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general advice on writing,  good style, grammar, and clarity

general advice on writing, good style, grammar, and clarity

Word Hacks

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Industrial-strength tricks for getting more out of Word

Microsoft Word is the world’s most popular word-processor – yet many people never use some of the powerful tools it has to offer. They might jiggle around with a few font choices and toolbar options, but there is a lot more under the bonnet which isn’t immediately apparent. Andrew Savikas’s new book Word Hacks offers tips and guidance for harnessing these hidden strengths. The tips are graded at beginner, moderate, and expert level – so you can work in a way which is comfortable for you. He starts off by telling you how to deal with all the menu options to make Word work as you want it to. Then it’s on to macros – a list of commands which you can store, to save you the problem of boringly repetitive keystrokes and menu choices. He also shows you how to hack your shortcut menus, and how to customise Word.

Word HacksThis ranges from trivial things such as changing the icons and buttons on your toolbars, to getting rid of the annoying and very unpopular Help assistant (Mr Paperclip). He then moves on to more useful tricks such as increasing the number of most recently used files (MRU) listed at the bottom of the File menu, and shows you how to mess with the number of font options available.

He shows you how to display samples of your fonts instead of just a list of their names; how to create bar graphs using tables; how to repeat a chapter heading across multiple pages; and how to increase the number of styles you can apply to footnotes ands captions.

Most of these tips only require you to type out a short macro (which he supplies) or to hack gently at the regular menu options. Any of the longer procedures are then saved as macros and assigned a keyboard shortcut of your choice.

You’ve probably noticed that Web addresses typed in Word turn automatically into hyperlinks – underlined and coloured blue. For those people (like me) who find this annoying, he shows you how to change the appearance and even get rid of them.

For serious and industrial strength writing he shows you how to do powerful search and replace edits, how to add custom (and temporary) dictionaries for special projects, how to take control of the way Word deals with bulleted lists, and how to make the most out of Word’s outlining feature.

There’s a whole chapter devoted to troubleshooting common Word problems – such as missing toolbars, repeated freezes and crashes, and the proliferation of unwanted temporary files. Then he finishes with some fairly advanced suggestions on forms and fields, plus how to get Word to perform calculations using tables, and using Word to work in XML and XSLT.

My guess is that this is one for people who like Word, who are committed to staying with it, and who want to get more from it in terms of power and productivity. It will also be useful to writers and editors working on book-length projects and reports. As usual with O’Reilly publications, the layout and presentation are impeccable.

© Roy Johnson 2004

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Andrew Savikas, Word Hacks: Tips and Tools for Taming your Text, Sebastapol: CA, 2004, pp.372, ISBN: 0596004931

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Words (language skills)

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beginner’s guide to language skills

Did you know that there are between one and two million words in the English Language. It’s the biggest stockpile in any language, mainly because English has been forged from many other languages – including Latin, Greek, Anglo-Saxon, French and German. Most people know between 25,000—75,000 words, and John Seely’s advice in this lively and accessible guide is that we should become aware of the distinctions between words. Word power is not just a case of learning more and more words, but using them with more care. He shows how words should be selected according to the situation in which they are going to be used. For instance, there is no point using specialist jargon if you are writing for a general audience.

Words (language skills)He gives advice on using a dictionary, and he offers a good account of what information dictionaries contain, and how to choose one to suit your purposes. There’s an interesting chapter on judging your audience and choosing the appropriate vocabulary for your purpose in writing. This deals with the connotations, the range and tone of words, ranging from formal, informal, and jargon, to slang and even taboo words.

He offers a brief account of the history of the English language, showing how it has been and continues to be built from words borrowed from other languages. It’s also particularly good for coining new terms from existing words – such as cybercafe and velcroid.

The second part of the book gives a humane collection of information about word classes, word structure – nouns, verbs, adjectives, prefixes, suffixes, and so on. This also includes lists of words which are commonly confused, such as adduce/deduce – and he ends with a detailed glossary.

This might all sound rather dry, but I have to say that the more I read on, the more interesting the book became. It’s suitable for anybody who wishes to perform more successfully in the workplace or in studying, and it will tell you all you need to know in order to develop or improve your word building and vocabulary.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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John Seely, Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp.128, ISBN: 0198662823

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Write in Style

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lessons on good writing style – with lots of examples

Write in Style is a good-natured and humane guide to the main elements of producing fluent and accurate English. Richard Palmer’s approach is practical and refreshingly irreverent. He covers good and bad sentences; how to deal with punctuation; how to strike the right tone; and the rules of spelling and grammar – plus all the bewildering exceptions to them. His pace is leisurely and the style conversational. He’s particularly good at explaining the problems and irregularities of the English language. Every point is illustrated with vivid examples – gaffes from the popular press and good style from skilful authors.

Write in StyleHe covers all the fundamentals and issues which commonly give people problems – such as the differences between clauses, phrases, and complete sentences. There are also exercises (with answers) at the end of each chapter, so that you can check your understanding of each topic.

All the common marks of punctuation are fully explained, including the much-misunderstood apostrophe. There’s a whole chapter devoted to advice on writing academic essays – a very good discipline to acquire for anybody who wants to develop their writing skills. Then he does the same thing for reports, reviews, and the quite tricky precis and summary.

This will appeal to people who want to be taken by the hand and led through the complexities of English by a reassuring teacher. The strength of this book is that every point is thoroughly explained and illustrated by good and bad examples – many of them very amusing.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Richard Palmer, Write in Style: a guide to good English, London: Routledge, 2nd edn, 2002, pp.255, ISBN: 0415252636

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Writing a CV that Works

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develop your key self-promotion and marketing tool

This is a cheap and cheerful guide to producing an effective CV (curriculum vitae). Writing a CV that Works is suitable for complete beginners who may not have written one before, or for intermediate users who might want to develop their existing CV beyond merely a list of their previous jobs. It starts off with the reasons why you need a CV and why you should view it as a marketing tool rather than just a life synopsis. This is followed by advice on how to identify your own skills and achievements. Paul McGee introduces four case studies of typical adults wishing to seek, change, or improve a job. Then comes the meat of the matter – how to write the most persuasive account of yourself without fibbing or distortion.

Writing a CV that WorksThe secret is to spell out all your skills and your achievements in a positive manner. He offers templates which you can use, as well as some good tips for presenting any qualifications or training in the best possible light. Moreover, he doesn’t shy away from the problem of what to do if you haven’t got any qualifications.

He discusses the three main types of CV – chronological, functional, and targetted – and how to organise the information it contains. If you’ve never created a CV before, you’ll be glad to see that he analyses several practical examples, showing their strengths and weaknesses. He also offers suggestions for how they could be improved.

He includes valuable advice on how to analyse job advertisements, and how to compose the covering letter which will accompany your CV. Then comes the part most people find very difficult indeed – Cold Calling, or applying for jobs which haven’t been advertised.

Then finally the picture is rounded off with advice about preparing for and succeeding in an interview. You’ll still need to do a lot of preparation before you get to this stage – but this short guide will help you through each part of the process.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Paul McGee, Writing a CV that Works, Plymouth: How to Books, 1997, pp.128, ISBN 1857033655

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Writing at University

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gentle advice to students on academic writing skills

“We believe that writing for your studies and learning for your studies are so integrally related that they cannot be separated from each other. Writing essays is fundamentally about learning.” That’s the credo here, and this book sets out to help students develop academic writing skills at university level. Creme and Lea start out by exploring the problems associated with getting started. That is, how to remove writer’s block by the techniques of practice writing, brainstorming, and generating your own questions.

Academic writing skills They explain why writing is difficult, then they discuss the early approaches to producing an assignment. This involves becoming aware of the protocols of the subject, and the type of assignment. The next step should be a close analysis of the question title, its key terms and any instructions. They offer some excellent worked examples of analysing assignments and showing what’s required, and they also discuss the note-taking, mind-mapping, and various types of reading which should go into any preparation.

The central strategic issue in academic writing skills is matching your own writing techniques to the requirements of the task in hand. You may be a ‘patchwork’ or a ‘grand plan’ type of writer – but how is this strategy to be matched with a project which might require what they call chronological, descriptive, analytic, or evaluative writing? They explore what might be involved in each of these approaches. There are more good examples – along with neat tips, such as the idea that you should develop your skills by assembling a glossary of terms for your subject as you go along.

They also explore one of the issues which many students find difficult – making the transition from everyday personal or subjective writing to developing a more objective mode which adopts the appropriate ‘language of discourse’. They end with tips for editing your work – including the details of grammar and punctuation – which are wisely left to the last.

The newly expanded second edition includes sections on report writing, electronic writing, learning journals, and using the Internet. This is a writing guide for someone who is prepared to sit down and read about the process of writing and who prefers the support of a sympathetic tutor rather than a source of reference or a compendium of rules. It’s the sort of book which holds you by the hand and talks you gently through the issues.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Phyllis Creme and Mary R. Lea, Writing at University, 3rd edition, Buckingham: Open University Press, 2008, pp.208, ISBN: 0335213251

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Writing at Work

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the basics of business communications

Robert Barrass is the author of Students Must Write. Writing at Work is his latest book, which is aimed at helping people with business communication skills. What he offers is a set of strategies for people who need to write at work – whether they are in administration, commerce, or management. The approach he takes is very practical and straightforward. He emphasises the fact that the act of writing helps you to digest and remember information. In communicating with other people, you should aim for directness, clarity, precision, and simplicity – and the best part of his method is that he shows you how to achieve it.

Writing at WorkOne of the many good features of the book is that he gives real-life examples of poor writing and shows how they might be improved. There’s also a chapter on writing a business letter, with detailed explanations of how to deal with each part – from your address at the top to your signature at the bottom.

There are some excellent checklists which offer detailed steps in preparing, planning, drafting, writing, and editing a piece of work. There’s also a section on language which deals with words which are commonly misused and misunderstood.

He includes a useful chapter on using measurements, diagrams, graphs, and pie charts. This is followed by an account of how to write a report – often a daunting prospect for even the most experienced writer. The same is true of the minutes of meetings, which he also covers.

He ends with a chapter called ‘Talking at Work’. This covers spoken communication on the phone, in meetings, in interviews, and making presentations.

If you work in an admin office, a school or university, the town hall, or especially a government information office – then this book will help you to express yourself more effectively.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Robert Barrass, Writing at Work: A guide to better writing in administration, business and management, London: Routledge, 2002, pp.201, ISBN 0415267536

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Writing Bids and Funding Applications

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applying for sponsorship and financial support

Many people now work in jobs which rely on funding – from either government or the private sector. Some of them spend a lot of time re-applying for money each year, just to keep themselves in work. This book will be a godsend to those who need help on how to do it effectively. It will also be useful to people seeking sponsorship for their schemes and projects. Writing bids and funding applications is now one way of staying in employment.

Writing Bids and Funding ApplicationsJane Dorner is an experienced writer and researcher who knows her way around information and resources. She’s good at explaining how to do the paperwork, and she’s very good at uncovering resources that are available. She starts off here with what will be the crucial items of advice to most people – how to locate sources of funding to float your new scheme or keep your existing project alive.

Next comes ‘preparing the pitch’ – the important stage of presenting your case on paper. She explains how to make your bid attractive, persuasive, professional, and most of all convincing.

This is followed by a strategy for making bids which can be applied to any circumstance. It tackles thorny issues such as how much money to ask for and how to cost your own time. If you are a freelance worker, you’ll find this section very instructive.

Next she deals with the separate parts of a submission document in great detail – the executive summary, financial statement, references, covering letter, and even how to package the application.

Then there’s advice on how to express and style your bid – with excellent tips on avoiding jargon and vogue terms. Many such bids will be made in partnerships – so she covers that as well.

The book ends with a series of checklists, step procedures, lists of funding bodies, online resources, and agency addresses.

If you are thinking of applying for funding to anybody – from a charity to the European Union – do yourself a favour and buy a copy of this book. It could make the difference between getting the grant or not. Certainly if you follow the advice given here, you will maximise your chances.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Jane Dorner, Writing Bids and Funding Applications, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp.138, ISBN: 0198606753

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Writing Essays

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guide for students in English and the humanities

This is a lively and comprehensive essay-writing manual which is obviously based on solid experience of helping students to improve their skills. Having written a book on the same subject myself [and with the same title!] I was keen to see what he had to say. Richard Turley talks you through the composition of an essay – from introduction to conclusion. This is done by a close examination of real examples, and he shows how writing can be improved by careful editing and re-drafting.

Essay Writing SkillsAll points of his advice are well illustrated, and he clearly knows where students need most help – though I wasn’t so sure about his discussing logic of argument, punctuation, and arrangement of evidence all at the same time. Several issues at once might be difficult for some students to grasp. However, one advantage of this approach is that the reader is brought close to the real process of composition – where several things do have to be considered at once.

He explains how to generate the structure of an essay – by exploring its question – and how to incorporate and use quotations from critics to strengthen your own arguments.

Then he tackles the thorny issues of making links between topics and guiding readers through an argument. I often suggest to students that their intentions should be made obvious without clunky ‘signposting’ of the ‘First I will discuss…’ variety. But the examples he provides are persuasive.

On conclusions, he goes through a series of edits, showing how the expression of ideas can be clarified and improved. He also covers quotations and the conventions of scholarly referencing (which many students find difficult) plus spelling, good style, and presentation.

He finishes with libraries and the use of computers, plus writing essays under exam conditions. Most of his illustrative material is drawn from literature and the humanities – but the advice he gives will be useful for students in most disciplines.

I enjoyed reading this book. The style is lively and often quite amusing. It’s a shame he doesn’t provide a bibliography; but this is one of the few books on study skills which will actually make you laugh.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Richard Marggraf Turley, Writing Essays: A guide for students in English and the humanities, London: Routledge, 2000, pp.145, ISBN: 0415230136

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Writing for Academic Journals

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getting into print with academic writing

Anyone who wants to get ahead in academic or professional life today knows that it’s a question of publish or perish. This applies to colleges, universities, and even hospital Trusts. Yet writing for publication is one of the many skills which isn’t formally taught. Once beyond undergraduate level, it’s normally assumed that you will pick up the necessary skills as you go along. Writing for Academic Journals seeks to rectify this omission. Rowena Murray is an experienced writer on the subject (author of How to Write a Thesis and How to Survive Your Viva) and she is well aware of the time pressures people are under in their professional lives. What she has to say should be encouraging for those people in ‘new’ universities, people working in disciplines which have only recently been considered academic, and those in professions such as the health service which are under pressure to become more academic.

Writing for Academic Journals She starts out by looking at the psychology of academic writing – questions of confidence, motivation, and skill. She is well aware that there is an enormous amount of competitiveness, envy, and open criticism between departments and disciplines on the subject of who has published and who hasn’t. Next she deals with the important issue of getting to know your target publications. There’s really no way round this: you need to know what they’re looking for, and how they want it presented.

For those who might not have written a scholarly paper before, she shows you how to analyse one and uncover its basic structure and arguments – with a view of course to constructing your own.

Do you want to publish your own articles or research? She likens the process to joining a conversation which has been going on for some time. You must first watch and listen, learn its rules and conventions, then when you have adopted them you might be accepted.

The next part of the book deals with how to find a topic and develop an argument. You can do this by mining your reading notes, expanding a brief presentation, or maybe adapting a chapter from your dissertation or thesis.

She explains several useful strategies to help getting started with writing and overcoming writer’s block. There’s also lots of sound advice on planning, outlining, and the art of writing abstracts.

She shows you how to draft your text and create the appropriate style. This is followed by the process of revision and editing,

There is further encouragement and some practical strategies for finding time in which to write. But by far the most useful is a chapter in which she shows you how to learn from letters of rejection – how to turn the disappointment of facing negative criticism into a positive learning experience.

Although it is aimed at those writing for publication, this book will in fact be useful for anyone who wishes to sharpen their academic writing skills and understand something about the process of preparing a text for its public launching.

© Roy Johnson 2009

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Rowena Murray, Writing for Academic Journals, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2nd edition 2009, pp.288, ISBN: 0335234585

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Writing for Broadcast Journalists

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writing skills and professional advice

Writing for Broadcast Journalists comes from a series on writing and new media which includes Writing for Journalists, Subediting for Journalists, and Web Production for Writers and Journalists. Those people writing for broadcasting (radio and television – and I suppose new media Internet podcasts) have special problems. They must make their style seem like someone talking (not writing) to their audience. They only have one chance to get their message across. And they have to be very careful for legal reasons (‘a bus hit a car’ could be contentious, but ‘a bus and a car collided’ is safer).

Writing for Broadcast JournalistsRick Thompson’s guidance manual is packed with advice to would-be writers for this medium. Much of his attention is devoted to the pursuit of cliché, journalese, tabloidese, official doublespeak, and gobbledygook. But he also deals with subtler issues – all based on his long experience in broadcasting – such as the choice of words which sound right, or the avoidance of ambiguity. I was struck by the fact that much of the advice he offers is exactly the same as that offered in academic writing.

And for the same reasons – the search for clarity and accuracy. He advises that you should use short sentences; start with the most important statement; use the active voice; and minimise subordinate clauses. So in fact, although his guidance is targeted at broadcast journalists, it could be profitably followed by writers in most other genres as well.

He’s someone with years of experience at the top level of the national and international profession, and he’s smack up to date with his references – such as the Labour government’s sexed-up dossiers on non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

That’s one of the things I really enjoyed about this book. Its primary purpose is to be a style guide for would-be journalists – but en passant he provides a great deal of insight into political communication skills and public relations strategies.

He has a long list of topics about which extra care should be taken: the titles of important people; geographic place names; the political divisions of the British Isles; numbers and measurement; sex, gender, and race. A slip on any one of these issues can easily lead to a court case.

There’s a clear explanation of the different techniques required for radio, television, and online news reporting; how to write headlines, how to use graphics, and even how to write for live broadcast on location.

He finishes with an interesting list of what he calls ‘dangerous words’ – terms which are commonly misused or misunderstood, such as anticipate and chronic, plus interesting cases such as inflammable and incombustible, which mean the opposite of what you would imagine. This is an amusing way of exposing cliches such as a safe haven. A haven is by definition a safe place of shelter – so this expression is tautologous.

The book is aimed at journalists, but anyone with a serious interest in developing their literacy will learn a lot about professional writing skills from what he has to say.

© Roy Johnson 2010

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Rick Thompson, Writing for Broadcast Journalists, Abingdon: Routledge, 2nd edition 2010, pp.192, ISBN: 0415581680

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