The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

Last Sunday, Gretchen Morgenson, a reporter at The New York Times, wrote an elegy, of sorts, to a man named James Walker Michaels, her former editor at Forbes, who died the week before last at age 86. As an editor Michaels was, she wrote, "irascible, exacting, fearless.” “Flaccid writing and weak thinking brought out his bark and bite,” she noted. While interesting to read the many bon mots she included of lines he scrawled atop manuscripts (“This is the kind of sentence that drives readers to stop reading'' ''If I can't stay awake editing this, how can a reader stay awake reading it? What's the point? If it has a point, maybe we can make a story of it'') what came through more than anything in her story was his commitment to giving readers something worth reading. We sometimes forget, as we’re typing away, that on the other end of the story is a reader, someone we need to interest, entertain, move to act, move to think, provoke, etc. Bore him, disrespect her, and you’ve lost an opportunity to build a relationship for yourself and for your client. 

Read the Times piece here. If it’s no longer there, try here, the International Herald Tribune, which ran it, too. Also, The Washington Post ran a terrific piece on Michaels by Allan Sloan, Fortune magazine's senior editor at large.

Comments

[Mike Keliher]

So very true. I always try to keep that in mind and, more importantly, let that thought affect my writing.

Separately: It's interesting that you used opposing pronouns in your "Bore him, disrespect her" line. I've done that before and have had people criticize it as confusing or -- once -- even wrong. But it's not! I'm being gender-inclusive. Lord knows "they" won't work if you're speaking about *one reader*.