Word Wise

Where You Read, I Will Follow

You’ve probably heard that reading makes you a better writer. Here’s why: It lets you analyze other people’s writing, their style, tone, word choice, format, and more. In other words, it lets you unlock some of the mystery of writing; it lets you see how others do it. Better yet, the more you read, the more styles you’ll have to choose from when you write. Go ahead and mimic other writers’ styles, see how they fit, try them on for size. Eventually, you’ll find a style that complements your natural gifts; without even trying you’ll create your own, unique voice.  But there’s more: Reading – both fiction and nonfiction – not only unlocks the mystery of writing, it can begin to unlock the mystery of life. Reading introduces you to new ideas, faraway places, other universes, and unexplored possibilities. It lets you meet people you otherwise wouldn’t, experience foods and fads and foolishness that aren’t a part of your everyday life. Reading lets you peer into other people’s families, work, sex lives, and marriages – the good, the bad, and the ewww. Reading let’s you know that you’re not alone. “A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end,” said William Styron, the author of Sophie’s Choice. “You live several lives while reading it.” Reading shouldn’t be a chore, though, and it shouldn’t be a snore – about reading a book, the movie producer Samuel Goldwyn once said, “I read part of it all the way through.” If you’re not enjoying a book, move on – life’s too short to force yourself to read the two new biographies of Hillary Clinton (Her Way and A Woman in Charge) when the author of The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini, has a new book out (A Thousand Splendid Suns). So be picky – read what interests you – but take a risk here and there too by choosing authors you’re not familiar with, topics you’ve thought not your thing, and formats that may be new to you (read fiction all the time? try a biography; you’re big on 600-page histories? try an illustrated novel).        And don’t forget magazines. Yeah, The New Yorker is fantastic – quirky, interesting and elegant – and worth the investment, even if you have to pick up an issue several times to plow through the latest 20,000-word piece on the physiology of the Monarch butterfly. But don’t forget my former employer People magazine, where writers are trained to stuff as much information as possible into a sentence and paragraph (my editor called it “telegraphing”). People is pithy, upbeat, fun to read, and a great example of a type of excellent writing. The writer Richard Steel said, “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” Stephen King said that reading “offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page.” Read robustly and your writing will become more robust, more worldly, and more interesting. It just will.

Note: So, what am I reading now? Well, I'm usually in the middle of several books at once and sometimes it can take me months to get through them all. Currently, I'm reading Christopher Hitchens' new book, God Is Not Great, Sense and Sensibility (I managed to get through high school without cracking it), the Collected Letters of Jessica Mitford, and a very fun first novel called Still Life With Husband by Lauren Fox. How about you? What's on your nightstand?

On a separate note, a number of Word Wise readers tell me they sometimes don't get my headlines - this week's is just a play on words on the great Carole King song from her "Tapestry" album, "Where You Lead" ("Where you lead, I will follow/ Anywhere that you tell me to/ If you need, you need me to be with you/ I will follow where you lead").

Don't Quote Me

Though sometimes it can be hard to believe, clients are people, too. So when crafting a quote on their behalf, keep a few things in mind. Advance your story: The person doing the talking should say something that you, the omniscient voice of the document, cannot; there’s no need to quote a CEO saying that her company’s new product will be available nationwide in June.  Know whom you’re quoting: A senior executive? a food scientist? the assistant director of marketing for southeast Jersey City? Jordin Sparks? Craft a quote only that person can say. A CEO’s commentary is going to be different than a celebrity spokesperson’s, for instance, while a marketing director will have a different perspective than an engineer. Make it sound real: Quotes should be conversational because that’s how people speak, period. Never hand in a document without having first read the quote out loud several times. If you stumble over your own words or punctuation, that’s an indication your quote isn’t working. Make peeps sound smart: Even if you know in your heart the guy’s a jerk, he’s also the client (or a supporter of your client). Keep it in mind. Excitement, shmexcitement: No journalist has ever been the slightest bit excited about a company spokesperson being excited about something the company is doing. Next time you’re about to write a quote like that, imagine instead the person singing these immortal Pointer Sister lines:                         I'm so excited and I just can't hide it                         I'm about to lose control and I think I like it                         I'm so excited and I just can't hide it                         And I know I know I know I know I know I want you That’s how dumb it is. So if admitting to being excited or thrilled or honored is the only thing you can think of for a spokesperson to say, better he should say nothing. Sometimes silence is golden.

I Got Rhythm

When we talk we naturally use contractions in our speech. We do this without thinking, and we modulate their use without thinking, either. In other words, depending on the moment, the conversation, the sentence construction, the topic, the context, and even the person with whom we’re speaking, we use or don’t use contractions. It’s as if we hear what we’re saying before we say it – and we get it right every time. But for some reason when we write we often go deaf; we stop “hearing” – we forgo contractions, which results in stilted and sometimes stultifying writing. Good writing is about rhythm as much as anything – word choice and their inflection, where words are placed in a sentence or phrase, the pauses and stops created by punctuation, the varied time it takes to read short words versus long words, the smooth transitions from one word to the next, and a mix of short and long sentences and paragraphs. Contractions are essential to creating the right rhythm. Don’t get caught up thinking it’s more “appropriate” or businessy or, God forbid, mature, to abstain from using contractions. Just as you use contractions when you speak because it’s naturally what your brain leads you to do, using contractions when you write will endow your words with a natural – and compelling – sense of rhythm. Who could ask for anything more?

Note: It’s true that some clients prohibit the use of contractions, but that’s about their quaint view that contractions are somehow wrong or too colloquial to use in a business setting. They're plain wrong. (Some contractions, like "gonna” and “wanna,” take no apostrophe; these really are too colloquial to use in most circumstances.)

Anyhow, I’ll leave the final word to Bill Walsh, copy chief on the national desk of The Washington Post, who notes that unless you “want to communicate the idea that you’re very, very constipated, don’t strain to avoid contractions.” I couldn’t have said it better myself (actually, I’m too uptight to have said it at all.)

Remembrance of Dings Past

If you’re in the type of business in which you work with clients, you know there’s nothing more self-flagellation-inducing than getting dinged for dumb mistakes in a document that should have been caught. Oy vey. Over and over I see the same five errors – on their own each is minor – but clients take notice and even when the rest of your work is stellar, it’s often these (and other) tiny things that get attention (and dinged). So, in no particular order: Companies, organizations and associations are single entities – each is an “it,” not a “they” – Blah-Blah Inc. announced its third-quarter earnings today. Mixing up “you’re” and “your” is surprisingly common, due more, I suspect, to carelessness than anything else. Use “you’re” when you mean “you are.” Otherwise, use “your.” Ditto “it’s” and “its.” Use an apostrophe for the contraction of “it is” only; remember, the possessive of “it” does not possess an apostrophe. “ly” words do not take hyphens because the “ly” acts as a clue telling us that the word it’s attached to will modify the word that follows  – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s beautifully filmed movie, “The Lives of Others,” won an  Academy Award (not “beautifully-filmed"). Professional titles only are capitalized when they appear immediately before a person’s name – Senior Vice President Pia Wong said today…. but Pia Wong, senior vice president of Ring-A-Ding-Ding Corp., said today… What sort of errors do you make or see when editing others?

Note: Everyone makes mistakes, so don't beat yourself up over them - learn from them. If you see (or it's pointed out to you) that you're prone to one of these errors or some other error, make a mental note of it. Or an actual note. I have a little piece of paper pinned to my bulletin board that has two reminders: the difference between effect and affect (I can never remember and I've stopped trying) and the difference between i.e. and e.g. (ditto, can't remember). I've trained myself to look at the note each time I need to use one of those words. (Okay, I also have pinned up quotes from Milton Berle and Abraham Lincoln and my mother's phone number because even though I've been calling her at the same number since forever, now that I only have to press "mother" on my cell, I've completely forgotten her number. Sometimes I call her from work and I actually have to dial it.)

AND I AM TELLING U

I’m often asked how I choose what to write about each week. In part I’m inspired by your comments and questions, but I also log errors and trends I notice at work or in my everyday reading. I may see an error once and assume it’s a typo. I may see the same error twice and make a mental note of it. But, as the sinister megalomaniac Auric Goldfinger said in the 1964 film, “Goldfinger,” “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” Hence, this week’s enemy – two words, both starting with U. Not too many things are unique and deep down inside, in the "dark night of the soul," as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, most people know it. So, to assuage our guilt, we try to modify the word, referring to things as "truly unique" or sort of unique." The truth is, something is unique or it's not. Still, I recently read that due to its height the Sears Tower in Chicago is "fairly unique." But the Sears Tower – admittedly a tall building –  is still shorter than two other buildings, Taipei 101 and the Petronas Towers, making it, at best, merely unusual.  Likewise, if the 18th-century French writer and philosopher Voltaire was alive today (and working in PR), instead of writing, “Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy,” he might have written, “Utilize, do not abutilize; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.” If the word “use” was good enough for Voltaire, let's be frank, it's good enough for us. Try not to use “utilize” in place of the verb form of “use” (i.e., yooz) because you think it sounds smart, businesslike, or writerly. It’s none of these things; in fact, the two words have a subtle yet important difference in meaning. “Use” means to employ something for its intended or appropriate purpose: Stefan used the hammer to hang the portrait of his grandmother. "Utilize,” the verb form of the obsolete adjective “utile,” means to employ something for a new or unintended purpose, or to make do with an item meant for something else: Phillipa utilized the heel of her Roger Vivier slingback to bang a nail into the wall. Even The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage has an opinion, calling “utilize” a “fancy word for use.” (By the way, it’s called The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage and not The New York Times Manual of Style and Use because in this case the word “usage” refers to the practice of applying punctuation correctly, not the question of whether it’s applied at all.)