Strunk and White taught me to omit needless words. How about if we omit needless thoughts as well?
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Take a Stand. Speak Your Piece.
Inspire passion, for or against, by saying something folks can sink their teeth into. Cause debate. Overstate your case once in a while, just to push someone into reacting. Drop the weasel words. Speak your piece. Take a stand.
Superfluous Apostrophe
The apostrophe serves a couple very specific purposes. If you look around at most marketing material, you’d assume its purpose is simply to separate the letter ‘s’ from the rest of a word. That’s, well, not even in the ballpark.
Are You Gonna Eat That?
When a question begs the obvious and expected answer, we’re not really asking a question; we’re making a disguised statement or request or demand. Wording the demand as a question, with the lilting raised voice at the end and a smile on our face, does not transmogrify it into an innocent act.
Declaration of Unspoken Intent
Words do a poor job of hiding our true intentions. Whether it’s disdain or love, what you feel or believe about your listener will leak into your communication. No; really. It will.
Illusion (001)
The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place (and yet, I still can’t find any firm evidence that Shaw actually said that.)
Copy the Copy. Copy?
We might assume that context and usage will make our meaning clear. It is, though, only an assumption, and includes the assumption that our readers or listeners know what we know, to some extent.
You Can’t Own Words, Can You?
When words contain our ideas, they’re somehow transmuted into children bearing our DNA. Writers, whether of fiction, how-to books, poetry or music, suffer physical pain when the cord is cut.
Brevity
Short sentences of small words can express grand thought and timeless ideas. It seems almost a given that long sentences of long words will be sucked dry of life before you reach the end.
The Appearance of Communication
Shaw is reputed to have said that the biggest problem with communication is the assumption that it has occurred. While I can’t find a definitive source to claim that anyone said it, let alone George Bernard Shaw, I do know that it’s true. The statement, that is.
