It's personal...or not

Screw up your pronouns, and you can look naked as a writer:

“Today’s savvy marketers are quickly realizing that viewing the customer as merely a target is a critical mistake. In fact, referring to the people that consume their products as anything other than people, is a mistake.”

And writing about people with a pronoun other than “who” is a mistake as well.

Onward... into new-word hell:

Onboarding: "...in the case of onboarding (adding a new hire)."

In some organizations, I hear this process can be as painful as waterboarding.

Trialing: "Advertisers have been willing to trial these products." It's trial to come across these constructions, but it's what I get paid the big bucks for!

Coffehouse words

Many writers tend to jump on trendy words as quickly as they do trendy food and cocktails. Usually they do so without understanding the meaning. Abused about as badly as Michael Vick 's dogs is word "ironic." It's been hip for years, and it continues to be hip. Like cockroaches, I suspect, it will survive nuclear war. It's a word you pick up in college coffee houses, listening to your English major friends chat about Proust. It sounds intellectual. Most college graduates stagger out into the world having forgotten most of what they learned in school save for precious words such as ironic. They use such words liberally to erase any suspicion among strangers that they forged their diplomas.

Today, an otherwise insightful column from Mediapost, began this way:

I'M WRITING THIS COLUMN FROM the office of a Facebook Friend, ironically enough, as there was a building collapse in Harlem this afternoon that has canceled all train service out of Grand Central for the foreseeable future. Who knows when I might see the home office again?

A tough situation to be sure, but not ironic. Irony conveys meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning. It might be ironic (or just plain bizarre) if the writer were typing from the office of the building that collapsed, but that's not the case.

So think about those coffee-house words before you employ them.

Onward... another day's worth of redundancies

Integral part: Integral means "part of" something.
End result: A result is the end of a process.
Irrefutable facts: A fact is something that exists, that is reality. Unless you're channeling Descartes, facts aren't refutable. (While we're at it, you might want to use "refutable" where applicable rather than "irrefutable." The latter is in the dictionary, but means the same thing--and the former's 1505-1515 origin beats the latter by a century).
Contributing factor: Factor: 1. one of the elements contributing to a particular result or situation.

National idiom shortage

You think the economy's in bad shape? Check out a Page 1 Onion story in the current edition.

Since beginning two weeks ago, the deficit in these vernacular phrases has affected nearly every English speaker on the continent, making it virtually impossible to communicate symbolic ideas through a series of words that do not individually share the same meaning as the group of words as a whole. In what many are calling a cast-iron piano tune unlike any on record, idiomatic expression has been devastated nationwide.

More on Buckley

From today's Wall Street Journal excerpts of the late William F. Buckley's writing and speeches:

"I am lapidary but not eristic when I use big words."

Lapidary: "Characterized by an exactitude and extreme refinement that suggests gem cutting."

(ME lapidarius, relating to stone cutting).

Eristic: "Pertaining to controversy or disputation."

Derived from the Greek eristikos, eris meaning discord.

Death of a sesquipedalian writer

William F. Buckley Jr., who for decades warmed my father's heart and chilled the necks of liberals, died today at 82. Died at his desk. Died writing a column.
The New York Times' headline must have Buckley raising a heavenly martini in toast:

William F. Buckley Jr., 82, Dies; Sesquipedalian Spark of Right

The Times indirectly defined that fabulous word we learned as kids when it made reference to Buckley's use of "ten-dollar words."

On writing

Roy Peter Clark at Poynter has an interview this week with legendary sports writer Frank Deford, famous for his work, among other places, at short-lived The National (I have a copy of the last issue) and at Sports Illustrated.

The interview got me thinking about writing techniques. Deford has a couple of good ones:

· He types his written notes to get a sense for what he has, doesn’t have and needs to get.

· He uses colored paper to block out chunks of his stories (the historical background on blue, for instance).

· And if he has writer’s block (I’ll dedicate a post to this at a later date), he just starts somewhere and works from there (say in the middle and writes to the end and then figures out the top).

Writing in business is straightforward: You’re trying to communicate simple messages effectively; not elaborate on chaos theory. There’s always a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning is what you’re going to say; the middle is what you want to say; and the end is recapping what you just said.

Visualizing that structure is relatively simple.

Deford’s techniques (and others) are effective on much more complex writing projects. The most valuable book I ever read on writing is “The Art and Craft of Feature Writing” by William Blundell, a onetime editor for The Wall Street Journal. Blundell taught me to use 3x5 index cards to frame both major and minor points, including quotes. You can then lay the cards out in front of you, pushing them around to where they best work.

Adopting outline and prep techniques like Blundell’s or Deford’s make the act of sitting down at your laptop to write much less daunting.

An abundance of fodder

Andy Kessler, who wrote "How We Got Here," is one of my favorite business columnists. I catch him in The Wall Street Journal whenever he makes it onto the op-ed page. Today, he has a column titled "Internet Wrecking Ball," about the so-called "net-neutrality" issue.
I call out a couple of minor boo-boos (not to pick on Kessler but because I've got to post an item, and a bird in the hand is twittering at me):

"I personally would climb telephone poles on my street..." If you're doing the climbing, Andy, you can't outsource it. It's going to be personal.

"Yes, despite an overabundance..." (Part of the definition of the word abundance is "oversufficient quantity or supply," so overabundance is overly oversufficient and going over-over the top. But aha! you say, as if you've lured me into a rusty bear trap that has snapped violently around my ankle: Why, then, is the word overabundance in the dictionary? Because smart people who write dictionaries sometimes screw up.
Can you use overabundance? Sure. You can use colloquialisms too. But my point is: edit paranoid. The more critically you look at every word, the more you will whittle your copy into cogent prose and communicate clearer thought.