New Year’s Resolutions You Can Keep

Happy Friday, everyone, and welcome to 2018!

You haven’t heard from me in a while, I know. If like me you’ve been buried under the holiday season ever since the run-up to Thanksgiving, you can empathize with me as I welcome the crisp cold weather and beautiful blue skies that pronounce our new beginning — and let’s be honest, do you know anyone who had a good 2017?

I’ve never been one for making resolutions. Although they work for a lot of people and I encourage that, for me personally they’ve always set me up for failure. Perhaps I’ve just set too high of expectations for myself. Consequently, the past few years I’ve endeavored to take smaller steps in the right direction, and to that end have subscribed what I feel is a much more feasible motto — start as you mean to go on, and end. No grand gestures that I then beat myself up for not achieving, no massive exhausting overhauls, no cold-turkeys that last for maybe a fortnight tops.

Regardless of whether you’re an all-or-nothing or little-by-little type, small changes that you start now can make a world of difference. One easy resolution is to polish your daily communications. Think of it as ironing your shirt, or investing in new business cards.

Firstly, though, what should be your target? Look at things that enter the public eye, like:

  • Your business cards, speaking of.
  • Your emails, including signatures and out-of-office messages.
  • If you run a blog or online store, check their pages / posts / item descriptions, and things like your invoices.
  • Social media posts, and pages if you have them.
  • Your resume.
  • Forum posts, product reviews, etc., if this is something you regularly do.

Got some ideas? Good. Now here’s the little fixes and good habits you can work on:

  1. Spelling errors. No one’s perfect, but try your best. So many programs and sites nowadays have at least a crude built-in spellchecker — use it! If you’re not sure, copy-and-pasting your text into Word or even Google will quickly find them for you. Always do a read-through before you send/post/submit.
  2. Misuse of the apostrophe. Part of my 2018 post plan is a detailed series on punctuation, but for now, here’s a rule of thumb: apostrophes show ownership, and are used when there’s a letter missing (in other words, to make two words into one, AKA a contraction). Example 1: If you want to make DVD plural, you’ll want to write DVDs rather than DVD’s — at first glance that last one tells me that the DVDs are owning something. Example 2: if you want a shorter version of they are or David is, you’ll want to write they’re or David’s.
  3. Following from the above, the difference between contractions, possessive pronouns, and in some cases directionals — your/you’re, there/their/they’re, etc. Practice with the apostrophe will help with these. Make sure you mean that place (there — a directional) versus they are (they’re — a contraction) versus belonging to them (their — a possessive pronoun).
  4. Misuse of capitalization. Capitals are mainly for the first word of a sentence, names and titles, and acronyms (e.g. — CD or OMV). Only rarely are they used for emphasis — and only as ‘all-caps’ rather than simply Capitalizing Every Word or random Words — and quickly lose their impact if used too much. Haphazard incorrect use tends to look sloppy.
  5. Excessive exclamation marks. One is enough where it is needed — an entire string does not make your point any stronger. In fact, it looks amateurish. And while we’re at it, consider whether you need one at all and if your point isn’t powerful enough using just a period. Every time I’m tempted to use one I tend to ask myself whether I want it for volume or to express emotion (in both cases, shouldn’t my words themselves make it clear?), or to emphasize that last word (in which case, try italics or bold).
  6. Lack of punctuation altogether. The linguistic evolution of lack of punctuation on the Internet as a means in of itself to suggest tone or as a form of humor is a conversation for another day. There’s also a time and a place for that and work emails isn’t one of them. Leaving off that period or question mark suggests hurriedness, laziness, or that you simply don’t respect the recipient enough to give them good communication, none of which are good.

To nurture these little habits, the first thing you have to do is get accustomed to slowing down and looking for them. Recognizing them is half the battle. The more often you correct them, the more practice your brain will get in writing them correctly the first time. Better yet, if you extend this practice to writing that does not necessarily enter the public eye — your personal journal, greeting cards, storage labels — the stronger the good habits will grow.

Naturally, old habits are hard to break, and of course correctly using the apostrophe won’t get you that dream job — but it’ll certainly stop an eyebrow being raised. Polishing these little tell-tale signs of clumsy writing not only means that your reader’s eye is distraction-free, but that the impression you’re making is far more professional and confident. And who doesn’t want that?

What are your writing New Year’s resolutions? What are some of your communication pet-peeves, or bad habits you can’t quite seem to shake?

Warm wishes,

~ Taegan

Pros and Cons of Using Local Vernacular

Happy Friday, everyone!

I may have mentioned that I was born and currently live in the Southern US; I may also have mentioned that I had a twelve-year stint in the UK. While naturally I haven’t encountered all the dialects either of them have to offer, I’ve seen and heard a good share. Local vernacular is close to my heart right now, too, because of the novel I’m working on that’s set in New Orleans in 1916, which is why I wanted to take today to talk about the talk, a.k.a. local vernacular.

What do I mean, exactly, by local vernacular? It’s slang, essentially. An ingredient of local or regional dialects. What can readily link a person to a geographical area in addition to (but not the same as) an accent. Why should it matter to you? Because yes, there are some occasions where it’s good to be linked to a region, but there are other times that you’ll want to avoid it.

Local vernacular in writing is ultimately a tool, and the better you understand how and when to use it, the better. We see it all the time in marketing (whether we realize it or not) where it’s used to inspire loyalty from a certain customer base, make a product or service recognizable, or support/create an image of belonging. If you’re one of the crowd, you’re trusted as a businessperson. For example, pseudo-French signage and packaging is understandably rampant here in Louisiana because of the pride in French and Creole heritage – if your product or service utilizes it, not only are you understood, but you are seen as belonging and friendly. Meanwhile, we also see local vernacular in fiction to enrich characters and impart flavor and realism to the setting. There’s a little more flexibility in fiction since we can set and play with our own rules. If you get the details right, you’re trusted as an author.

So if local vernacular is pervasive and useful, why would we want to avoid it? There are three main reasons:

  1. Geographical limitations. You can only take a piece of slang so far before, frankly, it may not be understood. For instance, the South will have a ready grasp of lagniappe — ‘a little something extra’, for those of you not from around here — because it’s familiar. Head north, east, or west, however, and while they may have heard it before, they may struggle to define it. Head outside of the US and use it, and you may not be understood at all. If something’s not understood, it’s ineffective. If you’re trying to market yourself, a service, or a product outside of the locality that uses that language, you’re going to struggle — it’s incredibly rare for a business with a name or slogan that uses local vernacular to be successful in a larger national or international market.
  2. It’s ultimately slang, whether you like it or not. Slang falls into the informal language category and as you know, there are occasions where informal language is appropriate and where it is not. It’s unfortunate but true that outsiders to a dialect, upon hearing/reading it, will — because of point #1 — feel at a disadvantage, which usually translates to seeing that dialect as lesser. Not all the time, but often. A more common example is that we all know that we shouldn’t be casual in an interview, and speak formally and clearly.
  3. Consistency problems, which mostly applies to writing. While there may be a few words that have a widely-understood spelling, when you get into the less obvious representations of dialect (e.g. — using apostrophes everywhere to contract words or drop a final letter) the fact of the matter is that it can be difficult to keep track of how you write something and when. I know I do. Also, though punctuation is a beautiful thing, if you have apostrophes everywhere eventually your manuscript is going to look like a spider skittered through an ink pad and then over every page.

Readability is key: too much vernacular and your reader will be exhausted by the time they get through a couple of paragraphs. You want your text — whether it’s a resume, a novel, or a business card — to be easy for your reader to understand, and appropriate to the audience and your intentions.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with local vernacular, be it when writing or reading!

Warm wishes,

~ Taegan

How to Become a More Concise Writer

Happy Friday, everyone!

I’m privileged to work with many different types of writing these days – I’ll be working on a novel one day, a thesis the next, then a poem, then vocational curriculum.  The list goes on. One of the things they all have in common, though, is often a need for brevity.

You’ve got your audience’s attention – great! But you have to keep that attention. There’s debate over the average attention span and whether it’s shortening due to the rise of digital technology, but the point remains that you only have so much time to get your message across, even if your reader has settled down and is in for the long haul to listen to whatever you have to tell them. Brevity is still a virtue and it is one of the main areas a good editor will look for.

Here’s some easy ways for you to check the concision of your writing yourself!

  1.  Read it aloud. Yes, you may feel silly at first, but reading your writing aloud will not only help identify awkward phrasing, but you’re more likely to notice when you’re being too wordy or have a ‘pet word’.
  2. When rereading your work, ask yourself as often as possible whether there’s a shorter way to say what you mean, or whether this sentence actually presents any new information. Be ruthless.
  3. Punctuation, conjunctions, and transitions not only help the flow of your writing, but allow you more flexibility in communicating your ideas. For example, instead of needing two fully-fleshed-out sentences a simple comma and conjunction tag-team may eliminate the need for five or six words or repeats of important terms.
  4. For some, character/word/page/time limits help. Those of you familiar with the ‘elevator pitch’ know this. If you impose a limit on yourself, your brain is likely to rise to the challenge and pare down what you want to say in order to fit that limit. It helps you determine what’s really important for the reader to know.
  5. Consider your audience and what they will actually want to hear. One of my pet peeves, for example, is a blog post containing a recipe I’m interested in, but which also contains two pages of context about the weather that day. While some may find this charming, I just want the recipe.
  6. Make a bullet-pointed list of your talking points. I use this strategy with non-fiction often, and you can use it before you write (e.g. – planning an essay) or when you’re editing and possibly rewriting. A similar tactic is after writing something once, cover it up and try to rewrite from memory – the stronger phrasings and main points will stick in your mind and you’ll be able to weed out the weaker.
  7. Avoid too many irrelevant anecdotes, ‘weasel words‘, unnecessary qualifiers (‘very tired’ versus ‘exhausted’), and the passive voice wherever possible.

Now, you may be thinking, “But Taegan, I’m writing a novel / thesis / non-fiction book about X; my reader wants to know as much as I can tell them on my subject.”

Yes, absolutely. Longer works do tend to be more lenient in the brevity department. However, here’s my rule of thumb: every word on that page needs to earn its keep, otherwise it is taking up valuable space where I could be talking about something new. It’s a similar concept to the Chinese proverb of ‘If the first words fail, ten thousand will then not avail’, in that if you let yourself ramble, your message weakens. Always choose quality over quantity.

Brevity will benefit: your pacing, the organization of your ideas, your meaning, the strength of your writing, and ultimately your readers.

Remember to use this advice in moderation, since you don’t want to obscure your meaning by cutting too much. For this reason, I often recommend writing all your thoughts out first and cutting back afterward.

Finally, also remember that this advice applies to all types of writing, from fiction to job postings to resumes to research articles to…

I’ll stop. Good luck, and remember you can always ask me if you have questions!

Warm wishes,

~ Taegan

Five Habits That Make Your Writing Look Unprofessional

Happy Friday, everyone!

I was talking to a friend yesterday about our writing habits – which of them are beneficial and which are not. While our discussion mainly revolved around our overall writing process, it made me think about the smaller habits I see in clients whose work I’m familiar with, and my own. Old habits die hard, goes the adage – and why? Because so often we don’t realize they’re there and though our well-intentioned friend the auto-checker tries its best, it frequently doesn’t catch them.

You’d be forgiven, after scanning the list below with bated breath, to not see a problem with many of them – what you may not realize is that these habits make your work sound dated, look unprofessional, and feel clunky, which are the absolute last things you want! Often it is the littlest of things that makes a reader question the authority of the writer, and even stop reading altogether. The more you can avoid these tell-tale signs of an unpracticed writer, the better.

  1. Capitalizing keywords unironically. (Not to be confused with typing in all caps.) Capital letters should only be used in specific instances – titles, proper nouns, and the beginning of sentences being the three main areas. No doubt you’ve seen them used as a stylistic choice, such as to make a webpage appear uniform (look at any of the button labels on most websites you regularly use) or as a tongue-in-cheek way to pretend something is more serious than it actually is (see if you can spot it in this post of mine). You’ll also see legal documents capitalizing important terms. However, too often I see the old habit of using them for emphasis in everyday writing, as though this technique were interchangeable with italics or bolding. It’s not. Don’t do it, folks – not only is it old-fashioned, untidy, and incorrect, but it smacks of poor marketing and is a sure-fire way to make your reader wonder if you’re trying to sell them something.
  2. A double space after every sentence. This is another common one. Instead of hitting that space bar once at the end of the sentence and starting another, it’s hit twice. While not incorrect, strictly-speaking, it can get distracting and is a clear indicator of the generation in which you learned to type (or the age of the person who taught you). Why? The practice of using the double-space after the end of a sentence began as a typesetter’s bad habit back in the advent of the printing press, which was originally straightened-out once conventions were developed during its rise to power. However, the reason you yourself may be guilty of this habit is whether you were introduced to typing via someone who regularly used a typewriter, wherein they may have found difficulty determining where a sentence ended due to the machine’s limitations; a double-space was used so that you could more easily tell that sentence was over. Thanks to modern computing, we don’t generally have that problem. Get rid of that second space.
  3. Bunny-ears. You may see them written “doubly“ or ‘singly‘, and you may know them by a less endearing name, but they’re there. Of course, there’s a time and a place for using quotation or speech marks – the problem arises when you use them too liberally and when it’s not really necessary. When that happens, when I’m reading all I can hear is an older person trying to be cool with the kids. On a more practical note, though, consider this: speech or quote marks are often used in this context to show that you’re quoting someone else, or that the sentiment or thought contained therein isn’t really yours. It’s a distancing tactic. Fine – sometimes it’s appropriate to do that. But when every other thought that you’re expressing carries this sign of uncertainty, I begin to doubt your confidence in what you’re saying. Not to mention it’s going to get confusing when you’re actually quoting someone or writing dialogue.
  4. Dated phrasings, particularly references to technological advancement that’s already happened. As an example, take one of my pet peeves: ‘In today’s world’. If you’re about to write about something that’s occurring now, just write it without introduction. We automatically assume it’s happening in the present without you needing to tell us. If you do, it makes you sound like you’re preaching from decades back. This is of course slightly different from archaisms – words and phrases that we don’t use anymore, such as ‘pray tell’ for ‘what is it?’.  If you’re uncertain whether you’re using a dated phrase, ask yourself if the sentence will still make sense without it, or if it’s stating the obvious. This involves understanding your intended audience.
  5. Multiple exclamation points, question marks, or over-use of ellipses. Conversely, this can also denote an immature writer. There is no reason to use more than one exclamation point or question mark. No excuses. Adding more will not make it more. Most of us rarely stray into that habit – more often I see the incorrect or over-use of the ellipsis (‘…’). More than a comma or dash, an ellipsis is used to slow the reader down. You may remember being introduced to it in school as a technique to create suspense. The problem lies…when you use it…too much… Then I don’t know…what you’re trying to lead me into thinking, or even…what you mean…sometimes…or even if you know… (You see what I mean?) It’s melodramatic, cluttering, and like too many bunny-ears leads me to think you’re not confident enough in what you’re saying.

Not sure about usage? Spotting these in your own work not your strong suit? That’s what your editor is for! Additionally, as you’ve noticed a lot of these have to do with punctuation; I’m aiming to explore each of the punctuation marks in their own ‘spotlight’ posts to help you get a better grip on them. Stay tuned.

What are some bad habits you can’t seem to shake? What are some of your pet writing or typing peeves?

Warm wishes,

~ Taegan