Writing Matters

Is Using "and/or" in a Sentence Just Plain Dumb?

A colleague of mine—an expert online editor and web content manager—sent me this e-mail last week:

Leslie - 

Can you give me some style guidance or a citation that says “using ‘and/or’ in a sentence is just plain dumb"? I was editing some web pages and ran across this construction at least four times. I wanted to tell the writer to NEVER do this again but wanted some source material. I struggle to keep our pages from sounding too “researchery” or “lawyery” and, given where I work, that’s tough.

Always interested in being helpful, and in stamping out anything that's just plain dumb, I did some quick research online to see if style guides or other editorial experts also dislike and/or. Here's what I found:

• The Writing Styleguide and Dictionary of Plain English, published by Duncan Kent & Associates, advises writers to avoid using and/or where either and or or will do.
• The UC Berkeley iNews Style Guide tells writers to avoid the slash, avoid and/or, and to just use or. 
• The American Chemical Society's Style Guide places and/or in Chapter 1 under the heading "Words and Phrases To Avoid," stating that writers should replace and/or with either and or or, depending on their meaning.
• In the American Anthropological Association's Style Guide, the and/or advice is simple: "never use." And leave it to anthropologists to put the advice in a chapter titled "Orthography."
• The APA Research Style Crib Sheet doesn't waffle either: "Do not use and/or."

So the verdict is in: and/or is JPD (just plain dumb).  Do you agree? Comment here or e-mail me with your opinion.

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

Proofreading Tips for Finding Errors in Your Own Writing

Reading the newspaper each day, I catch frequent errors in grammar and usage. It’s easy for me to find errors in newspapers—and, in general, in the writing of others. What’s hard is finding errors in my own writing. By the time I get to the proofreading stage, I’ve looked at the document so many times that I see what I think is on the page, not what’s actually there.

My failsafe remedies for finding errors—asking someone else to proofread or putting the document aside for a while before a final proofing—aren’t always practical, especially with tight deadlines.  

Feeling like I’ve exhausted my arsenal of proofreading techniques, I’ve looked to experts (including the Online Writing Lab at University of Arkansas, the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina, Grammar Girl)  for advice  beyond the tried-and-true (read aloud, use spell-check). Here are some new-to-me techniques for catching errors.

1. Proofread for only one kind of error at a time. For example, proof one time for punctuation (or even commas) and look for spelling errors in another read-through. 

2. Check for spelling errors by reading the document backwards. Start with the last word on the last page and work your way back to the beginning. Because content, punctuation, and grammar won’t make any sense, your focus will be entirely on the spelling of each word.

3. Print in an unfamiliar font so that the document looks different. Try a smaller font to force you to read more slowly and concentrate.

4. Make a list of your proofreading gremlins. Are there words you frequently misspell? Do you capitalize headings inconsistently? Do you forget end quotes or the closing parenthesis? Proofread one time for your common errors.

Do occasional typos and other mechanical errors really matter? In a recent Washington Post column on the increase in grammar and usage errors in the newspaper, ombudsman Andrew Alexander quotes a reader on how these errors erode credibility: “If they don’t care about basics like grammar and spelling, how much do they care about factual accuracy?” 

Add your proofreading tips to this list. Leave a comment or send me an e-mail.  

Epic Fail: Art-House MovieTheater's "How to Buy Tickets" page

We're lucky to live near the American Film Institute's Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland, a beautifully restored 1930s theater that offers satisfying alternatives to multiplex films. But AFI's website is a nightmare if you want to complete the simple transaction that will keep the theater in the black: buy tickets online.

AFI's home page sports a prominent Buy Tickets link. But, inexplicably, you can't buy tickets on the How to Buy Tickets page, a page that truly fails task-oriented users:

• There's no link to the Buy Tickets page, though it would be safe to assume that a user who's reading instructions on how to buy tickets wants to buy tickets.
• The paragraph under the heading Online includes this sentence: "There are many links on this site that you may choose to get to the purchase point, such as: Now Playing, Films by Title, Film Series and Calendar..." but doesn't actually link to any of those links. This kind of meta-writing is always a bad sign: copy that refers to links without linking, pages that begin  "On this page, you will find ..."

To be fair to AFI, I decided to compare its online ticket purchase process that of similar theaters. Who knew that art-house movie theater web sites comprise the Make-It-Difficult-To-Buy-Tickets genre?

• The Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts presents a small Tickets link under its description of each film, but site-wide it has placed the Buy Tickets links under the Buy Stuff label in the main navigation. You have to scroll way down to the bottom of the Buy Stuff page—past the travel mugs, gift cards, posters, and t-shirts—to reach the Buy Tickets link.
• The Enzian Theater in Maitland, Florida is better. The site lacks a Buy Tickets link in its main navigation, but the home page text does explain "Click Show Times to Purchase Tickets" and this sentence appears above the showtimes on each film-specific page.
• The Film Forum in Manhattan gets it right with a prominent Buy Tickets link in the main navigation. Even better, the drop-down from the Buy Tickets link lists the films currently showing, the calendar, and a couple of explanations of when you can or can't buy tickets online (albeit with some weird double asterisks).

Helping users complete tasks is a website's highest calling. If you want your site to be task-oriented, take a look at these excellent offerings from Webcontent.gov:

• Step-by-Step Guide: Roadmap to a Task-Focused Website (PDF)
  
• Strategies for Determining Top Tasks
  
• Task-Focused Templates and Resources
• Free webinar for government employees: Three Essential Tips for Creating a Task–Based Website – Jan. 13, 2010

  -- Leslie O'Flahavan 

Job: Managing Editor for InvestorPlace Media

For any writers or editors looking for work, here's a job ad that was forwarded to me by my friend Deborah Ager, Online Marketing and Ecommerce Strategist at Clickwisdom, who used to work at InvestorPlace Media (formerly known as Phillips Investment Resources).

Managing Editor

Contact Information

InvestorPlace Media, LLC is looking for an energetic, flexible, hard working Managing Editor in our Newsletter Publishing Group.  We have a 30+year history of growth and success and offer great benefits, convenient location and a stable work environment with great opportunity for advancement.

This is a great opportunity to work on our company's most successful franchise -- a highly visible position with great potential for those interested in a career in the financial services industry.

Job Requirements

Ideal candidate will have at least 3-5 years experience working on deadline with excellent writing and interpersonal skills.  Candidate will be responsible for managing the editorial quality of our award-winning investment newsletters and websites, and will have a great opportunity to contribute to an industry leader in the fast-paced would of investment publishing.  In addition to editing reports and marketing materials, the Managing Editor will perform research, and and must have excellent analytical and problem solving skills.  There is ongoing interaction with senior investment advisors, financial, marketing and print production staff as well as freelance writers and outside vendors.  The Managing Editor must also represent the company at occasional investment conferences as well as through subscriber correspondence.

Other Qualifications

Knowledge of InDesign helpful but not a requirement.  Good interpersonal skills; effective and persuasive communicator.  Excellent writing and editing skills.  Experience with Dreamweaver and HTML is extremely helpful.

Interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume to Human Resources at: jobs@investormedia.com.  Reference job code:  ME.SM.GR in cover letter.

With questions, contact InvestorPlace Media directly. (They've also listed openings for Editor and Editorial Assistant.) If you're looking to hire a writer or editor, let us know. We're glad to post the job ad.

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

We're So Over It: Rereading a Snarky 1997 Magazine Article About E-WRITE

While fulfilling my New Year's resolution to purge a filing cabinet jammed with papers, I came across a tattered photocopy of an article about E-WRITE that appeared in the "Fast Forward" feature in the February 1997 issue of Working Woman magazine. Our business was only about six months old at the time, and we were thrilled to be interviewed for the magazine. But we weren't thrilled when the article came out; we were stunned. What we thought would be a celebration of our forward-thinking woman-owned training business was, instead, a major mock-fest.

Apparently, the idea that we were charging four figures for a day-long e-mail writing course for 25 people seriously offended the author: "They get $2,000 for a day's worth of advice on how to tighten sentences and shorten paragraphs on-line." The piece portrayed us as snake oil saleswomen: "O'Flahavan and Rudick admit they have no technological expertise, but they sure know how to exploit the cyberboom." Not content to belittle us herself, the author recruited experts to corroborate that our business idea was merely opportunistic. She quoted Joanne Serling, an account manager at Wilson McHenry in New York, skeptically stating "If you can't write, you've got bigger problems than any e-mail course can fix" and Malcolm CasSelle, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who said "If you ride a fad, you can write your own price tag." (You can download the 1997 article, which I've retyped, so you don't have to squint at the image.)

Thirteen years later, this nasty article makes me smile with pride:

• We were right and Working Woman magazine was wrong. People do need, and do value, e-mail writing training. Our curriculum and our client list have grown. We're thriving, even in tough economic times.
• In 1997, we didn't even have business cards, but we did have clients. Only six months old, we were doing business with Lockheed Martin and Cable & Wireless. Not too shabby.
• The author compared us to "Mrs. Bunmaster, your tenth-grade English teacher." Well, in a former career I was a tenth-grade English teacher. I was honored to be compared to one in 1997 and I am today.
• The author used quotation marks around the word expertise, as in e-write's "expertise." Well, expertise grows with time. In 2010, our expertise is real; we're authors of a book on e-mail writing, and I'll be giving e-mail-related presentations at three national conferences during the first half of the year: Annual Call Center Exhibition, HDI 2010, and the  Government Customer Support Conference. No quotation marks needed.
• We shared page 16 of the magazine with Tony Bennett.

Do you have any interesting business artifacts from 1997 that you'd like to share? Sometimes, looking back is the best way to get ahead!

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

Results of our Client's Survey on E-Mail Writing Principles

Earlier this month, I delivered our half-day e-mail writing course—How to Write E-Mail That Gets Results—for a large corporation (2,000 employees) that provides research services. At the end of the course, after participants had discussed many e-mail samples and completed course activities on how to organize e-mail for easy reading, write a must-open subject line, and edit for conciseness, I distributed our Survey on E-Mail Writing Principles. In this Survey, course participants rate the importance of various writing principles, such as "Change the subject line when the topic of the e-mail exchange changes." Completing the Survey can be the first step their company takes to develop an e-mail communication policy or best practices guide.  I tallied the Survey results and let my client know which e-mail writing principles their employees felt strongly about and which ones didn't matter much. 

Subject line, spelling, punctuation mattered most 
Click the thumbnail below to review my clients' Survey results. As you'll see, the 37 respondents were passionate about correctness. The principles "Use conventional spelling" and "Use conventional punctuation" scored a 4.4 and 4.6 respectively (on a 5-point scale where 5 = Essential and 1 = Unimportant). The only principle that earned a 5 from every respondent was "Use a clear, complete subject line that announces the point of the e-mail." Which principle received the lowest score, a measly 2? "Ask permission to forward messages."

Which e-mail principles matter most to you?
I'm interested in your ratings, too. Complete our Survey on E-Mail Writing Principles online, and let me know what you think.  I'll update you on the online Survey results in a blog post next month. I'm curious about the portrait of Writing Matters readers that will emerge from this Survey.

You can also download the Survey as a PDF to use with your colleagues.

-- Leslie O'Flahavan