Dodging Bullets in Writing
Please, how about fewer bullets in our communications, okay? I can accept the fact that Microsoft's PowerPoint serves as a writing tool for a lot of business people. But there's something wrong with thinking that an outliner can lay out ideas with the efficiency, elegance and economy of a good sentence.
Amid a little good advice on writing blog entries, B.L. Ochman gives us this misguided gem:
"Use bullets whenever you can."
Puh-leeze.
Has good writing become an anathema to the Playstation generation? Ochman tells us in a breathless Web page that "The Internet has rendered traditional made-for-print press releases obsolete." Goes on to say that editors won't read a press release written by someone who's learned their skills since 1996. That you should forget what you've learned about business writing if you took a degree before 1990.
Wow, can you really teach me how to write like that? I'm not in my 30s anymore, and I don't watch reality TV — which might be the inspiration for Ochman's "Reality PR." (Oops, forgot to put the trademark symbol next to it. Who knows who might want to borrow that catchy phrase.)
Visit Ochman's own blog and count the number of bullets in her blog entries. You won't even need one finger to tally them all.
Writing is writing, and TV is TV. Try not to mix them up. Don't keel-haul the English language with the sloth that trades good sentences for fragments. Say what you mean with the least number of words. Branch to the right with verbs at the front of sentences. For a genuine primer on writing, check out Poynter Online's series of columns by Roy Peter Clark. He wrote "Fifty Writing Tools," and the only bullets in that great series are the list of tools that close out each column. Bite the bullet. Write a sentence whenever you can.
posted by Ron Seybold @ 8:33 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Sorry you don't like my "breathless" home page.
You don't read my blog very often, because if you did, you'd see that I use bullets regularly, along with extremely short paragraphs and sentences just because all of these make it easier to read off a computer screen.
I've been writing professionally for more than 25 years and my writing has evolved to take technology into account. Has yours?
Hey, BL:
Google me a little and you'll see that I've been writing about technology, for publications, almost as long as you've been writing. I've had a career as one of those editors your clients are trying to entice. I can hardly count the number of press releases I've opened, in e-mail and otherwise, riddled with bullets and missing key facts.
You wrote:
"You don't read my blog very often, because if you did, you'd see that I use bullets regularly, along with extremely short paragraphs and sentences just because all of these make it easier to read off a computer screen."
You strain toward an interesting point on brevity with that 39-word sentence.
No, I didn't read beyond the current page of your blog. I just scanned the last 25 entries and didn't find a single bullet in the writing.
Perhaps selling press services to Ford has made bullets more important to your work. Maybe that's what pumps up the hubris to collect more than a dollar a page for a PDF book about good writing. Or dismissing professionals' degrees with the sensitivity of Marie Antoinette.
You get yourself out on a limb by telling people their training is worthless. Maybe that imperious tone works with those who haven't trained in or practiced much writing. Then there's that "dead-tree" epithet you drop, another blind spot in your sensitivity rear-view. I can only hope that style stays in New York. You probably want to check and see if your professional respect has evolved along with your writing.
Until then, we'll just agree to disagree about communication. Congratulations on tracking down my fledgling blog. Since all bloggers consider themselves journalists, this degreed journalist decided to start blogging and join the fun. Stop by often.
Post a Comment
<< Home