Word Shots, The Podcast

Those zombie, empty nouns that don't stand for any real thing—how do they creep into our writing? Listen to the episode here: OR SUBSCRIBE to Word Shots in iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. Full Transcript Last week I talked about how much our writing is strengthened when we replace abstract subjects with concrete ones capable of actually performing actions, and then use those actions as our primary verbs. Next week, we’ll look at some strategies for doing that. But first, let’s talk about what those abstract nouns are called, and how they arise. This will help us understand which ones are the worst offenders. Then we’ll know how to tell which ones to leave alone. Page 1: The Dreadful Word Nominalization Stands for a Dreadful Thing. Those abstract nouns that find their way into subject and object positions have a technical name among linguists: they’re called nominalizations. That is, they’re some word that’s normally not a noun, but been turned into one. There are three parts of speech that get nomin

Even if you're producing expository prose, the key to strong writing is story. All you need is an entity and an action. Listen to the episode here: OR SUBSCRIBE to Word Shots in iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. Full Transcript: The following may or may not describe your experience with Word Shots. But I’d guess it’s true to at least someone’s experience: You want to know how to write strongly. I’ve assured you that good theory can help you get there. But now you’re seven episodes into his podcast and you haven’t seen your prose improve in any remarkable way. Last week I talked about ritualization, but I didn’t really explain what it is, and you’re finding it hard to do anything with the concept. Before that I talked about why you write. But you were already pretty good at working out why you write each thing you write, and you always aimed at recruiting and empowering your audience. You’d like to hear something that will really improve your writing. Very well. It’s time to descend from the heights of

All communication is about managing change. Good communication prepares the audience for the right kind of change. Listen to the episode here: OR SUBSCRIBE in iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. Full Transcript I’ve said that the most important part of writing well is knowing why we’re doing what we’re doing. And last week I had an opportunity to chat with an excellent public speaking coach, Stephanie Silverman, who agrees. We developed the idea that most speeches and writing projects will have the best likelihood of success if the writer sets out with a twofold aim: to recruit and to empower. This week I want to step backward just a little. I want to talk about the purpose of all communication, of every kind. That purpose is to manage change. Page 1: Princess Belle and the large, pale creature. Before I get all theoretical about it, let’s jump right to the concrete and practical. Let’s start this episode with the story of Princess Belle and her not very charming encounter. Princess Belle is her online na

Near the end of episode 5, I said that the single most common reason I’ve seen communication efforts fail is that people have forgotten why they’re doing what they’re doing. For that matter, I said, in too many cases, they’ve never clarified the why at all. I recorded that episode on a Wednesday. Three days later, I was listening to the radio show Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me!, and I heard this: [clip: Stephanie Silverman introduced on Wait Wait.] Well, after hearing such a corroboration of my idea from somebody who actually knows something, I just had to talk with Stephanie. I emailed her, she responded, and then she very generously gave me almost forty minutes of her time in two Skype calls. [clip: max and Stephanie saying hi] She didn’t tell me what I have to do to win her voice on my answering machine or voicemail, but she did answer a question about that appearance on NPR. Max: this is the classic cartoon reporter’s question. What was going through your mind when you gave a very serious piece of advice

English has too many rules to remember them all. But some meta-rules can help us master the complexity. Listen to the episode here: OR SUBSCRIBE in iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. Full Transcript Here’s what I want to do in this episode. I want to prepare you for the rest of the episodes. And here’s what I want to do in the rest of the episodes: I want to equip you to make good decisions about your use of language. Rules Within Rules In episode one, I talked about how little we can rely on rules to make our English as strong and useful as it can be. Part of the problem, I’ll remind you, is that English is so complex that, if we have to rely on conscious rules for everything, there will be just too many to remember. But think about how much life would be simplified if you had a rule that contained within it a hundred or more rules. If such a rule could exist, then to be useful, it couldn’t exactly contain the other rules; if it did, then to remember the one rule, you’d actually have to remember all t

In this episode, Max discusses how a change in usage stalked and murdered a perfectly nice poem. Listen to the episode here: OR SUBSCRIBE in iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. Full Transcript In this episode, I’m going to continue talking about the tricky matter of right versus wrong in the use of language. And I’m going to tell a story about a nasty trick that history played on a poet who probably deserved better. In the last episode, I made the bold statement that if you could only afford to buy one book to help you with your use of words, your first book shouldn’t be a dictionary. Today I’m going to elaborate on that a little. First of all, I want to say that it’s very important to have a reference that allows you to look up the definitions of words. But if you have internet access most of the time, the World Wide Web serves that need pretty well. It’s actually not a hard service to supply. What’s harder is to help you know, when you’re writing, which word you should choose out of several candidat

In this episode, we look at how two non-native English speakers damaged their writing by using perfectly "legal" English words that no English speaker ever heard. Listen to the episode here: Or subscribe in iTunes. Full transcript (headings aren't in audio): Last week I talked about who gets to decide whether something that might be a word is in fact a word. And I suggested that the right answer is not the makers of dictionaries, but the best writers. Are Dictionaries Valuable? Now, that may have prompted the question whether I believe dictionaries are valuable at all. The answer is that I’m sure they are valuable. Reference books on words and grammar and usage are valuable. Some are more valuable than others, of course, because some are better than others. This week I’m going to talk about two specific instances in my career as a writer and editor in which a dictionary did not provide the right solution to the problem I faced. First, though—spoiler alert—since I’m going to tell you that you can poss

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