Brevity

Brevity, the art of getting one's point across in as few words as possible, is not one of my strengths, but I'm working on it. William Strunk wrote the book on writing style (literally... it's called The Elements of Style) and always advised his students to "Omit needless words!"

I meet lots of people who could use this counsel.

I think people try to sound more important by using lots of big words. It doesn't work; they just sound awkward.

In an editing class I took a few years ago, we looked at examples of excess wordiness and practiced correcting it. One egregious phrase that stuck in my head from that exercise is "due to the fact that." Why is it so horrible? Because it means the same thing as "because." Any time you can replace five words with one, DO IT! I still cringe every time I read "due to the fact that..."


We don't find wordiness only in writing, but in speech too. I recently heard Dick Cheney give an interview on Laura Ingraham's radio show, in which he made many sins against brevity. Here are a few, followed by my comments:


"...legitimate policy differences, not meant or intended to be personal attacks..."
Really, Sir? They were neither meant nor intended that way? 


"...everybody's desire to want to end the conflict [in Iraq]..."
I wish we could all hope for a stronger inclination to strive for that desire.


"...what was going on in that part of the world at that period of time..."
Here, he used fifteen words when he only needed four: "what was happening there."


Mr. Cheney, I respect you and admire some of your accomplishments, but you're not impressing me with your verbal diarrhea. Jeff Boomhauer is better at getting to the point.

The problem is not just with using too many words, but sometimes too many syllables. I've recently heard the following from friends and coworkers:

• "You're banded to the small desk!" Banded? First of all, the word you want is exiled, not banned. Secondly, it's just banned. You let an extra D sneak in there.
• "We've had way too many incidentses lately." I can see how this one arose. It's a hybrid of incidents and instances. These are both valid words, but you can't put them together and expect intelligent listeners to take you seriously.
• "I got all the names you asked for and the other data, and I collagated them." This is my favorite! Collagated? Isn't that a brand of toothpaste? You can use it to polish your saxomophone.

I could go on and on, but that would be ironic, something this blog is not meant or intended to be.

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Love my blog but want more cowbell? Wish I would fall into an abyss, or at least throw my laptop in? Feel I should have chosen 12 pt. Arial instead of 14 pt. Verdana? Comment below! I’m not a mind reader.

Why I Blog

I've not been very bloggy lately; I only posted one short entry here all weekend and nothing in the past couple days. I'd like to catch up now, and to explain something.

Upon starting Unintimidated by Convention last month, I said I was doing it for a class assignment and also for my own reasons, which I will now share with you. I see lots of blogs, many of which focus on a specific theme. This is where mine differs. I am not doing any of the following as I blog:

- riding my bike cross country to raise money/awareness for some rare disease

- trying out new material for later use in my burgeoning stand-up comedy act

- training for a marathon, triathlon, beauty pageant, or chess tournament

- fighting breast cancer, either first-hand or for a friend

- learning the ins and outs of parenthood

- getting advertising income

They say the pen is mightier than the

sword. That would mean a typewriter is

more powerful than a machine gun, and

a personal computer is greater than an

atomic bomb. I am a world superpower!

Photo by Kriss Szkurlatowski

The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset said, "Tell me to what you pay attention, and I’ll tell you who you are." If he could observe me, he'd say I'm a writer. I write all the time. I write at work, at school, at home and on the road, for homework and for fun. I write to pass time when I'm in a boring meeting. I write stuff inside my head almost constantly, and later type up or jot down the parts of it I can recall. I also read, because reading and writing are closely related activities that support each other. I read novels, stories, poems, magazines, blogs, websites, newsletters, jokes, scientific research, movie and book reviews, literary criticism, textbooks, and greeting cards.


Someday, I might get paid to write, maybe enough to make it my primary occupation. For now, I just do it because it's what I am.

So, if writing is such a natural and essential activity for me, why do I need the blog as a medium on which to do it? My answer: Blogging is the best way to encourage others to read my words. Writing in a journal that I keep to myself has its own special attraction. So does writing on a piece of scratch paper that goes immediately into the trash. Or writing a school paper that I know my professor will read, but probably nobody else ever will. All of these and many others are fine in their own right. But when I blog, I know there's at least a potential of reaching many people, both friends and strangers, all over the world. My writing takes on new meaning when I know others might read it. It sounds arrogant, and I think most writing is unavoidably arrogant. The key is to find a personal style or "voice" that is not egotistical, even if the activity tends toward arrogance. For example, I've just typed several paragraphs about myself, including frequent use of words like I, me, and my. With this realization, the writer now chooses to end, but will return soon.


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