Two Harrumpfs

No comic today, but something to think about.

My second gold rule of writing is to be correct. This from This Day in History for July 20:

In December of the same year, Apollo 8 took three astronauts to the dark side of the moon and back, and in March 1969 Apollo 9 tested the lunar module for the first time while in Earth orbit.

The whole moon is dark half the time! They went to the FAR side of the moon! I know, “dark” is a synonym for “unknown,” and I presume they were using a professional writer who decided to write, um, informally. Still, why not be accurate?

While I’m at it, here’s another example of bad writing from the same article:

After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19.

“Into” is unnecessary. (It’s redundant. “Entering” includes the idea of going into.) I call this kind of mistake “fluff.” It goes against my third rule, to be concise. If you don’t need a word, don’t use it.

Double harrumpf.

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Being concise means you leave out unnecessary words. It also means choosing the shorter of two (or more) equivalent ways of saying something. Here’s a sentence from an interesting article in The Washington Post that’s nice and grammatical, but I’d say it’s a bit wordy. Unless I’m being paid by the word. (Which I’m not.)

This is primarily due to the fact that the low-level winds that blow from east to west across the tropical Pacific are at their weakest during this time of year, and consequently, small atmospheric changes can cause significant cooling or warming of the tropical Pacific.

Clear enough, and nice and chatty. Actually not too bad, and I wouldn’t be ashamed of it, but the sentence jumped out at me as a good example of how to be more concise. A lot of times you need to be concise, especially if the subject is complicated or boring. Here’s my take:

This is primarily due to the fact that because the low-level winds that blow from east to west across the tropical Pacific are at their weakest during this time of year right now, and consequently, so small atmospheric changes can cause significant cooling or warming of the tropical Pacific.

Here it is without the markup:

This is primarily because the low-level winds that blow east to west across the tropical Pacific are weakest right now, so small atmospheric changes can cause significant cooling or warming of the tropical Pacific.

That cut it about in half, and you get the same content. How much time would you save if your reading took half as long without losing any content? How much time would your readers save?

Okay, I just ran into a Dustin comic that mentions being concise. It’s a different kind of concise, though. But the principle applies, I think.

I don’t have anything (at the moment) from the outside world to illustrate this rule, but I want to make my series of posts about the five gold rules of expository writing, um, complete. Rule 1, rule 2 and again, rule 3, rule 5.

Making a document complete is tricky. And completeness has two parts, too.

First, you must meet requirements. Requirements are things imposed by something or someone outside the document. Requirements include style guides that you have to conform to, for example. Certain content might be required, such as a table of changes, table of contents, a version number, and a page of sign-offs.

The other area of completeness has to do with the content. Suppose you write instructions about how to make coffee. Don’t forget anything! Mention putting the grounds in, how to measure the water, and so on. Did you mention that the device needs to be plugged in? Whenever you write instructions, test them. Inexperienced users are excellent finders of things you assumed didn’t need to be mentioned.

I read a story once that the writer decided was a holy grail story, which, he said, always end up killing the writer as soon as they finish writing the story. So he left the last word off the last sentence in the

I haven’t mentioned this “the hard part of writing” in a while. Long enough ago that I don’t entirely remember what I wrote back then, but you probably don’t either, so it won’t matter if I repeat myself.

The hard part of writing is when you have a perfectly grammatical sentence, but it the sentence could be better—but and you have to think to make it better.

Here are I will share a few rules of thumb to make it writing good sentences a little easier.

Avoid using a false subject. Examples: “there is,” “there are,” and “it is.” (Except with the weather. You can say, “It’s raining.” But You can improve even on that: “Look at that rain!” “Good weather for ducks, eh?” “The rain is really coming down.”)

It’s a real problem
We have a real problem

… it hit me that I might still have special privileges with them
I realized that I might still have special privileges with them

It’s often said that faster is better
My shop teacher always said that faster is better.

Make the subjects of your sentences real.

Avoid using Use a better verb than the verb “to be.” (By which I mean all the forms of that verb, not just the infinitive.) “Make” and “do” are good ones to stay away from, too. This is why it’s using some other verb is harder: You have to think of another word. But if you do, your writing will be more colorful, interesting, and meaningful.

…which is the biggest rocket humanity has made.
…which currently stands as by far the biggest rocket humanity has made.

The writer wrote the second line is what the. It’s Better, isn’t it?

Nouns are better than pronouns. I mentioned this recently, so it’s not necessary I don’t need want to repeat myself. The idea is that Pronouns generally have words they refer to (antecedents) and your reader might have trouble figuring out what the antecedent is the pronoun refers to.

You might think of some more rules, but these are enough should give you enough to think about for a start. I made it this post hard enough to read by sharing some of my edits.

I mentioned conciseness recently, but avoiding unnecessary words is a good enough rule that it bears repeating. Make your writing concise.

Here’s a related comic, a Luann from a couple years back:

Got any suggestions of your own? Share in the comments.

This is rule three of my five gold rules of expository writing, after clear and correct (two  kinds). I held off a bit waiting for some good examples of not being concise, so I could be a curmudgeon bwhahaha.

Okay, let’s get serious. When you’re concise, you use all the words that are necessary, but no more. “On a daily basis” is not concise, because “daily” means the same thing. The rule is if you can say something with fewer words, do so. A synonym, terse, means “being a little too concise, so you sound unfriendly.” We won’t get into that. Being concise means you don’t waste your reader’s time or distract your reader from your content. Here are a few bad examples, anonomized to prevent embarrassment:

The first screen you will view is the ‘My Profile’ screen which is your profile.  This screen is broken down into 3 sections

Here’s concise:

The first screen is the ‘My Profile’ screen, which has 3 sections

Better, right? Here’s another:

Next, click on the ‘My Plan’ tab to view the details and/or to update your Performance Plan

The “next” isn’t necessary from the context, which I’m not showing.

Click  ‘My Plan’ to view or update your Plan

Microsoft (and Apple) specify a certain amount of conciseness in their style guides. For example you should “click OK,” not “click on the OK button.” I’m writing this a couple weeks ahead of when this’ll be posted, so I’ll keep my eyes open for some more examples:

Do you live in a remote area, or otherwise have difficulty bringing your computer in for repair?

Not as colorful, but definitely more to the point:

Do you have difficulty bringing your computer in for repair?

Here’s one I ran into today. I’ll just mark out the redundancy.

Hoffman-Richter Warranty Registration is currently not available as of this time.