Word Wise

Hump Day

Reading the Khaleej Times today here in Abu Dhabi, I learned of the birth of the first-ever cloned camel (it was front-page news). Named Injaz, which in Arabic means “achievement,” it made me think that while you may be able to achieve a cloned camel, you can’t always clone knowledge, and that sometimes clients, like camels, can be stubborn.   Ok, maybe a bit of a stretch, but I was thinking about this because my client asked me to ignore a common rule of English-language grammar that would have in turn introduced an error throughout a long document over which I am responsible.   This situation is by no means sui generis to this client, who has otherwise been (and I’m not just saying this) incredibly pleasant and easy to work with. Clients will often ask that we go against the grammatical grain: don’t hyphenate compound modifiers, capitalize words to lend them importance, use a comma where no comma is required. Letting the client know they’re wrong without insulting them and without coming off like a snooty, snotty, prissy, uptight jerk takes tact and diplomacy. I don’t argue in these situations, but I don’t just go along to get along either – and neither should you (after all, aren’t clients paying us for our expertise?).   In this case I wrote an e-mail to all those concerned (and a few unconcerned in an effort to cover my derriere), saying “I’d be remiss in my duties as writer and editor if I did not point out…” but that of course “I’ll follow your lead and make the requested change if that’s what you decide.” I also wrote that “to people who know the rules of English-language grammar, this will appear as a mistake.” Another favorite all-purpose phrase of mine in these situations is “let me play devil’s advocate.” It’s a polite way of disagreeing without raising anyone’s hackles or insecurities.   In the end, it was decided to be grammatically correct - a hump in the road to success both the client and I had to get over together. As for little six-day-old Injaz, she’s error-free and doing fine.

Abu Dhabi Scissorhands

I’m in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates, working on a client project for about six weeks. The people I’m working with are from several firms around the world in addition to my own. We work in one big room on the ground floor of a building near the Abu Dhabi port, though the client has provided me with my own office so I can sneak away when I need some quiet “Dan time.”   The document I'm writing has several sections and, in total, is more than 100 pages. It can be a real chore to keep track of what information is where and how it relates to other information elsewhere in the document.   Way back when I was a magazine editor I used to take long pieces and spread out their pages on the floor so I could literally see the story, how it flowed, how one section related to the next. It’s a habit I’ve continued throughout my career. So every day I pass by the woman at the reception desk here, who wears an abaya, grab one of the yummy, locally grown plastic-wrapped dates she keeps in a big bowl on her desk, and go to my office to spread out. Several times, after seeing 20 or 30 pages at once and following the story I’m trying to tell with my eyes from one page to the next, I’ve taken scissors, gotten down on my hands and knees, and cut out paragraphs to move them around, as if I’m working on a jigsaw puzzle. I look like a jerk doing it (just ask my dishdasha-wearing colleague who walked in on me mid-crouch) but I’ve been able to get a sense of my story in a way I wouldn’t have had I only been looking at it on my computer or paging through a hard copy.    Often with long documents, it’s the big picture that’s missing – to see it, don’t be afraid to crawl around on your hands and knees with a pair of scissors in your hands. And if a tall man in a dishdasha gives you any lip, offer him a date!