There’s an AT&T Wireless commercial, showing a father knocking on steamy car windows at a make-out spot, looking for his daughter because he hadn’t gotten her text message about spending a night at a friend’s house. The voice-over has him saying something to the effect that, “Come Monday, you’ll be known as the girl with the annoying father that nobody wants to date.”

Well, this annoys me every time I see it. Because, of course, why would anyone want to date the poor girl’s father?

This is a classic example of a dangling modifier, which is exactly what happens when you attach a modifier to the wrong word. Clearly, in that commercial, it’s the girl that nobody will want to date, not her father. All the writers needed to do was say, “…Known as the girl that nobody wants to date with the annoying father.”

Some more examples?

• Tossing the frisbee in the air, the dog ran to catch it.
• While talking on the phone, the doorbell rang.
• Running across the floor, the rug slipped and I fell.
• He was staring at the girl by the door wearing tight jeans.

We have talked about the epidemic of bad handwriting. So now that you know that you’re not alone (if you’re one of the many people suffering from poor penmanship), what can you do if you want to improve yours?

• Number one answer? Practice. Good penmanship is based on muscle memory, so the more you practice the basic shapes and angles, the better your writing will be.
• Of course, you’re going to want to be sure to use the right Muscles. Ideally, when you write, your fingers should barely move at all–it should be your shoulder muscles that do all the work (as discussed here). This is one of my personal handwriting faults–I tend to rest my hand on the paper and use my fingers to move the pen, which effectively means that I can’t write on a pad when I get to the end of the page–nowhere for my hand.
• Discipline is important, too. All of us are used to writing in specific patterns, and it’s easy to just let those patterns continue. If you want to change, however, it’s time to break new writing paths–and that requires work. You have to resist the temptation to “just this once” scrawl a quick note in your usual, messy fashion just to save time. You have to exert the strength of mind to make your hand do what you want it to do, just as if you were learning to write all over again.
• This, of course, also demands Patience. Re-structuring your handwriting is not going to happen overnight. If you expect improvement after only a few days, you’re going to be discouraged–so, don’t!
• Then there’s the Grip. Hold your pen or pencil lightly–if you hold it too tightly, you’re just going to be adding stress which is going to make your hand tire quickly. You’ll want to hold it at a 45-degree angle to the paper, too (especially important with a fountain pen).
• Slow Down. Even my own less-than-stellar handwriting improves when I take the time to slow it down from its usual break-neck speed and focus on shaping each letter.
• Pay Attention. Part of what makes good penmanship good is its consistency. So focus on making the angles of your letters consistent (90 degrees, more or less, in the U.S.), the curves the same shape. Make the space between each letter the same. Keep all the extenders and descenders the same height. (Those are the parts that rise above and below the basic letter–like the top of a “d” or the bottom of a “y”.) 
• One handy tip I saw here was to have a “test sentence” that you write once a week, which will show how much your writing has improved. Sometimes the changes are infinitestimal and you won’t see them … until you look back to where you started from and say, “Wow. My writing was really that bad?” This is the penmanship equivalent to yearly school pictures for your kids.

Now, if you’re anything like me, you’ll want a book on the subject. (Any time I’m interested in a new subject, I immediately go two places–the internet and a bookstore. The internet is great for instant gratification, but there’s still nothing quite like a book for studying.) Write Now is a good one. So is Teach Yourself Better Handwriting.

This is the fourth post in my series on Handwriting. The first post, on the act of writing is here, and the second, on the personal touch, is here. The third, on bad handwriting, is here.

If you are anything like me, your handwriting is, um, less than ideal. The word “scrawl” may be bandied about, and jokes about illegibility abound. (Though, in this regard, I truly am my father’s daughter.) It’s not just me, though. It’s practically an epidemic. I’ve often said that if a genie offered me three wishes, I’d take the first two to ask for health and prosperity for me and my family, and for the third, I’d ask for fast, beautiful, legible handwriting.

Why? Well, first, schools don’t seem to teach penmanship anymore. Once a child can spell out the alphabet and has learned cursive script–somewhere around third grade–the entire subject is more or less dropped from the curriculum. As soon as you look at other countries, the differences grow–Different styles, different ways of forming letters. Just to make things more fun.

Of course, we are all such rampant individualists these days, we pride ourselves on being special and unique (as, of course, we are) and so the idea of distinctive handwriting has an innate appeal. Why shape your “D” just like the person next to you when you can write it unlike anybody else? Except that, unfortunately, that “unique” handwriting all too often means “illegible to anybody but you,” which can be a little problematic.

And then, of course, the biggest reason–we just don’t write by hand that much any more. Keyboards are everywhere. We type e-mails. We type memos. We type book manuscripts. We type reminders to pick up milk on the way home from work. And when we’re not sitting at a computer or typewriter, we’re sending text messages on our telephones.

So, not only are we typing the vast majority of what we’re writing these days, the mere fact that we do means that our fine-motor skills for hand-writing are getting flabby. I can touch-type at about 70 words a minute, which is respectable enough, but put a pen in my hand? Well, not only is that going to be slower, but it’s not going to be particularly legible, either. It’s a catch-22.The more I type, the lazier my writing muscles get. The lazier my hand gets, the worse my penmanship gets. The worse my penmanship gets, the more I type out of sheer necessity. The more I type … you get the picture. It’s a sad, sad state of affairs.

What do you think? How good is your penmanship these days?

This is the third post in my series on Handwriting. The first post, on the act of writing is here, and the second, on the personal touch, is here.

What do you think about using slang in your writing?

The official Rule is that you should avoid colloquialisms when you write. I can give you two good reasons for this.

1. They date your writing, just like any other popular reference. You can refer to some popular television show or catch-phrase, and all is well and good … for now. But a few years down the road? Not so much. Remember the Terminator’s “I’ll be back”? Or Bart Simpson’s “Ay, Carumba!”? Fonzie’s “Aaaaay”? Exactly. You remember them (or not), but if you used them in an article when they were popular, well, it won’t have aged very well.

2. They are unprofessional. Or rather, they make you sound unprofessional. Too many slang terms may make your readers think that you don’t know how to express yourself “correctly.” Colloquialisms by their very nature are casual.

That said, as with many (many) writing rules, this one relies on the context. So, when can you use slang?

1. When writing dialogue. No matter how correctly they speak, practically nobody completely avoids slang when having a conversation. You just expect less of it in a speech by a head of state than, say, a farmer from some isolated area. So, when writing dialogue, if your character would use more colorful language? Use it.

2. In casual writing. When writing a letter to a friend, you can and should write as naturally as you can. Because, again, unless you are a head of state, English professor, or someone in some other highly-literate line of work, chances are that you don’t speak like a textbook reads. Which means that, if you’re writing naturally, your writing isn’t going to be perfect. That might not be ideal when writing something official, but in an e-mail or a friendly note? By all means, go to town.

When is the last time you got a hand-written letter in the mail? A personal note? A greeting card?

Exactly. It’s a dying art. I have a drawer full of letters I’ve received from friends over the years, but I cannot remember the last time I actually had a letter to add. Maybe something that came with a Christmas card, but a real letter, just because a friend felt like writing? It simply doesn’t happen any more.

Don’t get me wrong–I love the electronic age we live in. I love the ease of communication. I love the fact that I’ve got e-friends all over the world. I love that I can ask a question and get answers almost instantaneously. The world has never been so connected. But, it lacks the personal touch.

There is nothing like getting a handwritten letter. The look of the ink–maybe from a fountain pen. The feel of the paper in your hand. The knowledge that the writer put forth a real effort to communicate, instead of clicking a few keys between tasks at the computer to send you a quick note. Even the look of the handwriting is special, as distinctive as fingerprints. Handwriting might flow fluidly across the page, might be made up of short, quick lines engraved into the paper, or might be scrawled to the point of illegibility, but, no matter what, it makes a nice change from Times New Roman. 

And then, there’s the content. Tell the truth: do you write long, chatty e-mails to your distant friends? I’d wager you probably don’t. One of the oddities about electronic communication is that its instantaneous nature inspires “quick” notes. Rather like telegrams fostered short, cryptic messages, the convenience of e-mail spawns correspondence something akin to the, “Honey, could you pick up some milk” phone calls. Short and to the point, passing on bare facts or information, but not inspiring anyone to the literary heights. I’m not saying it never happens–and I have had some thoughtful, insightful e-mail exchanges with all sorts of people–but most of them? The quickie variety.

Which is a shame. E-mails don’t lend themselves to being saved for posterity–nor are they (necessarily) worth it. We can read the legendary correspondence between John and Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson. We can read copies of letters sent to Eleanor Roosevelt. Heartfelt letters sent home from soldiers throughout the ages. A quick look on Amazon.com for books about letters yields 603,310 results–some of which are fiction or how-to books, but many are collections of letters between famous people, world leaders, great writers.

But, think about it. Even if you and I both become world-famous overnight so that future generations are panting to know everything about us, somehow, I don’t think that, 50 years from now, we’re going to be seeing collections of “Greatest E-Mails,” filled with quotes like, “See you at the movies at 7:15,” or “Great post, Deb!” Just like you don’t see many collections of “Telegram Messages of the Ages.” Because, well, they’d be kind of boring, don’t you think?

I found a great editorial by Andrew Lam from 2000 about this subject which says,

These days I find the only people who write good letters are the old or those living in refugee camps or in countries not yet “wired.” The dispossessed refugee, especially, robbed of his home, his future uncertain, becomes the consummate writer. She picks up her pen and begins to bleed herself into words. For the rest of us in this age of mobility and information, there simply isn’t any time for such a thing as a long flowing, hand written letter. Odd, isn’t it, in a world where one does not need fire to boil water or a teller to withdraw cash, there isn’t any time left to complete a whole paragraph?

So, let me ask you–When is the last time you wrote a hand-written letter?

This is the second post in this series about handwriting. The first post, about the writing process, can be seen here.

Here’s a slightly off-topic announcement for you. I’m assuming that you all love to read, and that many of you love sci-fi and fantasy books as well. Well, Terry Pratchett (author of the Discworld books) recently came forward with the announcement that he has Alzheimer’s. He’s donated approximately a million dollars to Alzheimer’s research and his fans are trying to match that. They’ve only been collecting for something like four days and are up to about $70,00 (35,000 British pounds) … So!

I have a special hatred of Alzheimer’s, since it’s what (finally) killed my grandfather back in 1967, before they really knew what Alzheimer’s was. My grandmother took care of him until the end–and she luckily had great neighbors and relatives who helped out–but it was enormously difficult. On the rare occasions Dad mentions it, he’ll say that my grandfather almost took her with him, it was so incredibly hard. So, yes, I’m definitely supporting this one, for the grandfather I never got a chance to know.

You can donate to the Match it for Pratchett site or to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust directly. Oh, and there are t-shirts, too. Whether you ever read the man’s books or not, it’s a good cause, folks. Or even just promote it on your own blog to spread the word. Do you know that they’re predicting that 18% of all baby boomers will develop this disease? That’s one in five people out of an entire generation. Talk about scary. Match it for Pratchett!

When you sit down to write, do you reach for a pen? Or a keyboard?

It’s not just an idle question. There’s a completely different flow to the act of writing when you’re writing long-hand on a pad of paper as opposed to tapping away at a keyboard.

First, there’s the portability issue. Even with laptops springing up at every coffee shop around the world, having dedicated power jacks on airplanes, and being smaller and lighter than ever, they will still never be as portable as paper and a pen. With paper, you don’t need to worry about the battery running down, or software glitches–or that dropping it will render your precious work irretrievable (unless you drop it in a puddle). You can fold paper into your pocket with a golf-sized pencil and be ready for anything. You can jot down notes and impressions in a journal in your briefcase while you’re on the train. You can meditate with a pad of paper on the beach without worrying about sand or water damage. For sheer ease of use, paper is hard to top.

Laptops and typewriters, on the other hand, keep you in one place, in a seated, upright position, often at a desk or table. They rely on mechanics, and therefore put a “machine” between you and your writing, which bothers some people. On the other hand, the output is immediately legible, which cannot be said of everybody’s handwriting (cough). Additionally, if you’re using a word processor to write, it makes editing a snap. Instant find/replace for name changes. The spell-check function (which should be used warily but is still handy). Easy insertion of new paragraphs, or moving entire sections.

Of course, in this modern age, even a handwritten manuscript is going to need to be typed before it can be submitted to a publisher or posted to a blog, so keyboards are going to come into the equation at some point.

Me, personally? My handwriting is so abysmal at this point, writing anything longer than a few sentences in a note card is a chore–for me and for the reader. The thought of writing an entire book by hand? My hand cramps at the thought. How J.K. Rowling managed to write 1,088,072 words of her seven-book Harry Potter series out by hand just boggles my mind. If that had been me, you wouldn’t have been able to decipher anything past page six–if you made it that far. Therefore, I’m used to thinking in front of a keyboard, where I can simply type without having to worry that I just skipped half the letters in “writing” because I can’t seem to write “i-n-g” any more.

This is the first entry in a series of posts about handwriting. The next entry? It will be about the personal touch.

If you haven’t seen it, I’ve got a guest-post over at Laura’s Writing Thoughts today.

Go over and read it and then, after, go read the rest of her blog, if you haven’t already.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make small talk and see if there’s anything else I can help her with, all while getting in her way in the politest possible way … because that’s what guests do!

 (Oh, and speaking of guest-posts, this one of Joanna’s over at Word Sell is delicious.)

You’ve seen them. The little smiley faces made out of a colon and a close-parentheses.

The wink, the frown, the sticking-out-of-the tongue:

You know the ones. They’re so ubiquitous that many computer programs automatically transform them to pictures of little faces rather than use the keyboard representation. They’re everywhere.

I wouldn’t dream of telling you NOT to use them (as much as a part of me would like to), but what I will tell you is to use them sparingly. Just like exclamation points, just like too-familiar adjectives, the usage of the emoticons is too common.

What that translates to, for a writer, is laziness. It’s so easy to make a snide comment and then follow it up with a little happy face to show that you didn’t really mean it. Or to make sure the reader knows you’re telling a joke. Or just that you’re having a miserable day. The thing is, for a writer, that’s what the words are supposed to do. Emoticons just take that old saw, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” and expand on it ad infinitum.

But, do you really want to be known for your laziness? Sure, emoticons are handy little things to toss into an e-mail to a friend. But when they come en masse, they become obnoxious. One bee buzzing around your picnic is atmosphere, but a swarm can get, er, difficult. Similarly, an e-mail with one little smiley face is cute. One that has one after every other sentence? Gag (as they said in my high school days).

All this should not be surprising since you already know how I feel about abbreviations, and emoticons are the worst kind of abbreviations, because they’re not even words, they’re pictograms. (And, oh, there’s a post for another day!) If you’ve been paying attention, you will have noticed that I never, ever use emoticons. If anything, I’ll type “(grin)” where that little would go because, yes, I’d rather type the extra five keystrokes than use an emoticon. I had a brief fling with them when I first learned of them in college, back in the late 1980s, but quickly decided they were too “cutesy” for my taste. Too casual, even for casual e-mails. Too annoying, because, of course, everybody picked them up when they first made their appearance. But, hey, I never yearned for a Cabbage Patch doll, either.

But maybe that’s just me.

Is it? How do you feel about emoticons? Are they cute? Fun? Functional? Annoying? Omnipresent? Useful? 

(And–interesting. Wordpress DID “translate” those typed emoticons to little smiley faces. Sigh. Even when you want to use the things, the computer-world works against you!)

Jan left a comment on my post about getting started writing where she said, “I find that I am much more productive if I have projects and things ready to go (that includes a clean desk, nothing scatters my thinking more than a cluttered desk).”

I agreed whole-heartedly and replied, “It’s so nice to hear that somebody else has the same issue with clutter that I do. I HATE working with clutter. I find that it’s like my brain is keeping mental tabs of everything on the desk. ‘I’ll do this first, then that, but that pile over there can wait…’ The more that’s on my desk, the busier my mind is trying to keep track of everything. If the desk is clear, then I can focus.”

Which made me think. I do an excellent job of keeping my physical desk clean, both at home and at work. Years ago, when I worked with my father, he used to say that, if I wasn’t actually at my desk, he could never tell if was gone for the day or not. I would tell him the answer was simple–if my purse was there, so was I. Of course, my father’s desk always looked–still does–like the file drawers had exploded, so to him, a desk with almost no paper was clearly not a functioning desk.

And yet, still, all too often I have trouble focusing on what I need to do, and I realized … my DESK may be clutter-free, but my COMPUTER is not. Right this moment, I’ve got three windows of Firefox open, along with the Explorer file folder, Flickr uploader, and Adobe InDesign. And inside those Firefox windows? Thirteen open tabs.

No wonder I keep getting distracted from what I should be doing. No wonder I’m having trouble sticking to one thing, any thing. I’ve eliminated the surface clutter in my workspace, but not the space on my computer.

This is so obvious, I’m sitting here wondering how on earth I missed it. It doesn’t matter if the clutter is “virtual,” or “real.” If it’s taking up mental space, if it’s a distraction … get rid of it.

Which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t have the programs you regularly use open and ready–that’s what efficiency is about–but how many programs or browser windows do you have open that don’t need to be open? 

Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got some windows and browser tabs to close …

What does your computer screen look like?