July-August 2009 - Issue #70

• Intro
  
• Article - A few principles of good writing by Harold V. Cordry
  
• The Office Corner
  
• The Human Resources Corner by Anne Caldwell
  
• Grammar Question of the Month - Robbing a bank
  
• Tech Tips by Terence Kierans - Show Day of the Year and Number of Days Left in the Year
  
• Writing Corner
  
• Word of the Month - senate
  
• Recommendations
  
• Judy's Corner
  
• Judy's Photo Gallery
  

* Harold V Cordry (retired copyeditor, journalist, and professor) offers some writing tips that apply not only to writers and authors but to anyone who must write to communicate well. And he offers a little "P.S." to his tips that finishes with a couple of pithy sentences. Thanks, Professor Cordry. If you want to learn more about how he thinks, go to http://webgrammar.ning.com and join the fun.

A few principles of good writing:

• Readers will think about you the writer when they read what you’ve written. Be sure you know what you want them to think.
• Respect your readers.
• Don’t ever think in terms of "the reader" (unless you’re writing for one specific person).
• Prefer verbs to nouns.
• Prefer action verbs to linking verbs.
• Prefer conciseness. In general, "less is more."”
• Always try to be engaging and interesting.
• Don’t put too much into one sentence. Generally speaking, sentences aren’t at their best when they’re made to carry heavy loads.
• Think about "tone" and manner of speaking.
• Always know where you’re going.
• Look at what you’re writing from a reader’s point of view.
• Always look for precisely the right word.
• Don’t be boring.
• If you sit down to write and discover that you’re ready to write the middle part or the ending, don’t feel that you must begin at the beginning.
• I’ve found that my brain works subconsciously on the hardest parts of what I’m going to write.
• If time is on your side, put aside what you’ve written and read it the next day.
• Generally speaking, errors indicate that you the writer haven’t bothered to read what you’ve written. If that’s true, why should anyone else read it?

I'm seeing complaints on the Internet regarding "grammatical errors," their point being that if they're grammatical, they're not errors. NONSENSE!! Another flaw in the language! "Grammatical" is first of all an adjectival form of "grammar" which means "relating to grammar." Only in its second sense (American Heritage Dictionary) is it characterized as conveying the idea of correctness.

But remember: Dictionaries are like crime reporters. They report how words are used, not how they're supposed to be used.

1. CONVERTING PDFs TO MICROSOFT WORD: http://www.pdftoword.com/

2. COLORS ON THE WEB: Dedicated to the use of colors in design, and especially in web design. It gives web designers a better understanding of the importance of colors
http://www.colorsontheweb.com/

3. OFFICE TIPS TOREDUCE YOUR ENERGY:
http://sustainablecampus.unimelb.edu.au/carbon/officetips.html

The Art of Delegation Part 1

Everybody has too much to do. Everybody needs more time. How many times have you heard a friend or colleague say that they don't even have time to hire someone to take over the things that for which they don't have the time? Sounds illogical, doesn't it? Or at best, a Catch-22.

Why do some managers not empower their employees to do more? What causes them to hesitate to unburden themselves of the additional responsibilities that are most likely being neglected or done half-heartedly?

Ask them and most will say that it would take as long to train someone to do them as it would for them to take care of it themselves. It's easy to point out the flaw in this one: if they take the time once or twice, even three times, to train someone, it will be off their plates for good. Some of the other reasons are a little more difficult to discern and address.

The second most frequent answer I hear is that they are "control freaks," and that they really don't think that anyone else can do it to their satisfaction. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy which will eventually cripple their business growth if they apply it to everything.

The real reason is that most managers don't really know how to delegate effectively. Think about it. Most people get ahead in their careers because they are good at what they do technically, not because they are good at managing people. Some are naturals at guiding and directing others; most are not.

Find H/R expert Anne Caldwell at Outsourcing Solutions.
www.azoutsource.com

He "admitted to [e.g.] robbing a bank" or "to having robbed a bank." This is common usage. Good usage, however, omits "to."

Again, this tip is thanks to Professor Harold V. Cordry

You can use Excel's ability to perform arithmetic with date values. It makes it easy to calculate the day of the year and how many days are left in the year.

If you have a date in cell C123 you could use the following formulae in two other cells to calculate what day of the year it is and how many are still left (using US date format):

=C123-"12/31/2009"
="12/31/2009"-C123

The reason that the first formula uses a date of 12/31/2009 is so that the result will show the actual day number. After you enter these formulae you need to format the cells as numbers, otherwise Excel will, by default, format the cells as dates.

With the two cells selected:

• Right click on the cells and select "Format Cells"
• Select "Number "
• Set the "Decimal places" option to 0.
• Click OK.

Terence Kierans
Cyberspace Virtual Services
tkierans@virtualservices.com.au
http://www.virtualservices.com.au/
We keep your project on the boil, while you sleep

1. PARADIGM ONLINE WRITING ASSISTANT
http://www.powa.org/

2. CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE Q&A
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/new/new_questions01.html

3. PROOFREADER'S AND EDITOR'S MARKS
http://www.utexas.edu/visualguidelines/proofreaders.html

4. WORD TRIPPERS: The Ultimate Source for Choosing the Perfect Word When It Really Matters by subscriber Barbara McNichol
http://www.barbaramcnichol.com/buy_word_trippers.html

5. PROOFREADING YOUR WRITING
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/561/01/

Main Entry:sen£ate
Pronunciation:*se-n*t
Function:noun
Etymology:Middle English senat, from Anglo-French, from Latin senatus, from sen-, senex old, old man more at SENIOR
Date:13th century

1 : an assembly or council usually possessing high deliberative and legislative functions: as a : the supreme council of the ancient Roman republic and empire b : the second chamber in the bicameral legislature of a major political unit (as a nation, state, or province)
2 : the hall or chamber in which a senate meets
3 : a governing body of some universities charged with maintaining academic standards and regulations and usually composed of the principal or representative members of the faculty

*By permission. From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary at www.m-w.com by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated.

Tip: AP says to capitalize all specific references to governmental legislative bodies, regardless of whether the name of the nation is used: the U.S. Senate, the Senate, the Virginia Senate, the state Senate, the Senate. But lowercase references to non-governmental bodies: the student senate at Yale.

1. HACKING KNOWLEDGE: 77 WAYS TO LEARN FASTER, DEEPER, AND BETTER
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=113550703125&h=oTKR2&u=6KJ-u&ref=nf

2. RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN ONLINE
http://www.rnh.com/index.asp

3. PEN AND PARCHMENT: DRAWING IN THE MIDDLE AGES
http://blog.metmuseum.org/penandparchment/

4. ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE: an ambitious, even audacious project to organize and make available via the Internet virtually all information about life present on Earth.
http://www.eol.org/

5. FREE VETERAN MOBILITY SERVICE DOGS: 4 Paws for Ability, a nonprofit that I do volunteer work for, has just launched another program: Free Veteran Mobility Service Dogs.
http://www.4pawsforability.org/vets.html

It seems that many things are moving at the pace of a sleepy turtle in the U.S. So many people are poised, waiting...for what? No one is quite sure. I decided to take my free time and update my websites. Check broken links. Get my database up to date. I'm not quite there yet, but I have completely re-done the links in The Writing Center at http://www.editingandwritingservices.com/writingcenter.html. Enjoy!

July visit to Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium, Litchfield Park, AZ: baby white tiger sisters - nine weeks old - having a wonderful time.

July visit to Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium, Litchfield Park, AZ: Sweet little blue fish in tank near the flume ride

July visit to Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium, Litchfield Park, AZ. My niece, Emily Burton, getting ready to photograph a crocodile.

July visit to Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium, Litchfield Park, AZ. Hawk just after the misting machine turned off.

July visit to Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium, Litchfield Park, AZ. Sweet little multicolor fish in tank near the flume ride.

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