Summit 2014 presentation: It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

1. Sylvia Miller
Sr. Communications Analyst, Elsevier
STC Fellow

2.  Does writing quality matter to you?
 Does your blood pressure rise when you see
errors in grammar, usage, or sentence
structure?
 Do you recognize your own writing faux pas,
or do they slide through and end up
embarrassing you?
 This session might be for you.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

3.  Discuss ways to eliminate the following from
our writing:
◦ Wordiness
◦ Redundancies and clutter
◦ Dangling and misplaced modifiers
 Consider how these writing offenses
unintentionally reveal our attitudes toward
readers.
 Work in teams to practice fixing these types
of writing errors.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

4.  Finish this: The latest, greatest, coolest
technology and presentation in the world
doesn’t matter if...
 Even in an edgy multimedia piece, wordy,
redundant, or ambiguous writing slowly
deflates a discerning reader’s awe.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

5.  Use short words and phrases when they work
as well as long words and phrases.
◦ within with
◦ listing list
◦ request ask
◦ you have the option you can
◦ in order to to
◦ unavailable for use unavailable
 Use the least number of words necessary to
convey your meaning.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

6.  BEFORE: If a publication is unavailable for use,
use this list to provide a reason as to why the
publication is unavailable. (21 words)
 BETTER: If a publication is not available,
select the reason from the list. (12 words)
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

7.  I want to impress you with all the words I
know, especially all the big ones.
 Because I write for a living, you expect me to
know and use a lot of words.
 I don’t care if I make readers wade through
unnecessary words to get the point.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

8.  “If you can’t explain it simply, you
don’t understand it well enough.”
Albert Einstein
 “Even highly educated, sophisticated
readers do best with plain English
writing. They are often the busiest
and most impatient of your site
visitors [readers], so words that they
recognize most quickly work best.”
Ginny Redish. Letting Go of the Words, 2007.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

9.  When fried, I like okra.
 Flying over the African plain, the elephants
were a wonderful site.
 Having laid an egg weighing two pounds, the
farmer proudly displayed his favorite ostrich
to the photographers.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

10.  The system ignores filter options when
selecting a letter from the alphabet bar.
 When referring to a specific function in an
application, a topic should always be
associated with a book.
 By entering information in the available entry
fields, the system will provide a search results
listing based on entered criteria.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

11.  The writer is the provider of hilarious
entertainment.
 The writer is careless or too rushed to
proofread.
 The writer’s attitude is, “It’s okay. The readers
know what I mean.”
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

12.  “I try to make what I have written tighter,
stronger, and more precise, eliminating every
element that’s not doing useful work. Then I
go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am
always amazed at how much clutter can still be
cut.” William Zinsser. On Writing Well, 2006
 smile happily absolutely essential
 still remains end result
 very unique unplanned emergency
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

13.  Zinsser drew brackets around “any
component in a piece of writing that wasn’t
doing useful work.”
 Unnecessary preposition: fill [up]
 Unnecessary adverb: might [possibly]
 Unnecessary adjective: [tall] skyscraper
 Little qualifier that weakens: [a bit], [sort of]
 Phrase: [in a sense]
 Entire sentence
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

14.  Underline or italicize key words in a sentence. “Look
carefully at the remaining words so you can determine
which are unnecessary, and then eliminate wordiness by
deleting them.” Kriszner and Mandell. The Wadsworth Handbook,
8th ed., 2008.
 WORDY: Once information is posted into the tab, the
Import button is then clicked to import the information,
and as a result, a summary opens. The Import Summary
is a system review or checkout of the information to be
imported and verifies items to be included in the new
group. Also, items which cannot be imported for one
reason or another are also listed in the summary.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

15.  WORDY: Once information is posted into the
tab, the Import button is then clicked to import
the information, and as a result, a summary
opens. The Import Summary is a system review
or checkout of the information to be imported
and verifies items to be included in the new
group. Also, items which cannot be imported
for one reason or another are also listed in the
summary.
 BETTER: Click Import. A summary opens
showing the information that was (or was not)
imported.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

16.  I want to impress you with long, complex
sentences.
 I don’t care if I make readers wade through
unnecessary words to get the point. They’re
probably going to skim anyway.
 I don’t have time to reread or use techniques
to cut the clutter.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

17.  “We are not writing clearly because people are
dumb. We’re writing clearly because we
respect their [readers’] time, interest and
attention.” Sarah J. Richards, Dumbing Down, blog,
4/28/2014
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

18.  “If you make your content easy to read, you
aren’t ‘dumbing down’, you are opening up
your information to anyone who wants to
read it. You are making it accessible. You are
trying not to exclude people based on their
education, cognitive function or reading
ability.” Sarah J. Richards, Dumbing Down, blog,
4/28/2014
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

19.  Work with others at your table to:
 Shop petites by shortening and tightening wording
 Clean up and cut clutter
 Rearrange to eliminate dangling or misplaced
modifiers
 We’ll compare results.
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

20.  My contact information:
sylviaamiller@woh.rr.com
Or
sylvia.miller@elsevier.com
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing

21.  About.com Grammar & Composition – Richard
Nordquist (weekly email) http://grammar.about.com
 Grammar Girl -
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/gramm
ar/top-ten-grammar-myths
 Zinsser, William. On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary
Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.
Harper Perennial, 2006.
 Redish, Janice. Letting Go of the Words, Second
Edition: Writing Web Content that Works. Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers, 2012.
 http://www.sarahjrichards.com/1/post/2014/04/du
mbing-down.html
#stc14 It's Time to Spruce Up Your Writing