Writing Craft Archives - Page 5 of 7

‘Whom’ – downtrodden & forgotten

I think it's time to start a campaign to save 'whom' Either that, or I'm going to have to get over my tendency to correct the mistakes that I notice I'm constantly muttering 'it's whom' to the radio, tv, newspaper, whatever magazine or book I'm reading, and presenters at eventsThe real problem for me is that, in correcting the who/whom errors that I notice, I often miss out on important content the stuff that I really need to knowI find Janice Bell's discussion about who/whom...

Writing for an international audience

People who write for an international audience need to be particularly careful about who will be reading their messages and where those people are locatedI'm often frustrated by emails that promote interesting workshops and events, but fail to clearly state where those events will be held Typically, they're in a different part of the world from meI subscribe to several email lists, and all of them promote events for their members And most of the people who promote these events forget that the...

And & But as sentence starters

The other day my 9-year-old son looked up from his book and said: 'Ms M says that you're not allowed to start sentences with 'and' and 'but' So why do they start sentences with 'and' and 'but' in every book that I read'What a fabulous thing for him to notice And it started the most wonderful conversation at home About why his teacher tells the class that they shouldn't start sentences with 'and' and 'but' (my theory is that children are introduced to this 'rule' to encourage them to...

The power of pronouns

I've just finished a fabulous book called 'The secret life of pronouns: What our words say about us' by James Pennebaker It's a fascinating look at how the structural words in our language (pronouns, articles, prepositions, and so on) reveal a lot about the way we think and connect with others We don't even notice these words as we speak or write But Pennebaker says that they broadcast the kinds of people we are They reveal things like our perceived status and power, whether we're lying, and...

Deciding how much detail to provide

I've been wondering this week about how communicators can ensure that they provide the right amount of information for their audience - the right amount of detail, presented in the right order, in a way that doesn't either overwhelm people with too much information or leave major gapsI've been reflecting on two situations where the information seemed to be lacking: in a consultation I had with a doctor, and in a recruitment letter for a research projectThe consultation was with a...

Holiday chuckle

Sometimes, in the calm of holiday reading, you come across something that makes you chuckle Like this error in the latest edition of InStyle:Whoops!There's nothing quite like that feeling of flicking through a newly-printed publication (always the result of hard work) and noticing a stupid error We've all been...

Learning about agreement

There tends to be a fair bit of eye-rolling at my house when I can't keep my mouth shut about sentence structure - particularly when I notice things in books like agreement, convoluted sentences, and typosThe most dramatic eye-rolling is reserved for my frequent comment 'If Luke wasn't in that sentence, would you say "I" or "me"' I also get complaints when I'm reading aloud if I interrupt the story with comments about the way that the sentences are written The biggest...

Troublesome agreement with collective nouns

Last week, my 6-year-old son brought home a short reader from the Flying Start to Literacy series It was an excellent book about Driver Ants, which left us both very thankful that we don't have Driver Ants in Australia It even included a Glossary But the definition of 'habitat' got me all tied up about the difficulties of creating agreement when using collective nounsThe book says: 'Habitat: the place in which a group of animals live and find food' I'd much prefer to write 'a group of animals...

More on saying what you mean (and salt and fluid for heart disease)

I've learned something today that adds complexity to my recent post about the advice for a type of heart disease: that the treatment is 'fluid and salt reduction' It turns out that, in some types of heart disease, fluid reduction is exactly what's needed because the disease is all about an excess of fluid So maybe the advice I heard really did mean fluid reduction and salt reduction!For a non-medical person like me (or for anyone who isn't an expert in the field being discussed), it's being...