July 10, 2007
Written English? Odds against you? CALL THE ANGLICIZER.
Our province has many universities and several colleges that turn out graduates in English Literature, TESL, Translation and related fields. (I myself have a minor in English Lit.)
So why do Quebecers still tolerate really bad English, especially on expensive marketing materials, posters, menus, consumer goods, and most irritatingly, on tourism brochures?
One of my favourite shops in the Atwater Market uses NaturSac biodegradable plastic bags. I presume these bags are produced in the hundreds of thousands, at the very least. In French, one side of the bag reads:
Votre magasin se soucie de l’environnement en vous fournissant ce sac écologique dégradable par bioassimilation. (logo: Les Sacs Biodégradables) Ce sac de polyéthylène EPI se dégrade dans les 12 mois environ selon les conditions d’exposition. (logo: Le Reflexe Environnement)
In English, it says:
Your store care about environment by providing you this ecological biodegradable bag by bioaccumulation. (logo: The Biodegradables Bags). This polyéthylène (sic) EPI bag will degrade in about 12 month depending of the exposition condition. (logo: The Environment Reflex)
Where to begin?
At the Des Seigneurs canal locks near my house is a small tourism info centre. I picked up a couple of brochures, as one likes to recommend places for friends to stay in town.
An upscale B&B called ‘Le Terra Nosta’ has an expensively produced brochure with great photography and type, and more than a few lapses into questionable English, noting that they boast “queen size bed,” (what, just the one?) and that they “provide you with bicycles gratuitously.”
I could go on, but suffice to say that other than government publications, it was hard to find a brochure that didn’t have some sort of English error in it.
So here’s the deal: I will read over your English translations and fix them for you. My prices are not unreasonable, and the value to the image of your organization is incalculable — especially if you plan on dealing in global markets or the domestic tourism industry.
Even if your first language is English, if you’re not quite sure that spellcheck didn’t catch a lot of homonym errors, put your mind at rest - email me today.
Posted by aj_kandy at 4:44 PM | Comments (5)
June 12, 2006
Sentence. Fragments drive. The reader mad.
Reading text composed of sentence fragments is like being in the passenger seat with a start-and-stop driver; they’ll race away from the green light, travel a very short distance, then slam on the brakes, causing grammatical whiplash.
Sentence fragments also make the writer sound as if they’ve been hit with a tranquilizer dart — squeaking out small bursts of lucidity between blackout spells.
Here’s an example of writing from a friend’s blog, transmogrified into sentence fragments, with comma splices for good measure:
Clearly. The cat was suffering. There was nothing we could do. But we couldn’t just leave him there either, we had a little bit of water left. So I cut the bottom out of the bottle to make a small bowl. And we set the water down next to the poor creature.
The cat looked at the water. And then stood up. He gave us a contemptuous look. And walked away. With the swagger, of an old arthritic sailor.
It’s hard to resist the urge to say that out loud in a “caveman” voice, isn’t it? What scares me is that some people write like this (all together now…) all the time!
Sentence fragment errors occur when a writer isn’t aware of proper sentence construction. Sentences at their simplest need both subjects and predicates, and contain a complete thought; this is also called an independent clause.
By contrast, a dependent clause is missing one of these elements, and depends on another clause to complete its sentence structure.
For example, in the sentence:
Robert’s car rolled into the ditch, the brakes squealing.
“Robert’s car rolled into the ditch” is a complete independent clause, with a subject (Robert’s car) and a predicate verb (rolled) and even an object (the ditch). You can put a period at the end of it and it still works as a sentence; in fact, you could theoretically put a period after rolled, if you were feeling particularly Hemingwayesque.
However, the phrase “the brakes squealing” is dependent on the first half of the sentence, as this is a phrase without a predicate verb and it’s an incomplete thought, merely adding description to what’s going on in the first clause.
Comma splices occur when you try to join two independent clauses with a comma instead of a conjunction:
We rode up the hill to Cortona, we were staying in a B&B.
Here’s the same sentence corrected with a subordinating conjunction:
We rode up the hill to Cortona, where we were staying in a B&B.
When you have two independent clauses that share a continuous thought, consider using a semicolon to join them:
The car had 100,000 miles on it. It showed scars from being driven long distances.
The car had 100,000 miles on it; it showed scars from being driven long distances.
When you have an independent clause that’s followed by another that explains the first, but doesn’t form part of a continuous thought, then you should use a colon. Note that the phrase after the colon is properly capitalized, like a new sentence:
The car had 3,000,000 miles on it. It was time to buy a new one.
The car had 3,000,000 miles on it: It was time to buy a new one.
When you take care to avoid sentence fragments and comma splices, your writing flows much more naturally, without interruption. Using the concept that each sentence is a single thought also helps to order your writing, making it easier for the reader to follow. I find it a useful tool to also cut down on clutter and jargon, and condense your copy into lean, economical and memorable turns of phrase - which is the ultimate goal of business writing, isn’t it?
Once again, I’m indebted to Lori Mortimer’s article at Blogcritics.org for the links.
Posted by aj_kandy at 11:42 AM | Comments (2)
May 23, 2006
The dreaded passive voice
As a satirical poem at McSweeney’s aptly puts it, “passive voice is the silent killer.” In a tragically mistaken attempt to sound objective and professional, reams of prose are rendered deadly dull and impersonal by the overuse of this particular grammatical construction.
Escape the Pit of Passivity! Liven up your technical manuals, sales sheets and everyday business correspondence! Read on.
The passive voice has become a stylistic shorthand for objectivity, through its use in journalism. Combined with weakly-verbed phrases, however, it’s been corrupted into the cold, impersonal, impenetrable corporate voice. Passively-voiced writing often becomes space-filler that obfuscates more than it clarifies - and the goal of these little grammar lessons is to help you learn to write with clarity, after all.
Here is an example taken from a current BBC News story, and revoiced completely in the passive, with weak verbs and filler phrases added.
When Hamas is in agreement with a rejection of violence and proceeds with the recognition of Israel, peace can be negotiated, said the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. “To Mahmoud Abbas, the elected president of the Palestinian Authority, the hand is extended in a peaceful manner,” said a keynote speech to the US Congress that was given by Mr. Olmert. However, “a veto over progress will not be given, nor will hope be allowed to be taken hostage by a regime that uses terror,” he said. Hamas is given consideration as an organization that uses terror by Israel, the US and the EU. Israel is not in the recognition of the Palestinian Authority, which is under the domination of Hamas. A government was formed after elections in January by Hamas.
Maddening, isn’t it? And yet people write like this all the time!
There are legitimate uses for the passive voice; for example, when a writer wishes to emphasize the object of the action over the subject, she might write “The ball was kicked by Jack,” as opposed to the dog or elderly Mrs. McGillicuddy (one would hope). Another use is to differentiate the actor, as in “the ball was kicked by Jack,” but not Jill.
In the same way, the passive voice can be used well to emphasize results (“The quarter was ended successfully”…by whom?) but consider that the active voice works equally well (“We ended our quarter on the biggest revenues of our company history.”)
Untrained writers often believe that the passive voice sounds more objective, but since when were clarity and objectivity mutually opposed? If real human beings are shown to be involved, how does that invalidate what you’re talking about?
The objectivity is in one’s methods and work, not in the writing. Communicating with simplicity and clarity doesn’t dumb down your ideas, and you can’t fix flawed information by couching bad data in distant, neutral and authoritative language.
By contrast, legions of PR flacks, op-ed writers, and pseudo-scientists use the passive voice to appropriate authority and approximate objectivity. This makes their often cockeyed assertions sound reasonable, researched and “truthy.” (Just look at the sophistical ramblings of corporate-funded climate science naysayers.)
A related misconception is that the passive voice sounds somehow more professional. However, simply calling yourself “a professional” doesn’t make you more professional in your chosen métier, and professional-sounding language that doesn’t communicate effectively is the mark of a hack.
I suspect there are many who learned the passive voice and weak phrasing in school, where 1000-word-minimum paper lengths led them to pad out their thinly-worded paragraphs. Filler phrases take what could be one word and make them several:
- at this point in time (now)
- due to the fact that (because)
- with regard to (about)
- it is probable that (probably)
- as a matter of fact (actually)
Similarly, phrases using nouns instead of verbs suck any potential excitement right out of the text.
- give consideration to (consider)
- make an assumption of (assume)
- perform an analysis of (analyze)
- take action on (act)
To which I can only say that circumlocution does not make your text more impressive, it merely bores, and makes your probably ill-considered notions more suspect.
The combination of these bad habits leads us to the morass of Sir Humphreyisms. Consider “it may be noted that under certain conditions alternative paradigms might be considered,” versus “we could look at this data another way.”
Similarly, in the hands of self-styled professionals, the passive voice becomes a fantastic way to avoid personal or group responsibility. Pronouns like I or we go missing, making it easier to distance the action from any live human beings.
“Mistakes were made,” the report on the nuclear meltdown will say, instead of “Rupert made a mistake.” And Rupert will likely go on to another job at another nuclear plant.
Good for Rupert, bad for us.
……….
I found the examples in this piece at these sites, which I encourage you to go read now!Business Writing With Impact, at Monster.ca
The Passive Engineer: Why, When and How to use the Passive Voice, at ProTrainCo.com
One Simple Rule for Improving Your Writing, by Lori Mortimer, at Blogcritics.org. (Actually has dozens of rules, some of which I’ll touch on later here.)
Posted by aj_kandy at 9:09 PM | Comments (3)
Subjects and objects
Part two of our tips for better business writing.
It’s inevitable that your copy will go through multiple hands before finding its way to the audience. The editing-by-committee process often compounds subject-object and verb tense errors. Here’s how to spot and avoid these mistakes before it’s too late.
Subject and object pronoun matching. It’s a basic one, but multiple edits to a document often leave beginnings and endings of sentences mistmatched; singular subjects with plural objects, for instance:
- Each employee is asked to park his or her car in the designated lot
is correct, whereas
- Each employee is asked to park their car in the designated lot
is not, because employee isn’t plural, and you can’t really say “employees” there either, because it implies that all the employees share a single car, like circus acrobats. I suppose that might apply if you work at Cirque du Soleil, but otherwise, no.
Verb tense matching. In a single clause or non-compound sentence, all the verbs’ tenses should match. For instance:
- The team went to Taiwan where they visited the new semiconductor facility
is correct, whereas
- The team goes to Taiwan where they visited the new facility
is not, obviously. It is possible to have different tenses in a compound sentence, one for each clause, such as:
- The team is currently in Taiwan where they are visiting the new semiconductor facility, and then they will travel to Hong Kong for a series of business meetings.
In this example, the first clause is in the present tense, and the second is in the future tense, joined by “and then.” What creeps in more insidiously are mismatches such as:
- The team is currently in Taiwan where they visited the new semiconductor facility, and go to Hong Kong for business meetings.
where we have jumbled tenses. You’ll often see this when formerly separate sentences are joined together, an edit isn’t completed properly, or a clause is added without checking for verb tense agreement.
Next: the dreaded passive voice.
Posted by aj_kandy at 10:21 AM
May 21, 2006
Make good writing a cornerstone of your brand
Between the bloggers, Bullfighters, Cluetrainers and other lovers of language, we’re making great strides in eliminating buzzwords, cutting through bafflegab, and getting corporations to speak in a recognizably human voice. The people that get it really get it, and that’s good.
That said, even enlightened businesses suffer from the widespread epidemic of plain bad writing. Cringeworthy, first-draft quality, high-school, sometimes even grade-school level; stuffed with not just buzzwords, but unfunny jokes, too. I’ve read things that no one should have to endure, and as an editor, I try to both protect the public and polish up the image of the client. After all, words live forever in Google’s cache; more brand guardians should be mindful of them.
The following series of posts will address how to create good structured writing with crisp, clear, lean-and-mean prose.
After the jump: a “backwards” strategy for copywriting.
Always know where you want to end up, and work backwards from there. Unclear goals kill prose dead. If you start writing a piece without any clear idea of where that is, or who you’re talking to, a document can meander aimlessly and pointlessly. That means you need to know:
- First: What action you want the reader to take upon finishing the piece - to go visit the site, call the sales department, buy the product, make a donation.
- Second: Who the audience for the piece is. This means research.
- Third: What arguments or appeals are best suited to this audience - and the strongest one should be your closer.
- Work backwards from there through logical steps (simply asking “why?” at each stage is a good way to determine content)…
- …Until you end at the beginning - state the original problem that needs to be solved.
Using this work-back model, create an outline of topic points which can then have paragraphs crafted around them. Here’s a fictional example for Erewhon Bicycles Unincorporated:
- End action we want taken: buy an Erewhon bike.
- Who’s the audience? People that want quality and high technology in a bike, but can’t afford expensive boutique brands.
- Best argument we can offer this audience: Erewhons are 50% less expensive than competing bicycles but offer all of the same advantages.
- Working backwards: explain the advantages and/or how Erewhon can sell so low, etc. (“we use bamboo instead of carbon fiber!”)
- End at the beginning, with the statement of the customer’s original dilemma. “Boutique quality bikes at outlet prices, only from Erewhon.”
Posted by aj_kandy at 11:00 AM | Comments (2)
