People Who Can't Be Bothered to Communicate Clearly Online

My pet peeve of the day: People who can't be bothered to communicate clearly online.

If you've spent significant time in any particular online community, you've noticed that people typically fall into two categories:

1. People whose writing is easy to understand because, for the most part, it's error-free and written clearly
   
2. People whose writing is difficult to understand because it's riddled with spelling mistakes, lack of punctuation, run-on sentences, etc.
   

I should probably add a third category: "People whose writing would be clear except that it's full of hilarious typos produced by their iPad/iPhone autocorrect feature."

Here's What I Mean

These are not the most egregious examples, but they give you an idea:










Why Bother

My basic question is this. If you're participating in an online community, chances are it's because you want people to read what you wrote.

If you care about people reading what you write, why wouldn't you care about taking basic steps to make sure your message actually gets through? Seems contradictory to me.

Don't Waste My Time

Seriously, I'm busy enough. I don't have time to spend extra minutes, or even seconds, trying to decipher what you were trying to say. Heck, I have days where even milliseconds seem too long to waste on somebody who is making ME do all the work to read THEIR message.

If my brain finds that it's getting stuck in a quagmire of misspellings and unclear meaning, my busy brain tends to skip right over the text and find something else that's easier to read.

Don't get me wrong. One or two typos doesn't make a difference. Everyone makes one or two typos. I bet there are at least that many typos in this blog post. I'm talking about the posts that have egregious and/or frequent offenses to clear communication.

For instance, I was reading one day where a woman was complaining about her husband. She wrote, "He never abused me fisically, but..."

My brain read that as abused me fiscally. In other words, I thought she was saying that this guy had never stolen from her, or gambled away her life savings, or spent her money frivolously. I had read down another three or four sentences before I realized that she'd meant to say physically. I then had to go back and reread the entire paragraph now that I knew what she meant. And that, folks, is what I simply don't have time for in my life.

The Worst Part

The worst part is that, because I am so busy, I find myself falling into the trap of not editing myself when I've made a minor typo. I'm so tempted to just move on because I know it's minor, and let my readers decipher it because I know it won't take them very long.

But that is how it begins, my friends. And then it's a long downward spiral into being That Person. The one whose stuff nobody bothers to read because you'd have to chop through the errors with a machete like Indiana Jones hacking his way through the jungle.

"Contract Creator" for Freelancers

Check out this new tool from the Freelancers Union. It's a nifty tool that will automatically generate a contract for you to use with new clients. Click the image to view it at higher resolution:


To use the tool, you have to join the Freelancers Union (which is free). Once you are logged in, you can find the contract creator tool here.

Creating contracts is something that I knew absolutely nothing about when I started freelancing. If I'd had to come up with a contract, I would have probably started with Google and found something very generic, then modified it based on my very limited (okay, nonexistent) legal knowledge.

The Freelancers Union created this tool in conjunction with Furnari Scher, a law practice that works with freelancers, consultants, and independent contractors.

The more I learn about the Freelancers Union, the better my opinion gets. They exist to support freelancers of all types. Their web site is well done (though, if you're listening, guys, your search functionality could use some work - a search for "contract creator" does not find the tool even if you're logged in). Their e-mail communications are good. Overall they seem very organized, professional, and worth being a part of.

Happy Birthday, Blog

Good morning!

I couldn't let September end without acknowledging that this week is the 1-year anniversary of when I started this blog.

It's been a great year. Having a blog to motivate me to write more often has been excellent for this person, who, at the age of 35, still procrastinates. (I guess procrastinators, like proofreaders, are born, not made.)

One limitation of a blog about editing and proofreading is that, eventually, you will cover all the grammar topics that it's possible to cover. And there's only so much you can say about commas, even if you're a grammar nerd like I am.

So I imagine I'll start to cover topics more often that aren't strictly related to editing, like last week's blog about common sense. Having this blog about editing for the past year has made me realize how many other things I want to write about. I even contemplated starting up a second blog to cover those things. Then I came back down to earth and realized that will never happen. It's enough of a challenge (a welcome challenge, but still a challenge) to write once a week or so when you work full-time and have a toddler. I couldn't keep two blogs current (unless I was being paid to blog... how DO you get a job like that?).

And now, I've been staring at that cake picture for so long that I'm starving, so it's time for breakfast. Happy Friday, everybody!

Why Common Sense is Dead

• common sense noun : sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts

Years ago, I laughed when I first heard the quote, "Common sense is not so common" (attributed to the writer Voltaire, among others; no one's quite sure who said it).

Nowadays, I find that statement to be more true every day. Things that used to be commonly accepted are not anymore. Everything from "You shouldn't spend more than you earn" to "You can't trust someone who lies to you" (just look at politicians for the most high-profile violations of those two).

I would chalk it up to my own aging. What's considered "common sense" surely must shift over the years. But I see another source of the fragmenting of common sense.

The Too-Much-Information Age

The Information Age is a great thing. Right? We have unprecedented access to knowledge and perspectives from around the entire world. It's an embarrassment of riches.

But with those riches comes responsibility. Now that more information circulates out there, we're expected to know more of it.

At some point, our brains just fill up, like a maxed-out hard drive. Believe me, I have the greatest respect for the mighty human brain and its distributed storage of knowledge in neural networks. But there are only so many neurons and synapses to go around. When it fills up, if something new needs to go in, something old must come out.

The New Common Sense

Off the top of my head, here are a few things we are expected to remember nowadays that our ancestors 100 years ago were not:

• Traffic rules and regulations
• Health insurance rules and regulations
  
• Thousands of state and federal laws that have been enacted in that time (because ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it)
• Hundreds of computer usernames, passwords, and website URLs
• How to use and maintain a personal computer
• How to use anywhere from a handful to hundreds of different software applications and web applications, plus hundreds of functions within each one, plus all the new features introduced with each new "upgrade"
  
• How to use e-mail, and what to do with the thousands (even millions) of e-mails that pile up over your lifetime
• How to operate, troubleshoot, and maintain the several dozen electric appliances that you probably have in your household
  
• Modern medicine: What it can fix, what it can't, and which symptoms should cause you to take what action
• Scientific research. If you're going to use this research wisely, you have to keep track of which scientific conclusions are well established (in other words, worth believing because they are backed up by years of repeated, well-designed studies) and which ones have been demonstrated in only one or two studies (in other words, conclusions that you're better off ignoring until future research substantiates them).
• Hundreds to thousands of popular culture references. This may seem optional, especially compared to the above. But there is a degree to which people take you less seriously if they say something like, "NO SOUP FOR YOU!" and you stare at them cluelessly instead of smiling.

And those are just the things that nearly everyone needs to know. Depending on your personal interests, you likely seek out more information voluntarily and fill up your brain even more. For example, if you pride yourself on keeping up with current events around the world, then you'll be maxing out those neurons with the infinitesimal details of happenings in various countries.

Makes life in the 1800s seem appealingly simple, doesn't it? No wonder people chuck it all and move out to the country to live on communes. I've had that urge myself.

Fragmenting of Common Sense

With all the information thrown at us, it's no wonder people feel overwhelmed. And when people feel overwhelmed, they tend to fall back on things that they believe.

I'm not talking about belief that is independent of facts. What I mean is that I think each of us forms a set of beliefs -- our own personal version of "common sense" -- based on our own personal distillation of the available facts. Perhaps this was always true, and that's where quotes like "Common sense is not so common" -- which dates from the mid-1700s -- came from.

With a much larger number of facts available, I'm not surprised that a much larger variety of interpretations of "common sense" have emerged.

I'm also interested in how it becomes "common sense" to relieve yourself of information overload. (Because stressing out is bad for your health -- isn't that common sense??)

For example, everyone knows it would be ideal, from a security perspective, to have a different password for every computer application that you use. Yet I'd bet the vast majority of us use the same password for everything. To someone who works in IT security, it might be common sense to have different passwords for everything. But to the average Joe, it is common sense to avoid remembering 100 passwords when you have enough stuff to keep track of in your life. Likewise, it's common sense that if you write down your password on a post-it note and stick it to your monitor, then anyone who happens by can access your computer. But to someone else, it's common sense to keep the password on that sticky note because if they don't, they'll forget what it is.

No More Common Knowledge?

Nobody has access to exactly the same facts as anyone else anymore (if only because the 24-hour day limits the amount of information each of us can absorb). So "common knowledge" and common experiences, and therefore common sense, may become a thing of the past.

Maybe soon there will be no more common anything. I hope that's not the case because no one likes to feel isolated. We all enjoy being a part of a community where we have things in common.

I think we have all felt that isolation already. How many times do you read about someone online, or see them on TV, and think to yourself, "This person is so different from me rationally/spiritually that they seem like an alien to me. I have no idea how anyone could possibly think or act that way." And it's hard to believe that they live just across town from you and shop at the same stores as you and vote in the same elections as you. Yet they do, and they're probably thinking the same thing about you.

Imagine trying to govern a nation of such individuals, with fewer and fewer "common causes" to get behind. I do not envy our leaders.

The Curse of Creativity

First of all, I know I haven't been on in nearly a month. I know that equates to being in a coma or dying, as far as bloggers go. Let's just say there were extenuating circumstances. The important thing is, I'm back!

And now: THE CURSE!

The curse of creativity is when you are so taken over by an idea that you drop everything else in your life to pursue it.

I'm not just talking about ignoring calls from your friends and family for a few weeks or neglecting your children. I'm talking about pushing aside basic human needs in your hot-headed urge to get the idea down on paper, or canvas, or on your guitar, or in Photoshop, or on the computer.

Like sleep. "Sleep be damned!" says your mind when it's on fire with a creative idea. Food is another one. I personally adore food so much that I would eat chocolate chips out of the freezer for an entire day rather than starve myself completely, even for the world's best idea. But I have heard of folks who survived for days on caffeine alone.

My husband and I have talked about this curse before. He is a musician and songwriter who has stayed up many a night composing. For me, it's writing.

There's something desperate about the drive to get your idea out of your head and into a more permanent form. The drive is almost... let's not get too graphic here... procreative. It's a little disturbing. But it's the truth. It's urgent. It's a feeling of "now or never." If something thwarts your urge, you'll be frustrated. You'll get over it eventually, maybe even quickly, but you'll feel like you've been denied one of the very biological needs you shoved aside to pursue your idea in the first place. It can be that powerful.

For me, I was wide awake at 5:30 AM today with an idea for a screenplay. I gave up on sleep, got up and sat down at the computer. Three pages of notes later, I've written down all of the main characters, their histories, the basic plot more or less from start to finish, and even some dialogue. I'll let you know if it turns into anything.

I'd love to hear your stories of what happens to you when the creativity bug bites you.

LinkedIn Poll: "Which writing mistake drives you crazy?"

Good morning!

Thought I'd share this little poll with you all. LinkedIn asked: "Which writing mistake drives you crazy?"

I find the results somewhat surprising. The number one most annoying mistake, as rated by people who took the poll, was homophone misuse (e.g. writing except when you mean accept). This one annoys me too, but I thought "Punctuation abuse" would score much higher than it did.

Also encouraging was the mistake voted second most annoying: "Cliches, passive voice, trite writing." Granted, people who chose to take this poll are more likely than the general population to care about quality writing. But it's encouraging to me because it says to me that a significant number of folks still care about good writing. Sometimes, reading things on the internet, it's easy to think that good writing isn't valued much.

"Words" We Hate

Warning: The editor is ornery today!

Does it bug you when you hear a word that's not really a word -- and may even be totally incorrect -- yet people who say it can't seem to grasp that they're wrong?

Take this example: incent. I hear this all the time, especially in business. As in, "What can we do to incent our staff to work harder?"

It makes me cringe every time. The correct word is incentivize. Saying incent makes it look like (1) you're ignorant of the correct word, (2) you're dying to use the latest business buzzword, and/or (3) you're trying to popularize your own trendy little buzzword even though it's incorrect... or your own shortened version of a buzzword... I mean, really? Is incentivize really that long and cumbersome to pronounce? Do we need nicknames for buzzwords? Wouldn't that be, like, one of the most ridiculous things ever? (Maybe I need to write a separate blog about buzzwords.)

Changing Language

Don't get me wrong. I know word usage changes all the time. I know that over time, nouns get used as verbs or adjectives, and vice versa. Lord knows text wasn't used as a verb until very recently in history.

And yet text as a verb doesn't bother me. Incent does. Maybe because nouns becoming verbs is so common that it seems like a natural, creative progression of the English language to me. whereas incent is just plain wrong.

Another one that makes me cringe is heighth. You know, when people mean to say height, but they slap an extra -th sound onto the end. Maybe this is merely a regional variation, or maybe people who say this are trying to be all egalitarian, not wanting height to be deprived of the same ending sound possessed by its cousins, length and width. I don't know. But for the record, it's wrong.

What's your (non-)word pet peeve?