Jargon is everywhere. You know–the special, “inside” language that is used by specific industries or groups of people but is completely obscure to Joe Public. (Have you ever tried to read a legal brief? Or a medical journal?) Referring to an addressed envelope as a SASE. Calling the newsperson in front of the camera the Talent. Saying a project given a go-ahead is Green-Lighted. Calling a piece of undeliverable mail a Nixie.

The thing you need to be aware of is that jargon, by its very nature, puts a wall between you and everybody else. You might know exactly what you mean when you say your company was “down-sized,” but will everybody? Are you deliberately using it to obfuscate your meaning? Or, is your meaning confusing because you assume that everyone you’re talking to will be familiar with the jargon? If you’re trying to be obscure, or if you’re gearing your writing to a very specific set of people who have their own, very specific way of speaking (lawyers, computer geeks, photographers, rap stars), jargon may be fine.

But be wary. If you aren’t careful, your use of jargon could impede the transference of data segments to the mental computational devices of the written-word scanner.

(In other words, jargon may interfere with your information getting into your reader’s brain.)

Since I’m travelling today, I thought I’d address some of those travel-related words that can get confusing. So please, make sure your safety belts are securely fastened and that your hands are safely on your keyboards, and let’s begin!

• Plane vs Plain:
  • Plane, of course, is short for “Airplane” and describes those nifty machines that fly through the air (when the airlines let them).
  • Plain describes a flat geographic area, often monotonous, like most of the center of the United States.
• Train:
  • One word with two meanings.
  • (1) Train (n): The first describes that locomotive that travels on prelaid tracks and used to go choo-choo in the old days when it ran on steam.
  • (2)Train (v): The second meaning describes what you need to do to get the tallest, strongest person of your travelling party to automatically pick up the heaviest pieces of luggage without your needing to nag.
• Board vs Bored:
  • Board is what you do when you’re finally allowed onto a plane, train, or bus after hours in the terminal.
  • Bored is the emotion you feel while waiting to do so.

• Sail vs Sale:
  • Sail is what you do on one of those pretty boats with the pieces of cloth filling with wind. (I’m told by people who know more about the water than I that a motor-powered boat such as a ferry or a cruise ship does not officially count as “sailing.”)
  • Sale is what you look for while on vacation so that you don’t spend too much of your hard-earned money on cheesy knick-knacks and t-shirts. (Buying them is one thing, but spending full-price? Tsk.)
• Inn vs In:
  • Inn is a quaint name for a hotel, or bed-and-breakfast, or whatever type of lodging you prefer. They can be large, modern hotels (like Hampton Inn), or they can be charming little Victorian houses that have been converted to money-making opportunities by idealists with a flair for doilies. Or, really, anything in between–if they take money and let you sleep there, they can basically call themselves an inn.
  • In is what you need to be to get a reservation at the trendiest restaurants, get into the coolest clubs, or just INto the swimming pool at your inn.
• Wine vs Whine:
  • Wine: Visiting wineries while you travel can be a pleasant way to spend a few hours (and even more money), because once you’ve tried the wine-tasting at the end, your resistance to the sales pitch will be low. And, really, what could be a better travel souvenir than a delicate bottle filled with a liquid that does not travel well?
  • Whine: The high-pitched, annoying sound often eminating from the back seat of the family car on long drives. “Are we there yet?” “He’s touching me!” “She’s on my side!” “I have to go to the bathroom!” Whines may also be heard from adults by the end of a long day of shouting, “Don’t make me turn this car around!”
• Tour vs Tourist:
  • Tour is what you do when you visit a new place or a museum. Usually headed up by a tour-guide to point out interesting features and to warn you about keeping your hands and feet inside the vehicle. Depending on the location, the guide, the scenery, the weather, and the script, these can be either a fabulous and informative use of a few hours or one of the deadliest, most boring places to be trapped on your precious vacation.
  • Tourists, on the other hand, used to be just people who were on tours, but have since transformed into obnoxious strangers, often with funny accents, who carry cameras everywhere (even though they don’t have blogs), and block traffic while standing in the middle of the street with a map trying to figure out where they are.
  • In other words, going on tours is okay, but being a tourist is dreadful.
• Holiday:
  • Another one of those confusing words with more than one meaning.
  • (1) To a British person, “Holiday” means the actual trip–getting on that plane, lying on that beach, touring that museum. Holidays are something they “go on.”
  • (2) To Americans, “Holiday” is the word for time off from work. Fourth of July (sorry, Brits) is a holiday. Christmas is a holiday. A long weekend can be a holiday. But the trip you stood for four hours in the airport to take? That’s a “Vacation.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little tour of some of the more confusing, travel-related words in the English language. All gratuities can be left in the tip-jar. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go load the car with luggage, catch a ferry, and spend the next 6 hours or so after that driving home along I-95 with my Mom and my tends-to-get-carsick dog. That rush-hour and Tappan Zee Bridge part is going to be FUN.

Can you think of anything I missed? Come on, chime in, folks!

I am.

Simple, isn’t it? Serenely self-confident and self-contained, it embodies a simple statement of fact, unburdened by any distractions.

No, no. I’m not talking about the philosophical statement (though, that’s true, too). I’m talking about the sentence, because it simply doesn’t get any more, well, simple than that.

A noun: I

A verb: am

Punctuation to finish the thought: Period.

That, my friends, is all you need for a sentence.

Of course, you can add more stuff to it–that’s what makes things interesting. You can make bread with nothing but water and flour if you truly need to, but it’s a lot tastier if you add things like yeast, salt, butter, eggs, fruit, spices, nuts… you get the idea. But, the essentials must be there. A combination of butter, eggs, and salt may make a tasty omelet, but it is NOT bread. Likewise, a combination of adjectives, verbs, and prepositions does not make a sentence.

Every, single sentence, in order to be a sentence, must have a noun and a verb, and it must complete a thought.

Wait, I hear you saying, what about something like “Stop!” or “Shoot!” Aren’t they sentences? Well, yes, they are, but the noun is understood to be “You,” as in, “You wait.” They are technically commands, declarative sentences, and for those, brevity is key, but since they are directed AT somebody, the noun is understood to be there.

And, obviously, there’s more to be said about sentences. (How many two-word sentences do you come across on a daily basis?) It’s always good to start with the basics, though.  You understand.

Back in February (yes, I’m late), Peter asked:

I would like to know when you are allowed to use the hyphen (”-”). I tend to use it pretty often - like now - and I’m wondering if it is proper use. I also get confused when two words are joined up through a hyphen. In my primary language - which is dutch - we tend to stick words together. With english, I’m not always sure when you are supposed to place a hyphen, leave a gap, or join the words togethers. Like for instance: all together, altogether, all-together. Well placed, well-placed, wellplaced?

First, there is a difference between a dash and a hyphen. We’ve discussed dashes before–they are used to indicate a break or pause in thought, much like a comma does. Where Peter says “- like now-” he should rightfully use two dashes together (–).

A Hyphen, on the other hand, has two functions.

• One is for pulling words together. (”Well-placed”)
• One is for separating them into syl-la-bles.

Since Peter’s questions is mostly about the first one, we’re going to focus on that.
I’ve touched on the first one, back when I told you about compound-adjectives, but the “compound” part is not restricted solely to adjectives. Generally speaking, when you’re putting two or more words together because they are acting as a team, you need to tie them together with hyphens. (“Blue-green yarn.” “The next-to-the-last chair in the row.” “The well-placed decoration is just the right touch.”)

If they are working individually, however, you keep them separate. (”I like the blue, green, and yellow yarns.” “I’m sitting next to the door.” “I must say, that chair is so well placed, it never falls over.”)

Also, if they get tied together long enough, they eventually become one word. (Handspun yarn. Lightbulb.) So in Peter’s question about “all together,” you can use “all together” to describe the action of a group, but you would not use “all-together” at any time I can immediately think of. “Altogether,” of course, can describe (ahem) a person without clothes, as in “The king was in the altogether, as naked as the day that he was born.” If you’re not sure whether a pairing has passed into the not-needing-hyphen stage yet, it doesn’t hurt anything to use it.

Thanks for the question, Peter. Hope this helps. Anybody else have questions?

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.

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.

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!)

One of the most basic tips for good writing: Don’t over-use the same word and don’t use hackneyed phrases that have been used so much they become cliche.

I notice this the most in my “casual” writing, things like e-mails to friends, comments on blogs, and the like. One of these nights I really need to pull out my thesaurus and remind myself of some other, better, lesser-used superlatives like “striking,” “keen,” “awesome,” “meritorious” or “smashing.” You know, to be able to write something a little snazzier than “It’s so pretty!” when I see a beautiful hand-knit by a friend.

The problem is that words like “pretty” and “nice” have been so overused that any strength they originally had has been diluted, leaving them insipid, weak shadows of their former selves . . . but, isn’t that a sad thing to think about any word? Can’t you just picture them, sitting in their recliners, their canes and walkers nearby, reminiscing about the days when they were the words to use? The strong, active, cut-to-the-chase words that everyone wanted to voice?

“I wasn’t always just ‘Nice,’ you know, I used to mean all sorts of things! Wanton. Coy. Punctilious. Well-bred. Now I’m just a worn-out old catch-phrase.”

When, no doubt, the word “Gay” says, “You think you’ve got problems? I used to mean happy and merry, and now I’m a political land-mine. Woo hoo. Hurray for me. I remember when I was just a nice word . . . oh, sorry, buddy,” as the word “Nice” winces, “I didn’t mean you.”

All while “Like” is sitting in the corner, twitching . . .

(Inspired by an old post on my knitting blog.)

This one is very simple, short and to the point.

Exclamation points (aka Exclamation marks).

Don’t use them any more than you have to.

Period.

And if you DO have to use them?

Only use one. Never multiples.

Too many exclamation points make you sound like an overly-excited teenager, jabbering on the telephone to her BFF. (Like, OMG!) Now, obviously, there are times when you need to use them. Nobody calmly says, “Stop,” to a toddler running toward a busy road. If there’s a fire, you shout, “Fire!” I mean, the punctuation exists for a reason.

The problem is that, as writing gets more casual and more conversational . . . as we write more quick, little e-mails to friends, or comments on blogs . . . it’s easy to overuse the Exclamation Point. Sometimes it’s warranted, of course. If your favorite blogger just got a book deal, you tell them, “Congratulations!” “Happy birthday” just doesn’t sound the same without the “!” at the end. For that matter, when you see your best friend for the first time in ages, you’re going to be speaking in exclamations (”It’s so great to see you! You look fantastic! I love your haircut!” Your kids are getting so big!”)

The point is that you don’t want all of your daily correspondence to have that breathless, OMG! kind of feeling. Or, well, maybe you do. If you, you know, want to sound like a giggling teenager.

Out of so many grammatical stumbling points, I can’t choose one on which to focus today . . .

So, let me ask you. Do you have any specific questions you’d like to see addressed? Topics I have not covered yet? Tips you’d like to you share?

Honestly, I’m at a loss. Not because there aren’t enough points to cover–surely there are–but how can I choose?