Writing Effectively Part 2

In part 1 we covered:

The first secret of a successful business – Do it yourself until you can afford and need to hire outside help

The second secret of a successful business – Find your niche, make sure it fits what you are doing and can do, and develop it. Expand only to meet expanding demands.

The third secret of a successful business – When you need help outside your area of expertise be very, very careful. A degree in a field does not mean a person is expert in that field. Particularly true of writing.

The fourth secret of a successful business – You must know that you are at least equal to the best alternative out there….then make sure that your clients do benefit from your expertise more than they expected.

Well, glory be! We have only just begun.

The fourth secret of a successful business was the first one which dealt with effective writing.

The first secret of effective writing. In this article we’ll deal with another aspect of effective writing: becoming the expert. We’re talking writing here, but it equally applies to anything else which requires writing about it.

How do you create that one of 250 resumes that gets the job?

How do you create that business plan that successfully raises the funding money?

How do you write the grant that achieves success?

How do you write an article which gets the message across?

How do you create the brochure that stands out from the rest and is picked up? Oooops! That’s a different article – later!

The second secret of effective writing – Whatever your language – and yes, I still speak and read and write a little Spanish and a little German – is know your language and use it correctly!

There’re catchwords which’ll trip you up, especially if English is not your first language. Contractions are a fine example. Slang, even that accepted as mainstream, is a killer for an ESL (English as a Second Language) person. Hyphenated words cause problems for many, me included. Homonyms are serious pitfalls: words such as to, too and two; there, their and they’re; red and read; read and reed; site, cite and sight; write and right and copyright and copywrite (copywriting). And my old personal bugaboos, who’s and whose, and who and whom!

Even more, your punctuation will set you apart from the crowd. In spoken English using the right word sets you apart from people who use the wrong word but you can actually slide by with the spoken word and not betray your shortcomings. However, in writing you definitely need to be aware of all of the above, particularly commas, semi-colons and colons.

In the written English you sink your own expertise with a simple little thing like a comma fault. What’s a comma fault? Well, using a comma, which really shouldn’t, be used – lie the two in this sentence! Or worse, when stringing together words in a series such as to, too, and two – a comma virtually never precedes an and.

How about using a semi-colon? This is a toughie! Generally you just should never use semi-colons. Then, when you do get to a place where neither a comma nor a colon fits, you might try the semi-colon. When reading back your sentence you might also decide to break it down and make two or three sentences instead?

OK, so you’ve learned the style sheets and you know how to use the right word and the correct punctuation – you got straight A’s in English in primary school, secondary school and high school. But hey! That was 30 years ago. How about now?

Let’s look at me as an example. I didn’t get straight A’s, but I did learn. I learned even more as an adult, later on. Yes, I graduated from HS back in the 1950’s, 50 years ago, in fact. Then word processing came along and I became a typist for a living – I typed 100 words per minute (that’s a story in itself, but not for here). But with word processing the basic styles of writing changed as well. Our standards in the 1970’s were the NY Times Manual of Style and the US Government Printing Office’s Style Manual (adopted from the NY Times manual). I got pretty good.

Then electronic publishing and the computer came along and the style changed again. We no longer ended sentences with two spaces; now we use only one. And we no longer ended paragraphs with two carriage returns; now we use only one.

Much to my surprise there is a new change now out. We’re now in the 21st century and the new standard seems to have replaced “setting off special text” passages in quotes to setting off special text passages in italics! Quotes are out and italics are in!

Did this make it easier? Hah! Not on your life. You’ve still gotta be able to use quotes correctly. As an example, I quote from the Saturday Evening Post “Franklin P. Jones, said ‘The moon is really made of yellow cheese’ in the July 1968 edition.”

Then there’s the topic of spelling. If you cannot spell correctly do not count on your spell checker to make corrections for you. Corel Word Perfect spell-checker will not pick up a nu8mber in a word – nor will MS Word spell checker pick up that error. So your proofing had better be very good just to catch misspellings and typos. Every word needs to be checked carefully.

Finally, for this segment of writing effectively, when and where to use colloquialisms, slang and contractions in my writing?

In the case of contractions, personally I try not to use ain’t at any time because I knew an old engineer once (with a Masters in Music and a PhD in Electronic Engineering) who used ain’t all the time for emphasis on what not to say. It seemed every other word out of his mouth was ain’t. I got the message – I don’t use ain’t! But the rest are fair game – provided they are used appropriately and correctly?

As for slang and colloquialisms, look back at this article and you will see them interspersed here and there. Effectively? Well, if you are with me this far, understanding what I am writing about, I must have been doing something right.

Your test, should you wish to take it, is to go through all the articles on my web site here, and check them for grammatical and punctuation errors.

And the grading on your test is simple. Keeping in mind grammar, punctuation and spelling/typos:
1. If you don’t find any or not very many errors in grammar or punctuation you need to find a business which does not involve effective writing.
2. If you do find several errors, say an average of 1 or 2 for every article published on my web site, they there is hope for you. You may be able to learn to write effectively?
3. If you find articles which are fraught with error, articles which should never have been released for publication, an average of three or more errors per article published on my web site, and errors in my own articles, then you truly do have the basics for a career in writing effectively.
4. There is one author who has not only given permission to use his articles on other people’s web sites but has also given permission to make corrections to his typographical errors. Find it and, if your first result puts in into the #3 category above, you are definitely a writing effectively expert!

Now all that remains is to polish it and go to work.

Good luck.