Revision Precision

Recently, I've been thinking about some of the challenges that professional writing presents, as in the fact that your professional writing should sound conversational, but should not sound like an actual conversation. If we wrote the way we actually speak, our writing would read something like this:

"When I get home, I mean when I get back to--where are we staying? ur..well..the whatever hotel, when we, when I get back, in like maybe five minutes, I mean at like maybe five, then, I can totally..."

It's practically nonsense without the intonation that tells us how all the words connect. What we mean is

"I'll take care of it as soon as I get back to my hotel."

So, our writing needs to be not exactly like our speech, but sound like something we would actually say. There are lots of words in English that we reserve almost entirely for writing. The same message could be written like this:

"I will resolve the matter upon returning to my lodgings."

It means the same thing, but it isn't conversational because I would never say this out loud.

Writing conversationally means walking a fine line between writing formally and informally. Mostly, it means using words precisely to convey your meaning without elevating your speech simply to elevate it.

Recently, my students were working on revising this sample sentence:

As a result an envelope with the paperwork for claims will be left at your hotel so that you can fill it out completely and additionally provide us with a copy of your passport.

As we discussed in class, there are a lot of things wrong with this sentence, and a lot of ways to improve on it. One of the most interesting aspects of their revision, though, had to do with how they conveyed the message about the passport copy. Some students said "please include a copy of your passport"; others left it as "provide us with a copy". Still others used "attach a copy," which reveals their technological background. I reminded them, however, that there is in fact a word that means specifically "to put inside of something else," which brought them almost immediately to "enclose."

"Enclose" is the most precise word in this example because it conveys exactly what should be done with the copy of the passport without additional instruction. "Enclose" is also a word that we could imagine ourselves saying, no one needs to look it up because it is family, even if it's not a word that we actually regularly say.

What I'm getting at is that we tend to have two different vocabularies: the words we access quickly for speech and the words we access very slowly for special circumstances. Professional writing asks us to use an intermediary vocabulary, one that uses the full breadth of precision available to us in the thousands of words in our language while limiting that precision to words that reach only one step beyond our spoken language, not all the way into our let-me-show-you-how-well-I-can-use-a-thesaurus language. It's a fine distinction, but understanding it, and applying it to revision, will help make our professional writing clearer, more concise, and conversational.

Commas and

I have recently noticed a lot of people using comma + and when they shouldn't and not using it when they should. It's like somewhere the rule has gotten reversed. I'm not sure how or where this happened. Perhaps it's just that in my students' overcorrection they have completely 180'd the comma rules.

But I'm guessing it's more that people have just forgotten when to use comma + and and just hope that no one reading their work knows how to do it either. I've also noticed that people seem to try to correct the blue underlines from Microsoft Word Grammar check by inserting commas. Blue underlines do not always mean a problem with commas. Furthermore, blue lines do not even mean that something is necessarily wrong. Blue lines mean that something you have written has triggered some algorithm based on inflexible grammar rules to signal you that you have written something possibly incorrect. You have to review it yourself to be sure, though, because language is not a closed system with only a few possible constructions of correctness. There are infinite ways to write the same idea, and grammar check cannot make sure that infinite ways are all correct.

So, when to use comma + and and when not? There are two grammatical structures where a comma may appear before "and". In one of these structures the comma is an absolute requirement. In the other, it is a choice.

1) Comma + and required: A comma before "and" must appear when the comma + and works to combine two complete sentences. For example:

I am going to the store, and I am going to the Post Office.

Here we have two complete sentences. The comma + and could be replaced by a period.

I am going to the store. I am going to the Post Office.

But the writer probably joined them to emphasize to the audience that she is going to both places in one trip.

2) Comma + and optional: A comma before "and" may appear before the last item in a list. This comma, sometimes referred to as the Oxford comma, is optional. However, optional doesn't mean you can decide willy-nilly when to use it and when not to. The use of this comma, whether present or absent, must be consistent within one document, so it is best to choose your personal preference and live with that decision, forever. The optional comma looks like this:

I am going to the store for bread, milk, and eggs.

The sentence is also correct written without the comma, as long as every other list in the same document doesn't include this comma either.

3) Comma should not be present with and: No comma should appear with "and" in a compound subject or predicate. Compound means two. For example:

My sister and I are going to the store.

No comma appears before "and" because "My sister and I" are a unit as the plural subject of this sentence.

I am going to the store and the Post Office.

No comma appears before "and" because "the store and the Post Office" are a unit as the plural destination in this sentence.

I am going to the store and stopping by the Post Office.

No comma appears with "and" because "am going and stopping" form the compound verb; both use "I" for the subject.



So, the final summary: the comma + and must be used to join two complete sentences, may be used before the last item in a list, and is never used with compound subjects or predicates.

Providing your reader with context

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Beginning writers spend most of their time thinking about how to put words together into a logical message. Their focus is on getting the words out, writing down words that reflect the ideas in their heads. They feel finished when they have put their idea on paper, just put it into writing. This is a lot of hard work. It is a challenge to find the right words, to put them in order, to write as fast as your mind, or slow down your thoughts to match your typing speed. Your thoughts and your hands are constantly out of sync. So it is a struggle just to write.

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Professional email

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In our age of myriad technologies and informality, sometimes I think it's helpful to remind people of established conventions that are still expected in professional contexts. Professional does not necessarily mean within the context of business, but generally refers to a context in which the writer seeks to address a person of higher social standing. This could mean someone older, someone in a position of authority, or someone who you want something from.

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Paragraphs

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With our new technologies, twitter, facebook, text messaging, we have learned to cherish the shortest messages, and while the increasing value of the clear and concise 160 character message has improved our ability to communicate quickly, it hasn't helped our ability to communicate substantively.

We are losing the art of the paragraph.

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Semantics

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A few years ago, I was visiting friends in Germany. One of them is an English teacher and she asked me if I could explain to her the difference between "fill in" and "fill out". She gave an example, "Would you say 'I want to fill in the form'? or 'I want to fill out the form'?" I tried to imagine the situation. At the doctor or dentist's office, they hand you that clipboard with all the info you have to verify and say, "Please fill out the form." Ok, so "fill out", but "fill in" sounded just as right. On a test, it might say "Fill in all the blanks." So, I decided that the difference had to do with what was expected from the writer. To "fill out" seems to be to put in all the necessary information--to complete a form or provide information. To "fill in" seems to be to put back what has been taken out or removed. If there are obvious gaps in something, you fill them in. But if there are gaps and you need not complete all of them, you fill them out. Thoughts?

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Cover letters

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A cover letter is a document that pretty much all of us have to write. It's that thing that goes with your resume, a letter required by your potential employers. But what is the purpose of this letter? Your resume should tell the employer everything they need to know: where you went school, where you've worked, what responsibilities you've had, how long you've been at a job or in school, what your computer skills are, etc. What else do these people need from you?

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Three of My Favorite Word Choice Errors

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Prior to the prevalence of computers, (misspelling was the most common writing error. But spellcheck solved that problem and, like so many of our best inventions, created a new one: the word choice error. Now, our greatest problem is having a computer choose our words for us and, occasionally, choose incorrectly. Here are three of my favorite irreverent errors.

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Tone

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In my seminars recently, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about tone. People feel that they themselves or others are too “abrupt” or “brusque” in email. This is not uncommon.

The problem exists because writing is a much more limited system than our other forms of communication. When we talk to people face-to-face, we interpret their body language, gestures, facial expressions as part of what they are saying. When we talk on the phone, we lose the body, but we still have the voice with all its inflection, tone, and volume.

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Plan, Write, Revise

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Today, a seminar participant wrote on his feedback form: "This seminar took writing, which seems complicated and difficult, and made it really simple: plan, write, revise.

Some people are afraid of the blank page. Planning gets those writers started so that they are never faced with a blank page. The page has, at a minimum, their responses to the planning prompts.

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