How to get your message heard

Jack Trout, a renowned marketing guru:

"The best way to really enter minds that hate complexity and confusion is to oversimplify your message. The lesson here is not to try to tell your entire story. Just focus on one powerful differentiating idea and drive it into the mind. 

"That sudden hunch, that creative leap of the mind that "sees" in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence. If there's any trick to finding that simple set of words, it's one of being ruthless about how you edit the story you want to tell. Anything that others could claim just as well as you can, eliminate. 

"Anything that requires a complex analysis to prove, forget. Anything that doesn't fit with your customers' perceptions, avoid." 

(American Digest)

The power of red ink

When I was an editor at The Reader's Digest, we still worked on paper with pencil or pen. Taking a long-winded piece down to perhaps a third of its original size required a lot of ink. Typically four or more editors worked on an article, each successive editor having more experience and, therefore, more authority marking right on top of the previous editor.

We could actually look at a page of this stuff and read it; it was a condensation hieroglyphics. Each editor had a favorite color -- mine was black -- and the junior editors knew better than to use a color preferred by someone at the top. I recall that Fulton Oursler Jr., the mad genius at the top for many years, preferred purple.

Today I edit on the computer, and the default color when changes are tracked in Microsoft Word, is red. I'd never thought about it much, but this can have unintended consequences.

Stan Carey, on his delightful Sentence first blog, chooses blue. "Blue is a more neutral colour, and once I adopted it there was never a question of reverting, though what colours appear on a client’s computer is beyond my control." He notes:

There’s more at play here than aesthetics and personal preference. A recent study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology suggests that red pens prime us to be more critical. “Because the color red is implicitly associated with avoidance and failure,” they note, “and red pens specifically have long been associated with errors, we propose that exposure to a red pen activates the concepts of errors, poor performance, and evaluative harshness.”

The researchers report:

• people using red pens to correct essays marked more errors and awarded lower grades than people using blue pens. . . . the very act of picking up a red pen can bias [teachers’] evaluations.
• exposure to a red pen in the context of grading a paper can influence behavior, likely without the awareness of the person being influenced

Seems rather intuitive, if you remember grade school and the teacher's red markings. Think I'll switch to blue.

JournoGate: all the news that fits our point of view

The big foo faw in the exciting world of journalism this week, is, of course, an online discussion group known as Journolist. Apparently it's been disbanded after a number of its emails were leaked, revealing -- you might want to sit down for this -- a liberal bent in what's known as the mainstream media, which, increasingly, has little in common with mainstream public opinion.

At any rate, the "journalists" in this esteemed group -- from places like The Washington Post and The New York Times -- were doing their best to get Obama elected in 2008. We've known for as long as I can remember that people in the media have a liberal bent; the surveys of their opinions and voting habits have told us.

What we haven't seen is a coordination so explicit and blatant. Here are some tidbits:

A member of the Obama campaign was in the pack and invited them to the White House after the election.

One member referred to Journolist as the "non-official campaign."

All hate Fox News and some suggested the government should shut it down.

The irony of that last one is fun -- a bunch of biased reporters accusing a network of bias. It's also scary: the impulse to use government power over people with whom they disagree. Of late people have been floating the idea of a government bailout of the mainstream media, which is losing advertising and audience.

The same thought emerged from the mouths of two blow-dried talking heads at CNN, who allowed as how maybe the government ought to regulate bloggers -- those with whom they disagree, of course.

Put this word together with ...

juxtapose / JUK-stuh-pohz / verb

To place side by side.

"His expansive narrative poems juxtapose themes of melancholy and loss with a sense of elation and pure joy…." (Daina Savage, Sunday News [Lancaster, Pennsylvania], April 4, 2010)

From Merriam-Webster: A back-formation is a word that has come about through the removal of a prefix or a suffix from a longer word. Etymologists think "juxtapose" is a back-formation that was created when people trimmed down the noun "juxtaposition." Historical evidence supports the idea: "juxtaposition" was showing up in English documents as early as 1654, but "juxtapose" didn't appear until 1851. "Juxtaposition" is itself thought to be a combination of Latin "juxta," meaning "near," and English "position."

Simplicity is difficult

"Simplicity is the characteristic that is most difficult to simulate. The signature that is most difficult to imitate is the one that is most simple, most individual and most free from flourishes…

The longest Latin derivatives seem necessary to express the thoughts of young writers. The world’s great masters in literature can move mankind to tears, give light and life to thousands in darkness and doubt, or scourge a nation for its folly,—by words so simple as to be commonplace. But transfigured by the divinity of genius, there seems almost a miracle in words."

-- From Self Control, Its Kingship and Majesty by William George Jordan, 1905

Just the facts, ma'am

Mark Jaffe, one of the 'World's 100 Most Influential Headhunters,' according to BusinessWeek magazine, sees way too many resumes.

Just been reading your resume. Say, are you really a “hands-on” executive?  Would your administrative assistant be willing to go on the record with that? And what’s the opposite of “results-driven,” anyway? Results-averse? Results-agnostic? Process-obsessed?

Less is more. And vice versa.

If you begin your summary by claiming to be a “seasoned, savvy professional with a distinguished career,” there’s nothing left for me to do but hand over my wife and kids. Seriously, good luck with them. Before I forget to ask, did your last employer sign off on you being a “visionary, world-class entrepreneur,” or did you kinda decide that on your own?

The same goes for cover letters. Here’s an actual, unedited excerpt from one of my favorite cover letters:

Twenty four (24) months later, after having done what I had always opted to accomplish and had dreamt to realize, i.e. ride my Harley Davidson, teach, hike and paint; a kind of ennui started to crawl all over me. I began to feel a little melancholy and earnestly yearn for the days when quotidian nonetheless grueling challenges were posed to me and interminable dynamic strategy formulation as well as decision making processes were factually a way of life, a kind of a circadian routine!

Here’s another — the preferred method — reproduced in full:

Attached is my resume. It’s my hope that I will bring value to one of your clients.

I rest my case.

I dunno. I kinda liked that ennui crawling all over me thing.

Solecism sweepstakes

A solecism is something perceived as a grammatical mistake or absurdity, or even a simply non-standard usage. The word was originally used by the Greeks for what they perceived as mistakes in their language. Ancient Athenians considered the dialect of the inhabitants of their colony Soli in Cilicia to be a corrupted form of their own pure Attic dialect, full of "solecisms."

Here are some common solecisms.

• "This is just between you and I" for "This is just between you and me" (hypercorrection to avoid the common, nonstandard "you and me" form in the predicate of copulative sentences, despite the fact that "me" is the standard pronoun for the object of a preposition)
• "He ain't going nowhere" for "He isn't [or "he's not"] going anywhere" (dialectal usage; see "ain't")
• "He's the person whom I believe is the fastest" for "He's the person who I believe is the fastest" (hypercorrection resulting from the perception that "whom" is a formal version of "who" or that the relative pronoun is functioning as an object in the dependent clause when, in fact, it is a subject, with the predicate "is the fastest"; contrast "whom I believe to be the fastest," in which "whom" is the object of "I believe")
• "Irregardless" for "regardless" (nonstandard usage from analogy with constructions like "irreverent," "irrespective," and "irrevocable," where the negative prefix "in-" changes to "ir-")
• "The woman, she is here" for "The woman is here" (nonstandard usage with the double subject "she")

Score yourself one point for each one you hear today. Give yourself two points for each one you catch yourself using. Score 100 points for correcting your boss when he utters one.

Good luck with your job search!

More words for writers

abderian           Given to incessant or idiotic laughter
abecedarian      A person who is learning the alphabet
cruciverbalist   One who loves doing crossword puzzles
hamartithia      Being likely to make a mistake
quidnunc         One who always wants to know what is going on
mulligrubs      A state of depression or low spirits

Words for writers

lethologica The inability to recall a precise word for something
mytacism The incorrect or excessive use of the letter M
polyphloisboian Making a lot of noise or loud racket
skoptsy The act of self castration
tetrapyloctomy The act of splitting a hair four ways
witzelsucht A feeble attempt at humour
philosophunculist One who pretends to know more than they do to impress others

What's in a word?

aMarc Ambinder, politics editor at The Atlantic, reports:

If you blinked, you might have missed it. The Obama administration has unofficially rebranded "war on terror" phrase that dominated public discourse throughout the Bush administration. The replacement phrase, carefully chosen, is "CVE" -- Countering Violent Extremism.

Early in the administration, the Office of Management and Budget changed the wording of the line item under which the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were funded. They called it "Overseas Contingency Operations." That phrase was never intended to be for public consumption (and public ridicule), but burrowed bureaucrats leaked it to the press, a field day was had.

Countering Violent Extremism is noticeable for two words that aren't there: some variant of "jihad," which is the preferred predicate for counter-terrorism-fighting conservatives, and "war," which is because the administration has put de-radicalization alongside the Predator drones as  a primary instrument of combat.  No mention of Islam, of course. That's because the administration wants to try and decouple the notion of combating terrorism from the Muslim faith itself.  BTW: when I first heard the phrase, I assumed it stood for "combating violent extremism."  But no -- the word combat denotes military action only -- Obama's approach combines hard and soft power.

Though there hasn't been any formal announcement, folks in the counteterrorism business are now using CVE in the same way they used GWOT -- Global War On Terror just five years ago.

The asterisk

asterisk / ASS-tuh-risk / noun

The character * used in printing or writing as a reference mark, as an indication of the omission of letters or words, to denote a hypothetical or unattested linguistic form, or for various arbitrary meanings.

Merriam-Webster: If someone asked you to associate the word "asterisk" with a heavenly body, you would probably have no problem relating it to a star — even if you didn't know that the word "asterisk" derives from "asteriskos," a Greek word meaning "little star." "Asterisk" has been a part of the constellation of English since at least the late 1300s, but it is far from the only shining star in our language. The Greek forms "astēr," "astro," and "astrum" (all of which mean "star") still cast their light in English by way of such words as "asteroid," "astral," and "disaster" (which originally meant "an unfavorable aspect of a planet or star"). Even "star" itself is a distant relative of "asterisk."

The asterisk is derived from the need of the printers of family trees in feudal times as a symbol to indicate date of birth. The original shape was seven-armed, each arm like a teardrop shooting from the center. For this reason, in some computer circles it is called a splat, perhaps due to the "squashed-bug" appearance of the asterisk on many early line printers.

How to not sound dumb

Jean Rupp, author of Grammar Gremlins: An Instant Guide to Perfect Grammar for Everybody in Business, lists some common grammatical mistakes:


David Doberman and me will meet at 8:00 a.m. Thursday.
Confusing I and me is a sure way to demonstrate your lack of grammatical skills. Use I when you do something ( I do the job); use me when something is done to or for you ( The job was done for me). Correct: David Doberman and I will meet at 8:00 a.m. Thursday.

If you have any questions, please call John, David, or myself. Never, never use  myself as a substitute for me. Use  myself reflexively (I thought of it  myself), or use it if you do something to yourself (I cut  myself). Correct: If you have any questions, please call John, David, or me.

I like the suggestion which Jack submitted.
That introduces a restrictive (defining) clause or phrase -- it is essential to the meaning of the sentence. Which introduces a non-restrictive (non- defining) clause or phrase. It is non-essential information. (Example:  I like Jack's suggestion, which everyone already knows). Generally, you will use commas with which. Correct: I like the suggestion that Jack submitted.

Who did you select to conduct the seminar?
Who or Whom? Follow these simple guidelines. Use  who when  he, she, they, I, or  we could replace the who. They are all nominative case. Use whom when  him, her, them, me, or  us could replace the  whom. They are all objective case. Still confused? An easy way to ensure (or is it  assure or maybe  insure?) that you are using the right form is to rearrange the sentence like this:

 Whom did you select to conduct the seminar? (objective case) I selected  him to conduct the seminar. (objective case)

Correct: Whom did you select to conduct the seminar?

I feel badly about not getting the speaking engagement.
Use  bad (the adjective) after feel or after verbs dealing with the senses — taste, touch, sight, sound, smell. (Example: Yuk! This food smells bad and tastes bad.) Use  badly (the adverb) with action verbs. Therefore, if you are wearing gloves, you will hinder your sense of touch and you will  feel badly. Look at it this way. If my dog, Fred, smells  bad, I need to give him a bath. If my dog, Fred, smells  badly, he has a defective nose.  Correct: I feel bad about not getting the speaking engagement.

Marv Ellis is the more competent of the five speakers we interviewed.

Use the comparative form  more when referring to two persons, places or things. Use the superlative form  most when referring to three or more. Correct: Marv Ellis is the more competent of the five speakers we interviewed.
   
The new series of management classes look interesting.
The verb  look must agree in number with the subject, which is  series. More often than not, writers mistake  classes for the subject. Classes is a part of a prepositional phrase;  series is the simple subject—a singular, collective noun that requires a singular verb. Don't let modifying words that come between the subject and the predicate confuse you. Correct: The new series of management classes looks interesting.

Sometimes a person gives up on an exercise program because they don't have time for it.
Even careful writers sometimes allow this naughty Grammar Gremlin to encroach upon their messages. A pronoun must agree in number, person, and gender with its antecedent (the word for which the pronoun stands). Correct: Sometimes a person gives up on an exercise program because he or she doesn't have time for it. Correct: Sometimes people give up on exercise programs because they don't have time for them.

The general manager will introduce himself to the new employees on Tuesday, December 12th.
Don't let this troublesome Grammar Gremlin slip onto your page. When the day follows the month, use a numerical (  1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). Don't add  -st, -nd, or -th to the number. However, when they day precedes the month, you can write it in either a numerical ( 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.) or as a word ( first, second, third, fourth, etc.) Correct: The general manager will introduce himself to the new employees on Tuesday, December 12.

We need to schedule the conference room, write an agenda, and it must be sent to all employees.

The parallel structure in this sentence is off balance. Careful writers must use similar grammatical structures for similar ideas. Correct: We need to schedule the conference room, write an agenda, and send it to all employees.

The news in the news

Let's check in on the Fourth Estate to see what the ink-stained wretches are up to.

Seems The Washington Post is not just reporting but making news. Todd Zywicki at The Volock Conspiracy sums it up nicely:

The Washington Post’s Ombudsman Andrew Alexander dedicated his column this week to the Post’s puzzling silence on the DOJ’s dismissal of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case over the past several months.  Alexander rebukes the Post for its failure to cover the story, but seemingly accepts the explanation of the paper’s reporters and editors at face value that this reflected resource constraints, not ideological bias: “National Editor Kevin Merida, who termed the controversy “significant,” said he wished The Post had written about it sooner. The delay was a result of limited staffing and a heavy volume of other news on the Justice Department beat, he said.”

But this explanation won’t wash.

Consider this substantial, prominently-placed puff piece that ran just one month ago (June 4, 2010) on page A3 of the Post that is entirely dedicated to the activities of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division: “Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division steps up enforcement.” I recall sitting at the breakfast table reading that piece and being absolutely stunned at its sycophantic tone and–most astonishingly–at the failure to even mention the controversial dismissal of the New Black Panthers case.  Not a single word.

I’m sorry, but Kevin Merida’s excuse simply does not add up.  I simply cannot see how the Post could assign a reporter (Jerry Markon) to write a substantial story–which reads like a press release for the new DOJ Civil Rights Division–and claim that its failure to even mention the New Black Panthers case until last week was the result of “limited staffing and a heavy volume of other news on the Justice Department beat.”  And I think that Alexander’s uncritical whitewash of Merida’s excuse is, well, inexcusable.

Meanwhile, The Post did find time to unveil a massive report on the U.S. intelligence community. This naturally raised alarms, causing, for example, The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which sent a memo to contractors warning them about the article. “Foreign intelligence services, terrorist organizations and criminal elements will have potential interest in this kind of information. It is important that companies review their overall counterintelligence posture to ensure that it is appropriate.”

On the other hand, perhaps the newspaper is doing us a service in reporting that, "The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."

If this prevents our intelligence community from preventing another big one, then I'm concerned. Here are some highlights from the article:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.
* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

That's not good. Sounds as though a lot of dots aren't being connected.

Five quick rules

From Stan Hoffer at Playing in The Word Farm:

1. If it “goes without saying” then don’t say it. If it doesn’t, in fact, go without saying, then don’t say it does.

“Obviously, the sky is blue.” Putting the “obviously” doesn’t suddenly make the statement insightful.

2. True or false: a comma must precede any use of the word “and”?

FALSE. Commas should only precede and, but, for, or, nor, so, or yet when they introduce an independent clause. For example, “We laid out our music and snacks, and began to study.” Placing a comma after “snacks” is incorrect. The subject of the sentence has not changed, “we” still “began to study.”

An example of correct comma use: “The game was over, and the crowd began to leave.” The game and the crowd are different subjects and the clauses are independent. The crowd could still be leaving regardless of what is happening with the game.

A comma can also precede “and” when it is used in a list of three or more items. However, in a list it is entirely optional and called an “oxford comma”.

3. Once upon a time, the English language had a way to modify both nouns and verbs. Adjectives did the trick on the former and adverbs on the latter. You didn’t just have to walk, you could walk quickly!

Adverbs modify verbs. For example, you accomplish a task with ease. What do you say?

WRONG: I can do that easy!
RIGHT: I can do that easily!

You accomplish a task with more ease than your colleagues. What do you say?

WRONG: I can do that easier than they can.
RIGHT: I can do that more easily than they can.

4. Et cetera: a useful Latin-derived tool for shortening lists. However, unless you are a lawyer, using it (and especially overusing it) can make you sound unprofessional.

If you must, use it once. A second or third occurrence in the same document essentially says, “I really don’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll just jam etc. on the end and try to pretend I do!”

Another et cetera mistake is using it when you should use “et al.” Listing a set of objects? Use etc. Listing a group of people? Use et al. It also is derived from Latin and means “and others.”

5. Some people seem to think that throwing an “i.e.” into a paragraph makes them look smarter. Unfortunately, most of those people are using i.e. to mean “for example.”

WRONG: “I have sold many products, i.e. washing machines.” This doesn’t make any sense.

i.e. is an abbreviation of the Latin words id est, literally translated as “that is.” In English, i.e. is used synonymously with “namely.” It specifies and limits.

e.g. is also a Latin abbreviation but of the words exempli gratia, meaning “for example.” E.g. implies, “This is one of several possible options.”

Mark Twain on interviews

From a recently published essay, "Concerning the Interview," by Mark Twain:

The Interview was not a happy invention. It is perhaps the poorest of all ways of getting at what is in a man. In the first place, the interviewer is the reverse of an inspiration, because you are afraid of him. You know by experience that there is no choice between these disasters. No matter which he puts in, you will see at a glance that it would have been better if he had put in the other: not that the other would have been better than this, but merely that it wouldn't have been this; and any change must be, and would be, an improvement, though in reality you know very well it wouldn't. I may not make myself clear: if that is so, then I have made myself clear--a thing which could not be done except by not making myself clear, since what I am trying to show is what you feel at such a time, not what you think--for you don't think; it is not an intellectual operation; it is only a going http://www.pbs.org/newshour/images/multimedia/twain/1.jpgaround in a confused circle with your head off. You only wish in a dumb way that you hadn't done it, though really you don't know which it is you wish you hadn't done, and moreover you don't care: that is not the point; you simply wish you hadn't done it, whichever it is; done what, is a matter of minor importance and hasn't anything to do with the case. You get at what I mean? You have felt that way? Well, that is the way one feels over his interview in print.

The opposite of miniscule

In all my years around publishing and printing, I've never heard of this word.

ma·jus·cule /muh-juhs-kyool, maj-uh-skyool

–adjective
1. (of letters) capital.
2. large, as either capital or uncial letters.
3. written in such letters (opposed to minuscule).
–noun
4. a majuscule letter

History: 1720–30; < L majuscula (littera) a somewhat bigger (letter), equiv. to majus-, s. of major major + -cula -cule

-cule, thanks for asking, is a form of -cle, which is a suffix found in french loanwords of Latin origin, originally diminutive nouns, and later in adaptations of words borrowed directly from Latin or in Neo-Latin coinages: article; conventicle; corpuscle; particle. In Latin, this suffix formed from verbs and  nouns that denoted a place appropriate to the action of the verb (cubicle, receptacle) or a means by which the action is performed (vehicle).

Weasel words to avoid at work

"Try"
"Try" is a weasel word. "Well, I'll try," some people say. It's a cop-out. They're just giving you lip service, when they probably have no real intention of doing what you ask. Remember what Yoda says to Luke Skywalker in "Star Wars": "Do or do not--there is no try."

"Whatever"
This word is a trusted favorite of people who want to dismiss you, diminish what you say, or get rid of you quickly. "Whatever," they will say as an all-purpose response to your earnest request. It's an insult and a verbal slap in the face. It's a way to respond to a person without actually responding. When you say "whatever" after another person has said his or her piece, you have essentially put up a wall between the two of you and halted any progress in communicating.

"I'll get back to you"
When people need to buy time or avoid revealing a project's status, they will say, "I'll get back to you," and they usually never do. If people say they will get back to you, always clarify. Ask them when they will get back to you, and make sure they specify the day and time. If they don't, then pin them down to a day and time and hold them to it. If they won't give you a day or time, tell them you'll call in a day or week and follow up. Make sure you call and get the information you need.

"Yes, but . . ."
This is another excuse. You might give your team members suggestions or solutions, and they come back to you with "Yes, but . . ." as a response. They don't really want answers, help, or solutions. You need to call the "Yes, but . . ." people out on their avoidance tactic by saying something like "You know, Jackie, every time I offer you a suggestion you say, 'Yes, but . . . ,' which makes me think you don't really want to solve this problem. That's not going to work. If you want to play the victim, go right ahead, but I'm not going to allow you to keep this up." After a response like that, you can be assured that the next words you hear will not be "Yes, but . . ."!

-- Forbes

Writing email that gets read

Here's a thought. Newspaper articles are meant to read, right? Well, you can't assume everything. Nevertheless, that's the idea. So why not craft your emails like news articles. Wayne Turmel:

The subject line is the headline. When you read news — either in print or online — how do you decide what’s worth reading, what you’ll save til later and what you don’t care about? You look at the headline. In an email that’s the subject line. There’s nothing more frustrating than looking for an email about the Johnson Project under the heading “re: great seeing you Thursday.” The subject line should tell the reader what the email is about and whether it’s worth reading. If the content changes, don’t just hit REPLY– take the time to change the subject line.

The first paragraph is the “lead.” In a news article, the first paragraph contains the “who, what, when, where, why” — all the important information. You can quickly scan it and figure out if it’s worth further investigation. This doesn’t mean you leave out the details, it just means you don’t put them before the action item — or before telling the reader why this message is important to them. The critical information should be at the beginning of your email — preferably in the first paragraph, so people can read it in their preview pane.

The article is edited before it’s published. Every news article goes past at least two or more sets of eyes before it’s committed to paper or the web. Why, then, do we trust that we can rattle off critical business information without even rereading it ourselves, let alone have someone else take a look at it before we hit “send”? You don’t save any time by creating an email in seconds — and then spending days apologizing for misinformation or the tone of your email. Just because you can send things at the speed of light, doesn’t mean you should. Pause and reread your email before sending it. If it’s really critical have someone else take a look at it first.