5 Simple Ways to Write about Negative Issues with a Positive Spin

Have you ever written something only to have the recipient completely misunderstand your intent? Or been accused of abruptness when you thought you were being businesslike and efficient? There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to communicating effectively, but among the most important is tone.

I’ve spent nearly two decades in the online trenches in roles ranging from business owner to forum moderator to PR email writer extraordinaire—a true virtual diplomat. Here’s my best advice for writing about negative issues in a way that sounds positive and productive.

1Present solutions instead of problems.

It’s better to talk about what you can do rather than what you can’t. Formulate a solution or alternate plan and present that instead.

I can’t meet with you tomorrow morning because I’m booked.

Tomorrow afternoon works better for me. Would a 2 p.m. meeting fit your schedule?

Not everyone will remember to bring their handbooks to the meeting, so we should bring extras.

Let’s remember to bring extra handbooks to the meeting in case anyone needs a copy.

2State what you want, not what you don’t.

Why focus on preventing a negative outcome when you can encourage a positive one? Instead of beginning requests with “don’t,” try stating what you do want.

Don’t leave your leftovers in the break room fridge over the weekend.

Remember to take your leftovers out of the break room fridge on Fridays.

Do not bring laptops to this meeting.

Laptops aren’t necessary at this meeting, so leave yours at your desk.

3Keep hyperbole in check.

Sometimes exaggerated language is used to great effect (particularly by advertisers) to promote something or speak to positive issues, but when you use it in a negative context it can evoke bad feelings. Watch out for words like always and never. They’re more likely to mean sometimes than either of those extremes.

You always file your reports late.

I sometimes receive your reports after the deadline.

We never get anything done.

Let’s stay on task so we can get things done.

4Try “I statements.”

When you’re tackling a difficult issue, statements that begin with “you” (and especially “you always” and “you never”—see the previous tip about hyperbole) tend to sound like accusations. And accusations, of course, raise a person’s defenses.

When you’re bringing up something negative, keep the focus on how the situation makes you feel rather than what the other person did.

You never listen!

I find it hard to communicate when I’m worried that I’m not being heard.

You’re always on my case!

I feel frustrated when I’m frequently reminded to do my work instead of being trusted to meet my responsibilities.

5“I’m sorry, but . . .” means you’re not sorry.

When I was a kid, and I’d apologize for some heinous act of childhood treachery, I’d often apologize with, “I’m sorry, but—” My mom would cut me off in my tracks, saying, “Any time you add a ‘but’ it means you’re not sorry, you’re just defending yourself.”

When you’re sorry, be sorry. Excuses and other defenses render apologies useless.

We’re sorry your shipment was delayed, but we had a lot of orders this week.

We’re sorry your shipment was delayed. The number of orders we received this week took us by surprise!

I’m sorry I interrupted you, but I felt the conversation was headed in the wrong direction.

I’m sorry I interrupted you. Let’s keep the conversation on a positive track.

Here are a couple of things to consider before you send an email, write a social media post, or address anything negative in writing.

• Do an empathy check. Read what you’ve written as though you’re the recipient. How would you feel if someone sent this to you? Is there anything you can change to make the message more positive, or to focus on solutions instead of problems?
• Sit on it. Have you ever fired off a scathing missive and almost immediately regretted it? Give texts about negative issues a cooling off period before you send or post them. Chances are, you’ll be able to rewrite with a more positive mindset once you’ve had some time to process.

It’s not always appropriate to be upbeat and enthusiastic. A realtor, for example, wouldn’t want to sound chipper when she’s writing to tell a client that the value of their home has dropped significantly due to a downturn in the market. But maintaining a positive, solution-focused tone can make things like bad news or criticism less devastating.

This Emoji Guide Is Fire

Emojis may be the cutting edge of language, but do any of us really know how to use them? For example, let’s say your friend sent you a text that read, “???☺️.” Would you know that it meant “the key to success is a great attitude”? Unless you and your friend have already established emoji conventions of your own, probably not. Emojis, while an interesting communicative device, don’t yet have a formal system of grammar governing their use. In fact, SwiftKey, one of the apps that helps people send more emojis, has shown that emoji combinations are overwhelmingly repetitions of a single emoji for effect. This supports the stance that emojis are not a new language, but a system that allows speakers of a certain language to express emotions and opinions in a new way.

Although the emoji system of communication will most likely evolve, we’ve collected a few best practices to help you use emojis more efficiently. Check them out and leave your thoughts on the future of emojis in the comments below.

A Guide to Emoji Grammar from Grammarly

Are Seasons Capitalized?

When we write the days of the week, we capitalize their names. We do the same for months. But when it comes to seasons, more often than not you’ll see them written in lowercase. Not that they’re always written that way—once in a while you’ll see them capitalized, which should suggest that there are some capitalization rules that apply to seasons after all. So here they are.

In General, Can You Capitalize Seasons?

The seasons—winter, spring, summer and fall—do not require capitalization. Some people think these words are proper nouns and capitalize them using the capitalization rule for proper nouns. But seasons are general nouns, so they follow the capitalization rules that apply to other general nouns.

Does that seem unfair? We capitalize Monday and February, so why not summer? It’s a valid question. But then again, if we were to always capitalize the names we give to specific periods of time, wouldn’t we then also have to capitalize afternoon or morning? You can debate this as much as you’d like (and please do in the comment section), but as things stand right now, seasons are common nouns, so no capital letters for them.

When Can You Capitalize the Names of Seasons?

There’s one exception that you’ve probably already thought of: when the name of a season is the first word of a sentence, you should capitalize it. Likewise, capitalize seasons when they are part of a proper name or a title, like the Summer Olympics. If your name is Summer, which is great because it’s a lovely name, there’s no reason not to capitalize your own name.

If you’re a poetic soul and you like to think about seasons as if they were people, you can also capitalize their names. If you want to write a verse that describes how summer is caressing you with his warm arms, go ahead and capitalize that “s.” But when you’re done with the poem, remember to switch back to lowercase in your everyday correspondence.

A quick summary:

• The general rule says that seasons should not be capitalized. They are common nouns, not proper nouns.
• But there are a few exceptions that call for capitalization. Capitalize the name of a season when it’s the first word of a sentence or part of a proper noun. If the season is being personified, you can capitalize it then, too.

Examples

This fall, you can cozy up in military-style outerwear, throw on a tartan coat, try out a sweeping cape, or keep the chill at bay with an elevated version of the workaday puffer jacket. —New York Magazine

Southern California is having its smoggiest summer in nearly a decade and hospitals report an increase of people with breathing problems. —ABC News

You could say Rob Connolly’s competent but slight thriller “Edge of Winter” is about extreme roughing it. —The New York Times

Only at the end of spring did they rise above average, the Woodland Trust said. —The Guardian

Save Time & Work Smarter with these 5 Email Apps

Do you have any idea how many hours a week you spend reading and writing emails? Well, according to a recent study by McKinsey & Company, it could easily be 11 hours for the average worker—and that doesn’t even count personal time! Just let that sink in for a moment…

Well, now you can take matters into your own hands (and possibly retain some sanity) with these time-saving and feature-packed third-party apps.

1. Yesware     Especially helpful for: Sales professionals

Want to know what happens after you click send? This is Yesware’s big hook, and it’s a meaty way to explain a product that gives you a ton of insights on post-send activity.

 

• Know who opens and clicks on your emails and on what device
• Schedule your emails to send later
• Automated follow-ups via mail merging
• Syncs with Salesforce
• Works with Gmail, Outlook and iPhone

 Get Yesware for Free Here >

2. Boomerang     Especially helpful for: Organization of sent and received email

Boomerang has a similar feature set to Yesware, but we are adding it to the list because it’s a little more mainstream focused and less sales-industry driven. For instance, if you receive a bill but don’t want to deal with it today, you can click on the boomerang icon to send the bill to the top of your inbox at a later date.

• Know when someone opens your email
• Set custom reminders to respond or follow-up
• Schedule your emails to send later
• Works with Gmail and on smartphones

 Get Boomerang for Free Here >

3. Inbox by Gmail     Especially helpful for: Early adopters and users who receive a lot of promotions

Inbox is Google’s latest email product that overhauls the email client experience. Right now, it’s available by invite only but only takes a few seconds to request an invitation on the official site.

 

• Scan important info from emails without having to open them
• Put to-do reminders at the top of your inbox
• Automatically catalogue promos, travel info, and purchases
• Works with Google Chrome or smart-phones

 Get Inbox for Free Here >

4. Rapportive       Especially helpful for: Getting context on whom you’re emailing

Rapportive is basically LinkedIn meets Gmail, and it’s really slick. While emailing contacts you’ll see their profile with important details. It’s a very simple but useful way to save time and to keep content relevant.

 

• See who you’re emailing
• View contact’s job profile and location
• See your shared contacts
• Connect via LinkedIn without leaving Gmail
• Works with Gmail only

Get Rapportive for Free Here >

5. Grammarly on Chrome      Especially helpful for: Eliminating writing errors and improving communication effectiveness

Last but certainly not least is Grammarly for Chrome, which is new and absolutely free. Grammarly will intuitively help you eliminate writing mistakes nearly anywhere you type on the web, including Gmail and other popular email clients.

• Correct up to 10x more writing errors than with popular word processors
• Evolve your writing together as the app becomes smarter the more you use it
• Works with Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn and thousands of other sites

Get Grammarly for Free Here >

5 Tips for Writing an Amazing Thank-you Card

If you want to let someone know how much you appreciate what they’ve done for you or what they’ve given you, the classic way—writing a thank-you card—is still the best, the classiest, and the most appreciated way of expressing gratitude. Lest you forget this, there’s always National Card Reading Day to remind us how fulfilling it is to receive a thank-you card, and how respectful it is to send them. If you’ve never written a thank-you card before, don’t worry—it’s easy to write a great one if you follow the steps below.

Set Aside the Time

Sometimes you might need to write more than one thank-you card. After a wedding, for example, it’s a good idea to send thank-you cards to people who attended or sent gifts. But even if the number of thank-you cards you need to write is relatively small, always set aside enough time to write them. Writing thank-you cards shouldn’t be rushed, and you don’t want to make mistakes in your cards. Consider drafting your messages on scratch paper or your computer first and then copying them into the cards themselves.

Make It Personal

A thank-you card says that you took the time to choose the card, compose the message, write it down, and send it. But if you were to print out your thank-you cards, it would completely ruin the personal touch. That’s why thank-you cards should always be handwritten. Not only that, but they should be handwritten in your nicest writing because there’s no use in writing a thank-you card that the recipient won’t be able to read.

Be Polite

Thank-you cards need to be polite. Don’t start with “Hey You,” even if that’s how you would greet the person on the street. Thank-you cards are a classy way of showing your appreciation for someone’s effort and goodwill, and if you’re going to do it, do it right. Start with “Dear…,” and end with “Sincerely,” or “Yours truly.”

Be Thankful

Being thankful in thank-you cards is more than just a statement, and it should be expressed in more than one sentence. The first sentence of the card should say what you’re thankful for. After that, mention how you are using the thing you’re thankful for or how it has helped you. It’s also a good idea to include a reference to the next time you might see the person you’re writing to, and to state once more that you’re thankful.

Be Pleasant, but Don’t Exaggerate

No matter how thankful you might be, resist the temptation to exaggerate. For example, if you’re writing a thank-you note for a painting you got as a present, saying that it changed the way you think about art might be an exaggeration. On the other hand, saying that you’ve already found a nice place for it on a living room wall demonstrates exactly the right amount of pleasantness expected from a thank-you card.

A Complete Guide to Reevaluating Your 2017 Goals

You came into 2017 with high hopes.

Maybe you decided Stephen King isn’t the only writer who can mash out a few thousand words every day. If Chuck Palahniuk can hammer out an entire novel in under two months, you reasoned, then surely you’d be able to finish your opus by springtime. Journalists churn out many hundreds of words each day and presumably still see the sun once in awhile.

Admittedly, King’s advice to newcomers is to start by aiming for a thousand words a day, six days per week—while many other longtime pros get by doing less: working from an outline, novelist Colson Whitehead shoots for a thoroughly manageable eight pages a week. Zadie Smith has said just getting to 800 words “feels like a champion day.”

Alas, writing is hard.

Distractions abound, as do other, non-writerly responsibilities. Maybe you need to clear out your inbox before your head’s clear enough to tackle your intro. Or maybe it feels essential to transcribe every word of a research interview you taped before you’re ready to map out a structure. “My apartment in college was never cleaner than during exam week,” veteran reporter Michelle Willard jokes, “and it’s still true: I’ll clean my desk when I want to put off writing a story.”

Whatever resolutions or goals you’ve set for your writing this year, if they’re not working for you, that’s okay. Beating yourself up about it isn’t going to help, so the first step is forgiving yourself. There’s no guilt in being realistic, so long as you’re still writing. With that in mind, here are some tips to help you recalibrate your writing goals for 2017.

It’s okay to start small

Goals are helpful tools for getting writing done. But when they feel depressingly out of reach, they can become crippling and counterproductive. When possible, sometimes it’s wise to ease into your project rather than stress over the eventual scope of the end product.

For instance, a radio journalist covering the news of the day might be obliged to write two versions of the same story: one short, the other longer. By first knocking out a few quick sentences for an announcer to read, the reporter crosses the short version off her to-do list and now has a workable outline from which to build the longer spot.

The same lesson holds true whether you’re drafting a grant application or a novella: your word count will be low before it is high, and sometimes it’s practical to work that to your advantage. Be deliberate about it—make it part of your process—and you’ll surmount one of the greatest obstacles writers face: getting started.

Carve out time to work

Writerly concentration is often fragile. It can crumble with the buzz of a single text message and take several precious minutes to reassemble. If you’re juggling other responsibilities—whether you also have to run meetings this afternoon, or just run laundry—it’s easy to pretend you’ll cram in some writing during brief windows of downtime in between, but that rarely works out.

This is why many writers carve out specific hours to be alone with their work. Some put their phones in airplane mode; a few insist on going offline altogether, instead doing their writing with old-school pen and paper. King has advised against working in a room with a phone, TV, or even so much as an interesting window to look out of; for him, the point of working set hours is “to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day.”

But your routine doesn’t have to be brutal, argues Tim Kreider—a committed writer of the four-to-five-hours-a-day school. Your sessions do, however, have to afford enough empty space for your creativity to breathe:

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.

If your writing objectives feel difficult to achieve, perhaps part of your revised goal should simply be scheduling a realistic window to work in, and sticking to that.

Keep giving yourself deadlines

Parkinson’s law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” But in the end, you’re still aiming to get something finished. That’s where deadlines—even the self-imposed kind—come in handy.

For some writers, it’s the glorious inspiration of last-minute panic that helps shepherd their project across the finish line. For others, the ideal motivation might come from a kind of external pressure—the public declaration, perhaps via social media, that you’ll reach a given milestone by a certain time, for instance. Or the fear of letting someone down. Leveraging that anxiety so it spurs you onward might be all the more reason to let that person know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, and when.

Phyllis Korkki, a New York Times editor whose book is subtitled “How to Complete Your Creative Project Even If You’re a Lazy, Self-Doubting Procrastinator Like Me,” has remarked that for some folks, making a friendly bet on your ability to hit a deadline, or even hiring a stranger to keep hectoring you through it, might factor into the fix.

Lastly, a deadline can help to enforce your requisite alone-time, lest this ritual feel overly selfish. Consider this entry from the glossary of Jonathan Kern’s Sound Reporting, a seminal guide for anyone writing for the ear:

Crash: To work on a deadline—often an imminent deadline. If you’re crashing, you don’t have time for socializing; phone calls to reporters or editors often begin with the question “Are you crashing?”—and if the answer is yes, the caller apologizes and hangs up.

Key takeaway: the person writing on deadline isn’t sorry; the person bothering them is.

Save editing for later

One other consideration worth keeping in mind as you march toward your new goal: writing is one task; editing is another. It’s often easier and more efficient to cull what’s worth keeping from an overlong draft than it is to try to prune out everything but the most scintillating bits as you go along.

The Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan’s initial draft of his iconic work “Like A Rolling Stone” ran to some 10 pages, for instance, before he was able to whittle it down to four verses. Barbara Kingsolver, the Pulitzer nominee and frequenter of bestseller lists, frames this point perhaps even more starkly:

I write a lot of material that I know I’ll throw away. It’s just part of the process. I have to write hundreds of pages before I get to page one.

Whatever your goal, big or small, go easy on yourself—and get started.

Strikethrough and Why It’s so Popular

A very long time before any of us was born, there were no computers, typewriters, or printing presses. Books were written by hand, on pieces of specially treated leather called parchment or vellum. Back in medieval times, books were not only written but also illuminated, embellished by colorful drawings. And the lettering, even though you might not be able to read it easily, is a testament to the skill and patience of the scribes who wrote them.

Just think about the untold hours spent over rather expensive pieces of leather, writing page after page . . . only to make a mistake in the last sentence. Those things happened, of course, and there were a couple of ways scribes dealt with them. Sometimes, they were able to scratch the mistake off the surface of the parchment. But when that wasn’t an option, they sometimes resorted to drawing a line through the mistaken word—and the strikethrough was born.

Today, we understand a strikethrough intuitively as either crossing out something that is wrong or as crossing out items on a list. There’s nothing like crossing out items on a long to-do list, but also nothing like seeing your article studded by words (or even sentences) crossed out by your editor. But these days, the strikethrough has begun to serve yet another purpose.

If you like to spend a lot of time reading articles online, or hanging out on message boards or forums, you’ll notice that there’s usually nothing wrong with the words that have been crossed out with a strikethrough. This is because, today, on the Internet, a strikethrough is a way of saying something without really saying it. For example, a writer might use a strikethrough to indicate her own thoughts on the subject she’s writing about in a quick and annoying funny way. Did you catch that? The strikethrough is becoming the written equivalent of coughing and saying something at the same time, or mumbling something that you might not want to say out loud, but also wouldn’t mind for people to hear. You might also use the strikethrough to discern between official facts and either your opinions or things that are not official but are known by everyone. If you’re a journalist who does this, you might be accused of opinion journalism. You’re not likely to find a respectable media outlet that uses strikethrough in this way, at least not when reporting.

If you do see strikethrough text on the digital pages of a very serious media outlet, it’s possible you’re looking at information that was corrected after the original text was posted online. When this happens, some websites make a note of revisions at the bottom of the article. However, some use the strikethrough to the same effect—to show that they’ve made a mistake. So traditional media might still use the strikethrough in the traditional way, but new and user-generated media might use it for irony, humor, plausible deniability, or commentary.