Never begin a sentence with the conjunction and or but.But you don't want to break these rules in all situations you write in.
Never end a sentence with a preposition.
Never split an infinitive.
Never use the passive voice.
Never use contractions.
Here are a few ... observations on writing and the teaching of writing.
The Magic of Writing:
I always wanted to write because for me it was magic to get a piece of paper and put words on it. As I'm always saying, to put together words that were never before put together by anybody. To take two words that were never joined together like a "scintillating turnip." I would put words together like that just to keep the language fresh.
(Frank McCourt Interview, The Academy of Achievement, June 19, 1999)
Finding His Voice in Angela's Ashes:
After 20 pages of standard omniscient author, I wrote something that I thought was just a note to myself, about sitting on a seesaw in a playground, and I found my voice, the voice of a child. That was it. It carried me through to the end of the book.
(quoted in The Providence Journal, 1997)
Teaching and Learning:
You can teach biology and origami and how to skin a rabbit but I don't think you can teach creative writing. You can hint and nudge and inspire and encourage. You can help aspiring writers in their search for their material, their style. . . . What I learned, most of all, was that if you're teaching and not learning then you're not teaching, and if you don't enjoy yourself in the classroom, you might as well be driving a taxi.
(Frank McCourt, "Reflections on Creative Writing Class," The New York Times, April 14, 2002)
Follow Your Bliss:
I found out eventually why I was put on this earth. I was put on this earth to write. And as Thomas Carlyle said, "Happy is the man who has found his work." So I'm happy, and I hope everybody else finds that, too.
(Frank McCourt Interview, The Academy of Achievement, June 19, 1999)
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I have been writing and page designing on a computer, professionally, since 1992. Two spaces has never been the norm for computer-based journalism, or commercial printing or publishing, since desktop publishing became the norm in the early 1990s, and I think the extra space should have gone away with the end of typewriters as the dominant writing machine.In our efficient, modern world, I think there is no room for two spaces after a period. In the opinion of this particular copyeditor, this is a good thing.
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... there's no foolproof formula for perfect proofreading every time. It's just too tempting to see what we intended to write rather than the words that actually appear on the page or screen. Still, the goal of perfection is worth pursuing, and in that spirit I offer these 10 tips to help you see (or hear) your errors before anybody else does.How do you know if you take writing seriously? At some point, you've actually used all of these above -- that's a convincing start. I would certainly forgive someone of not proofing a 300-page book line-by-line backward (#8), but it's a good idea for a letter, report or article.
1. Give it a rest.
If time allows, set your text aside for a few hours (or days) after you've finished composing, and then proofread it with fresh eyes. Rather than remember the perfect paper you meant to write, you're more likely to see what you've actually written.
2. Look for one type of problem at a time.
Read through your text several times, concentrating first on sentence structures, then word choice, then spelling, and finally punctuation. As the saying goes, if you look for trouble, you're likely to find it.
3. Double-check facts, figures, and proper names.
In addition to reviewing for correct spelling and usage, make sure that all the information in your text is accurate.
4. Review a hard copy.
Print out your text and review it line by line: rereading your work in a different format may help you catch errors that you previously missed.
5. Read your text aloud.
Or better yet, ask a friend or colleague to read it aloud. You may hear a problem (a faulty verb ending, for example, or a missing word) that you haven't been able to see.
6. Use a spell checker.
The spell checker can help you catch repeated words, reversed letters (langauge is my favorite), and many other common errors--but it's certainly not goofproof.
7. Trust your dictionary.
Your spell checker can tell you only if a word is a word, not if it's the right word. For instance, if you're not sure whether sand is in a desert or a dessert, visit the dictionary (or our Glossary of Commonly Confused Words).
8. Read your text backward.
Another way to catch spelling errors is to read backward, from right to left, starting with the last word in your text. Doing this will help you focus on individual words rather than sentences.
9. Create your own proofreading checklist.
Keep a list of the types of mistakes you commonly make, and then refer to that list each time you proofread.
10. Ask for help.
Invite someone else to review your text. As I found out the hard way, a new set of eyes may immediately spot errors that you've overlooked.
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Regardless of what people around you (including the media) may say, right now is the best time to get into business Just go back and look at the economic slowdowns throughout history. Most recessions in the post-World War II era last an average of 10 months, followed by growth cycles that last an average of 50 months.And the last...
What this means for the startup is there's no better time than right now to get going and start pursuing your business dreams--in anticipation of the next period of growth.
- Everything is cheaper.
- You can hire more and better-qualified people.
- People are looking to change suppliers.
- Ownership equals tax incentives.
- Family and friends don't want to (or can't) invest more money into the stock or real estate markets.
- Suppliers are giving better credit.
- You can get good PR by showing you are going against the trend.
- You can buy everything you need at auction.
- You can find great "low money" or "no money" down deals.
10. You've lost your job, and you have to do something.See the piece (link is above) for the details behind the ten reasons.
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After all these years, however, there is still the expectation that when the economy turns around that the printing industry will turn around, too. Sorry. That assumption can't be made. Commercial printing shipments, on an inflation-adjusted basis, have been down for seven consecutive quarters, and this current quarter will only make that eight. That's twice as long as the general economic recession. While the economy was growing, we went through a period of 15 consecutive negative quarters a couple of years ago.Digital is taking a massive hit on printing companies, just as it is on print news companies, who need to start considering just what they can do to more greatly impact their piece of the digital market. Printing will never die, since one cannot make a paper plane out of a smartphone (yet). But that's about it, it seems!
Another idea that should be set aside is that that after recession, whenever that is, we will return to "business as usual." I don't know what that means. In practical terms, there really is no such thing. It's important to have fantasies, but this should not be one of them.
The printing industry will be vastly different after the recession ends than it was going into it. This industry always changes, especially in recessions. Unlike those of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and also the 1991 recession, there is no technological change working in our favor that is reducing the total costs of print or expanding the potential market for it. We went through the launch of digital prepress in a recession.
Last week, Marriott Corporation announced that in its first 100 days of making room reservations available using mobile devices (such as iPhones) it had booked $1.25 million in reservations. We already know that Dell Computer had attributed $1 million in orders over 18 months over Twitter. The company has more than 12,000 Twitter followers and offers them exclusive discounts. Mobile marketing will only be bigger when the recession is over.A lot has changed since I first got into the news business.
The other day, Hearst's legendary publisher Cathie Black said that magazines would start thriving again. She said that's what happened after 1991, and it will happen again. Sorry. Magazine circulation has been flat for nearly 20 years, through booms and busts, even though one would expect that population growth alone (just under +1% per year) would keep a floor under the business. Magazines are in deep trouble.
Just consider what has changed since 1991, the last real recession we had (and even then it was mild compared to 1981-1982). There was no consumer-driven Internet. There was no Facebook. There was no iPod. There were no e-books. There was really no e-mail. There were no online PDFs. There was no XML. There was no Twitter. No Google. No YouTube. There was no instant messaging. Cell phones were bulky, and they were just phones. There were no worthwhile PDAs. The Mac was seven years old. Windows barely worked.With regards to Windows -- touche! (If you used Windows in 1991, you might be diluted or forgetful if you think it worked like anything worth bragging about. Windows' weaknesses, not its strengths -- mostly its tie to DOS, thus business operations, via aggressive package sales and marketing -- is what the IT industry seems to have been built upon.)
All of this leads to this essential question: What will the post-recession successful print business look like?Keep reading, as he goes on from there. And his three main points run up to this:
First, it is print process agnostic. That is, it reflects the growing perception among buyers that selection of the print process is no longer critical except in process-exclusive situations. Offset or digital, buyers will consider the selected process as meaningless in their overall decision. Recommending a certain print process over another will become less important, often viewed as complicating a decision unnecessarily.
Those companies focused only on survival will not make the transition. They are only interested in figuring out how to buy time for themselves using their current business methods, equipment, and ideas. Getting past "survival-only thinking" requires a vision of what clients will need three and five years from now. That's risky because the clients don't even know what that is. That's what the entrepreneurism we need is all about: leadership and creativity.
Being obsessed with survival alone prevents a company from being forward-looking and proactive and can kill the optimism of employees and management. Reposition and restructure the print business now; get out of survival mode as quickly as possible. Obsessing over survival alone is counterproductive and is a sign of larger problems.
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[Vonnegut] offers seven deceptively simple principles:
* Find a subject you care about.
* Do not ramble, though.
* Keep it simple.
* Have the guts to cut.
* Sound like yourself.
* Say what you mean to say.
* Pity the readers.
Pity our readers? Vonnegut goes on to explain that our "audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify--whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales. That is the bad news."
"The good news," Vonnegut continues, "is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited."These days, About is a massive collection of what we now refer to as blogs. It is one of the originals, I think. If you enjoy writing, aspire to write, teach writing or have any interest in writing, the About.com section on Writing -- Grammar & Composition -- with Richard
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You know you need to get out journalism business fast. But you have no idea what to do next.He offers a list of areas of work one could enter if journalistic writing has come and gone as a beneficial career, he notes. He includes, as a sidebar, a humorous example of a news guy who became the "communications director" for, of all things, a strip club. Bottom line:
At that point a friend suggests you give bartending a try.
“Why not?” he says, “it’s an easy and fun thing to do. You get to meet a lot of interesting people and you also make a hundred dollars a night on tips alone.”
You figure you can make three or four thousand dollars a month easy and you are tempted to say “yes.” But should you? I think not.
The chances are you are a bookish person, more comfortable in a library than in a sour-smelling smoky noisy night club. There is a great chance that you won’t be able to handle the pressure of running a busy bar, making constant small talk to keep the inebriated customers happy, keeping up with different orders correctly, and managing the cash register, all at the same time.
You’d be totally out of your comfort zone.
Sometimes moving sideways is the smoothest way to push forward.Check out the blog, by Ugur Akinci, Ph.D., at technicalcommunicationcenter.com.
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What the digital switchover is actually doing is changing the language that TV broadcasters use to communicate with your television. Since 1941, televisions in the U.S. have utilized a set of broadcast standards laid out by the National Television System Committee. Big broadcast towers sent out information over the air using these NTSC standards and were picked up by the television antenna in your living room. Inside your TV, an NTSC tuner interpreted the information and properly displayed it on screen.The author, Michael Patrick Brady, brings up the often overlooked, at least unspoken, logic, behind any family dumping cable and satellite. As an admitted TV addict trying to recover from it, the thoughts are something I can appreciate.
With the emergence of free, digital, over-the-air television that includes HD transmissions, it will be interesting to see if Americans, the majority of whom now pay for their television service via cable or satellite, might see the benefit of switching back to the old rabbit ears. While the selection of over-the-air broadcasts will never be as comprehensive as pay services, that same glut of content is often cited as an annoyance--lots of channels that subscribers will never watch.
Dump cable. Donate to charities.
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The Worst Jobs For The 21st Century - Forbes.com
Another endangered species: journalists. Despite the proliferation of media outlets, newspapers, where the bulk of U.S. reporters work, will cut costs and jobs as the Internet replaces print. While current events will always need to be covered (we hope), the number of reporting positions is expected to grow by just 5% in the coming decade, the Labor Department says. Most jobs will be in small (read: low-paying) markets.
Radio announcers will have a tough time, too. Station consolidation, advances in technology and a barren landscape for new radio stations will contribute to a 5% reduction in employment for announcers by the middle of the next decade. Even satellite radio doesn't seem immune from the changes.
As anyone who works in the news business can attest, sagging ad revenue, rising newsprint costs and Internet competition are quickly changing this industry. Large metropolitan dailies have cut jobs and the size of their papers. Of course there will always be a demand for news, but the government projects news jobs will grow at a meager 5% by 2014. Best places to look for work: small-town and suburban newspapers, TV and radio.Working conditions: irregular hours, frequent deadline pressure, fierce competition.
Median annual salary: about $32,000 for reporters, $37,000 for broadcast news analysts.
