the Acme Focus Group’s (AFG's) Course for Group Leaders.
From this online course (and this workbook) you can expect:
Content tailored by expert leaders of focus groups
A chance to work at your own pace
A course facilitator to answer your questions
Best of all: In 8 weeks or less, you’ll be ready to lead focus groups with confidence.
Here’s how the course works:
All course content is organized into modules. Each module appears in a folder that you will see whenever you log on to Whiteboard. These folders contain links to:
Slide shows
Word documents
Video clips
A Discussion Board where you can type in (“post”) questions or comments
Practice tests so you can check what you’ve learned
Opportunities to go back and review any time
Flesch Kincaid Grade Level: 6th grade, 2nd month
A draft version of that introduction required more reading effort:
When the Acme Marketing team in Houston began training leaders of focus groups, the training was done in-person at a 3-day workshop. What the Acme team quickly discovered was that it was difficult for people to get away from their normal office duties for that length of time. It was expensive to train small groups of people and to offer trainings outside of Houston. It was at that moment the Acme On-line Group Leader Training Course began to take shape!
Staying true to the practice of the Acme team to consult with experts, this on-line training course was developed in collaboration with expert Acme group leaders who provided feedback about the content and structure of the course, the learning activities, and this workbook.
Trainees enrolled in the course have 8 weeks to work at their own pace to learn the Acme Focus Groups (AFG) content and skills to effectively run the focus-group program. As an on-line learner, you make your own “class schedule.” You have a course facilitator to answer your questions, and you have this workbook to guide your learning.
Here’s how the on-line course is set up. All the course content and activities are organized into “modules.” The content of each module is described below. Within Whiteboard, there are Module Folders with links to slide shows, Word document, and video clips to help you learn the course content. As part of each module, there is a “Discussion Board” where you can type in (“post”) questions or comments. There are practice test questions to help you know whether or not you are learning the AFG principles and strategies. If you discover you are answering these questions incorrectly, you can review the course content another time.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8th grade, 9th month
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Word (Windows) 2007: Grammar Check & Readability
Many of you already know this technique; but if you don't, here is how to use Word 2007 (Windows) to grammar-check your document and report on its readability:
1. Click on the icon at the extreme upper left of your screen (the Office icon).
2. A window will open, and at the bottom you should click on Word options.
3. Another window will open; in the left column, click Proofreading.
4. The resulting window will have many choices with checkboxes next to them.
Probably you will need to check "Show readability statistics."
5. You will see a drop-down menu that lets you tell Word to review not
just Grammar but "Grammar & Style."
6. Then you can select specific style features that Word should flag, such as the comma in a series of three or more, and the number of spaces after a sentence-final period.
7. Click OK, and get back to your document.
8. Now, go to the "Review" tab, and at the left of the resulting toolbar you will see "Spelling and Grammar." Click on it.
9. After you have made a decision about each spelling or grammar issue, you will see a window with the word count, sentence count, etc. At the bottom will be
Flesch Reading Ease. This statistic is on a scale of 0 to 100; 70 is excellent, 60 is good, 50 is usually acceptable at the grad level.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. A reading of, say, 12.2 means 12th grade second month. 15.5 means junior year of college, 5th month.
1. Click on the icon at the extreme upper left of your screen (the Office icon).
2. A window will open, and at the bottom you should click on Word options.
3. Another window will open; in the left column, click Proofreading.
4. The resulting window will have many choices with checkboxes next to them.
Probably you will need to check "Show readability statistics."
5. You will see a drop-down menu that lets you tell Word to review not
just Grammar but "Grammar & Style."
6. Then you can select specific style features that Word should flag, such as the comma in a series of three or more, and the number of spaces after a sentence-final period.
7. Click OK, and get back to your document.
8. Now, go to the "Review" tab, and at the left of the resulting toolbar you will see "Spelling and Grammar." Click on it.
9. After you have made a decision about each spelling or grammar issue, you will see a window with the word count, sentence count, etc. At the bottom will be
Flesch Reading Ease. This statistic is on a scale of 0 to 100; 70 is excellent, 60 is good, 50 is usually acceptable at the grad level.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. A reading of, say, 12.2 means 12th grade second month. 15.5 means junior year of college, 5th month.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Names of Companies
Companies (like people) are sensitive about their own names.
When a company incorporates, it names itself. That name may or may not include a comma. And you may need a comma to separate the corporate name from the rest of the sentence.
For example, a company could call itself Software Inc.
It could just as easily choose Software, Inc. or Software Incorporated or Software, Incorporated. If you want to type the company name correctly, copy it off the company stationery, or search it on the Internet.
Incidentally, the same is true of the ampersand (&). Some companies use it and some emphatically do not. One firm calls itself Canel and Canel, another Jones & Jones. Many three-name firms seem to use the ampersand but omit the comma before it: Riskin, Howard & Beame.
However, if the firm name ends in “Inc.” and you use that name in a sentence, guidebooks tell you to add a comma. For example, I would write
Weber & Pike, Inc., filed a suit on behalf of General Cereals.
The extra comma also appears after other abbreviations in a similar spot:
Jones Harmon Wilder, P.C., [professional corporation] is a new law firm in town.
Lee Penfelder, Ph.D., announces the opening of a new office.
When a company incorporates, it names itself. That name may or may not include a comma. And you may need a comma to separate the corporate name from the rest of the sentence.
For example, a company could call itself Software Inc.
It could just as easily choose Software, Inc. or Software Incorporated or Software, Incorporated. If you want to type the company name correctly, copy it off the company stationery, or search it on the Internet.
Incidentally, the same is true of the ampersand (&). Some companies use it and some emphatically do not. One firm calls itself Canel and Canel, another Jones & Jones. Many three-name firms seem to use the ampersand but omit the comma before it: Riskin, Howard & Beame.
However, if the firm name ends in “Inc.” and you use that name in a sentence, guidebooks tell you to add a comma. For example, I would write
Weber & Pike, Inc., filed a suit on behalf of General Cereals.
The extra comma also appears after other abbreviations in a similar spot:
Jones Harmon Wilder, P.C., [professional corporation] is a new law firm in town.
Lee Penfelder, Ph.D., announces the opening of a new office.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Writing Numbers So People Understand
Compare these two versions of the same financial data:
a. Durables spending dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $486 billion from $501 billion in January, while spending on nondurables went up moderately to a rate of $1.17 trillion last month from $1.16 trillion in January.
b. In January 2006, Americans bought durable goods at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $501 billion; in February, that rate dropped to $486 billion. Yet in the same period, spending on nondurables rose from $1.16 trillion to $1.17 trillion.
The b version is easier for most people to decode. Yet the a version represents the accepted style in newspapers. (Check a financial page and see.)
When you compare numbers, your readers will grasp them better if the time range precedes the numbers and if each comparison runs from older to newer. (Of course, if you have multiple comparisons, display them in a table or chart.)
The b version could well begin with a topic sentence that states the important result. One such sentence might be, “The US is spending less on durable goods.” The content of that topic sentence will depend on what most concerns the readers.
a. Durables spending dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $486 billion from $501 billion in January, while spending on nondurables went up moderately to a rate of $1.17 trillion last month from $1.16 trillion in January.
b. In January 2006, Americans bought durable goods at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $501 billion; in February, that rate dropped to $486 billion. Yet in the same period, spending on nondurables rose from $1.16 trillion to $1.17 trillion.
The b version is easier for most people to decode. Yet the a version represents the accepted style in newspapers. (Check a financial page and see.)
When you compare numbers, your readers will grasp them better if the time range precedes the numbers and if each comparison runs from older to newer. (Of course, if you have multiple comparisons, display them in a table or chart.)
The b version could well begin with a topic sentence that states the important result. One such sentence might be, “The US is spending less on durable goods.” The content of that topic sentence will depend on what most concerns the readers.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Or online at writingsems.com
In the header of this blog, I included a sentence fragment. I wrote
"…Rosemary Camilleri teaches writing to your people, at your site. Or online at http://writingsems.com."
That last group of words is not a sentence. It's acceptable in advertising (sometimes) in order to drive home a point. But fragments are not a good habit.
You have seen other fragments:
1. Whatever the carpenter specified in the contract.
#1 above is called a subordinate clause. (Clauses are meaningful word groups that contain at least a subject and its verb.)
Subordinate clauses begin with certain conjunctions (and conjunction-like words or phrases). Here are most of them:
The List
after, before, since, until, although, how, so that, when (whenever), as, if, that, which, where (wherever), in order that, though, whether, as if, as though, once, what (whatever), while, because, provided, given, unless, why, who (whoever), whom
If you have written a clause, and it begins with one of those words, you cannot correctly end it with a period. It is only a subordinate clause:
2. Although Ali drives a gray car
is a subordinate clause. To be correct, it must be joined by an independent clause:
3. Although Ali drives a gray car, he also owns a red one.
4. Ali owns a red car, although he drives a gray car.
5. Because Ali drives a gray car, I sometimes forget that he owns a red one.
6. I sometimes forget that Ali owns a red car because he drives a gray one.
When the "because" clause shifts to the end, do you notice what happens to the comma?
"…Rosemary Camilleri teaches writing to your people, at your site. Or online at http://writingsems.com."
That last group of words is not a sentence. It's acceptable in advertising (sometimes) in order to drive home a point. But fragments are not a good habit.
You have seen other fragments:
1. Whatever the carpenter specified in the contract.
#1 above is called a subordinate clause. (Clauses are meaningful word groups that contain at least a subject and its verb.)
Subordinate clauses begin with certain conjunctions (and conjunction-like words or phrases). Here are most of them:
The List
after, before, since, until, although, how, so that, when (whenever), as, if, that, which, where (wherever), in order that, though, whether, as if, as though, once, what (whatever), while, because, provided, given, unless, why, who (whoever), whom
If you have written a clause, and it begins with one of those words, you cannot correctly end it with a period. It is only a subordinate clause:
2. Although Ali drives a gray car
is a subordinate clause. To be correct, it must be joined by an independent clause:
3. Although Ali drives a gray car, he also owns a red one.
4. Ali owns a red car, although he drives a gray car.
5. Because Ali drives a gray car, I sometimes forget that he owns a red one.
6. I sometimes forget that Ali owns a red car because he drives a gray one.
When the "because" clause shifts to the end, do you notice what happens to the comma?
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Power Verbs
Perhaps you already practice correct grammar and punctuation. You want to escalate your writing skills. May I suggest you enlarge your vocabulary of verbs?
I try to use the most precise verb for what I mean. So, in whatever I must read anyway, I notice verbs — especially ones I would not readily use. I jot them down. By learning them in context, I absorb their usage and nuances.
The most precise verb is the best:
Not great: Joe Bloggs will focus on arrival policy.
Better: Joe Bloggs will specify how a new policy will encourage employees to arrive on time.
These sentences contain vivid, precise verbs:
Bank of America's reserves dwindled.
If the policy lapses, the insurer need not renew it.
Behind every obstacle there lurks an opportunity.
Unfortunately, I dithered for two days; and finally, Lee rescinded his offer.
I try to use the most precise verb for what I mean. So, in whatever I must read anyway, I notice verbs — especially ones I would not readily use. I jot them down. By learning them in context, I absorb their usage and nuances.
The most precise verb is the best:
Not great: Joe Bloggs will focus on arrival policy.
Better: Joe Bloggs will specify how a new policy will encourage employees to arrive on time.
These sentences contain vivid, precise verbs:
Bank of America's reserves dwindled.
If the policy lapses, the insurer need not renew it.
Behind every obstacle there lurks an opportunity.
Unfortunately, I dithered for two days; and finally, Lee rescinded his offer.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Strategic Writing
Here is what a military analyst wrote about the U.S. forces in Iraq in 2003:
A. During the advance on Baghdad, senior Marine and Army field commanders had many significant interdependent variables to contemplate in addition to the capability and intent of the Iraqi forces before them. In order to maintain both the velocity and operational tempo of their highly mobile forces located across a wide battlespace, the subject of fuel was an ever-present consideration. Much time, energy, and continuous analysis was put into determining when, or if, a culminating point would be reached due to this vital resource.
Here is what that expert could have written:
B. While US field commanders advanced on Baghdad, they worried not only about what Iraqi forces could do and intended. They also had to move their highly mobile forces across a wide battlespace; so they worried constantly about fuel. They continuously analyzed supply and use variables to learn when their fuel would run out.
The A version sound impressive, but the B version communicates. Impressing someone may be a tactic; but communicating clearly is a strategy for long-term success.
Writing the B version requires a few skills you did not learn in college. You can learn these skills from Dr. Rosemary Camilleri in a course called Clear Sentences. Choose to learn online, at http://camsems.com, or in a workshop.
Questions? Contact me, Rosemary, at rosemary@camsems.com.
Best regards,
Rosemary
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Corporate Thank-you Notes
A gracious note of thanks can distinguish you from your competition. But how many ways can you say “thanks” before the clichés pall? Here are four ideas for corporate thank-you notes.
1. If you don't have any firsthand knowledge about the individual you are thanking, you can
* Discover something about them or their work OR
* Thank them by describing in some detail
- the gift or what they did for you AND/OR
- the impact it had on you and your work group
The secret to describing in detail is using vivid verbs. Describe the gift or favor, and/or how it helped you, as vividly as you can. For example, instead of writing, "Thank you for filling our order promptly," you might write:
“We received our order only 48 hours after we e-mailed it to you. Even more importantly, because we had the display components, we could assemble the project on time and present it to our clients at their annual convention. We impressed them; and you have impressed us. Thank you.”
Notice those verbs: assemble, present, impress.
2. If you are a salesperson who must thank a potential client after every sales call, you need not resort to remarks about the weather or generic compliments. Enliven the note by alluding to something that happened while you met with this person.
Dear Lee:
It was a pleasure to meet you Wednesday. I’m still marveling at how you conversed so easily in Spanish with the waiter at Lucy’s El Adobe.
Thank you for giving me the chance to show you our line of parts for the RX-2. I appreciate your needs for continuity and I’m looking forward to demonstrating that we at Acme can....
3. A handwritten thank-you note is a mark of personal favor.
Always use the finest paper. (You can order note cards embossed with your name or initials at a department store or stationery store.) Write with a good pen, either a fountain pen or one of the better roller-balls, and use blue ink to distinguish your writing from printed copy. Put a heavily lined grid under the stationery to keep your lines straight. And write legibly.
4. If you are an executive, or you write for an executive, you may wish to use executive stationery for business thank-you letters. U.S. executive stationery is 7.5” x 10” (19 cm x 25.4 cm); the inside address appears at the end of the letter; and it is well-suited to thanking business associates for personal or social favors.
Examples of thank-you notes can be found on websites and in books:
Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to Executive Manners (1985) NY: Rawson Associates, pp. 120-127
Webster’s Guide to Business Correspondence 2nd ed. (1996) Springfield, MA: Merriam Webster. pp. 300-305.
1. If you don't have any firsthand knowledge about the individual you are thanking, you can
* Discover something about them or their work OR
* Thank them by describing in some detail
- the gift or what they did for you AND/OR
- the impact it had on you and your work group
The secret to describing in detail is using vivid verbs. Describe the gift or favor, and/or how it helped you, as vividly as you can. For example, instead of writing, "Thank you for filling our order promptly," you might write:
“We received our order only 48 hours after we e-mailed it to you. Even more importantly, because we had the display components, we could assemble the project on time and present it to our clients at their annual convention. We impressed them; and you have impressed us. Thank you.”
Notice those verbs: assemble, present, impress.
2. If you are a salesperson who must thank a potential client after every sales call, you need not resort to remarks about the weather or generic compliments. Enliven the note by alluding to something that happened while you met with this person.
Dear Lee:
It was a pleasure to meet you Wednesday. I’m still marveling at how you conversed so easily in Spanish with the waiter at Lucy’s El Adobe.
Thank you for giving me the chance to show you our line of parts for the RX-2. I appreciate your needs for continuity and I’m looking forward to demonstrating that we at Acme can....
3. A handwritten thank-you note is a mark of personal favor.
Always use the finest paper. (You can order note cards embossed with your name or initials at a department store or stationery store.) Write with a good pen, either a fountain pen or one of the better roller-balls, and use blue ink to distinguish your writing from printed copy. Put a heavily lined grid under the stationery to keep your lines straight. And write legibly.
4. If you are an executive, or you write for an executive, you may wish to use executive stationery for business thank-you letters. U.S. executive stationery is 7.5” x 10” (19 cm x 25.4 cm); the inside address appears at the end of the letter; and it is well-suited to thanking business associates for personal or social favors.
Examples of thank-you notes can be found on websites and in books:
Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to Executive Manners (1985) NY: Rawson Associates, pp. 120-127
Webster’s Guide to Business Correspondence 2nd ed. (1996) Springfield, MA: Merriam Webster. pp. 300-305.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Online classes in writing
In early 2009, I begin offering my first all-online writing classes at a new site, http://www.camsems.com.
WriteWell-1 is an introduction to academic writing for graduate and advanced undergrad students, especially in the helping professions.
Its sequel is WriteWell-2: Coherence and Persuasion (C&P). C&P is also a standalone class for any writer who wants to construct paragraphs that are lean, precise, and persuasive. The third class will be WriteWell-3: The Clear Sentence. More classes will follow.
I never realized how an online class could enrich learning. Students will be interacting most of the time, they receive my immediate feedback, and they can query me privately any time. Best of all, they can learn at their own pace, whenever their schedule permits.
For about $150, students will have access to a class for 60 days. Query privileges extend, as my students know, for life.
WriteWell-1 is an introduction to academic writing for graduate and advanced undergrad students, especially in the helping professions.
Its sequel is WriteWell-2: Coherence and Persuasion (C&P). C&P is also a standalone class for any writer who wants to construct paragraphs that are lean, precise, and persuasive. The third class will be WriteWell-3: The Clear Sentence. More classes will follow.
I never realized how an online class could enrich learning. Students will be interacting most of the time, they receive my immediate feedback, and they can query me privately any time. Best of all, they can learn at their own pace, whenever their schedule permits.
For about $150, students will have access to a class for 60 days. Query privileges extend, as my students know, for life.
Monday, December 01, 2008
When a Noun Becomes a Verb: The New American Presidency
Arguably the most difficult, but perhaps the most powerful, lesson I teach is the lesson about clarifying a sentence. To clarify a single sentence, we list the actions it mentions, and we try to turn more of them into verbs. But why? How does a change differ from He changed x?
A vivid example of that difference appears in the American presidency today. President-Elect Barack Obama promised "change"--as a noun. Many Americans voted for "change" as a noun.
But when an action lives in a noun, each hearer of that noun supplies (or fails to supply) the doer of the change and the entities that are changed.
A few Americans assumed that Mr. Obama would change what they expected. Like presidents-elect before him, he would change the executive branch to a panel of his political supporters.
But Mr. Obama is changing something deeper. Already, in his political appointments, he is changing the way a president "runs" the executive branch. He is changing the presidency from an executive branch that answers "How can I implement my politics smoothly?" to an executive branch that answers "How can we best benefit America and the world?"
Change as a noun becomes change as a verb. Let's watch Mr. Obama and his very diverse team change the world.
A vivid example of that difference appears in the American presidency today. President-Elect Barack Obama promised "change"--as a noun. Many Americans voted for "change" as a noun.
But when an action lives in a noun, each hearer of that noun supplies (or fails to supply) the doer of the change and the entities that are changed.
A few Americans assumed that Mr. Obama would change what they expected. Like presidents-elect before him, he would change the executive branch to a panel of his political supporters.
But Mr. Obama is changing something deeper. Already, in his political appointments, he is changing the way a president "runs" the executive branch. He is changing the presidency from an executive branch that answers "How can I implement my politics smoothly?" to an executive branch that answers "How can we best benefit America and the world?"
Change as a noun becomes change as a verb. Let's watch Mr. Obama and his very diverse team change the world.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Mr. Obama's Speech: A More Perfect Union
On March 18, 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama made a speech that is already a piece of rhetorical history. I urge you to read it. You can access it, in video and in print, at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html
The audio-and-video of the speech is available at the American Rhetoric Society
americanrhetoric.com. It will be remembered by the ages.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html
The audio-and-video of the speech is available at the American Rhetoric Society
americanrhetoric.com. It will be remembered by the ages.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Against Plagiarism
Plagiarism is passing off someone else's ideas or materials as your own, or failing to credit their owner properly. Can you identify plagiarism in words and pictures? To find out, take a ten-minute online quiz designed by Ted Frick at Indiana University in Bloomington:
http://www.indiana.edu/~tedfrick/plagiarism/index2.html
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Zotero
Do you write research papers with more than three references? If so, you probably use or need software that manages your bibliography (or, as we call it in APA style, your reference list).
There is a free software package called Zotero. To quote the Zotero.org web page,
"Zotero (zoh TAIR oh) is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself. Zotero requires Firefox 2.0 or 3.0, Netscape Navigator 9.0, or Flock 0.9.1 for Windows, Mac, or Linux."
It might be worth trying.
There is a free software package called Zotero. To quote the Zotero.org web page,
"Zotero (zoh TAIR oh) is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself. Zotero requires Firefox 2.0 or 3.0, Netscape Navigator 9.0, or Flock 0.9.1 for Windows, Mac, or Linux."
It might be worth trying.
Friday, October 17, 2008
If It's Removable, Put It Between Commas
A bank official replied to a prospective client, and with the reply enclosed an annual report. Unfortunately, the official wrote this sentence:
I am enclosing an annual report that shows we are debt-free.
The dependent clause "that shows we are debt-free" is not separated by a comma. That lack of separation implies that the clause is essential to describe which annual report is being sent. Are there others? Those reports may tell a different financial story!
Conclusion: if the descriptive word(s) are removable (redundant), then use a comma or a pair of commas to set them apart from the sentence. To imply the bank's integrity, the bank official could have written this sentence:
I am enclosing an annual report, which shows we are debt-free.
Personally, I would have gone on to make the sentence even more precise:
I am enclosing our latest annual report, which shows that we are debt-free.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Unnecessary Colons
A colon announces that something--a series, a restatement, or an explanatory equivalent--will follow and end the sentence. However, do not use a colon when the final word itself implies that something will follow.
Wrong - The Valeria Line is carried in: department stores, men's stores, and on Valeria's own Web site.
Right - The Valeria line is carried in department stores, men's stores, and on Valeria's own Web site.
Wrong - The two files were: created separately, named differently, but backed up on the same hard disk.
Right - The two files were created separately, named differently, but backed up on the same hard disk.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Singulars and Plurals
We all know that when a subject (noun or pronoun) is singular, its verb sometimes takes a special ending. For example, Dave watches football games.
When the subject is plural, its verb must match or "agree with" it. For example, Dave's friends watch football games.
If writers break this agreement rule, they are judged unskilled.
But sometimes it isn't clear whether the subject noun is singular or plural. In one such exception, the subject is called a collective noun. Take "family." It looks singular. But if the writer means the family as separate individuals, the correct verb may not end in -s: The family watch different TV programs in each of their three living rooms.
Other collective nouns are "team," "staff," and "herd."
In the world of subject-verb agreement, another exception is those plural-looking words that express a singular concept:
The last 12 months has been particularly ugly.
Hear how Yahoo! Groups has changed the lives of others.
The woods is the last place they would go.
Finally, there are the idiomatic pronouns that seem plural in meaning but are used as singulars: Everybody is waiting. Everyone is at home.
Every person is different. All people are different.
I have this many pencils.
In language, custom trumps logic.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Health Care, Health-care, or Healthcare?
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003) says that health care is two words when used as a noun. It is hyphenated when used as an adjective (as in health-care providers).
In U.S. English, hyphenating a multiple-word adjective is standard practice unless the dictionary rules otherwise.
However, many U.S. writers, including corporate writers, have started using healthcare as one word. For example, one of my early clients was the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council. Another (now functioning under another name) was called Healthcare Compare.
U.S. dictionaries are compiled by lexicographers who survey how we write and speak in both public and private discourse. As a result, in the next edition (2013), Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary may well list healthcare. To write the adjective healthcare now is, perhaps, to be ahead of your time. To write the phrase health-care providers is safe.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Business Writing and Proofreading
"Today, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts ® specialize in deluxe hotels with meeting facilities and special services for the business traveler, operates in hotels in major and secondary cities, airport locations, and leading resort areas throughout the world."
That "sentence" should make its writer blush. But it is typical of the errors that creep into electronic text today. Someone changes one part of a sentence and fails to reengineer the entire sentence correctly.
In order to catch those errors before they tarnish the corporate image, firms are offering my workshops to their writers. And we are nearly all writers because e-mail is the lifeblood of business.
Grammar & Proofreading
or
The Impeccable Page
taught by Rosemary Camilleri CSeminar@uic.edu
Monday, August 04, 2008
The Noun Assumes; the Verb Explains
The following sentence puzzled me:
"The investment account should have been [cashed in] second, given a long-term tax rate versus the traditional income tax liability."
That sentence advises a retiree when to draw from her investment account. But that advice gets an "explanation" that fails to explain. The "given that..." phrase assumes that every reader instantly knows which is greater: "long-term tax rate" or "traditional income tax liability."
If the noun "tax" became a verb, the new sentence would explain the writer's rationale:
The investment account should have been cashed in second, because the U.S. government taxes long-term investment gains at a lower rate than it taxes other income.
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