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“The art of readable writing
is to write as you speak”
Professor Rudolf Fleischer
The moment most people put fingers to keyboard
their language becomes stilted, formal, circumlocutory and filled
with jaw-breaking words - like circumlocutory. This pomposity
they confuse with professionalism.
If you’re not a professional copywriter,
we’d like to share some of the secrets of the trade. You’ll
then be in a better position to judge the written word when
you commission a pro. There are lots of trips and traps, you
see, many of which the amateur writer doesn’t think of.
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Professional writing is easy-to-read and flowing.
It communicates. It doesn’t try to be clever or impress.
It uses contractions. One- or two-word sentences. The easier
it is to read, the more professional the writing.
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Of course sentences can start with and. In
the first Testament, the first 40 paragraphs all start with
‘and’. The ‘bucket brigade’ - and,
so, thus, because, et cetera - draw the reader from one paragraph
to the next.
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Sexist language should be avoided.
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So should tautology and the obvious.
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When two words come together to form an adjective,
they should be hyphenated.
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Clichés, buzz words and overused phrases
should be avoided, e.g. ‘in terms of’, ‘when
it comes to’, ‘in order (to)’, ‘up’
and ‘off’ as in ring up, listen up, post off.
There’s nothing as dating as a dead buzzword.
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Then there are unnecessary words. Basically
is one of the worst. Perhaps not used so much in writing –
but in speeches, or normal speech, ouch! Listen to any business
programme on the radio and you’ll be appalled at the
use of ‘basically’.
‘Different’ must be the most over-used of the
lot. How often do you read
of someone who went to seven different countries, for instance?
They
couldn’t go to seven of the same country, now, could
they? Or ‘we had
numerous different options’. If you had numerous options,
of course they
were different!
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Capital letters should be used only
for proper nouns.
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The company is always singular.
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The difference between similar-sounding words
is often vast. Continually and continuously are too often
confused. The use of enormity instead of enormousness shows
how few know that one applies only to crime. Presently should
not be confused with ‘at present’. There are many
more.
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Common misuses include ‘amount’
when it should be number, and vice versa. They are
not always interchangeable So what’s the difference?
You can’t, for instance, have an ‘amount of people’
– unless you’re referring to a huge pile of humans
who cannot be counted individually. You talk about an amount
of sugar or salt. You talk about a ‘number of people’.
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Non-existent words. Is this a uniquely ‘new
South African’ phenomenon? Where has ‘representivity’
come from? The word is ‘representation’ –
and has been for centuries. That’s just one.
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Dates. The now famous 9/11 does not refer
to the ninth of November. As everyone knows it refers to aircraft
crashing into the Twin Towers on September 11. Yes, indeed,
for many decades the international rule on dates is to start
with the year, follow with the month, and finally the day.
Why can’t South Africans get it – other than our
properly trained journalists. And banks! But even our press
is getting shoddy.
Punctuation – vital! Let’s
look at Lynne Truss’s best seller on the subject, Eats,
Shoots and Leaves – a title taken from a badly-written
article on pandas. As it was written – Eats, comma, shoots
and leaves - suggests that a panda ate, shot the place up, then
left. Without that erroneous comma it would read Eats shoots
and leaves, making the meaning clear: that the panda eats the
young shoots and leaves of a tree! A single comma changes the
entire meaning.
There’s lots more. But, hey, this is not
a do-it-yourself course. We’re here to do it for you.
Go to the
top of the page
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