People don’t write letters as often as they used to–emails, yes; text messages, yes; the occasional hand-written note, even, yes … but actual letters? Not so much. Especially outside of normal business hours.

So, let’s review the essential elements of a basic letter, shall we?

• Return Address: On both personal and business letters, the very top of the page should be the address of the letter’s sender. It can be on the left or the right margin, it just needs to be at the top. Naturally, if you’re using some kind of letterhead paper, this is already covered (even if it’s just a logo at the top, with the address in the footer).
• Recipient’s Address: This is more for business letters, but in formal letters, it’s usually a good idea to put the address of where the letter is going, as well. This is particularly important if you’re using a window-envelope to mail it in (grin), but also helpful for future reference. You can skim through your old letters and see exactly where they went, without consulting your address book.
• Date: The date of the letter–definitely important. My personal feeling is that this is essential, even on personal notes where I might skip the addresses at the top. The bare minimum for the header, is the date.
• Salutation: “Dear _____,” This is where the real action of the letter starts–addressing the recipient by name. The word “Dear” is almost always included, but for personal notes, can be left out and just the name be used (”Dave,”). I honestly can’t think of a substitute for “Dear,” although there certainly might be one, but it IS the standard. As to the punctuation, personal letters usually end the salutation with a comma; business letters with a colon. At least, that’s the traditional format, though those rules have gotten “squishy” and these days it seems like either is acceptible.
• Body: The actual text of the letter.
• Closing: This is your chance to say, “Sincerely,” “With love,” “Cordially,” “Yours truly,” “Waiting with bells on,” or any other phrase you choose, but the one thing to remember is that only the first word of the Closing should be capitalized. Never write “With Love,” it should always be “With love,”. And, of course, the closing’s closing punctuation is the comma.
• Signature: In a handwritten letter, this literally is just your signature, but in a formal, or typed letter, there is space left (traditionally 3 carriage returns) for the actual signature, followed by the written name, and titles if any. (”John Smith, Lead Adventurer”)

That’s essentially it. Granted, there can be other pieces–things like “cc” annotations for carbon copies, or whatever–but this is just about everything you need.

Again, a personal note to a friend isn’t going to be as formal as a business letter, and so might not need all these pieces. You can scrawl a note with just three pieces: “Dave, Got your note. Looking forward to seeing you on the 12th. John.” It certainly gets the job done, but then, it’s a note, not an actual letter. What’s the difference? Length, maybe? Structure, perhaps? Something like that (grin).

Incidentally, I did this post out of my memory of “Writing Classes Past”–did I miss anything??

So, we talked last time about the idea of casual and formal writing, as filtered through a wardrobe analogy. (A good image that I can only say I wish I’d thought of myself.) I want people’s writing style to be neat and clean, not all tattered and ragged around the edges. I’m happy with people wearing the verbal equivalent of blue jeans, as long as they’re neat blue jeans. I’m not going about my day wearing gowns and white gloves–nor do I speak as if I were–but I still want to present myself as a person who cares about the impression she makes.

So–assuming that you want your daily verbal skills to be of the neat, presentable, blue jeans variety–how do you figure out which grammar rules you need to follow? The ones that will keep your wardrobe in neat shape?

• Reading. As always, one of the very best ways to learn the correct usage of words, and how they are best strung together, is to READ. Unless you spend your free time doing historical re-enactments, you probably don’t want to speak like a character out of Charles Dickens on a regular basis, but the man knew how to put a sentence together. Read as much, and as widely, as you possibly can. Just like seeing a girl walk by in a tacky outfit, you will quickly come to appreciate the good writing from the bad.
• Television/Media. Hearing how your peers speak is also important–and by “peers,” I mean “other people on the planet.” Clearly there’s a huge variety of different speech patterns all over television and radio–but the more you listen to the variety out there, the more your ear will pick up the flexibility of the language. You know, just like when you were absorbing all the basic rules when you were a toddler listening to the grown-ups talk.
• Speeches. Clearly a politician delivering a speech is going to speak differently than a clergyman delivering sermon–or the kid delivering your pizza–but listening to words formally put together is like watching Fred Astaire dance in a tuxedo. It might not be something you’re ever called on to do yourself, but, well, you have to have something to aspire to. (And who wouldn’t like to be able to dance like Fred Astaire?
• Conversation. The real crux of language–basic communication at its best. Or, at least, its most common. Our high-speed era doesn’t allow the care with conversation as earlier centuries did, but being able to explain what you are thinking to another person is really the whole point of a language, and yet it allows for more flexibility than any more formal form. Teenage girls giggling over a cute boy, teenage boys grunting over a video game, doting mothers raving over their children, excited men going over the latest game scores … straight, one-on-one verbal communication is where the action is, if you’re looking for variety.
• Email and Letters. Written personal communication is almost a hybrid between conversation and published matter–it’s not as immediate as talking face-to-face, but it allows for more casual usage of the rules than writing for the general public. This is one of the reasons reading other peoples’ letters can be so much fun–not only do they talk about things they wouldn’t mention in public, but there isn’t the same pressure to write to exacting standards, either.

Ultimately, the best way to learn to use any language is to USE it. Studying grammar books and usage guides might help, but they can only teach the language if you want to sound like a text book. If you want to be able to speak to people in anything other than a 3-piece suit kind of way, you need to be comfortable with all the variations. Or at least, acknowledge that they’re there. I’m certainly not spending any of my time trying to learn whatever jargon teenagers are using these days, but at least I’m aware that they’re stretching the ways English is used–just like they’re stretching the limits of basic wardrobe pieces.

And, um, no, I don’t really want to dress like them, either (grin).

Two famous, latin abbreviations that so many people seem to get wrong.

i.e. is short for “id est” and should be used for “that is.”

• I strongly recommend the driver of the automobile cease their forward movement at this time, i.e, STOP!
• This weekend, I played with my kids, ran errands, baked bread, cleaned the house, washed the dog, updated my blog, balanced my checkbook, and painted the garage; i.e., I’m tired.
• My child is a natural at sports (i.e., baseball, football, and tennis).
• When the little hand and the big hand are both pointing to 12 (i.e., straight up), it will be noon.

e.g. is short for “exempli gratia” and should be used for “for example.”

• I carry a lot of things in my purse, e.g., my cell phone, wallet, MP3 player, and my glasses.
• A prime number is one that can only be evenly divided by itself and the number one, e.g., one, two, three, five, seven…

The trick is that they often seem interchangeable, as in the following sentences.

• I love vegetables, i.e., things like carrots and celery.
• I love vegetables, e.g., carrots, celery, corn, and so on.

The difference is that the first one (with the “i.e.”) is clarifying exactly what is meant by “vegetables,” whereas the second one is giving actual examples of the loved vegetables.

Still having trouble remembering? Here’s a handy mnemonic device I saw over at Grammar Girl’s:

A few listeners have also written in to say that they remember the difference between i.e. and e.g. by imagining that i.e. means “in essence,” and e.g. sounds like “egg sample,” and those are good memory tricks too.

As to punctuation, the correct way to write these is with a period after both letters (”i.e.” and “e.g.”), followed by a comma.

There’s nothing more aggravating than having your writing flow interrupted by bad equipment. It doesn’t matter if you are writing a blog post, a letter, an article, or your doctoral thesis. Interruptions by people are bad enough, but having your equipment let you down is just one, long frustration.

So, what can you do to make sure that mental “flow” that can be so hard to get going, continues to move?

• Make sure your pencils are sharp, and that your pens have ink.
• Make sure you have a pencil sharpener, refills for mechanical pencil lead, and extra ink and refills for your pens.
• Make sure you have an eraser (or more than one).
• Make sure you have plenty of paper.
• Make sure your printer has plenty of paper. And ink.
• Make sure your computer is working reliably.
• Make sure your computer files are backed up in case it’s not.
• Make sure your chair is comfortable and your light is good.
• Make sure your door is closed and your phone turned off.
• Make sure your notes are in order.
• Make sure your notes are also backed up or safe from harm, if that’s at all possible.
• Make sure your computer keyboard and mouse are working smoothly.

I can hear you wondering, “Gee, Deb, these are excellent points, but what brought this up?”

I’m so glad you asked, because I have had the hardest time getting any writing done at all this week because the D and S keys on my laptop are sticking, or not making contact, or something which prevents them from working reliably. Which means I’ll just get a sentence going and I’ve got to stop to pound on one or the other of these keys to get the letter to “take,” and it’s just a little bit annoying.

(Please, read in as much sarcasm as you like into that last sentence. It would be hard to underestimate the level of frustration.)

How bad is it? Here, I’ll type the next paragraph without all the extra tapping to get the letters to work…

This laptop keyboard really is driving me nuts. The D an* the S just don’t want to work reliably an* it’s wreaking havoc on my writing an* typing kills…. *o very aggravating. (I’ll ju*t leave you to in*ert the mis*ing letter* on your own for thi* paragraph. I figured I woul* ju*t let the letters fill in or not a* they chose so you coul* see how often those two letters are really mis*ing when I type. Canne* air just doesn’t cut it, an* there’* no way I’m going to try to OPEN my laptop to clean it out from the inside. Argh!

I don’t have a separate keyboard, you see, and am pretty much stuck with what’s ON the laptop because I don’t have a desk to work at. When I’m at home, I sit on the floor with my laptop on a bedtray so that I can slide it out of the way when I’m not using it, so there is nowhere to put an extra keyboard. Even if I wanted to prop it in my lap, where would I keep it when I wasn’t using it? (Hey, I never told you that I had a fancy office, huh? I used to use my quaint, little, writing desk, but started sitting on the floor when I got my puppy so that I was in reach, and somehow, that little desk now holds stuff rather than being clear for writing. So I sit on the floor. And, anyway, it’s so small there’s not room for an extra keyboard up there, either. Go figure.)

I’ve been racking my brain, trying to think of a punctuation mark we haven’t discussed yet. We’ve covered periods, commas, exclamation points, quotation marks, colons, semi-colons, and hyphens, not to mention parentheses, ellipses, and dashes. What else is there?

Then the light dawned. The answer was right there in front of me.

The question mark.

This one is pretty straight-forward, though. A question mark (?) is used in place of the period at the end of an interogatory sentence. In other words, at the end of a question.

Obviously, this is easy to remember, what with it being part of the name of the punction mark, after all. Some of the extra niceties:

• It should only be used after a direct question (”Are you done reading that newspaper?”), not after indirect ones (”I asked him what time the movie started.”).
• Rhetorical questions do merit a question mark. (”So, class, we can see that inventing the guillotine had a lot of unforeseen repercussions, didn’t it?”)
• A polite request–since it’s not really a question–does not merit a question mark. (”Would you please step this way.”)
• If your question ends with an abbreviation, finish the abbreviation–that is, you should use a period followed by a question mark. (”You think you’ll become a movie star just by moving to L.A.?”)
• Generally speaking, though, you should not mix question marks with other punctuation. (”He said what!?” with both an exclamation point and a question mark is incorrect. Using multiple question marks is also frowned upon.)

I’m in the middle of reading a book called The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left by David Crystal, about language and the way we use, need, and apply rules. His premise is that grammar pundits who insist on rules are not acting in the best interests of the language. He says in the introduction, “How should we deal with the disturbing note that is creeping into contemporary debate on the subject? … Zero tolerance? That is the language of crime prevention and political extremism. Are we really comfortable with the recommendation that we should all become linguistic fundamentalists?” Now, I’m only halfway through the book, and so can’t tell you exactly in what way they (and I?) are harming the language, but the chapter I just read over lunch got me thinking….

The crux of this particular chapter is that you need as many different dialects and variations on a language as you do clothes in your wardrobe. If you only have one outfit to wear, so that you use it for everything from jogging to work to dinner out on the town (not to mention state dinners, mucking out stalls, sky-diving, and every other event in your life), you are going to have problems. No single outfit in this day and age can possibly cover all the possibilities. Similarly, you are going to speak differently to your five year-old than you do to your chums at the local bar … or to your boss, clients, or the President of the United States.

It’s certainly true. I can’t quite imagine somebody being introduced to George Bush and saying, “Hey, buddy. How ya’ doing?” Nor did I ever lean toward my niece when she was small and say, “Inserting that silicate plaything into your oral orifice is a short-sighted plan detrimental to your well-being.” There is no one writing (or speaking) style that works for every occasion. As Mr. Crystal puts it, “If children have only one variety of language to use, it is like having a single-item wardrobe. On the other hand, if they have been made aware of all the varieties in a language–by degrees, of course, during a language syllabus of several years–then they leave school linguistically fully dressed.”

The thought that keeps flitting through my head, though, is that–while this is true, and having variations available is healthy (not to mention stylish)–you should still know the “correct” rules to begin with. There’s an old saying that, “You need to know the rules to break them,” which is sheer nonsense. It’s easier to break rules when you don’t know they exist, you just don’t realize you’ve broken them. Any lawyer can tell you that ignorance is no defense.

The difference, though, is that if all you want to write at the the lowest common denominator level of English, you can write the same way your five-year old does. You’ll get your point across, more or less, without any fancy bells and whistles like complex sentences or parallel construction in a bullet list. But just like clothing, you get noticed for the way you present yourself, and if you can write in an intelligent way, you’ll make a better impression than if you don’t.  Just ask Eliza Doolittle if her lessons in speech, deportment and dress didn’t make a difference when she headed back to Convent Station to visit her old cronies. First impressions are key.
If varied language use is analogous to having a well-rounded wardrobe, I submit that the more serious and formal you want to be, the more rules you need to know. You can hang out with friends in jeans, t-shirts, and your most comfortable, worn-in phrases of speech. Any schmuck can put on a sweat suit, scratch himself, and grunt for a beer, but you’re not going to be able to take him to a white-tie affair without a little sprucing up. You need to wear a suit and tie at a funeral, untorn jeans on a date, and a tuxedo, gloves and a cravat at a state dinner–and none of those come without some set of rules. How do you match a shirt with the suit? What kind of shoes do you need to wear? And how do you actually put on that stiff-fronted shirt and collar studs? And, also, while wearing it, stand up straight, brush your hair, and remember to use your napkin during dinner.

The more formal you want to be, the more rules you need to know. You can’t write an academic paper in the same informal tone that you use in a letter to a friend. You’re not going to write to that friend in the same way you wrote the life-changing job proposal you just submitted at work, and there’s apparently some kind of rule against writing an instruction manual with any clarity whatsoever. If you can’t construct the sentences with correct grammar and vocabulary, you’re going to look just as out-of-place as that beer-drinking schmuck being introduced to President Bush. You’ll be able to communicate beautifully with your buddies, but you’re less likely to be invited to speak about serious matters of state over in the West Wing–no matter how intelligent you are.

Is this the point that Mr. Crystal is going to make in upcoming chapters? I have no idea, but I loved his wardrobe analogy.

Now, I just need to go change my clothes….

The primary use of a semi-colon is to link two sentences together.

Now, obviously, sentences are usually kept separate and distinct. Sometimes, however, they are very involved with each other, and like to keep close. Like twins, or mirror images, they’re more connected to each other than to the sentences next door. Usher in the semi-colon.

• My mother was a terrible cook; we ate out a lot.
• Cable television is expensive; renting movies is cheap.

It is important to remember, however, that the sentences connected by the semi-colon be complete sentences, and if you’re using a conjunction (and, but, or), you don’t need the semi-colon. Like, for example, that last sentence. I could have stopped after “complete sentences,” added a period, and then started up the next sentence with “If you’re using.” I could also have put a semi-colon there and dropped the “and.” It’s your choice. As a writer, you have options, but like at certain restaurants, no substitutions are allowed.

Semi-colons can also be used to break apart the items in a series, when a comma isn’t quite enough to do the job.

Usually, when writing a list, you use commas to keep items separate. (”My favorite ice cream flavors are vanilla, peppermint, and pistachio.”) When the items start getting more complicated, though, commas can become unclear. (”I have travelled to Boston, Massachusetts, Madison, Wisconsin, and San Franciso, California.”) This is where the semi-colon comes into its own.

• I have travelled to Boston, Massachusetts; Madison, Wisconsin; and San Francisco, California.
• My dogs’ ages are Katy, 9; Chappy, 7.

And, that’s it. Clear? Unclear? Anything I left confused? Further questions?

I don’t need to tell you that the price of gasoline is going up, but did you know that the same tips that can help extend your gas mileage can help your writing, too?

1. Don’t Speed. Go Slow and Steady.
   Take your time. There’s no need to rush, just work steadily. You’ll get the job done almost as quickly as if you hurried, and chances are you’ll be less stressed when you finish, too.
2. Easy Starts and Stops.
   You don’t have to start off at a run, take a few moments to think about what you want to write. Pause to collect your thoughts, picture what you need to say. Then gently put your pen to paper, and step on the gas.
3. Use Cruise Control.
   You may not be able to write completely on auto-pilot, but it never hurts to use templates, or familiar formats to help ease the process along. Having a structure your brain and fingers are used to can help jog that creativity.
4. Check Your Tire Pressure.
   Make sure your equipment is ready. Sharp pencils, plenty of paper, a full laptop battery … whatever it is that you need to get the job done. There’s nothing worse than a flat tire to keep you from getting where you’re going.
5. Turn off the Car to Avoid Excessive Idling.
   Obviously, you need to work to get anything done, but sometimes you’re forced to stop. It might be writer’s block, it might just be so beautiful a day that you need to step outside. But when life sends you a traffic jam, you’re better off accepting it gracefully and just shutting the whole thing down, rather than wasting gas and energy sitting there without moving.
6. Lighten the Load.
   It’s not necessarily a bad thing to have a large work load–in fact, it’s hard to complain about having too much work–and yet, it can be difficult to focus when you’ve got too many things to do, and only two hands to do them with. If you can drop a little of the extra weight, it might help you get more mileage.
7. Keep the Windows Closed.
   Naturally, distractions should be avoided. Don’t stop to check your e-mail. Don’t get distracted browsing on the internet. Don’t let the kids drag you out to play (too often). If you want to get anything written, you need to write!

Incidentally, as a Public Service Announcement, if you want to read these and other tips for actually saving gas (because, if you have a car, who doesn’t these days? ), here are a few links for you. Change Your Driving Habits (and Save Gas!) is a good one, as is this Top Ten list, also from Edmunds. Then there’s this list of 30 tips, and this one of 29, many of which were new to me.

What do you folks think? Any tips to add?

And, what are the gas prices where you are today? My local gas stations are hoving at just about $4.00 per gallon–some stations are a few pennies are higher, some are a few pennies lower, but there you go.

Have you ever given any thought to how you write the date? 365 (or 366) days, broken out into 12 months, of 28, 29, 3o, or 31 days, all sequentially counted in groups called years.

Now, the months themselves may be spelled out, so that this month is written as “June” or as its number in the monthly sequence (06). In this computer age, even four-letter months are also sometimes abbreviated by the first three characters (”JUN” or “JUL”).

Here in the U.S., we write the month first, followed by the date. (June 9), and if specifying the year, they are separated by a comma (June 9, 2008). Some other countries, though, prefer to put the day first (9 June) which conveniently makes that comma no longer necessary (9 June 2008 or even sometimes 9th June 2008). I admit that, American though I am, I often prefer to write the date that way.

Years, of course, are counted these days in what is known as the “Common Era,” formerly known as “Anno Domini.” The calendar most of us work with is the Gregorian calendar, and started with year number 1 at (supposedly) the birth of Jesus Christ. Other nations, other cultures, have their own calendars, of course, and many of them prefer not to be saddled with such a “Christian” dating system, yet with the world getting smaller and the Internet getting bigger, we needed a non-offensive alternative, and so the “A.D.” was switched to “C.E.”

We are also, of course, in the 21st century, even though our year starts with “20″ and not “21.” (The “first” century, of course, was years 1-100. The second century was 101-200, and so on. There was never a year “zero.” This is why, incidentally, that the 21st century did not start in 2000, but not until 2001, but that’s an old argument.) We had gotten into the habit for years or writing the dates just by the last two digits (”98″ for “1998″, for example) but the shock of switching into a brand new century threw us off, so that about half the time, we’re still writing the 4-digit year rather than just 2-digits, just to remind ourselves of where, exactly, we are in this space/time continuum.

Now, why bring all of this up today? Because a couple days ago, on Saturday, if you write dates as we do here in the U.S., it was June 7th, 2008 and for a brief moment, 06/07/08 9:10. How cool is that, huh?

For those of you using the British way of writing dates, though? You get another chance at it next month, on 6 July 2008.

Most people will tell you that, if you want to write, you should read. A lot. That there is no better training for being a good writer (other than the actual writing part).

Now, reading a lot has never been a problem for me. Quite the contrary–my problem has always been putting the books down long enough to do anything else. This love of reading, of course, is one of the reasons I run the weekly meme about books over at Booking Through Thursday, and the other day, one of my readers left me a question that started me thinking: “What’s your take on the power of fiction–no matter the medium?”

If you’re anything like me, one of your favorite reasons to read is for the story. Not for the character development and interaction. Not because of the descriptive, emotive powers of the writer. Not because of deep, literary meaning hidden beneath layers of metaphor. No … it’s because you want to know what happens next.

Television, movies, even good documentaries tell stories and make you want to travel along with the writer (or narrator) as they unfold. March of the Penguins wasn’t a huge hit just because penguins are cute. No, we all wanted to know what happened when the mothers came back.

People like stories. Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, you can structure all sorts of writing as a story to capture your readers right away. For example:

• You can frame an article on the production of wool by following one shepherd’s harrowing night looking for a sheep lost in a storm.
• You can talk about the benefits of perseverance and never giving up by relating a story of a hard-luck, underdog football team that managed to scrape out a huge win over the league favorites.
• You can write a how-to instruction manual on organizing your computer files by comparing the average computer-worker’s desk to the one used by a monkish scribe scratching on parchment with a quill pen back in the fourteenth century.

Humans are geared to love stories–or, why would we waste so much time reading novels when we could be raising our families or earning money? We love hearing about the adventures, the trials, the joys, the happy endings. And, most of all, we learn from them, without even realizing it. You don’t need a moral to hit you over the head to pick up the point that doing the right thing is a good idea–you can learn it by example by listening to Cinderella, or any of the many, many fairy tales most of us grew up on. Even though she strayed from the path and got eaten by a wolf, you want to know if Little Red Riding Hood lived to learn her lesson.

This is a powerful idea. Think about how much easier it is to grab someone’s attention by telling them a story. Start off, “When I was growing up, I had a friend who thought he knew everything. Well, one day….” and they’re hooked. You can use that anecdote as a springboard for almost anything–an article, a sales pitch, a speech–because your readers are going to want to know what happened with that friend.

It’s all about what happens next.