Two Words (ok Ed, three!) - (You) Read This!

Perusing the web for an article on active and passive voice usage in business communication (for my professional writing students) I stumbled across Ed Barr's really great blog.

My favorite recent posting is entitled "You only need two words."

I think this concept of "concision as emphasis" is fabulous for professional writing students, and in some ways can be a basis for creative writing as well. It's not always about how much detail you can add. It's not the fancy words or the beautifully extended metaphor. Often the most profound messages stand out simply because of their, well, simplicity.

To me, these statements share another commonality, (which I've fixated on since I just prepared a lecture about sentence structure). These two-word sentences only include a subject and a verb. An object is not included, not necessary. These sentences focus on the action of a single entity, and declare a type of singularity. One person, one action, one moment, one impact. These sentences expand emotionally because they define only a single point out there somewhere. It is the reader's responsibility, then, to position herself in regards to the sentence. "How does this change me, now?" she might ask. What has ultimately been accomplished, then, is a sentence that necessarily engages the reader by not dictating how she must relate to that new information. Relationships are made, but they are more profound since the reader is part of the process. She understands.

Teachable Moment - Business Memos

And I thought I knew just about everything, j/k...

I'm teaching 3 sections of a professional writing course this semester, and, as always, the first assignment proves to be a bit of a challenge for my students, i.e. omg wtf do you want me to do?!?

The Assignment: Write a memo evaluating a sales message for effective communication.

The Question: "I don't have my book yet, so I what is 'memo format'?"

The Answer: I'll just google "memo format" and get something easy as a proxy.

The Complication: This article, which I desperately want to share, but seriously, not as the very first thing I show an assignment-overwhelmed student. HA!

The article provides a cogent, near-academic (but somehow SO NOT academic) approach to the science of visual rhetoric, document production, and the ills of worshipping at the altar of Word Defaults. The writer is truly taking the audience-centric "You" attitude I preach, and is considering (on a tab and space and leading level) how we actually SEE a memo and the DECODE that information more or less quickly. It's brilliant, and frightening, and, well, the kind of stuff that just gives me the willies.

I have never so seriously considered my entire writing life with a healthy dose of oh-god-did-I make-the-Example-3-mistake!?! dismay. In some ways it is an epiphany and a radical departure from everything I've ever thought to consider about the banality of business document composition. In other ways, it's the kind of tedious, nit-pickingy type of thing students despise instructors for expecting. Thus the perils of the academy and its academicians perched precariously on the edge of obsessive attention to curricular detail (we so desperately want to teach everything, really, even the crazy, tiny stuff like this).

I'm thinking now that this blog might just be the best thing going for my teaching. I can obsess and digress, they can inquire and be inspired, and we can carry on these fabulous discussions without the formality of the classroom, or the stingy "allotments" of the classroom.

If only I can get them all to read it...at least a little...without me.

Food, Inc., Lesson Plans, & Special Offers

I had the opportunity this weekend to see the new film Food, Inc.

While I have to say the "cast" involves many of my favorite "major players" in the local, non-industrialized food movement, I can't say the movie was much more than, well, preaching to the choir.



The movie brings up this issue, that the viewers of the film are people who are worried about our food supply. The viewers are NOT like the limited-income family shown in the film, who buy from the McDonald's Dollar Menu since you can get a burger for the price of a pear or two. I'm afraid of my food. That's why I try to frequent the Phoenix Farmer's Market, actually telling my restaurant employer I don't want to work Saturdays so I can visit the market. (Not surprisingly, they continue to buy, oh, 99% of their offerings from distant, commercial, and thus industrialized sources. This is not uncommon, even among restaurants of the highest quality and price point.

I don't want to watch a movie with questions. I want one with answers. About as close as it got was the final, word based call-to-action about "what you can do to support this movement." The rest was more shots of sad animals in slaughter houses, contrasted with Joel Salatin's happy little pigs in rural Virginia. I grew up near rural Virginia. I saw "free-range cows" that my uncle raised. Also not surprisingly, he farmed tobacco, too, but now these fancy cows are worth more than the former cash crop.

I was very interested in this movie, though, as a possible teaching tool. I've really considered trying to put together a freshman composition course about food. Not as in, "I want to teach you about food writing," but as in "I want to teach your about food, and I want you to write about what you learn." I think that this film could be an interesting entree into some of the "key players" I discuss. I also think it can give the graphic imagery that, were I to show on slides, would look like proselytizing. Something about the fact that it's a mass media movie makes it so much more believable. Geez. (Yeah. That's what I'm up against in comp class!)



Assignment Idea #1

Pick a processed food you love. It can be from the grocery store or fast food chain. Just make sure you didn't make it, and that it came to you ready to eat (i.e., no heating necessary). Find the list of ingredients on the packaging or at the chain's website. Make a numbered list of these ingredients, in order of appearance. For each ingredient give a brief 100 word description of what the ingredient is, what it does, where it comes from, and additional information that shocks or delights you. After creating this "annotated ingredients list," write a short introduction (1st paragraph) that describes the product as you FIRST saw it as just a consumer (literally, an eater) and a short conclusion (last paragraph) that describes the produce as you NOW see it, based on what it's ACTUALLY made of as an "informed consumer" (what the label is SUPPOSED to communicate to you, but probably didn't, since you had to look up most of the ingredients). You will need to do outside research for this assignment for any terminology/ingredient that is unfamiliar to you.

Try this with your favorite guilty pleasure and get back to me. Anyone who posts a response, I'll trade you a handmade baked good of your choosing, made with ingredients you can recognize, many of which will be locally produced.

What's in a Name? - Note on the title of this blog

As a developing writer and poet, I was obsessed with metaphors. And etymologies. But most especially homophones.

Trying to name a blog is like trying to name a new puppy. What can I imagine saying out loud that won't make me gag in 2 years time. Or alternatively, what doesn't sound like a generic dog-name, or in this case, blog-name, but still works as a functional title.

I ran the gamut of boring titles and overly-syrupy metaphors. Why? Because I have a thing for threes. I built a collaborative arts project around the number three, and I realized my blog needs to cover three near-and-dear topics:

1) Composition
2) Marketing
3) Food

Now, pick any two (like a lunch-counter combo) and you're fine for titles. But "adding on" makes the title buffet get awfully picked-over, awfully fast. Food metaphors aside, I've spent a lot of time working over the title in my mind, like dough, and I finally turned to an old standby--the Wikipedia disambiguation pages--and stumbled upon what is the linguistic equivalent to a slap in the face: PROOF.

I teach students to do this, I've made a living fixing colleagues' errors on junk mail, and I've had a hankering to learn how to make a really good artisan loaf. Let's face it, my past, present, and future are all based on this little word. PROOF, to save you the lengthy definition, serves my blog in, let's see, three ways.

3) It's the process of leavening, it's the "rising" that makes bread a food of texture, not just taste.
2) It's the process of copyediting and of revision, it's half of the time you spend creating a written piece.
1) It's the process of establishing of the truth of anything, it's the demonstration that leads others to knowledge.

It's the PROOF, the action, that gives meaning and fullness to the SHAPE, the original form and the idea(l).