Donovan-Wright Associates

Everywhere you look and everything you read is all about how critical good writing skills are in this age of digital communication. In business, the memo is passe, replaced by email, now the mainstay of communication. Instant messaging is used in some environments, but it is being replaced by text messaging. Websites, blogs, forums — all demand good writing skills. Then there are reports, PowerPoint presentations, proposals, and letters — more traditional formats, but writing intensive as well.

Regardless of whether you own a small business or are an employee in a large corporation, you need to be able to write and to write well.

Most of us know about, and we English types shudder at, the general demise of the English language from its pure and correct form. The causes are rampant and many, hailing from all ages and all segments of society, but the effect is the same: the “almost” acceptable use of the plural pronoun (they, them) with a singular antecedent (student, customer), use of big words and complex sentences to appear “important,” sentence fragments, run on sentences, and the list goes on.

But recently I’ve run into quite a conundrum. In my attempts to “market” using the many social networking vehicles out there, I’ve come across many English as a second language business folks trying to do business with US-based customers. Opportunity! I approached several such folks and offered my services as teacher and editor/writer. Understandably, many either did not reply or politely declined. However, one individual did respond and took me up on my offer to edit for him. Only ….

Without giving details, the problem in this instance, and in many others, is that some ESL people either are not aware of, or refuse to admit to, their inabilities to write correctly in English. Granted, English is a nasty language to learn — right up there with Russian, Chinese, and Arabic. But to do business in this culture requires an ongoing commitment to learn the language and write it well.

What to do when you are an expert, in this case — writing — and an English as Second Language (ESL) comes along and says you can’t write? I should have known when he criticized my first submission and I couldn’t find anything wrong. Right then and there it should have been exit stage left. But retrospect is golden.

The plot thickened when I edited a 16 page, horrible document that he wanted in three days. He also wanted me to do it using Word’s Track Changes feature. And so I did. However, as I went on, his meaning was so obscure that I did what I could highlighting those areas in yellow. As I trudged on, I told him that we would definitely need to make another pass because of the number and complexity of changes.

Let me add that also in the course of this business liaison that this creep had one of his employees get into my computer (admittedly I did allow it), but the guy wreaked havoc with it and now it has been in for repair for two days. The repair techs tell me the problems are a direct result of what they did.

Back to the 16-pager. On a Saturday evening, while relaxing with my family, I got an absolutely unbelievable email ripping my work apart. I ran his email by my partner and several friends and they were, as I, appalled.

Okay — examples, buddy, I want examples! I got the examples and I flipped out. There was nothing wrong with two of them — he said they were wrong, and the third was an error on his part in downloading and dealing with the Track Changes feature.

So, here’s the deal, I think we writers should test clients before we take them on. And especially beware of ESLs who think they know it all.

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner
The University of Chicago Press

It took me a few moons to do so, but I finally finished Fred Turner’s really captivating From Counterculture to Cyberculture this past weekend and my mind will remain reeling from his unusual ideas for some time to come.

Let me see if I can do justice to its premise. Basically, Turner sets about to prove the point that the evolution of culture as it is today is directly correlated to the protest, hippie, and commune movements of the 1960’s, specifically as orchestrated by influential entrepreneurs from San Francisco area, led by Stewart Brand. .

He talks about the bureaucracy of organizations in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and of the resultant authoritarian rule and subsequent corruption. He talks about the age of the Whole Earth Catalog, the hippies, and communes as a counter-culture response to conservatively driven bureaucracies. He makes a tight parallel between The Whole Earth catalog and its emphasis on functionality to the world of the Internet and the web. He talks about how the Internet harbors groups and forums where people of like minds can gather, as in the days of communes and protest marches.

From the back of the book:

“Fred Turner details the previously untold story of a highly influential group of Bay Area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the Whole Earth Catalog, the computer-conferencing system WELL, and, ultimately, Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers. Turner’s fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think.”

Although bogged down by the language for academics, the book is still worth reading, albeit at a slow pace, to instigate new ways of looking at and thinking about our present day Cyberculture as well as, ourselves.

My most favorite daily email is a little feed called Dumb Little Man. I get a lot of email news feeds every day, as well as a lot of just plain emails, and this is the one I rush to open every day.

The impetus for my comment on it, actually I could comment on it most every day because of its never-ending cascade of jewels, but this one was titled “20 Things I’m Glad Life Taught Me.”

Do take a moment to read the article — it is priceless.

Yesterday I finished up work for the day and went out to get the mail. Strange, there was an airmail letter from Montreal. I opened the letter and out dropped a check for $2990. Pay dirt, I finally hit it, my luck was changing — the thoughts that flashed through my mind. The check was accompanied by a 2-page letter instructing me what I was to do with this money only a small amount of which was supposedly to become mine. The key words I saw after skimming it were “Mystery Shopper.”

Shower time, and after my initial bliss, reality dawned along with the water washing over my body. Water has always afforded me clarity. Okay, shower done, time for a close read. Here’s what it said. In sum, “my assignment” was to take this check for $2990 and either cash it or deposit it into my account. Then I was to take $2570 of this money, go to Western Union, and send it to a designated receiver. My alleged purpose was to evaluate the service and premises of the Western Union dealer. The next part of the assignment was to go into two well-known retail stores and buy $50 worth of merchandise. I was then to complete a form on each store answering a series of “consumer-ish” questions. After all this, I was left with $200 — my fee.

After a close read, this thing screamed scam. Not only was the whole deal very fishy and suspect, even though return address on the letter was a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning company in Manvel, Texas, the return address on the envelope was some random address in Montreal.

I Googled Mystery Shopper scam, and sure enough, I found that other people were receiving something very similar. I then called the HVAC company, number on the letter. There was indeed such a company, and they were indeed aware they were being used as a front for this scam.

Now if I’d gone ahead and cashed this check, in two weeks I would be contacted by my bank, or the police, and informed that I was out $2990 because the check turned out to be bogus.

Most of us are aware of such scams these days, but those meaty checks can still be awfully tempting. From a professional communication standpoint, the letter was written well, but it lacked the polish of a truly legitimate professional communication. Also, who would ever send a legitimate check for $2990 through the mail without requiring receipt signature?

So, friends, don’t let greed tempt you. It never fails: if it’s too good to be true: IT IS!!!!

In just the past two days I have come across two articles, both of which “how-to’s” about good writing, both of which were rife with writing errors. What errors? Passive voice, pseudo-academic style (in other words, difficult to understand), agreement of pronouns and antecedent (That person caught their coat in the door), crazy sentence construction, and frankly — text that sounds like it was written by an ESOL (English as a second language) writer. Take a look for yourself (be sure to come back, I’ve got lots more to say.)

English maven that I am, I left a comment on the site basically saying what I am saying to you. But I want to say MORE to you, because the great highway in the virtual-sky is becoming clogged with crap that multiplies explosively moment by moment. Let me tell you why.

The marketplace is turning inside out, upside down as brick and mortar gives way to the virtual shingle (website, blog, SNS, etc.) I’ll spare you the technical mumbo-jumbo, but to make an Internet presence means to generate content, content content. Translated: articles, essays, blog entries, reviews, how-to’s,m features, interviews. When businesses take the approach of wanting to throw up a bunch of content to get ratings, traffic, etc., they don’t care about quality. They do care about keywords, key phrases, and Search Engine crawlers. What you get on these sites is often times, crap. And, you get crap written by offshore workers whose main language is NOT English, but they are cheap, cheap, cheap.

My purpose here is threefold:

I had a harrowing experience last night. I was perusing the web for an article I’d written recently on search engine optimization to see how many pick-ups it had gotten. Unlike previous article checks, this time I used the article title, “The Rhetoric of SEO” instead of my name as author for the Google search. Well, guess what? As I happily examined the pickups, most of which gave me proper credit as author as well as links to our site, I came upon one forum entry that used the exact title of my article, and verbatim text of a portion of it. And, here’s the clincher: it was posted by a forum administrator who presented it as his or her own work.

This is theft. Plain and simple. And unfortunately, the Internet is rife with it. The cyber-thieves gamble on the numbers game: with the sheer massive volumes of material on the Internet, what are the chances that the author will find her plagiarized work? So now the question becomes, what can be done about it?

First, if you are a website owner or webmaster, populate your site with good, quality content that you either create yourself, pay someone to create for you, or use material from public access sites such as Ezine Articles.com. If you do use such material, make sure you follow the terms of service guidelines or you can find yourself in a heap of trouble.

Or suppose you find other information or articles that you would like to publish, and it is not in a free access zone, so to speak. You must contact the author of the article and ask for permission to publish the article. And when you do publish it, you must give the author the proper credit. It’s just this simple: if you have any doubt about whether you need the author’s permission, just go ahead and request it. Always ask FIRST, and publish later!

If you include information on your web site such as statistics or someone else’s ideas, then cite the material. Always give credit to the source of those things that are not your own. In addition, instead of copying and pasting material in verbatim from another source, even if you are planning to give the author credit, paraphrase it instead. And, even though paraphrased, still include the proper citation. As for what citation format to use, your best bet is to select the one most frequently used for your discipline or business area, and then do a Google search on it. Some of the more commonly used ones are APA (American Psychological Association), MLA (Modern Language Association), and the Chicago Manual of Style. Most colleges and universities have ample material to guide you through the creation of proper citations.

Second, if you are a contributor to forums, listservs, newsgroups, etc., never, never, never present anyone else’s words as your own. It is downright unethical, and just remember: what goes around comes around.

Third, if you are an author, make it a habit to peruse the web at least once a week to see where your work has been picked up. Perform three searches: one on your name; one on the title of the article; and one on a unique string of words from the article that you put in quotes in the search box. If you find that your work has been used without permission or proper credit, take immediate action by first contacting the plagiarizer, and then the administrators of the site. But a caveat here, as angry as you may be, and believe me, I know what that anger feels like, try to be courteous and professional in your dealings, but at the same time, firm about your request to either have your material removed or the proper credit noted.

When I discovered my plagiarized work, I immediately wrote to the person who posted it, and made a post on the forum announcing the plagiarism. The forum was attached to a website, but it had no contact information, and was not US-based. In addition, the “thief” was from India. Though I wanted to raise Cain with the web site owners/administrators, I had to be satisfied with having my work removed from the site within an hour of my email and posting. Hopefully, at least, this thief won’t strike again, but something tells me not to be so optimistic.

We call it context. In my classes, I see paper after paper after paper that begins by setting me in the middle of a jungle with no clue as to how I got there or where I’m supposed to go next. The missing link is called context. The concept is quite simple: assume your reader knows nothing about what you’re writing about and why you’re writing it.

A recent assignment for my college students required them to respond to a claim letter written by another student. The claims were written to seek compensation for some transgression or another: each student came up with one based on their personal experience.

Here’s an example of one claim response letter:

Dear John Doe,
I am pleased to inform you that we will offer you one free night here at Seneca Falls View Hotel. After reading your letter we will be very careful and informative to future customers who are renting rooms while construction is taking place. Thank you for writing us about the situation that occurred while you stayed at our hotel. We like to meet and go beyond our customers’ standards. To learn that this situation occurred is truly disappointing. I understand your frustration with the noise and we will work accordingly with construction. In the future I hope you will decide to choose our hotel again.

Sincerely,
Mary Smith

The issue with this letter is that you read that first sentence and you have no clue why the writer is writing. John Doe may not remember writing his claim letter, which complained about drilling and hammering in the upstairs room while he was trying to sleep. He then requested some sort of compensation for his hardship, and the letter above was his response.

Now, what that first sentence should have done is set the context, orient the reader as to the situation. Try this:

Dear John Doe,
As you pointed out in your letter of September 11, the Seneca Falls View Hotel has indeed been under renovation. And as you also pointed out, you unfortunately experienced this first hand as you tried to sleep under a room where active construction was occurring. We are so sorry for your inconvenience and disappointment in our hospitality and we hope you’ll give us another chance. Therefore, we invite you to a weekend on us: enjoy breakfast, dinner, and a deluxe, renovated room at our expense and a time convenient for you. Please call me and I will personally take care of all the arrangements.
Sincerely,
Mary Smith

After reading the first sentence, you know where you are, right? If he didn’t remember the incident and/or writing the letter, he’s reminded and knows what the letter is about. If, like us, you’re coming in cold, you also know what the deal is after reading that first sentence.

So, my friends, the moral of this story is to always ask yourself, will my reader unequivocally, absolutely know what I’m writing about or do I need to set the stage including all the backdrops and costumes. Err for the latter and your writing will be more effective and efficient.

Did you know that we have left the Age of the Information Economy behind and are now well into the Age of the Attention Economy? What does this mean? It means that if you rely upon the Internet to conduct your business, do your research, network with business acquaintances, and attract new fans, the rhetorical skills and savvy you need are not what they were even 5 years, let alone thousands of years, ago. And not only is today’s rhetoric a matter of exercising skills of persuasion for your direct audiences, it’s a matter of getting their attention to begin with. That’s why it’s called The Attention Age, and that’s why successful techno-rhetoric implies 2 things – the rhetoric of attracting attention, and the rhetoric necessary to accomplish your goal.

Defined, rhetoric is persuasive communication. It is sending a message to convince an audience to think, do, or believe something. Traditional rhetoric was oral: the great orators of old, including Socrates (my favorite because of his ethical approach), either delivered speeches, which tended to be more manipulative, or used discussion to discover truth. In the Middle Ages, the printing press and its printed materials replaced the oral delivery of persuasive messages. Fast forward to today, enter a techno-whirling dervish of video, audio, Flash, image, interaction, simulation, and so on – a virtual bottomless pit of rhetorical media.

My friends, in my humble opinion, the task of becoming a successful techno-rhetorician is twofold.

1. You have to get attention, get people to come to your site, read and respond to your Twitters, friend you on FaceBook, visit your blog and your website, and so on. This, I believe, requires mechanical rhetoric. Thus, you have to think about content – the more valuable, the better. And in that content, you need to incorporate your tags, or keywords in a seamless and effective way. For websites and blogs, you need to think about design and layout. Remember – it’s 7 seconds to grab them, or kiss them goodbye.

2. You have to keep their attention, and this is where your true argument and persuasion comes in. Focus yourself: what’s your goal and purpose? Who’s your target audience? How can I get them to do, think, believe? If you’re successful, they’ll:

• Call
• Check order status
• Download free software
• Find information
• Give feedback
• Join
• Purchase a product or service
• Request something

So, whether you’re coming up with a Twitter entry or designing your website, think of Socrates and the effort he expended in crafting skilled sessions of communication and truth seeking. You can do the same.