# Presentation: 914426

## Getting the Message, Getting It Right:  How to Write Like a Pro

- Sandy Miller Hays
- and Cathy Lonaberger

## The Purpose of Writing

- “The anticipated outcome of creation of non-verbal communication is articulation and transmission of  data with maximum clarity and exactitude.”......SAY WHAT?
- The purpose of writing is to give information as clearly as possible!
- K-I-S-S

## Don’t Save the Best for Last!

- The Titanic is sinking fast—what’s your message?
- Lead with “The Lead”
- Give King Tut a headache (or “The Wonderful World of Inverted Pyramids”)
- The Twisted Tale of the Cornelius-Banta PTA

## Quick Like Bunnies...

- Who....
- What....
- When....
- Where....
- Why....
- How....

## Brief is Best

- Keep your sentences to NO MORE THAN two typed lines (1-1/2 is even better).
- Keep your paragraphs to NO MORE THAN  six typed lines (four is even better).
- Try to avoid “mixing issues” in a single  paragraph—aim for one “nugget” per paragraph.

## Seek Professional Help (Or At Least Ask a Friend!)

- Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees!  Have someone else look for those holes you could drive a Mack truck through (example: The Tale of the Union Station Train Wreck).
- Those pesky acronyms!
- Apply the “Nell Sullivan” test.

## Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

- Watch for double entendres (oops!)
- Is that what you really meant to say?
- “The researchers said fat cells get larger as people gain weight, break down and die.”
- “The complainant said his upstairs neighbor had a large dog that walked the floor all night, played the radio at all hours and had frequent loud parties.”

## Let’s Do the Twist

- Don’t be afraid to turn the sentence around to make it more understandable:
- “Born at the age of 43, the baby was a great comfort to Mrs. Wooster.”
- “Tail wagging merrily, Bertie took the dog for a walk.”
- “As a den mother, Mrs. Glossop’s station wagon was always full of Cub Scouts.”

## The Boogie Men: Don’t Be Afraid!

- “Don’t split an infinitive.”
- The infinitive is simply the verb itself— “eat,” “walk,” “cook”—and works just fine without “to,” although “to” is acceptable, too.  (You could say either “the lady helped the pirate escape” or “the lady helped the pirate to escape.”)  Since “to” isn’t actually a part of the infinitive, it’s fine to put a descriptive word between the two:
- “To BOLDLY go where no man has gone before...”

## The Boogie Men: Don’t Be Afraid!

- “Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.”
-  Winston Churchill said it best: “This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.”  Blame an 18th-century English clergyman, Robert Lowth, for this old “rule”—but no one knows why he thought it was wrong!  The bottom line: Don’t twist your writing into pretzels simply to try to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition.

## The Boogie Men: Don’t Be Afraid!

- “Always use an active verb, not a passive one.”
- Usually the direct approach is best: “Susie ate the cake” instead of  “The cake was eaten by Susie.”  But sometimes you want to delay the subject for dramatic effect— “The watch was stolen by a monkey!”—and sometimes “whodunit” isn’t as important as what happened— “Bob was arrested for burglary.”

## Style: It’s More Than Just a Matter of Taste!

- The typical “style” for government documents is “GPO (Government Printing Office) Style,” but....
- There’s a whole other world out there, especially if you’re writing for the public or the media!
- Welcome to “AP (Associated Press) Style”—whisky, ax, under way and Md.
- AP Style is “the gold standard” for news writing (and, by extension, writing for the general public).

## A Little Dab’ll Do Ya....

- If you’re going to use quotes, don’t overdo the attribution—“he said/she said” is just fine.
- “We believe that ARS is the greatest thing since sliced bread,” said Edward B. Knipling, ARS administrator. “We hope this agency lasts forever.”  That’s enough attribution for one paragraph!
- “Said” is good enough for most purposes—avoid “exclaimed,” “noted,” “sneered,” “commented,” “snorted,” “reported,” “retorted,” etc.

## Watch Those Curves!

- Punctuation can be tricky....make sure you have it right.  A wrongly placed comma can make all the difference in the world—just ask the waiter who served the panda!
- “It’s essential that you understand the apostrophe and its meaning.”
- “Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” by Lynne Truss ($12.97 at Amazon.com)

## “Queen Elizabeth Ravished”—Where was Prince Phillip?

- Never call a “spayed” a “spade”—or vice versa
- “Do you know how to effect the affect?”
- Many words can have hair-splitting meanings: it takes a while (or is it “awhile”?) to learn the right word for your needs!
- “Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English,” by Patricia T. O’Connor ($12.97 at Amazon.com)

## Tight and Right!

- Just because you say it that way at home...
- “It’s important to take into consideration the period of time it takes to write clearly in this day and age”—NO!  “It’s important to consider the time it takes to write clearly today.”
- Especially unique....35 acres of land....new renovations.....
- “Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers,” by Harold Evans  ($22.99 at Barnes & Noble.com)

## Polishing the Apple:  Tips for Making Your Writing Shine

- Don’t belabor the obvious: “give it away for free” (under what other terms would you give it away?); “pretty in appearance” (how else would she be pretty?).
- A tipoff:  If you’re tempted to tack on a phrase that starts with a preposition (by, for, in, of, to)...don’t!!  If you’re thinking of saying, “blue in color,” just say “blue”.

## Polishing the Apple: Tips for Making Your Writing Shine

- Don’t tie your writing in knots trying to avoid repeating a word.  This tendency is called “elegant variation,” but it’s also known as the “Slender Yellow Fruit Syndrome”:
- “Freddie was offered an apple and a banana, and chose the slender yellow fruit.”
- “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked to comment on the role of women in the military, but the raven-haired non-veteran declined to state her personal opinion.”  Who????

## Polishing the Apple: Tips for Making Your Writing Shine

- Take the direct route!  “Spitting it out” makes for stronger writing:
- “Their house was destroyed in the hurricane of 1932,” NOT “The destruction of their house occurred during the hurricane of 1932.”
- “We concluded that Martin is an idiot,” NOT “Our conclusion is that Martin is an idiot.”

## Polishing the Apple: Tips for Making Your Writing Shine

- If you’re going to use descriptions, keep them close to what they’re describing—otherwise they’ll get lonely!
- “The pasture contained several cows seen by news reporters that were dead, diseased or dying.”
-   The problem: “Dead, diseased and dying” is too far away from the cows...and it makes it sound like the REPORTERS are “dead, diseased and dying.”  Make those nouns and adjectives cuddle up:  “The reporters saw a pasture filled with cows that were dead, diseased or dying.”

## Polishing the Apple: Tips for Making Your Writing Shine

- Keep your subjects and verbs on speaking terms with each other, too!  Don’t put too much distance between your subject and verb—it makes it too difficult to understand the sentence.
- “The siblings, long after they had agreed to sit down and amicably divide up their mother’s most prized possessions from her childhood, were still fighting over the family cat.”  Do you need a road map yet?
- “Long after the siblings had agreed to sit down and amicably divide up their mother’s most prized possessions from her childhood, they were still fighting over the family cat.”

## Polishing the Apple: Tips for Making Your Writing Shine

- Speaking of “them”—don’t overdose on pronouns!
- “Jane told Susan that she had seen her boyfriend and his friend at the horse races and that he seemed unhappy about her having been misled about their plans for the day.”
- Whose boyfriend? Whose plans for the day? Who was misled?  Who did the misleading? Make it clear!

## Polishing the Apple: Tips for Making Your Writing Shine

- Keep it logical!  You don’t want to tell the story chronologically (remember the Cornelius-Banta PTA), but tell the story in a logical fashion:
- The lead (with all the juiciest bits)
- Most important background point
- Second-most-important background point
- Third-most-important background point
- Think “cut from the bottom”.

## Polishing the Apple: Tips for Making Your Writing Shine

- Read with a jaundiced eye.  Yes, YOU wrote it, but review it with the eyes of a stranger.  Is it......
- Unintentionally funny? “The bereaved family covered the mirrors as a reflection of its grief.”
- Overloaded with cliches, or confused by mixed metaphors? “To the end of his days, the bone of contention was an albatross around his neck as he competed in the game of life.”

## Proofreading: The More, The Merrier

- If you can talk them into it, get a friend (or several friends) to look over your writing for typos, grammatical errors and unintentional “funny stuff”
- Take a break!  It’s always better to let a piece of writing “sit” for a while before you proofread it...you’re less likely to gloss over mistakes that way.

## Proofreading Tips

- Read aloud the document while co-worker follows on hard copy
- Use spell check
- Use ruler method

## Proofreading Tips

- Start at the top of the document (including letterhead)
- Proof from hard copy; do not proof from the screen
- Ask co-worker to proof document

## Tools of the Trade

- Agricultural Research Service Correspondence Manual  261.2
- _[www.afm.ars.usda.gov/ppweb/261-02mch-1-2.htm](http://www.afm.ars.usda.gov/ppweb/261-02mch-1-2.htm)_
- Government Printing Office Style Manual_._
- _[http://](http://www.gpoaccess.gov/stylemanual/browse.html)__[www.gpoaccess.gov/stylemanual/browse.html](http://www.gpoaccess.gov/stylemanual/browse.html)_
- Other correspondence reference books

## Thank You!Sandy and Cathy will take questions now.