On the necessity of good wordsmithing

Long talk today with a potential client about writing work. Small businesses have so many needs for the written word and growing businesses trying to move up to the next level are certainly challenged by how their written documents (whether in actual print or .pdf format) are seen by the world.

Professional writing comes to the point of making things meet the expectation of the reader in terms of form. Newspapers (where I spent a few years toiling away) have stylebooks to give all of the writing a certain consistency. Style is an important issue when it comes to a professional take on your documents. Having things be the same--such as state abbreviations, capitalization of certain words and phrases, spellings of certain words--makes the reader comfortable that they are dealing with professional material. It's about more than typos. It's about avoiding surprises in places where there should be no surprises whatsoever.

Of course, newspaper hands know about the AP Stylebook, the bible of newsroom style in most every newsroom in the United States. Academics are familiar with the Chicago Manual of Style and the MLA Handbook. My favorite beginning place for writing style issues is Strunk and White The Elements of Style. The White in that duo is E.B. White--of Charolotte's Web fame. You would be hard put to think up many really substantial writing questions that don't simply come down to something you'll find in Strunk and White. For me, the essence of the book itself is contained in Rule No. 17: "Omit Needless Words." Wow. How cool. It even demonstrates itself in the rule itself. Three words. Declarative. Direct. Cool. Rule No. 17. Something we can all live by.