My Dislike of Like

For those haters out there who think the United States is useless, let me tell you that we Americans have contributed significantly to the furthering of humanity:

• Kentucky Fried Chicken
• Coca-Cola
• A stand-up economic policy
• Paris Hilton
• Like

Allow me a nerd-gasm here.  The main function of "like" is that of a simile, which simply means that it's used to describe something by connecting it with something else similar.  For example:  "My love is like a rose."  (Um, what?  Is it prickly and expensive to buy?)

But for a while now, it's been cavorting around as another linguistic phenomenon:  discourse marker.  And for the majority of you whose eyes, at the mere mention of "discourse marker, rolled so far back in your head that you're now effectively blind and unable to click on the link I provided, I'm happy to have your text-to-speech program read my brief explanation of what a discourse marker is.  In essence, it is a filler word, i.e, a word that, if removed from a sentence, wouldn't change the meaning of your message in the least.  Here's a discourse marker in full action:

"And I was, like, why are you 40 years old sounding like a 9-year-old?"

I know that I can have some language-purist tendencies about me, but I'm also pretty easygoing when it comes to language and communication, too.  (Unless you dangle a modifier in front me, at which point you're asking to be punched in the face!)  But seriously, folks--this "like" business is getting out of control.  I have witnessed a Harvard-educated graduate carry on a conversation with me, all the while using "like" more than Kim Kardashian uses her ass for publicity.  (I seriously wanted to punch him in the head.)

If you have a problem with using "like" gratuitously and irritating everyone around you, here's a word of advice:  STOP IT.  NOW.  It's not cute.  It's not funny.  You look and sound like a complete ass.  But I need to be specific here.  Using "like" in moderation can actually add a level of normality to your language.  After all, people do use the term as a discourse marker.  And no one wants to sound like some pompous tool every time he/she speaks.

The key here, just as it is in everything in life, is moderation.  You want to sound hip to the youngsters and their obsession with Rihanna, go for it.  You may be able to drop one of them in some more formal discussions.  Again, moderation.

Writing the Right Way--Your Way!

You know, there's really nothing wrong with you.  Sure, you have got 11 toes and walk a little funny.  Sure, your eye does that weird thing every time J. Lo's attempting to captivate us with her "acting."

Did she just say, "Gobble, gobble?"

And sure, you laugh so hard at times that you snort and end up nose-vomiting milk on the person interviewing you for your dream job.  It happens.  But let me assure you that all that awkwardness makes you YOU.  (Though you probably won't be getting a call back from that snot-covered interviewer.)

So you want to keep that in mind when you're writing.  Yes, I so awesomely schooled you in my last posting on the importance of keeping your audience at the forefront of what you're doing when it comes to writing, but there's bit more to that story, too.  It's you!

Unless you're ghost writing, that is, selling your soul to every overly paid moron who can't even write well enough to sound like himself/herself--like every damn U.S. President in the past 50 years--your unique writing style or voice will be present, and should be present.

Jon Favreau 3.28 seconds after he sold his soul for finished up another ghostwriting speech-writing
 gig for the president.

Think about it:  Every author on the New York Times best-sellers list didn't

1. Write about the same crap,
2. Write in the same style,
3. Deserve to even be on the list in the first place.

The last number in the list should give you REAL hope.  You, too, can be four years old with nary an understanding of even how to make it one hour without soiling your pants and STILL get people in the U.S  to throw obscene amounts of money your way despite living in an economically depressed environment for the past three years--all despite the fact that you can't even spell yet.  If that's not being yourself and being accepted, I don't know what the hell is.

Some people have a lighthearted writing style that's suitable for entertainment sites or the erudite prose that is Playboy Magazine.  That's cool.  Somebody's got to keep the den of iniquity going.

Some people's writing oozes empirical evidence, facts and figures, and hard data, which is suitable for scientific journals and publications.  These writers also tend to have gargantuan vocabularies that they have picked up from all the years of not dating.

Some people's writing is grammatically correct, never missing a semicolon or antithetical phrase, and makes you feel guilty because you love using "u" for "you."  

Some people naturally write poetically and expressively (read:  talk too damn much and are SOOOO sappy) and make reams of money from it all.

Different styles, different ways to express yourself.  That's okay.

What you don't want to do is adopt someone else's writing style or try to write like the guy who's making millions from his writing.  One Emily Dickinson is enough, thank you.  While there are best practices in writing, there is NO substitute for authentic writing that speaks the heart of the author and captivates the mind of the audience.  It's when those two concepts are married that you produce truly stellar writing.  Or, at the very least, writing that will one day allow you to stop ordering from the McDonald's dollar menu.

Your Audience Runs This Mo' Fo'!

Writing isn't really about the stuff you have to do to pass your English-composition course in college.  (No more than three sentences per paragraph!)  It's so much more than wielding your commas as well as a Star Wars geek can wield a fake light saber.  (Pray for these poor people.)

I can't say it enough:  Writing is about communication.  That's right:  C-O-M-M-U-N-I-C-A-T-I-O-N!  As in the thing you have to do in order to live quasi-successfully on this planet.

So keeping that in mind, you also want to keep in mind that people communicate all kinds of ways.  If you're in a boardroom and have managed to keep from falling asleep after having the 400th Excel spreadsheet slapped in front of your face, you probably have to use business-like language to hang with the posse and to keep from being fired.  You know, "Let's get those people on-boarded so we can action-plan appropriately and utilize their skill sets to gain their buy-in!"  WTF?  (I included links on the ridiculous-sounding words so you can translate them.)

If you're writing for your persnickety, underpaid English teacher who is easily impressed by your ability to use the vocabulary words he gave you last week, you probably have to write something like:  "The sententious and martinet-like captain of the boat mellifluously navigated the ship in accordance with her predilections, which was at variance with the empirical data efficaciously presented to her by her sanctimoniously sycophant crew."  A+ for you!

If you're writing to Alicia Keys, who is probably the most ghetto person this side of the Milky Way Galaxy, unless you write like, "Yo, yo, see, dis iz wat um sayin', U C.  U caint b tekkin ma monay lyk dat, cuz I wok hard fo' my shiz, u HERD?" you probably won't be taken seriously by her or her parole officer.

In other words, the audience runs the show, not you.  D'yah got that?  Okay, let me repeat:  The audience runs the show, not you.

If you want to be taken seriously, you have to write so that your audience can understand you.  So what that means is that you have to be about as flexible as I am:

Damn, I'm good.

This flexibility is not meant to negate your own sense of self in the writing process.  I mean, everyone's writing has traits in it that can't be erased, no matter how audience-focused we try to be.  (I'll blog about that bit next.)  That's all good.  It's just that we need to taper down how we want to communicate something and focus on how our audience wants us to say it.  Really, it's simple customer service--giving the customer what he or she wants.

I'll be the first to admit that this notion was a problem for me.  I used to be so prescriptive about my writing. To me, if my syntax was book-perfect, who gave a flying *^@# if the audience understood me?  Hell, if they didn't, it was because they were unlearned savages who looked at education like Lady Gaga looks at a classy dress.  I was the one who was right; the audience was the one who had to submit to my will.

Yeah, it doesn't quite work that way.  Well, it does if you went to the George W. Bush school of how to live life.  (Most of us, however, actually got halfway-decent scores on our SATs and escaped that fate, thank ya, Jeezus!)  I really had to look at why the hell I was writing in the first place.  That became clear after a few seconds of introspection:  I was writing to impress rather than express.  If I could litter my writing with superfluous--arg, still doing it!--$50 words, people would take note.  Which was true for some circles.  For other circles, all that did was turn people off, or it gave them the wrong impression about me.  ("What a stuck-up *%@%$!)

That attitude continued for many years until I had some colleagues sit down with me to discuss my approach to writing.  It was through that serious of sometimes-tough discussions that I learned that writing was about the audience, not about me.  Admittedly, I'm still learning that day by day.

So for your next writing project or assignment, before you break out the mighty pen or keyboard, slow ya roll.  You need to first think about who your audience is, and how that audience communicates.  Is the audience a holy convention of pastors?  Well, dropping the "F" bomb might result in getting your a$$ crucified.  Or maybe you're writing for the Vibe Awards?  Dissin' everyone by using vile things like verbs could get you capped in the face and chest faster than you can yell, "Hey!  There's Tupac!"  Or callously writing something like "Cher and the Home Depot are the reason we have global warming," might get you glitter-bombed if you are writing to the audience for GLAAD.

In the world of writing, the audience is king.  Got it?  Yeah, you do.

Modifiers: Modify Your A$$ Out of Here

For the writer, words are our friends.  They tell us how they're feeling.  They aren't afraid of expressing themselves--unlike our spouses.  In fact, we can get practically polyamorous with them, believing that we need as many of them in our lives as we can get.  ("Big Love," anyone?)

For the editor, all that is a gigantic, "Yeah, no."  Of course, words are a cool way to express ourselves, but you gotta know when enough is enough.  Despite the beliefs of rabid Lady Gaga fans, there really is such a thing as too much of a good thing.  Cut it out, writers, or we will.

One of the core areas in which I notice bloat in language and writing is the overuse of modifiers.

"What's with all these big words? you query.  (Ooops!  Another one.)

It's pretty simple, really.  A modifier is a word that gives a description of another word.  In boring English class--you know, the class you slept your way through--you may have heard them called "adjectives" or "adverbs," or some crap. As an editor, we refer to them as &*$%#<=+#, as in the language we use when we come across them misused so frequently.

Here are some examples of modifiers:

Bad
Good
Totally
Pretty
Really
So

Now let's see how we encounter their being raped to holy hell in nature:

That so-called good book I was forced to read by my totally horrible teacher was pretty bad and really asinine. It was so utterly stupid, man!

Please never write this way. Not only does it sound juvenile, but the amount of unnecessary modifiers in here borders on the obscene. You don't get awarded anything for putting the most number of useless and irritating modifiers in one sentence.When you really look at these risible sentences, what you see is words that don't add any value to the words being modified.

For example, we get that your teacher sucked. Yeah, she was horrible. But totally horrible? Really? As opposed to what? Being partially horrible? Obviously, what we're trying to communicate is the ultimate terrible teacher, and that's cool, but you don't need two words to express that sentiment, not when one will suffice. Let's just call her horrible. Or if you want to be over the top, we'll call her Beyonce.

The same goes for most of modifiers in the sentence; they're just not needed. Kick them to the curb so you have a lean sentence and communicate a straightforward message.

I should mention that modifiers, also referred to as intensifiers, do have a place at times. For example, in creative writing, they're certainly appropriate to really paint vivid pictures for your readers. When hatin' on modifiers, I'm referring to business writing, though. After all, it's awesome to say "the ominously dark skies" in a short story.  It's not so awesome to say "you're super fired" when canning the guy with seven kids, a wife, and a mortgage.  Workplace violence much?

So pay attention to your next writing assignment, whether it for work or pleasure. Scrutinize that adjective before it makes to the editor's desk. Interrogate that adverb as if it were in Guantanamo Bay. Your message and audience deserve it.  And so does the editor who has to read your stuff.

Get down and dirty with Purdue's lesson on unnecessary modifiers.  Try not to fall asleep, please.

Fear My Pen of Correction

I am a writer and editor, but mostly an editor--and a bad-ass one, too.  (Yes, I said "ass."  I'm allowed to.  Because I edit.)  I have yet to meet a sentence that has survived my red pen of correction.  I eat object pronouns for lunch.  I decimate subject pronouns.  I spit in the face of dangling modifiers.

I will &%* your sentence up!

Okay, so maybe that paragraph was a little harsh and is probably the reason why I have such a reputation.  So I won't &%* your sentence up, but I may just whisper in its ear in an attempt to inveigle it to present itself a little better.  After all, first impressions are lasting ones.  Your writing simply has to be the prettiest thing walking around.  I mean, it's a reflection of you.

Welcome to the purpose of this blog then.  I want to help people write better by helping them with their English skills.  For most people, writing is not fun, but it's necessary.  They hear so many conflicting stories of what you should and shouldn't write.  They feel the urge to regurgitate when they have to write a homograph.  And they wonder whether it's okay to start their sentences with FANBOYS.  (No, those aren't the dudes you see at the local gay-pride parade, thank you so much!)  It can all be so dang confusing!  But it doesn't have to be.

With my threats assistance, you will be more comfortable writing that office memo (administrative assistants, run in fear!) or turning in that research paper to your gangsta English professor.  But we have to be real here:  Not everyone is a writer, and not everyone will write with one hand tied behind her back.  I'm good, but I'm no Miracle Worker.  So, again, the goal is to help you become more comfortable with writing, because something tells me that breaking out in a cold sweat and chanting the book of Deuteronomy in reverse won't really help you.

So don't pay attention to the title of this article.  You don't really have to fear my mighty pen of correction.  Just relax.  We'll get through this this language thing together, and you'll probably laugh just a little along the way.

Caveat:  I am not perfect.  (I know!  I was shocked when I found out, too!)  So if you find a grammar error in any of my articles, you can send corrections to biteme@irejectyourhateration.com.