What Are You Reading over the Holidays?

Last post of the year!

One of my great expectations as any holiday approaches is the found time to read more, and this year has not disappointed. Since I would be spending Christmas and New Year's days on another coast, I knew that the vacation would begin the moment I passed security at Newark Airport's Terminal C and settled into a seat at the waiting area of my departure gate to read. The cross-country flight would grant me another six hours of uninterrupted reading. Then I anticipated more late-night or early-morning opportunities during a stay on the dunes near Monterey and hills of Oakland. 

I recently bought at a bargain price the Library of America's boxed set of all 14 Kurt Vonnegut novels, spanning 45 years, from 1952 to 1997, because I wanted to rediscover why I was so caught up in the Vonnegut mystique of the early 1970s, when I was a college student. I've gotten through Player Piano (1952), a disjointed but revelatory critique of the dystopia that would emerge when machines replace human labor and engineers and managers run everything, and The Sirens of Titan (1959), a slapstick space travel odyssey about wealth, greed, and vanity.

Then sometimes you get an unexpected gift, as I did on Christmas Eve when browsing East Bay Booksellers on College Avenue in the Rockridge section of Oakland, California. I picked up Again, the Dawn: Selected Poems, 1976 - 2022 by Grace Schulman. Schulman, a recent recipient of the Frost Medal for Distinguished Achievement in American Poetry and a Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, where she has taught for 50 years. As one of her early students, I was greatly influenced by her teaching style and writing, as I mentioned in a previous post. This latest Schulman book collects 127 poems from all nine of her volumes, standing as a testament to an extraordinary career, which I hope is far from over. 

So here I am, switching between Vonnegut and Schulman, returning to writers I discovered a half-century ago. But I am also reading newer writers, mostly nonfiction, as I've noted in previous posts here. What are you reading during your downtime?

Use Your Words!

When children cry without explanation, parents typically say, "Use your words." It's a good reminder to all of us when writing business email or instant messages. Below are three common examples of using our words to say what we really mean.

This first example written by an information technology analyst to an end user replaces two words too general in the context with more specific ones:

• Vague: You must do several things before starting the engine.
• Specific: You must take three security precautions before starting the engine.

This second example written by a project manager to a department chief shows how two specific project-related terms replace a crude, virtually meaningless word:

• Vague: We will talk about project stuff during the meeting.
• Specific: We will talk about project deliverables and contingencies during the meeting.

This third example written by an engineer to all levels of the organization interested only in operations minimizes the value of two other business aspects because they do not relate to engineering. The second draft clarifies that oversight. 

• Vague: This engineering report divides the business issues into operations and miscellaneous.
• Specific: This engineering report divides the business issues into operations, administration, and management.

The problem with being specific is that we sometimes do not come up with the best words in first draft, so we should allow editing time if we want to use our words.

 

Pandemic Practices

I know the last thing you want to hear about is the pandemic. But I've learned a lot more than the value of getting vaccinated, washing my hands, masking up, and meeting others sparingly during those two-plus years that we were in pandemic mode, although I am grateful for those lessons. Sure, I lost a lot of business, but as the saying goes, money ain't everything, especially when considering those who lost their lives to covid. I mentioned in previous posts the pleasures of reading, writing, listening, and seeing more intently (and intensely) during those "lost years," but I believe I have gained so much by slowing down my commercial treadmill from March 2020 to June 2022. Here is how.  

I found unprecedented time to read many of the books on my bucket list, but I still have many more to read. Some recent worthwhile reads have been Joseph Henrich's The WEIRDEST People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, Geert Hofstede's Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations, Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci, and Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation.

I have subscribed to YouTube channels that never cease to put a smile on my face, including those of pianists Rossano Sportiello, Stephanie Trick & Paolo Alderighi. Or I could just listen a thousand times to pianist Michel Camilo play From Within, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane play The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond play Emily, pianist-singer Eliane Elias play Samba Triste, or pianist Ahmad Jamal play Poinciana. Those five videos alone could take and make an entire day for me.

All of these activities have inspired and continue to shape me, proof that we never stop learning.  

Advice for All Writers from Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) offers eight tips for fiction writers in his introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (2000), but three of them, tips 1, 5, and 8, apply to business and technical writers as well. 

Tip 1: Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. We need to heed this advice when writing anything at work, from an audit or an investigation report to a procedure or a proposal. Readers do not need to know all the who, what, where, when, why, and how—only as needed. Consider the business purpose related to your audience. It's not what you know that matters; it's what your readers need to know.

Tip 5: Start as close as to the end as possible. Fiction writers can take this tip to mean that they should reveal or foreshadow the climax or even the resolution early in the story. On-the-job writers use another term: executive summary. Ask for what you want right up front. In an incident report, you will want to note the human and property damage of an accident immediately. For a proposal, you want to put the ask right away.

Tip 8: Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such a complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should the cockroaches eat the last few pages. Well, Vonnegut said it all with this piece of guidance, didn't he? Place the request before the reason, the solution before the problem, and the result before the process.

Thank you, Kurt Vonnegut.

I Did Not Say That, Part 12: Oxford Comma

I conclude this series on misinterpretations of my teaching with the Oxford comma, or serial comma, a punctuation mark I invariably use but do not insist that others do. I could have ended the post with that single sentence, but, hey, I'm a writer.

Notice the comma, known as the Oxford comma, before and in the following sentences:

Thanksgiving has passed, Christmas is coming, and New Year's Day will soon follow.

Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, and Duke Ellington were born in April. 

Rita Dove has written poetry, fiction, drama, and essays. 

I have evidence of using this comma when I was a college student in the 1970s. I have no logical reason for using it; it is just a preference. I have seen many examples from teachers trying to prove that using the Oxford comma adds clarity to a sentence, but all those examples would be better rephrased with or without the Oxford comma for clarity. I tell my students that they may use it if they wish and I will not correct them if they do not, but I do suggest that they do or do not use it consistently. When my editorial clients ask me why I use it, I say it's just a choice. Then some will tell me to drop it, and most will tell me to keep it and adopt it themselves. I do what my clients say on this matter. They are the ones who pay the invoice.

Consistently use the Oxford comma if you like, but I did not say you must.

I Did Not Say That, Part 11: Mr. and Ms. or Nothing?

The gender identification movement has something to say about how we address each other in writing. Finding gender-neutral ways of referring to people is taking hold across many major segments of society, particularly the workplace. Referring to an individual with the traditionally standard plural they regardless of their sex or sexual has becoming the not-so new standard. 

In formal writing, do we then eliminate Mr. or Ms. altogether and address people by their given name and surname, as in Dear Jia Liu or Dear Avinash Patel? I ask this at a time when I still meet people who insist on using Miss and Mrs. when referring to women; they have been out of touch with prevailing standards for a half-century! And what if people want to be referred to as she/her or even Mrs., just as others want to be referred to as they? I noted in a post earlier this year that these issues are evolving, so I continue to tell writers to stop looking for certainty in this area. Just be mindful and, above all, respectful of your readers.

I do not believe the matter is completely settled to the extent that subject-verb agreement remains a grammatical standard. But those who believe that proponents of gender identity merely compose a fringe group are wrong. If we do  not want misgender our readers, keep reading up on the issue in countless online resources, and think before you address.

I Did Not Say That, Part 10: Formal Style

"I write like I talk, so I want to improve my writing style."

Whenever I hear someone making this comment, I respond, "Why change? You speak respectfully, clearly, and concisely. I understand you perfectly." Wow, does that comment stun them.

What's so bad about writing like you talk?

Assuming you are articulate and speaking at your professional best, as you would during a public course in which you are a participant, then you should strive to write with a similar style. When hanging out with old friends at a bar, you might say, "Yo, man, like I ain't feeling it when I'm rapping, and my scribing is all jive." But among professional peers, you would likely to say something like, "I tend to take a long time to get to the point when I'm speaking, and my writing is even worse." That's formal enough in our world today.

Do you always want a formal style?

You might say, "I need to write more formally." Fair enough. But if you ever open an email with "Hello Hal," "Hi Hilda," "Good day Gloria," or "Dear Dan," you are not writing formally. In fact, I hesitate to say, "Dear Dr. Davis" or "Dear Ms. Miller" is appropriately formal today because of preferred pronouns emerging from the gender identification movement. These days, a more gender-neutral "Dear David Davis" or "Dear Millie Miller" seems more the fashion. Even dropping Dear seems a better fit. (Sorry, old timers: things change.) 

So if you see me hedging when you say, "I always want to write formally," it's because I'm trying to find a nice way to say, "No, you don't."

I Did Not Say That, Part 9: Avoiding "I Can't"

Most of my clients are in the service business. Serving others concerns what you can do, not what you cannot do. For this obvious reason, I admonish people to avoid defaulting to expressions such as I cannot, We are unable to, My team finds it impossible to, and Our company is not in a position to—all meaning just about the same thing: we are recalcitrant, indolent, and intractable.

So how do we get around saying and writing I can't, especially to the people we owe our living to? By saying its opposite: I can:

• Instead of writing the repellent "I can't help you next week," write "I can help you today." 
• Avoid saying the negative "We are unable to complete this project without additional staff and funding," by saying "We are able to complete this project with additional staff and funding." 
• Rather than communicate "My team finds it impossible to complete this proposal on time," prefer "My team needs another day to complete this proposal." 
• Drop "Our company is not in a position to provide guidance in this area" in favor of "Our company recommends expert consultant Paul Jefferson for guidance in this area."

I am not saying we should never use expressions like I can't, but I am saying that we should default to positives. If your clients insist you help them next week after you've written, "I can help you today," then explain: "I'll be on my honeymoon next week" or whatever your reason. If they still insist, then they're not getting the message, although reasonable people will. They have given you no choice but to write the negative "I am unavailable next week." But remember to make the positive I can your default.

I Did Not Say That, Part 8: Apologizing

Here's another one from the I-Never-Told-You-That files. I believe we should not apologize for matters beyond our control. Let's say I lost electrical power for an extended period, as did most people from the Caribbean to northeastern Canada in October 2012. I would explain the reason, but not apologize, for not getting back to you sooner. People have incorrectly taken this position to mean "don't apologize." 

Not true. I'm a big believer in apologizing for something we could have controlled, say an unintended but unwelcomed comment (we could have chosen different words), a late appearance (we could have begun our commute earlier), a late response (we could have communicated sooner), or a mistake (we could have been more careful). In fact, I urge people in my classes to apologize unconditionally when an apology is due. So what does an unconditional apology look like? 

Let's start with what an unconditional apology does not look like:

• "I'm sorry, but ..." (Never follow an apology with a justification for a misdeed.
• "I'm sorry if you think ..." (I think? How dare you!)

An unconditional apology should have five parts, all beginning with the letter A:

• Assertion –  The precise reason for your apology. ("I'm sorry I kept you waiting for five minutes before beginning the virtual meeting.")
• Acknowledgment –  An explanation of why the offended party deserved better treatment. ("I know how important it was for all of us to be on time for the meeting.")
• Assurance –  A promise to do better next time ("If I know I'm running late in the future, I'll text you to begin the meeting without me before I take an interrupting phone call.")
• Adjustment – An act or gesture compensating the offended party. ("As promised, I took your turn to write the attached meeting review.")
• Appreciation – An expression of gratitude for your relationship with the offended party. ("You manage meetings masterfully, so I look forward to the next one you run.")  

Using the five A's of an apology will improve your relationships as a colleague, teammate, friend, sibling, parent, child, or relative. And those apologies will be more real when they are due.

I Did Not Say That, Part 7: Assertiveness and Aggressiveness

In teaching tone, I make a point of distinguishing between assertiveness and aggressiveness. This is no small point, as some of us tend to use these words interchangeably, and each word has nuanced detonations (literal meanings) and connotations (inferred meanings). The root of both words is Latin: assertive from assertus, meaning defended or claimed, and aggressive from aggressus, meaning attack. Regardless of their roots, we are familiar with sentences such as these:

• Val could not be more assertive about her preferred political candidate. (Val seems single-mindedly certain about her opinion, which is not necessarily bad.)
• Xavier never was assertive about compliance with the policy until he believed his staff began taking too many liberties with it. (Xavier’s newfound assertiveness is edging toward running roughshod about the policy, which may border on stubbornness.)   
• Yu said he quit his job because of his manager’s aggressiveness. (Here we take aggressiveness to mean belligerence, which we do well to avoid, especially in the workplace.)  
• Zoey's aggressiveness on the court helps her win most tennis tournaments she enters. (In this case, aggressiveness suggests wanting to win at all costs.)

Writing assertively (authoritatively confident and bold) depends on the point you are trying to make, the audience you are addressing, and the emotional climate. In my line of work as a writing consultant, I write assertively in rare cases, usually when my clients insist on no wiggle room from this professional wiggler. Writing aggressively (belligerently), on the other hand, is a no-no. Who am I to be confrontational with the people who pay for my service? Sorry to be so assertive here, but I’m sure you get my point.

Now here’s the dig: Since I say some of us may use assertive and aggressive interchangeably, myself not included, some people may wrongly believe that I am encouraging an aggressive tone. Never. I don’t care if we want our favorite athlete to be aggressive in competition. The office, whether actual or virtual, is not a sport. Respecting people’s feelings is part of our job, whether we like it or not. On second thought, we should like respecting other people’s feelings.  If you are ever told your writing tone is aggressive, you must do two things: apologize and change. I can’t be more assertive than that.

I Did Not Say That, Part 6: Beginning a Sentence with "But"

You can begin a sentence with but—no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I discussed this point in a 2018 post and readdress the issue here with examples from writers far better than most of us who began a sentence with the conjunction.

"But with defeat comes the need to talk, to explain, which presented problems for a fiction writer." Joseph Blotner, Faulkner: A Biography, Volume 1 (1974), page 691

"But it doesn't matter with me now." Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., "I See the Promised Land" 1968 speech, in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writing and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1986), page 286 

"But in 1861 these achievements still lay in the future." James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988), page 321

"But the atmosphere of crisis that has been generated by the confusion among some of the white Americans who control the 'education establishment' is cause not only for alarm but for red alert and hot pursuit." Albert Murray, The Omni-Americans in Albert Murray: Collected Essays & Memoirs (1970), page 177

"But there's a problem, which has more to do with space than race: The longer form does not lend itself to headlines." William Safire, Watching My Language: Adventures in the Word Trade (1997), page 110

These five examples are from five different stylists: a biographer, a social activist, a historian, a critic, and a rhetorician/grammarian. I can offer many more examples of accomplished writers from other fields using but at the beginning of a sentence with their editors' approval. The point of raising this issue is not to encourage starting sentences with but. Rather, I want to reinforce the point that rhetorical rules are usually arbitrary, especially when cited by writing teachers who rarely write. True, overusing but to lead off a sentence may suggest a weak writing style. But the writer's goal is to employ a variety of sentence beginnings, middles, and endings. How can we create this effect without turning to all options available to us?

I Did Not Say That, Part 5: Beginning a Sentence with "Because"

Haven't so many of us been taught not to begin a sentence with because? That advice from our elementary school teachers is incorrect, but I understand why they gave it. They wanted us to avoid writing sentence fragments, like the one in the answer below:

Question: Why did the U.S. Civil War begin?  

Answer: Because of slavery.

Our teachers reasonably expected us to write complete sentences, so they should have accepted an answer that read, "Because of slavery, the U.S. Civil War began." 

Those who refuse to surrender their grade school teachers' admonishment about never beginning a sentence with because will say, "You should use since instead, as in, 'Since there was slavery, the U.S. Civil War began.'"

Well, doesn't because mean since?

Beware of catch-all grammatical or rhetorical rules, those edicts from bogus language authorities that begin with never or always: "Never begin a sentence with because" or "Always use a comma to separate an introductory word, phrase, or clause from the subject of the sentence." Such maxims will sooner or later let you down. Language is too rich, flexible, and dynamic to be subjected to intractable tips.

While I do say it's all right to begin a sentence with because, I add to that advice a suggestion from Aristotle, "In all things moderation." Do not overdo it.

I Did Not Say That, Part 4: Fragments

A fragment is not a complete sentence and, therefore, a grammatical error because it lacks a subject, a predicate, or both. A subject and a predicate are both necessary to form a standard sentence. Here are examples of a correct sentence followed by three incorrect fragments:

Standard sentence: When Henry arrives, the meeting will begin.   

Fragment, lacking subject: When Henry arrives, will begin.

Fragment, lacking predicate: When Henry arrives, the meeting.

Fragment, lacking subject and predicate: When Henry arrives.

Although we learned in school not to write fragments and our managers admonish us to write complete sentences, excellent writers frequently write them. Here is an example of breaking the standard sentence rule by the brilliant writer, Joan Didion, in her 2005 book The Year of Magical Thinking (page 128): 

I  remember learning at UCA the names of many tests and scales. The Kimura Box Test. The Two-Point Discrimination Test. The Glasgow Coma Scale, the Glasgow Outcome Scale.

The first sentence is fine, the next two are fragments and the last is a comma splice, also a nonstandard sentence we have been taught to avoid. So why do writers as great as Didion and their editors allow these fragments? For many reasons, including impact, rhythm, and variety. (The previous sentence is a fragment!) I do not tell people to never write them, but to use them only when their best judgment tells them a fragment works better than a complete sentence. If you've ever written in an email Thanks instead of I thank you, or Received instead of I received your attachment, or Done instead of We have completed the task, then you are writing fragments that most reasonable readers would say are preferable to their longer, correct counterparts.

While a carefully considered fragment may have its place in professional writing for the sake of brevity, we should avoid writing fragments like these:

Opening fragment: In response to your inquiry. (Prefer I am responding to your inquiry.)

Mid-message fragment: Consequently, falling behind schedule. (Prefer Consequently, the project is falling behind schedule.) 

Closing fragment: Questions, 1-732-718-3361. (Prefer If you have questions, call 1-732-718-3361.)

If you are not sure of whether to write a sentence or a fragment, then write a sentence. That's what I said.

I Did Not Say That, Part 3: Ideas vs. Verbiage

In a writing workshop,  I might give a sentence like the one below instructing students to eliminate unnecessary words without changing the writer's intention:

I am writing this email to inform you that you are required to stop conducting your investigation right away on a temporary basis due to the fact that Jefferson is taking a position of not being cooperative in response to your interview. (42 words)

Here is the suggested solution to this editing exercise:

You must immediately discontinue investigating until Jefferson cooperates with your interview. (11 words)

Of course, we do not need the false start, I am writing this email, to understand the sentence. Other longwinded phrases are replaceable by single words (are required = must, conducting your investigation = investigating, right away = immediately, due to the fact that = because,  not being cooperative = noncooperative). Still other phrases mean nothing in the context (is taking a position of, in response to). We also can find ways of implying the meaning with fewer words (until Jefferson cooperates implies well enough that Jefferson is not cooperating and that the discontinuation is temporary). 

Some students miss the point of this exercise by dropping words necessary to the meaning, such as temporarily or immediately, which would change the writer's intent. For this reason, I make a point of discussing the differences among revising, editing, and proofreading, which we should do in this order:

• Revising – a matter of content and structure, when we move, add, or delete ideas to support our point and address the reader's concerns (purposefulness, completeness, organization).
• Editing – a matter of style, when we change the expression of language to best express our intention (courtesy, clarity, conciseness, correctness).  
• Proofreading – a matter of detecting overlooked errors (layout, typos). 

By the time we edit, we should have already determined what goes into the message; we are merely finessing the language, massaging the expression. People mistake my saying delete unnecessary words by eliminating ideas essential to the meaning of the sentence. If it adds value, keep it in; if it does not, out it goes.

I Did Not Say That, Part 2: "To Be"

When I suggest using action verbs in place of being verbs for greater clarity, I am not saying to never use being verbs. As I mentioned in a previous WORDS ON THE LINE post, being verbs (e.g., am, are, is, was, were, be, being, been) have their place in excellent writing. We need to use to be in continuous tense, as in I am running for mayor, or in general statements where a copulative will do, such as She is an engineer or He is Australian.

Nevertheless, using action verbs makes our writing more precise, more clear. Let's revisit those three to be examples in the previous paragraph. Instead of writing I am running for mayor, I can make am running a noun and find a more exact action verb, such as By running for mayor, I plan to transform our town into a more economically vibrant community. Rather than write She is an engineer, I could choose the more informative She graduated from Cornell University with an industrial engineering degree. And I can skip past the man's national identity (He is Australian) toward a more purposeful He lives in Australia but works for a Chinese company. 

I raise the action-verb-over-being-verb issue because we tend toward laziness as writers when over-relying on ambiguous being verbs. So here's the tip: Substitute being verbs for action verbs, unless you are sure that the being alternative is just what you want to say.

I Did Not Say That, Part 1: Passive Voice

Sometimes we should record ourselves when giving writing advice. Over the years, I have heard some disturbing compliments from people who took one or more of my writing workshops. What they said showed me that they did not understand the teaching point. In other words, I did not get the job done. That hurts. I am devoting a dozen posts on these teaching points to set the record straight.

Compliment: "Thanks to you, I never use passive voice."

Reality: I have never told anyone to never use passive voice. The people who have claimed I have either do not know the difference between active and passive voice despite my having taught it to them, or they do not mean never.

Intention: I have written a lot about passive voice in my book The Art of On-the-Job Writing and on this blog. I know the value of passive voice, so I would not tell writers to never use it. Nevertheless, using passive voice could cause ambiguity, wordiness, or awkwardness, and using active voice could create clarity, conciseness, and fluency. For these reasons, I do tell students (1) to know the difference between active and passive voice, (2) to prefer active voice, and (3) to practice transposing passive voice to active voice and vice-versa.  

The posts in this blog on passive voice (type "passive voice" in the search bar) should prove useful if you need help in this area. 

Plagiarism Detection Services from a Friend of WORDS ON THE LINE

My mantra as a writing trainer is this: stay fresh. Update your writing skillset by practicing the craft, reading diversely, and researching new ideas in rhetoric. This approach will keep you at the top of your game. You can imagine how delighted I am when I see one of my students in a writing course or readers of this blog heeding this advice. That's why Maja Ampov made my today so cool. 

I probably was wondering whether anyone was reading my posts when I wrote more than nine years ago about the value of using a plagiarism detection service since the editors and professors who read your submissions do. But today I received an email from Maja proving that lifelines are all over the internet. She thanked me for that post but went two giant steps further by 1) independently researching plagiarism detection services and 2) contacting me about her findings. She wrote, 

While this tool you mentioned works great, I got curious and started looking for other options and I came across this article (with) a list of similar tools: https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/best-plagiarism-checking-tools/

What I like the most about this article is their honesty and objectiveness when choosing/ranking the best and more accurate plagiarism check tools available out there, in addition, they suggested a few free tools, so it’s great for someone who would want to try it.

Maja recommended I add her suggestion to WORDS ON THE LINE and concluded with the most beautiful complimentary closing I've ever read:

In hope I helped back,

Maja

Oh did you ever, Maja. A big thanks to you!

BOOK BRIEF: We Become Our Losses

Loss and Grief: Personal Stories of Doctors and Other Healthcare Professionals, edited by Matthew Loscalzo and Marshall Forstein, coedited by Linda A. Klein. Oxford University Press, 2022. 243 pp.

While each of us experiences loss and grief uniquely and permanently, its universality should bind us. This premise is the guiding light of Loss and Grief: Personal Stories of Doctors and Other Healthcare Professionals. The 20 authors, ranging from doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists to social workers, pharmaceutical representatives, and attorneys, argue their own professional expertise did not adequately prepare, support, or console them during their own tragedies, and their colleagues’ help during their ordeal was marginal at best and nonexistent at worst. Therein lies the power of this book: Even the most apparently objective, calculating medical professional is human with all the frailties and limitations that go with it. Emotional and mental pain is impossible to eradicate from the memory, indeed from our everyday conduct, but we are not alone in our suffering.

The riveting accounts in this volume reveal the storytellers’ reactions to their personal tragedies at every stage of the grief spectrum. Some lost a parent, others a brother, and others a spouse. Some struggled with their own battle against cancer. One lost two sons in their childhood to a rare neurologic disorder. Another’s loss was his childhood at the hands of an abusive stepfather and complicit by beloved mother. Some shared these moments with significant others and adult children, and some were too young or geographically removed to fully understand what was occurring during their life-changing event. Some stories start in childhood, some at the beginning of an illustrious career, some at their professional peak, and others in their dotage. But no time seems opportune to brace oneself against the ravages of losing an important part of one’s life.

What we read over and again throughout these well-written tales is that any life, regardless how damaged or successful, is forever altered by loss, and the grieving process shapes the survivor’s identity. Indeed, moving through the chapters of Loss and Grief will compel readers to reflect about their own losses. Painful though they are and impossible to ultimately transcend, they offer a powerful reminder to cherish life, family, and friendship. This book helps us to better understand ourselves.

Knowing Your Reader, Part 2: Informing vs. Persuading

Notice the language the writer uses in the instructions below.

To use the system, follow these steps:

1. Click on this link.

2. Click new user.

3. Use your company email address to create a user name.

4. Enter a password as instructed.

5. Complete the two-step verification process as instructed.

6. Log in using your new user name and password.

Not a shred of kindness appears in the message. There is no please in the lead-in to the list or in any of the steps, but this style is precisely what the reader wants. Don't beat around the bush; just get me into the system. Users are not looking for sweet talk; they want to act. 

Let's look at an entirely different example.

Our recent decision to establish a nine-month hiring freeze will significantly reduce operating expenses, 5% this fiscal year and 9% next fiscal year. These savings are in line with the budgetary results leadership is seeking. The freeze should not affect administrative operations; in fact, it will spur enduring operational efficiencies, leading to further rewards.

Production, the heart of our business, will not fare as well. Production staff turnover is 50% greater than administration on the east coast and as high as 90% higher west of the Mississippi. Even a one-month freeze can have an adverse impact on our responsiveness to customer orders.

The writer seems to be taking a position against the companywide hiring freeze, particularly as it affects the production department. Then why bother writing the first paragraph, which seems to support the decision? Because he wants to give leadership credit where it is due and give herself greater credibility. By saying the company decided wisely, she is trying to persuade the executives to be openminded about what comes in the second paragraph. Persuasive writing is all about anticipating objections and making concessions.

Knowing Your Reader, Part 1: Leading into a List

Both of the lists below are acceptably phrased, but the Version 1 lead-in to the list has 3 words, and the Version 2 lead-in has 13 words.

Version 1

We expect to:

•  increase sales by 10 percent
• decrease operating expenses by 5 percent

Version 2

Consistent with the President's vision statement, we expect to achieve the following objectives:

• increase sales by 10 percent
• decrease operating expenses by 5 percent

Which do you prefer? Of course, the correct answer is it depends on the situation and the audience. Knowing that every word we write should matter, why would we want to push out 10 more words. Version 1 seems to be intended for a colleague who gets the context. Perhaps she missed the meeting where the numbers were determined, so she simply asked her teammate for the data. She understands why these numbers are binding, as well as what they mean to her department's operational plan. Version 2 seems more political. The writer might be citing the President because the email will land before the executive team, or maybe he is trying to give the sentence more authority.

Getting to the point does not solely mean writing in the fewest words, but making the purpose appropriate to the audience.  

The Duke Is a King

For many years I have believed that Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington is the greatest composer. He wrote more than 3,000 pieces of music while managing a big band, touring the world with its members, and leading them as their pianist. Just his piano skills would have assured his status as one of the best jazz figures in history. Adding to this achievement his catalogue of diverse compositions reveals an unmatched genius whose career spanned more than a half-century. 

It's great to know that "Five Minutes That Will Make You Love Duke Ellington," an August 3, 2022 The New York Times article by Giovanni Russonello and Marcus J. Moore backs up my conviction about the Duke. Enjoy reading this article featuring 13 music experts citing their favorite Ellington piece and listening to the accompanying recordings. Then start collecting Ellington music. Any of his suites will do, but you can also check out his collaborations with John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, and Charles Mingus, among many other jazz greats. I have listened to Ellington as background music for work, to get my body into a swinging, dancing rhythm, and for serious listening. He always come through. 

My Friends Are Artists

I am not one to brag about myself. But about my friends is another story. I will remember 2022 as a year of great creative development for six of my friends. 

Matthew Loscalzo, whom I have known since high school, is an internationally known authority on the psychosocial aspects of cancer. Matthew has worked for the most prestigious cancer care centers in the US. His latest book on palliative care is Loss and Grief: Personal Stories of Doctors and Other Healthcare Professionals. As the subtitle suggests, the book spotlights grief from a unique perspective.

Robert Mucci, a longtime friend, has lived many lives, but for the 50 years I have known him, music and art have been common threads running through all of them. His first art exhibit, Out of Silence, at the Warner Art Gallery of the Mamaroneck Public Library, features 33 of his acrylic on canvas pieces. The two-month show runs until September 30.

Paul Cassone, a colleague during my 19 years at Lifespire, became the CEO of the Guild for Exceptional Children, and his dedication to the field of developmental disabilities won praise from numerous community and professional organizations. Since his retirement, Paul has focused on his musical career, now in its sixth decade. His YouTube channel presents heaps of originals and covers.  

Deborah Greenhut and I have enjoyed a 30-year friendship. She is one of the most intelligent and tolerant people I know. Her first novel, The Hoarder's Wife, about an aspiring musician's survival of a failed marriage to a brilliant but flawed university professor, is a remarkably fast read. This book has no villains or heroes. It is an unsparing look at the reach of human dependencies and mental illness.

Keith Carne, a live and studio drummer for We Are Scientists the past nine years, as well as a  writer for Modern Drummer, has been a friend for 20 years. He continues to tour throughout the world with We Are Scientists, create his own music with Communipaw, and teach music when his busy schedule allows. And there's not a thing you can't talk to Keith about.

Hayley Youngs, one of my newest friends, is an extraordinary artist and art teacher who has produced work at an amazing pace. Haley's work, which has been widely exhibited, evokes Fernand Leger, Arthur Dove, and Georgia O'Keeffe, but her creative vision is singular and inimitable. Her current exhibit, Serenity Now, is at the Mark Borghi Gallery in Sag Harbor.

My friends inspire me to keep my creative juices flowing. I am fortunate to know them.

Summer Reading

It has been a great summer for reading, and summer is not over. I finally got around to reading many targeted books that I bought in Pegasus Books in Oakland or on Amazon; borrowed from my local library, my university library, or the New York Public Library's Cloud Library; or just pulled my own bookshelves. 

For biography, Walter Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe made for a great read about a complex man who, in his mid-twenties changed how we think of our world with his special theory of relativity, became a refugee from Hitler's Germany, lived in Princeton, New Jersey the last two decades of his life, wrote and spoke powerfully for global peace and a world order that enforced social collectivism but prized individual freedom, and rejected quantum mechanics until his end. I followed up with Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci, whose genius sprung, in part, from an insatiable curiosity of all things, an uncanny power of observation, and an unrelentingly diligent yet often distracted approach to work. 

I also read the collected poetry of five poets: Alan Dugan, Rita Dove, Mary Oliver, Frederick Seidel, and May Swenson. Dugan's vulgarity is easy to accept when he juxtaposes it with high art and exposes us at our core. Dove can write masterfully from so many viewpoints: as a curator of her cultural history, a concerned environmentalist, an arts aficionado, a spiritualist. Mary Oliver has a way of making a bird, fox, bush, or even an insect an extension of ourselves with the plainest language imaginable. Seidel is hilarious, if you can fathom wildly privileged, self-obsessed, paranoid contemporary men as hilarious. Swenson is Oliver's literary older sister, a great witness of our natural world, but she knows the city too and lives more in the mind than in the observable spectacle that Oliver beholds.

Albert Murray's Collected Essays & Memoirs, which along with James Baldwin's Collected Essays, shows that Black Lives Matter is far from new. Of course, Baldwin and Murray owe much to Frederick Douglass, whose autobiographical narrative graphically depicts a life that is at times painful to read but ultimately stands as a triumphant testament to the human spirit. Douglass rose from slavery to become a great influencer of Abraham Lincoln, more proof that critical race theory makes a lot of sense, as one cannot think about any political movement, social cause, educational approach, legislative action, court ruling, military or police action, or turning point of United States history without reflecting on how race intersects with it.  

The Essential Tagore, a catalogue of fiction, drama, poetry, songs, autobiography, letters, humor, and travelogue by the first Asian Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, is the bargain read at any price. The man was a remarkable writer, thinker, and spiritual leader of his fellow Bengalis, indeed, of humanity. 

I have plenty more reading to do this summer: Adorno, Bakhtin, Benjamin, Derrida, Foucault, Gramsci, and Lukacs. After those guys, I'll likely look for some lighter reading. Joyce's Ulysses?

The Power of Observation

During a warm summer twilight yesterday, I was watching a nine-year-old boy observe an inchworm looping along a black-eyed Susan in a friend's garden. He watched it for a long minute from a distance of six inches before slipping his finger under a petal where the creature was moving until it crawled completely away from the flower and onto him. The boy counted the inchworm's three pairs of posterior legs and explained to me that its lack of middle legs causes it to move as it does. He let it inch across his fingers another several minutes before finally returning it to the black-eyed Susan. 

I describe this brief but pleasurable crepuscule moment to reiterate the importance of observation in cultivating writing skills. Ernest Hemingway mentioned its value. And who observes with guileless acuity and imagination more than a child? For this reason, I tell writing students to observe with all their senses what they perceive. They will have much to write about.      

More Favorite Poems

When I created a list of 50 favorite poems nearly seven years ago, I promised to add to the list as time permitted. So here are 10 more that I hope you will lie as much as I do. I am grateful to the Poetry Foundation and the poets for making these poems publicly available.

Air by W. S. Merwin

Crepuscular by Charles Simic

Demeter's Prayer to Hades by Rita Dove

The Fear of Oneself by Sharon Olds

The Layers by Stanley Kunitz

Looking for Something Lost by Mark Van Doren

The Sigh by Ted Kooser

Sisters by Adrienne Rich

The Starry Night by Anne Sexton

What Is It? by Mary Oliver

I explained in a previous post why I read poetry, and I believe everyone should. Happy reading!

Is Instant Messaging Replacing Email?

More than 20 years ago, I was telling clients that Sun Microsystems was using instant messaging internally to replace email. Now more businesses are using IM through platforms like Microsoft Teams. Just as the memorandum became so twentieth century to advanced businesses accustomed to using email as the most efficient technology to communicate in writing, these days IM is replacing email, especially among team members collaborating on projects.

What  will this trend mean for standard writing? While much of the answer remains to be seen, we are already noticing how standard sentence structure is mattering far less. Dialogue-style writing is replacing formal writing style, requiring readers to create meaning based on the context in which the writing appears. You can imagine a dialogue like the one below between Kim, a project manager, and Lee, an account manager, both of whom report to Chris, a firm vice-president, concerning a request from Pat, a client.

Kim: What did Pat say?

Lee: They're greenlighting the requested revision.

Kim: Did you discuss the rate increase?

Lee: Not yet.

Kim: Then there's no go-ahead.

Lee: They're looking for an exception based on business volume and loyalty. 

Kim: They get what they pay for. 

Lee:  Should we get Chris in on this?

Kim: OK, but you know there's no exceptions. We can't eat the increased work hours.

No doubt, this dialogue will lead to Lee writing an email to Pat insisting on a rate increase, but Kim has made the policy clear through IM. This sort of communication will become, no, has become, more prevalent in organizations. We will always need signed contracts, or at least e-signed contracts, but the basis of much of these agreements is becoming IM.

Two Negatives Equal a Positive━Really?

I used  to teach the idea that English has characteristics just like mathematics, but I do not any longer because, as you might suspect, every English rule, unlike mathematics, has exceptions. While 1 + 1  always did, always does, and always will = 2,  honest writing teachers must admit to their students that language is far more subjective, all too often laden with uneducated opinion and fraught with majority- or authority-rule tastes. 

Take the rule claiming two negatives make a positive, just like math. Saying "I am not unaware" means I am aware, saying "I cannot make a mistake" asserts I want to do something correctly, and saying "I will not hurt you" implies you will be safe with me. 

But you can't count on two negatives making a positive. For example, you can imagine an astronomy professor facetiously saying, "Galileo did not err when he distanced himself from heliocentrism during the Inquisition." In fact, you can't even depend on two positives making a positive. If you asked whether I was willing to freefall from the roof of a 14-story building, you can picture me ironically replying, "Sure I would do that."

Too much depends on context for insisting on right-wrong rulings for English usage. Ain't that right?

Pleasures of Being Home, Part 4: More Seeing Time

Besides death and near-death occurrences during the coronavirus pandemic, one of the worst setbacks was the loss of freedom of movement. We all missed either eye-opening vacations to exotic locales, or simple walks along tree-lined neighborhood sidewalks with friends; inspirational excursions to museums, cathedrals, or monuments; or warming visits to the homes of family or friends. So many missed moments. In other ways, I believe many of us with the advantage of a computer and the willingness to stay connected saw more than we ever had just by staying home more. 

I saw more of loved ones through Zoom meetings than I did when the expectation of such such meetings required physical contact. Those meetings continue to this day, over 100 weekly ones on Sunday night with four groups of family members, nearly 60 biweekly ones on Wednesday night with six friends from the old neighborhood, and nearly 60 biweekly ones of Saturday evening with five friends from the old job. We all continue to show up when we can, so the increased facetime means something to all of us. 

From my backyard patio, I have seen so much of nature that I usually did not have or take the time to enjoy. I saw a crow descend on a hole in my lawn to peck for baby rabbits when the mother rabbit emerged from apparently nowhere and dashed toward the encroacher to defend her brood. After a quick skirmish causing the crow to lose a feather or two, it flew away with nothing for its trouble. I saw squeeze out of a 15-millimeter-diameter hollow 5 meters up my maple tree a full-sized squirrel, followed by another full-sized squirrel, followed by a third full-sized squirrel. I saw in midday sunlight two robins engage in the most elaborate dance from one end of my 27-meter lawn to the other, the first one leaping over the second, the second hopping in a circle around the first, both of them bouncing in a circle while facing each other like two boxers ready to attack, and then repeating and exchanging these moves while continuing to the starting point of the dance before flying into the leafy shade of my oak tree.

I also saw art with the focused attention that it deserves. While I admit that nothing beats seeing an original artwork, I took to my old books that I had not opened in years to examine the paintings or drawings of Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Audrey Flack, Chuck Close, Kerry James Marshall, and Jean-Michel Basquiat to challenge my assumptions and affirm my convictions about their artistry.

I never had to leave my home to experience new sights and reimagine old ones. Tragedy can breed triumph.

Pleasures of Being Home, Part 3: More Listening Time

The coronavirus is nothing to ignore. It has already taken more than 6 million lives globally and still accounts for some thousand deaths daily. It also has given unexpected pleasures: more reading and writing time, among many other delights. Yet while most people have not read as much as they could have, and even more have not written much even in a pandemic, most working adults have had more time to listen in the solitude of their home during the quarantine. 

Besides the endless barrage of Netflix or Amazon miniseries, what have we listened to? For one, sounds of nature. Just yesterday morning, I heard a persistent drumming I thought was coming from inside my house. When I approached my opened window, I realized the sound was the rain smacking the roof above me. I've also grown familiar with different types of winds slashing against my house and I've begun naming them: rumble, tumble, grumble, jumble, crumble, fumble, stumble, mumble, and humble, in descending order of strength. In addition, I sense contrasting silences at 4:30 a.m. and 11:30 p.m., mainly because my tinnitus tends to hum early in the morning and scream late at night. And while the mourning dove's call has been a staple sound in the 38 years I have lived in my house, I have not heard so distinctly as now the heckling song of the mockingbird, the persistent hammering of the woodpecker, and the sharp scratching of claws as squirrels chase each other in dizzying circles up and down my backyard maple and oak trees. 

No less pleasurable is the sound of music, which has become much more than just background noise to my reading and writing and household chores. I marvel at the mysteries of life revealed to me through the magical notes of Bill Evans's piano ebbing and flowing through Some Other Time, John Coltrane's soaring tenor saxophone opening My Favorite Things, and Billie Holiday's velvet voice pleading in Love for Sale. I now hear progression, not repetition, in Philip Glass's String Quartet #4. I feel blood course through my veins throughout Duke Ellington's orchestration of Sunset and the Mocking Bird and weep at the climax and resolution of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.

More important than any of these pleasures, listening to you has become a sought-after activity and an improved skill, not because I am getting older and wiser but because I am home more, and more relaxed, patient, contented. What you are saying sounds more purposeful, more interesting to me. You make sense to me, so I think more before responding, cringe more when responding lamely, and smile more when just listening to the silence that follows your wisdom. Less talking, more listening: a good recipe for relationships.

Pleasures of Being Home, Part 2: More Writing Time

The extra reading time of being home brings us pleasures that not only enhance our leisure time but can transform our thinking and, in effect, our lives. Any newfound time at home also offers opportunities to write more. We can find time at unexpected moments, so we need to take full advantage of them whenever they arise. And we can approach this good fortune in several ways and at various moments of the writing process.

Planning Stage

Those of us who are serious about writing have probably for a long time been listing ideas for essays, scribbling dialogue for playscripts, storyboarding or drafting treatments of screenplays, describing scenes for poems, and synopsizing novels. Now's the time to pull out those notes from years ago, see what's changed since then, and add or delete as needed to keep those plans fresh. Maybe such a review will send us to the library, our own bookshelves, or online to cultivate our research on those plans, adding to the content of our notes and sharpening the focus of our premise.  

Drafting Stage

Moving beyond the planning stage, we can choose to draft a few pages of our writing project: more dialogue, observations about the characters, twists in the plot, extra layers to the context. During this stage, we are not expecting much more than to produce content.

Rewriting Stage 

Suppose we have a draft that seems complete but has not found a home in a publication or a production company. We can reread our draft critically with an eye for trying to see why it hasn't seen the light of  publication or production. This approach in no way suggests that our piece needs improvement (although it probably does). In fact, the practice gives us a chance to keep working at our craft. Chances are we'll want something new, something more, or maybe something less, in our piece. 

Pleasures of Being Home, Part 1: More Reading Time

I do not want to seem insensitive about the COVID-19 pandemic, which is in its third year and has killed far more than 6 million people worldwide. I knew a good family man who died from the coronavirus during its initial outbreak. Some of my favorite jazz musicians also succumbed to the virus, including pianist Barry Harris, saxophonist Lee Konitz, pianist Ellis Marsalis, guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, and trumpeter Wallace Roney, as well as the legendary playwright Terrence McNally. Many terrific small businesses, including restaurants and jazz clubs, have gone under due to the economic strains of COVID. I also feel fortunate that all I have lost is money, which, as the saying goes, isn't everything. 

In fact, my health has improved since early 2020. Before then, I would get laryngitis twice a year, sometimes more, sometimes leading to bronchitis. These ailments have disappeared from my system. I attribute this reversal of fortune to fewer rides on buses and trains in proximity to germ-carrying commuters and fewer handshakes with people attending my live classes. And health, as the saying goes, is everything.

I can think of other big benefits of quarantining at home. Since March 2020, I probably have read more than I had in the previous decade. I have been collecting books for years that I promised myself I would eventually read. As my writing consulting business grew increasingly successful, I began to think the only hope for reading those books would be retirement, incapacitation, or incarceration, but I was not planning on any of those circumstances. The pandemic offered me found time. I read scores of novels, short story collections, philosophical treatises, biographies, histories, poetry volumes, and plays. I enjoyed the time-consuming process of being transfixed by chilling chapters, rereading powerful paragraphs and scintillating sentences to examine the writers' rhetorical strategy, and delighting in their wonderful word choices. 

I am convinced that these exhilarating experiences have made me a better reader, a more powerful writer, a more informed writing teacher, and a more sensitive writing critic. By the way, my business has coming roaring back this year. Patience born from using idle time productively has paid off. The point is of this post is that you can use waiting time, from standing in line at the bank to getting through a pandemic, by entertaining and educating yourself through reading. When your turn comes, you will wonder where the time went. 

Why I Read Poetry

I read poetry nearly every day. How could I not? When Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day" begins with "Who made the world?" and Rita Dove's "Canary" ends with "If you can't be free, be a mystery." When Billy Collins's "Forgetfulness" begins with "The name of the author is the first to go" and Audre Lorde's "A Litany for Survival" ends with "we were never meant to survive." 

I read poetry because of the focus it brings to my daily activities, the pleasure it brings to my professional responsibilities, the surprise it brings to my ill-advised assumptions, the inspiration it brings to my human interactions, and the serenity it brings to my loneliest moments. I suggest you get started reading poetry at the Poetry Foundation, which offers a seemingly endless supply of great poems.

Defaulting to "I Can"

I offer a simple yet transformative piece of advice: Default to I can.

Too often at work, we read people write about what they cannot do, even if they are our vendors:

Question 1: Will you help me on Monday?

Answer 1: I can't.

Question 2: Do you wax floors?

Answer 2: We can't.

Question 3: Would you provide a discount for my $2,000 order?

Answer 3: XYZ, Inc. can't.

I continually suggest to never put these words anywhere near each other: I (or we, or My company) and can't. We are all in the can, not can't, business. Use the more positive can, even when you can't. Here are easy fixes to the three can't-do sentences.

Question 1: Will you help me on Monday?

Answer 1: I can help you on Tuesday.

Question 2: Do you wax floors?

Answer 2: We can wax floors at an additional cost, or, We can mop floors more frequently to avoid their need of an expensive waxing. 

Question 3: Would you provide a discount for my $2,000 order?

Answer 3: XYZ, Inc. provides discounts for orders over $10,000.

That's not too much effort, is it? Of course, sometimes people will insist that you do something you just can't. In these cases, you'll have to clearly say, "I can't." But at least you tried the better approach the first time around.

The benefits of defaulting to I can will be legion. People will see you as cooperative, helpful, and positive.

Pronoun Preference: TBD

In the 1970s, we tried to solve the sexist usage of deferring to male pronouns in mixed or ambiguous situations calling for a singular application. Before then, this sentence was standard usage:

An employee must understand a job requires that he ask his manager about problems unfamiliar to him.

In 1978, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) decided that since such usage excluded females, some workarounds were preferable. Thus, the following three sentences became standard, with the second and third ones being preferable to the wordy and awkward first:

1. An employee must understand the job requires that he or she ask his or her manager about problems unfamiliar to him or her.
2. Employees must understand the job requires that they ask their manager about problems unfamiliar to them.
3. An employee must understand that the job requires asking a manager about unfamiliar problems.

Good enough. Fast forward nearly a half-century to gender-identification issues and preferred pronouns. Now we encourage employees to proclaim their preferred pronoun in the name of inclusion. The intention behind this usage addition is honorable, no doubt. But announcing preferred pronouns creates more problems than it solves. Imagine a project team of six employees:

• Allie, agender, prefers they/them/their
• Billie, female, prefers he/him/his
• Carlie, male, prefers it/its
• Dannie, female, prefers she/her/hers
• Eddie, male, prefers he/him/his
• Frankie, nonbinary, prefers no pronoun

In such a situation, you can see the confusion that will arise from referring to these team members in a business document. The NCTE has tried addressing this language bind through recommendations in a revised 2018 position statement, which falls short of solving the problem. 

So this is what I say. The pronouns he/him/his and she/her/hers will not disappear from the language anytime soon. Regardless of the next step in our discovery of respectful usage, show patience. Respect those who "misuse" the new standards at the same level that you are trying to respect those you want to bring into the language fold. Things will evolve, but only with more patience and less finger-pointing.