11 Tips to Clean Up Your Dirty, Wordy Writing

Get out the pruning shears: a big part of good writing is good editing. And a surefire way to give your writing a confidence boost is to eliminate words that weigh down your writing and make you sound uncertain.

We call these weasel words. Like weasels, they’re not necessarily bad on their own. In fact, they’re kind of cute. But weasels are known for escaping situations (ever heard of someone “weaseling out” of something?). Plus, if you’re a rabbit, they’re deadly.

Weasel words won’t kill you (or rabbits). But you’ll still be safer if you avoid them. So give your writing a confidence boost with these tips for cleaning up your writing.

Get rid of these dirty habits

1 Weasel words Specifically, weasel words are qualifiers that might make you sound sort of like you’re not sure of yourself. Or maybe like you’re trying to create a little wiggle room. For example:

• Like
• Sort of, kind of
• Maybe, perhaps
• Might, can

Let’s try that again. Weasel words are qualifiers that make you sound unsure of yourself, like you’re trying to create wiggle room.

Don’t get us wrong: in some cases, you need these words. But if you want to convey an idea or make an argument, remove words that make your readers think of slimy politicians trying to avoid stating something directly. Maybe it can make a difference.

No, really: it makes a difference.

2 Adverbs Like weasel words, adverbs aren’t evil on their own. They’re like seasoning: a little goes a long way. Who wants pasta with more pepper on it than cheese?

Stephen King wrote in his book On Writing:

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

We’re not going to bring devils and brimstone into the picture, but we do strongly recommend that you seriously think about taking out the adverbs, unless you actually need to significantly modify an idea.

Oh look, it happened again. Here’s that sentence without the padding: we recommend taking out the adverbs unless you need to modify an idea. Stronger, right?

Here are some of the most common do-nothings in the adverb world:

• Actually
• Basically
• Currently
• Presently
• Really
• Suddenly
• Very
• Seriously

When you catch yourself using one of those words, read the sentence to yourself without it. If it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence in a significant way, axe it.

3 “There is” and “there are”

There is nothing more boring than a sentence that starts with “there is.” In other words, sentences that start with “there is” are boring. In other words, write interesting sentences. Constructions that start with words like “it,” “here,” or “there,” followed by a form of the verb “to be” fall into the category of empty filler words.

Instead, try to start with yourself or a subject—or better yet, a verb—to focus on the action and the idea. After all, there are so many interesting writing styles out there. Er, that is, emulate interesting writing styles to keep your prose powerful.

Replace these signs of weakness

1 Excessive Punctuation

Sure: sometimes a colon, semicolon, or other fancy punctuation—dashes, for example—can help you get a point across; it’s elegant and convincing.

But often, shorter sentences are better. If your writing feels weighed down by long sentences crammed with lots of punctuation, try taking out some of the extras in favor of sentences that are short and sweet.

2 Too many negatives

Yes, that goes for your mood, but it also goes for your writing. If you’re finding lots of instances of “shouldn’t,” “can’t,” “don’t,” and other variations of “not” in your writing, try to diversify by picking a verb that doesn’t require the word “not.”

For example:

You shouldn’t use negatives in your writing.

Vs.

Use positive words in your writing.

Now there’s a boost to your writing style and your mood.

3 Excessively fancy words

Fancy words are fun. They make us feel smart. They remind us that we took the SAT, and despite the tribulations of the egregious experience, passed with equanimity and aplomb.

It’s a bit much. Sure, a 50-cent word here and there can help you convey ideas precisely—for example, “with equanimity” is a lot more specific than “doing a good job and staying calm.” But don’t just toss in the big guys to make yourself sound smart. Your writing will be clearer and more powerful if you use them sparingly. After all, you can have too much of a good thing.

4 The word “thing”

Really, just destroy that thing.

Pretty much every time you use the word “thing,” you could pick another word that is more specific and precise.

Take these examples:

I’m trying to strengthen my writing with things that sound better to an audience.

Vs.

I’m trying to strengthen my writing by gearing my style toward a target audience.

See? Rewriting can be a powerful thing.

Follow these key rules

1 Make verbs stronger

In other words, strengthen your verbs. That just about covers it.

2 Think about icebergs

You know, the tip of the iceberg. It’s an idiom that means a small or visible part of a much bigger issue, and it’s how Ernest Hemingway thought about writing as a whole. Here’s the idea in his words:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg [sic] is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

The metaphor: the dignity of writing is also due to slashing what you want to say down to what you need to say. Maybe one-eighth sounds extreme, but even if you have a different fraction, the rule stands: show, don’t tell, and if you’re showing, show it in a shorter way. Whether you’re writing fiction, nonfiction, or something that defies definition, it’s a good rule of thumb.

3 Listen to George Orwell

In an essay called “Politics and the English Language,” he defined six rules of writing. If they worked for the author of 1984 and Animal Farm, they may just work for you. Here they are now:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

There you have it: keep your writing simple, brief, active, free of clichés, and to the point.

But Orwell gives you a little bit of leeway: if something sounds “outright barbarous” (in simpler terms more in line with his own rules: brutal, uncivilized, or bad), you might just have permission to break these rules. Which leads us to our final guideline:

4 Use your own best judgment

These rules will help you maintain clean, clear prose that argues, convinces, or portrays efficiently and powerfully. But there are always exceptions: sometimes a grandiloquent word best serves your purposes, or the word “thing” really comes in handy. You don’t have to treat these rules like a religion, but if you keep them in mind when you’re polishing your writing, you’re likely to have a more powerful product. Even the weasels can’t argue with that.

Monday Motivation Hack: Use Your PTO

You think you’re locking in your career by never missing a day.

You’re not alone.

Research shows that more than a quarter of workers fear that taking time off will make them seem less dedicated. Others think that vacation-time martyrdom will boost their chances for a raise or a promotion (it doesn’t).

But, this (very American) cultural phenomenon of rarely taking time off and almost never using all of one’s vacation days is bad news for employers and employees alike. And managers know it.

According to Project: Time Off, managers agree that paid time off (PTO):

• improves health and well-being (82 percent)
• relieves burnout (81 percent)
• increases employees’ focus after return (78 percent)
• improves employees’ commitment to their jobs (70 percent)

So, if the boss is on board, why did Americans donate 658 million vacation days to their employers in 2015?

More than 66 percent of employees report getting mixed or negative messages about time off and just don’t want to take the risk, deal with the stress, or let the work build up.

However, there are important reasons to make PTO a priority.

Why You Absolutely Must Start Using Your PTO

Recently, we explored the benefits of self-care and treating yo’self for motivation and productivity. Using up your PTO takes these ideas to the next level, and the benefits are just as profound.

• Vacation can save your life—literally. Research shows that high-risk middle-aged men who took regular vacations were less likely to die of all causes and significantly less likely to die of heart attack during the course of a nine-year study. Vacation has also been shown to have an effect on your body and mind similar to that of meditation.
• Time off is critical to self-care, creativity, and motivation. Though research shows the halo-effect of vacation is short lived, it is a vital part of recharging your batteries and your willpower.

How to Get the Most from Your PTO

Put a little excitement in this Monday, and do these things today:

1. Find out how many vacation days you currently have. (Check with HR if you have questions about how or when you need to use PTO.)
2. Mark out paid holidays on your calendar.
3. Pick three fun things you could do with the vacation time you have.

When you have an idea of what you’re working with, there are a few best practices that will set you up for success when you do take time off.

Plan ahead.

Planning is highly correlated with increased use of time off. Many people fear the amount of backed-up work they’ll come back to if they take time off. By wrangling your workload effectively, you will be able to build in adequate buffers to your vacation time and remove the stress that can accompany time off.

Here’s a tip: Plan your workflows as if you’re taking 30 to 50 percent more time off. This way, when you come back to your desk, day-to-day tasks are sorted and you can focus on any catch-up—like email.

Plan around slow seasons.

Take advantage of lulls in your industry to minimize backlogged work before and after vacation.

Piggy-back on holidays.

A lot of people take vacation whenever they can squeeze it in. By planning, you are able to optimize not only workflows but also total time off, getting the maximum bang for your days-off buck.

Communicate with your team.

Advanced notice to your team—with regular reminders—works wonders. You can set early deadlines, and your colleagues will often cooperate to make project requests farther in advance so you’re not bottlenecked before or after your time off.

Make vacation planning a reward.

By planning far-ish in advance for PTO, you get to look forward to your coming vacation. It’s fun to see the details come together. Plus, on rough days, it can be highly motivating to have something concrete to look forward to/daydream about.

Now that you know how much time off you have, when some good times to go on vacation are, and how you’re going to plan for that time, let go of the worry that your boss will be angry or that you’ll fall behind, and plan a trip!

How much vacation do you take? How do you prepare for it and what tips would you share?

7 Easy Phone Interview Tips That Will Help You Get The Job

The job hunting process can be long and stressful. You’ve crafted the perfect resume, sent out countless cover letters, and now you’ve finally heard back that you’ve got a phone interview. This should be a walk in the park, right? An obligatory step to confirm you’re a real human.

Until you find yourself on the phone with the interviewer and they’re not just chatting you up. They’re asking you real questions, some of them tough questions, and your throat is going dry and you’re talking a million miles a minute and then it’s all over and you’re wondering what just happened. Did you blow your chances at another interview?

The phone interview is easy to underestimate. It doesn’t seem as intimidating as meeting in person, but if you don’t nail the phone interview you definitely won’t be asked to come for an on-site.

To set you up for success, we’ve put together seven easy tips that will help you prepare for your phone interview and give you the best shot at advancing to the next round.

1Do Your Homework

Learn everything you can about the company. Scour their website, social media, LinkedIn, and current news for info. You need to know the facts of who they are and what they’re doing, plus their mission and values. (Know your audience!)

Learn everything you can about the job. Review the job description with a fine-tooth comb and check for reviews on Glassdoor. By knowing the skills and qualities they want in a candidate, you’ll be able to craft answers for their interview questions that show you are exactly who they’re looking for.

2Curate Your Success Stories

Now that you know what skills and qualities they’ll be asking about, start thinking through your work history and brainstorming which experiences will best illustrate what they want.

So when you’re asked, “Do you work well under pressure?” you won’t just say “yes”—you’ll also recount the story of your company’s product launch from hell and describe how you managed to stay calm, come up with a successful plan B for your team, and crank out quality copy at the last minute.

Outline each success story, then practice telling them to a friend (ideally in thirty seconds or less per story).

3Prep Answers for These Common General Questions

Make sure each success story you provide not only answers the question, but demonstrates the skills and qualities the company is looking for.

“What is your biggest strength?”

“What is your greatest weakness?”

Here’s a tip: Don’t try to pretend you’re perfect! Talk about how you’ve dealt with your weakness. Tell a success story of how you’ve overcome it!

“How are you with time management?”

Here’s a tip: Don’t just say you’re organized. Recount a work situation where time management was important and you were able to nail it.

“Why are you leaving your current position?”

“Why do you want to join our company?”

“Why should we hire you?”

4Prep Answers for These Common Behavioral Questions

“Tell me about a time you took initiative or stepped into a leadership role.”

“…a time you had to deal with conflict at work.”

“…a situation where you used problem solving.”

“…a time you collaborated on a team project.”

“…a time you went beyond your job description.”

“Tell me about your proudest professional accomplishment.”

5Get In the Zone

• Avoid brain fog by getting a good night’s sleep.
• Ditch the jammies and dress in business casual (it’s all about mindset!).
• Call a friend so you can warm up your vocal chords and get in phone mode.
• Remove any distractions (TVs off, pets absent, kids occupied).
• Be ready five to ten minutes in advance so you won’t feel rushed.
• Have a glass of water handy.
• Have a copy of your resume.
• Have a cheat sheet of the qualities they’re looking for and your success stories.
• Have a pen and paper available to take notes.
• Remember to breathe, listen, and smile.

6Ask Questions

At some point, the interviewer will ask if you have any questions. Having zero could be taken as a red flag, so plan out four to five relevant questions, such as:

“What will be the training process for this position?”

“Can you tell me more about the team I would be working with?”

“What opportunities would I have for advancement within the company?”

“What are the next steps in the interview process?”

These questions communicate that you’re serious about the position and you want to confirm whether the company’s a good fit for you.

7Send a Thank You Note

Practice courtesy and professionalism. Within twenty-four hours, follow up with the interviewer by sending a thank you note via email.

Thank them for the opportunity to interview, express your continued interest, and reiterate how you would be a great fit for the position.

Why You Should Learn Roots

Have you ever noticed how, in the English language, some small words sometimes appear in a lot of bigger words? Take the word “friend,” for example. If you notice someone who is acting friendly toward you, you might want to start a friendship, so you befriend her. You don’t want to be friendless, after all, but you also probably don’t want to befriend unfriendly people, so you save your friendliness for those who really deserve it. Those are six words based on a smaller one, and we call that smaller word a root word.

How Do Root Words Work?

Let’s take a look at three of the words based on the word “friend”: befriend, friendly, and unfriendliness. The word “befriend” is made by adding “be” to the word “friend.” “Friend” is the root word here because it is the word we use as the base for creating a new word. We create the new word by adding the element “be.” “Be” is used as a prefix, an element added in front of a root word to change or expand its meaning, and sometimes even create a new word of a different class. So, from the noun “friend,” we get a verb, “to befriend,” which means to make someone a friend. We can also add elements to the end of a root word, as we did with “friendly.” The element “ly” changes the word “friend” into an adjective. We call an element we add to the end of a root word a suffix. Prefixes and suffixes are collectively known as affixes, and they can be added simultaneously to a root word, as in “unfriendliness.”

Are Root Words Really That Simple?

Actually, they are not. We used the root word “friend” as an example because it’s an English word that is very easy to understand. However, not all root words are of English origin. In fact, a lot of them come from Latin and Greek, and if you saw them without an affix, you might have a hard time guessing what they mean. Take the Latin root “ject,” for example. We see it in reject, eject, and interject. Those words can mean, respectively, throw away, throw out, and throw in between. We can see that “ject” has something to do with throwing things. In fact, it comes from Latin “jec,” which was a form of the verb “jacere” (to throw). Root words don’t have to be simple or obvious at all, but they are still well worth studying and learning.

Why We Need to Learn Root Words

Root words, especially those from other languages, tell us a lot about how a language evolved, how it is related to other languages, and what major historical influences caused it to change. For people who want to master a new language, learning root words is beneficial in different ways. Root words are sometimes called the primary lexical units. In other words, a root word cannot be further divided, and it is the most meaningful part of other words that it helps form. In the example we used at the beginning of the article, you didn’t have to know the exact meaning of all the words we constructed with the root “friend,” but if you knew the word “friend,” you could have figured out that the related words all have something to do with its meaning. Root words carry most of the meaning, and by learning them, we can better understand the whole language. The group of words created by adding to a root word are called a word family. By knowing a root word, or a base word, as they’re called when speaking in the context of word families, you will have a great base for learning the whole family. If you take some time to learn the most common affixes as well as root words, you’ll enrich your vocabulary more than you can imagine. Yes, from time to time you’ll create a combination that’s not usually used in English, but those small mistakes are well worth making if you think about how many new words you can use by simply knowing root words and affixes.

Program vs. Programme–What’s the Difference?

In American English, program is the correct spelling. In Australian English, program and programme are both acceptable. In British English, programme is the prefered spelling, although program is often used in computing contexts.

Decades ago, program appeared in American and British writing. In the nineteenth century, the Brits started to favor the French way of spelling it—programme. However it’s spelled, it means a plan of actions, activities, or procedures, usually for a specific purpose. Alternatively, it can refer to a list of acts or performers associated with an event, such as a theatrical play or a concert. Program can also function as a verb. It means to set, regulate, or modify to produce a specific result. When referring to writing code, both British and Americans use program as the preferred spelling.

The school started a morning breakfast program before classes.

The computer whiz programmedhis computer to wake him up thirty minutes after sunrise.

The backup dancer cried when she realized her name was not included in the program.

Examples

Program in the US

“By age 18, children not served by the Chicago CPC program were 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime,” he said. “And, by age 24, those who were served by the program were 20 percent less likely to have served time in a jail or prison. By age 27, children not served by the Perry Preschool program were five times more likely to be chronic offenders, with five or more arrests.”

Downtown Express

Among the gadgets is Code-A-Pillar, a caterpillar-shaped robot comprised of interchangeable segments, each of which adds a different movement command to the overall contraption, allowing the stripling scholars to program its behavior as they work out a pattern that gets the bot from Point A to Point B.

Arkansas Matters

Program and Programme Outside the US

An accomplished dancer and part of the academy’s professional training program, she recently placed third in the Youth American Grand Prix (YAGP) of dance in the senior classical ballet category.

Victoria News

Libratus, an artificial intelligence program developed at Carnegie Mellon University, was trained to play a variant of the game known as no-limit heads-up Texas hold ’em

BBC News

An Irish scientist will feature in a BBC television programme on Wednesday night, to discuss the apparent health benefits of eating fermented foods.

Victoria News

Do you find it easy to tell the difference between program and programme? It’s fun to discover the differences between American and British English. Why not check out this article about the past tense of the verbs learn and label?