Thursday, May 10, 2012

Review of "On Writing Well"


Writing, whether we like it or not, is the central form of communication for the modern world. Everything starts in writing; movies begin as screenplays, classes are based on written instruction and speeches start off as lecture notes. The Internet–the global communication network–is mostly in writing. With such a large role in our society, good writing is vital for a successful career in most fields.



Good writing isn’t something you’re born with. You get it from lots of practice, and lots of reading on how to write. Whether you agree with everything a “How To” book tells you on writing–or nothing at all–it still shows you the way one successful writer writes.

The reason I open with this statement is that if you’re anything like me, you’re probably too proud to think your writing needs much improvement, if any. I’m not trying to sound arrogant; it’s just that I have been writing for many years and fancy myself pretty good at it. But even the self-proclaimed good writers can improve on their technique.

On Writing Well is a great resource for a student in pursuit of any degree. It’s not just for students, either. Even those professionals who have already landed their careers can benefit from the advice William Zinsser gives. It’s not even a dry book–like so many publications on writing out there. The author does a nice job of making an instruction book fun and interesting. He uses humor and colorful stories to get a lot of his points across.

In On Writing Well, Mr. Zinsser breaks writing down into four different parts, split into 25 techniques and subjects. He first discusses the backbone of writing: style, the audience, words, usage, etc. Then he talks about the project you’re writing as a whole and unifying different pieces into one masterful product. He then discusses the different avenues of nonfiction: literature, interviews, travel, science and technology and sports, to name a few. Finally, he ends his work with attitudes–the attitude you’re implying in your writing, to be exact.

When writing for a particular audience, Mr. Zinsser reminds you to tailor your work to that audience. This might sound simple; however, as Mr. Zinsser points out, if your writing is boring, confusing or just plain sloppy, your readers will quickly lose interest. Throughout the book he discusses these techniques and gives the reader excerpts from actual writers’ work so he or she gets an example of what he’s talking about in his instruction.

William Zinsser, working.
Mr. Zinsser warns against overusing exclamation points (I rarely use them outside of texting). He discourages fragment and run-on sentences. He reminds us when to use “that” verses “which.” I found that bit, “If your sentence needs a comma to achieve its precise meaning, it probably needs ‘which’” particularly helpful. And on top of this, he also condones the use of conjunctions at the beginning of sentences–which justifies my liberal use of at the beginning of sentences in this review.

I have experience in writing about science, but writing about sports has always been a weak point for me. Taking interviews has always been something I’ve wanted to do, but never known how. He gives advice on writing memoirs, as well. I have been interested in writing a memoir for a while, so this is definitely an appealing part of the book for me.

Even though I didn’t agree with everything he said in his book (an example of this is his refusal of giving up the sexist pronoun, he), I still got a lot out of reading it. If you are a professional writer, novice writer or someone who only writes to meet quotas, On Writing Well is an informative piece that helps fine-tune your skills at writing. Mr. Zinsser does his best to cover every aspect of writing, whereas most other writing books cover one topic, or genre. I definitely recommend finding a place in your bookshelf for this reference book.

I bought my paperback copy in the local Barnes & Noble for $9.60. If you get it off Amazon.com it’s a couple dollars cheaper. You can also get it from Amazon.com in a hard cover for about $18. If you like to snuggle up to your Kindle or Nook when you read, alas, this book has no digital format.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

The Facebook Epidemic


I remember as a kid there were only three ways of keeping in touch with friends and family: through postage mail, by calling, or by visiting that person. All these methods took some kind of real effort, too. To write a letter, for example, you had to sit down and write it, put it in an envelope, give it a destination to go to, and throw a stamp on it. On top of all that, you had to give the letter to the post office so your friend can actually receive it, in about two weeks. Written “snail mail” was probably the most cumbersome way of keeping correspondence. But once the letter reached your friend, having been hand written, it had your presence imprinted into it. The receiver knew that that piece of paper was in your hands shortly before it came into hers.

Enter, the digital age: we don’t have time to put our hearts into communication. The demise of snail mail came with the invention of email. Snail mail’s too slow. Now you can create a message in five minutes, throw in a shorthand message, and send it to however many people you want–for free. Why would you want to spend 40 minutes doing the same thing, and then pay a postage carrier to send it?

In the digital age, calling is becoming obsolete, too. Who needs to call when you can text? Calling can be nerve wrecking; texting is much less invasive. You don’t have to keep focused on the conversation with texting, either. When calling someone, you’re pretty much devoting your time to that person.

How is that a bad thing? It’s not if you were accustomed to the pretexting days and can still call the people you truly care about, instead of relying solely on texting. But if you’re a generation Y kid and texting is all you know, then you’re not going to revert to calling except in rare circumstances. This will result in poor social skills among our children, and even worse social skills among our children’s children. Our focus is being destroyed because we're spending every waking hour on digital devices.


Then there are the social networks, like Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is a website where you can create a profile for yourself and keep in touch with all your friends. But how many people really have a thousand friends? The biggest problem with Facebook is it allows you to share all the intricate details of your life (probably too many details), while keeping you at a safe distance from the rest of the world. After all, who in their right minds would sit in a room full of people and shout out about the toenail fungus that just won’t go away? After reading somebody’s profile on Facebook, there really isn’t anything left to talk to that person about, except maybe about reading that person’s profile on Facebook.

Twitter is just an excuse to constantly talk about yourself. Again, after you read a person’s Twitter, you’re extremely limited on your conversation topics when you actually see your friend in person. Unfortunately, this removes the necessity of people interacting face-to-face. We’ll soon see people sitting in a room together, talking via text messages on their phones­–­­not because the unlimited data plan has them excited, but because they are uncomfortable with human exposure and all they know is T9.

Friday, May 4, 2012

The Future of a Legend


I will admit, I never was much of an Indianapolis Colts fan–but I’m even less of one now that Peyton Manning was released. Manning was the sole reason the Colts were anything. He utilized his offense to get maximum results for the tools he had and he manipulated the opponent’s defense to give him what he wanted. For a lot of people, football is just a sport. To Peyton Manning, it’s a science. He will be sorely missed by Indianapolis.

But can you really blame Owner and CEO Jim Irsay for canning Manning? It was either that or pay him the $28 million roster bonus at the beginning of the season. And we don’t even know if Manning is truly back to his old self. The Colts couldn’t possibly afford to keep paying a still questionable Manning the big bucks and find a suitable replacement in this year’s draft. Peyton Manning settled in nicely in Indianapolis after 14 years of football, but it’s now time to move on to greener pastures.

Will he find those pastures in the mountains of Denver? Under Tim Tebow, last year’s offense was questionable. He had talent in his wide receivers, but he couldn’t quite get the ball to them. He preferred the ground and pound strategy and, believe it or not, was actually able to win quite a few games that way.

If Peyton Manning can throw like he used to there is no question in my mind that the Broncos will come away from this season victorious, even with the second toughest regular season schedule. The only thing I would be worried most about is Manning’s defense, which gave away 5,725 yards last season (it was actually better than the Colts, at 5,935).

The biggest question in regard to Manning's return to football is his neck: is it safe for him to play? Having the vertebrae in his neck fused together makes for an apparent soft target. That was probably the leading factor in the Colts' release of him. I wouldn't be too worried about Manning re-injuring himself, though. It's obvious that the defense has to get to him in order to hurt him. Manning has been in football for 14 years. He knows he doesn't have to do all the moves to make the big bucks in the NFL. As long as his line holds up, I don't see why manning should have too much of a chance of re-injuring his neck.

In my opinion, the only hurdle Manning is going to have to overcome is getting used to the thin air in Denver. Coming from Indianapolis to Denver, he’s going to have to do a lot of cardio training to acclimate himself to the much higher altitude. With the former at 845 ft above sea level and the latter at 5,470, come the first home game he’ll be sucking wind. The obvious advantage of that is he will have Godlike cardio at his away games where he’s closer to sea level.

All in all, I’m a little interested in seeing how next season will turn out. Peyton Manning is undoubtedly an all-star quarterback. My prediction is he will not disappoint.