Keep grammar gurus handy

The next time you're banging away on the keyboard and get stumped about whether you should use "due to" or "because of," or you become vexed regarding the difference between "affect" and "effect," don't just guess and hope no one will notice. Go on-line and consult an expert.

There are scores of grammar and usage sites on the Web. Many are good, but you need only bookmark a couple of them to make your writing life more livable. Here are two that are comprehensive and easy to read: Paul Brians' Common Errors in English and Jack Lynch's Guide to Grammar and Style. Each is arranged alphabetically, so you can quickly identify the grammar or usage problem that's giving you trouble. Also, the sites largely avoid slipping into a lot of grammar mumbo-jumbo that you don't really need, and they're written in an engaging style.

What's more, both go beyond common grammar and usage questions and explore other issues whose entries themselves might spark your interest. If you care at all about language, you'll probably be tempted to read Brians' explanation of the phrase butt naked and Lynch's entries entitled bugbears and skunked terms. There are many other equally attention-grabbing subjects, and it's easy to go to these sites to solve a specific problem and ten minutes later find yourself exploring other topics. Who knew grammar and usage could be so engaging?

Fat's not only bad for your belly

Writers and butchers have something in common – the ability to recognize what's juicy red meat and what's greasy, gristly fat. Wise writers always scrutinize what they've put on the page, and they do so with a sharp cleaver in hand and a willingness to trim the fat.

When you spot words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs that clutter, that could leave the reader chewing and chewing but not swallowing, mercilessly hack this rubbery excess away. That means ridding your writing of meaningless intensifiers like "very" and "really," as in, "The Sprockets B-12 widget-maker is a very effective machine. Your production staff will really like it."

Use your butcher's eye to slice away clichés, too. And watch for bloated sentences like, "With an eye toward boosting our exposure, at least initially, the timing of our outreach to the public, which should be led with a news release and ad campaign initialization, is essential, particularly as it relates to the introduction of the new product line." Instead, try the meatier, "Let's make sure our publicity and ad campaigns are prepared before the new product line is ready to launch."

Make every word count. Don't let your message get lost amid the tasteless word-fat and gristle. Think lean.

Avoid clichés like the plague

Here's a way to instantly improve your writing, and you don't need to know a pronoun from a preposition to do it: Trash the clichés. Give them the boot. Avoid them like the plague. Don't let them show their face. Scrap them lock, stock and barrel. Think outside the box. Get the picture?

Dispatch these and other meaningless phrases to the Retirement Home for The Hackneyed. Most clichés got their start as original writing. The first scribbler who wrote that "the crowd roared with laughter" was engaging in clever wordplay. Now, when readers encounter such clichés, even if they don't recognize them as such, they dart right past them, and the wasted words barely cause a flutter of recognition.

Your cliché substitute doesn't have to be quotable, just accurate and effective. Often, when you take the time to swap a cliché for original writing, you'll gain insight about your subject that could be worth its weight in gold. Ugh!

Chip Scalan offers some tips on axing stale phrases in a column carried by Poynteronline. He even notes that a dictionary of clichés is now available.

Let's take language off endangered list

The February issue of Public Relations Tactics carries a provocatively headlined column, "Is pure language dead? And how much does it matter."

The piece, by John Guiniven, notes that the writing skills of younger people are steadily eroding and cites futurists Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker, who suggest that "language is an endangered species, morphing and mutating right before our eyes – tribalized, more symbols than words."

Guniven also quotes Joe Gennaro of Kinetic Communications in Los Angles as saying that e-mail [and text messaging, too] has led people to believe that they can ignore sound writing principles.

We've all witnessed and likely participated in that game. How many e-mails or text messages have you sent that ignore capitalization, punctuation or proper spelling? You might say, "Who cares, as long as the message gets across?" OK. I'll concede that. But is the message getting across? Not all the time. My guess is that the flaws in our casual writing often reflect our not knowing the correct way to do things. So we mask it by pretending we don't care, that it doesn't matter, and besides, everybody else does it.

But is a sloppy approach to grammar, usage, punctuation and the structure of sound writing hamstringing our ability to communicate beyond our own small world of friends and co-workers?

I say yes. I see it every semester in my writing class: bright university students groping their way through the task of putting a few sentences together to form a meaningful piece of writing. They know what they want to say, but years of e-mailing and text messaging their buds hasn't given them the tools to communicate in the broader universe. Out there it's cold and lonely and you need potent rocketry to travel from one star to another. You need to know the fundamentals of writing, spelling, punctuation and grammar.

So let's not drive a stake through the heart of language just yet. Let's be brave enough to scrutinize our writing and ask ourselves the hard question: Does this really say what I want it to say? If the answer's no, let's figure out why and do something about it.