Tag Archives: writing

Saturday with the Spark

The Novel-List (Another Brain Hack)

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Another week, and another almost-week of stalling in my novel. I went without writing in it for a month, kept away by illness and real life issues, and just flat not feeling like “writing.” Meanwhile, I kept staring at my to-do list, which did admittedly get smaller and smaller as the week went on.

What was wrong with me? I wondered. How am I able to get all this real-life stuff accomplished, but can’t be bothered to open a simple file and edit anything?

THEN…then I took a look at my to-do list, and had an epiphany.

My To-Do List: Before


just a sample to-do list, but it illustrates my point

Everything else I had written out to do was specific–for instance, on “Monday”, it says to write a post about HTML5 and clean off bathroom countertops, and on Wednesday, it says to make notes on the Sunday School lesson for the week and mop the kitchen floor.

But for my novel? All it said was the vague instruction of “write 1,000 words”. No other clues, no real indication as to where the story was to go next…NOTHING.

I had gone to the trouble of writing in time to novel on my to-do list, but I had not made it a specific goal. Nor had I left myself any clues or seeds of ideas to build off of. Therefore, I was continually baffled as to what to do next, making it harder and harder to write.

So, instead of making a detailed entry in my everyday to-do list, I made out a whole new to-do list, just for my novel.

My Separate Novel-List


generic sample novel-list because the actual plot is under wraps 😛

This is an example of the specific to-do list I’m talking about. With this, you’re making an outline of your book before you write it, kind of like our teachers wanted us to write outlines before we wrote our papers in school (and we wrote the outlines after writing the paper, right? *wink*).

With my specific to-do list, I’ve mapped out exactly where the story is supposed to go, almost like a diary entry of each “day” in the novel. And I’ve already been able to go a little further ahead in my story, where I had been stuck for a month before. Even though I still may get stuck, and it still may be slow going, at least I’ll be going!

Summary

If you’re currently working on any creative project, and you know where you’d LIKE it to go but can’t seem to get inspiration, try a to-do list like this, mapping out the way for yourself. Seeing it all planned out visually, like an itinerary for your project, may just spur you on!

Saturday with the Spark

Clumpy Character Description = Boredom

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When I’m reading a novel, I personally hate character descriptions that are “clumped”–the kind that go on too long when they first introduce the character. You probably know the type; there’s almost a whole page dedicated to how shockingly beautiful the heroine is when you first meet her, or how devastatingly handsome the villain is despite his horrible ways. Bo-ring.

Here’s an example I crafted of “clumpy” character description:

Boring Character Description

“In the doorway stood Jean. She was about 41, with curling red hair down to her mid-back, porcelain skin with ruddy patches on the cheeks, and eyes that seemed to be nearly silver. If I had to guess, I’d say she wore a 36DD bra, had no waist to speak of, and hips that nearly took up the whole doorway space. Aside from the expensive, deep green blouse she wore, the rest of her clothing looked worn; even her shoes looked too scuffed to be new. Her rounded belly, not of pregnancy but of years not spent on the treadmill, became more obvious as she moved into the room. If she had once been beautiful, the bloom was rapidly fading.”

While this does make a great character sketch of “Jean”, it’s not very interesting. The story stops while this snapshot in words is taken; additionally, the character sketch is almost too detailed. Prime example of a “too-detailed” sketch: the “36DD bra” and the age of “41” detail, which is something I’ve actually seen done in many amateur stories. Like anybody can tell what size bra a girl wears or exactly how old she is by just looking at her! It’s like you’re reading a police report on somebody’s description rather than a story.

When you do a detailed character description like this, especially at the beginning of a story where it’s the first appearance of the character, it tends to slow down the storytelling, and many readers (like me) will want to skip over it. Nothing’s happening to advance the story in there, so why bother reading it?

Instead of clumping all my character description into one paragraph, I like to space it out across several story-moving sentences, slowly weaving a picture of the character while describing him/her through his/her actions.

I reworked my earlier example into the following sample, below:

Hopefully Not-So-Boring Character Description

“Jean appeared in the doorway just then, her generous hips grazing the doorjamb as she moved through. ‘What are y’all even talkin’ about?’ she said, defiantly placing a large hand on one hip. ‘You think I’m deaf in there, you don’t think I’m hearin’ you talkin’ junk ’bout my fam’ly members?’ For a moment, her anger seemed to spark along her tumble of red curls, and her pale, gently-lined skin flushed only on the cheeks in unbecoming spots. ‘I’m in there cookin’ supper an’ all I can hear is this mess, on a holiday, no less!’ Her large bosom, even constrained as it was underneath the silky green blouse, quivered with the force of her words and feelings. ‘If that’s what you think about my fam’ly, you can just git out, for all’s I care. Why should I bother feedin’ you when you’re talkin’ trash, in MY house?’

No one could say anything against her, not with her gray eyes flashing an unsettling silver, not with her words condemning them. Already a statuesque woman, she seemed to stand even taller in her frustration, and everyone was too intimidated to speak.”

For me, this character description works better because the story continues to move along–we get hints of what “Jean” looks like, especially in anger, and we also get the reasons why she’s angry through the dialogue she has. It feels like a much more active scene, a better emotional scene, not just a paragraph-long, flat painting of a character.

Your Opinion: Which is Better?

Depending on your personal opinion, you might like the first example better than the second, or vice versa. Which do you think is more interesting to read? Which provides a better character description? Is neither particularly interesting to read, for that matter? (That would be a sad result, considering I wrote both, but… LOL)

Saturday with the Spark

Words as Pictures: The Wordle Way

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A few years ago, while stumbling about on the Internet, I discovered a very creative site, and I think it’s one of the best modern ways to use words in visual art (besides web design, of course).

Wordle is a Java-enabled way to make blog entries, feeds, articles, pasted-in text, or even Delicious tags into a graphic. Now, I know that doing graphic arrangements of words is not new to the world of visual art, but Wordle does it in a particularly interesting fashion, with the largest words being the most used in whatever text sample it gets.

Some Personalized Examples

For some beginning examples, I used Wordle to do a couple of graphics based on two large samples of my writing, below:


Based on my webmistress page
It amuses me that “Grits” and “driveway” are two of the biggest words…LOL


Based on Crooked Glasses’s RSS Feed
You can tell the gaming post was prevalent on my feed this particular day. Haha

In both these cases, I chose the font color and style, as well as the background color. I also chose how the words spread themselves across the image. All of these tools and many more options are available to you through the Wordle interface–play around with it and see what you like best!

Some “Famous Poetry” Wordles

I also used Wordle to make word pictures with a couple of my favorite poems, seen below:


From the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe


From the poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

Wordles as Wall Art/Gifts

Making a Wordle would be a fun thing to do with a particularly inspirational monologue, poem, or prose piece you like–print it large and frame it to put it on your wall, or just stick it on your bulletin board with tacks and call it a day. Anything that gets it into your line of sight on a daily basis would work well.

Also, if you wanted to give a Wordle as a gift, you could easily copy in the text of something a family member or friend has written, and transform their writing into evocative visual art that they can enjoy. Choose favorite colors for the words, arrange it all for best effect–it can make a beautiful personalized gift.

You could even write in just random positive words that describe the gift recipient into the text box provided. Just make sure the words that you want to be largest are there multiple times, and you’ve got it! Almost anything that uses words could become a word graphic using Wordle…you might come up with a totally new way to use it, too!

Try It On Your Own Writing!

Take the largest sample of writing you have, or the most vibrantly written work you have. Anything you want. It could even be a long Facebook status. Copy in your text, and see what Wordle can do for you. It’s not only a fun timewaster, but a great tool for design and art, too. 🙂

Monday in the HTMLab

Wahhh, We Want Comments!

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A blog is a difficult thing to write for every week, as many bloggers can tell you. Oh, sure, it’s much easier to write when you’re all het up about something and you know you’re going to get a lot of feedback. But sometimes, it feels like you’re writing on a wall that nobody even looks at.

Though I enjoy my own blogging experience here on Crooked Glasses, I have found myself feeling the same way about the blog as of late. Is my writing that uninteresting, that I get maybe a comment a week (if I’m lucky)? Am I not writing about things that others want to read about or know more about? When no readers give feedback on your blog, sometimes you begin to wonder if these proverbial “readers” are even out there, or whether you’re just the falling tree in the forest, with no one around to hear you.

I know that I’m not the only blogger to feel this way. I’ve spoken to several people in real life and online who have similar issues with their own blogs, never sure whether they’re really informing and entertaining, or whether they’re just wasting time, money, and megabytes of storage space. It’s not completely an egotistical need for attention, though I admit there is some truth to that. But for me, it’s more a need for validation: Am I doing something worthwhile, or should I be spending these 6 to 10 blogging hours a week doing something else?

This article, therefore, is written to help other bloggers like me figure out how to inspire reader feedback, as well as to push us all toward writing more for the readers rather than just ourselves.

How can bloggers inspire readers to give feedback?

So, with this concern of reader feedback high on many bloggers’ minds, we wonder how to help others respond to what we write. I began to brainstorm, and realized I needed to answer this question: “What makes ME want to post a comment about something someone’s blogged about?”

Ask thought-provoking questions

Insightful blog posts always get me, right in the cerebral cortex. (That’s one reason I strive to include both philosophy and commentary in my Tuesday on the Soapbox posts…I like being able to give insights if I come up with something that sounds halfway decent.) I like commenting on the insight and thoughts that the blogger has had, especially if it makes me see an issue in a new light–I like letting them know I was touched or moved by their writing.

State an opinion and ask for rebuttals/other perspectives

When someone asks directly for my opinion, I usually give it. (If you couldn’t tell already, I tend to have strong opinions. 😛 ) So, when I see a blog post that has a very strong or well-stated opinion (either aligned with what I believe or not), I tend to respond. There’s no need to be incendiary here; just writing your opinion with evidence to back up why you believe what you believe can be enough to start a (polite) debate or discussion.

Write something so personal/beautiful that others can’t help but reply

When a blogger writes openly and honestly about something in their real-life experience, especially a struggle with illness, family trouble, depression, regret, or anything else troubling, I want to give them words of courage. Also, if the blogger writes about getting better or taking it one day at a time, I want to leave words of encouragement. Either way, I’m clicking that comment button for all it’s worth.

What’s Your Opinion?

What makes you, as a reader, leave comments on a blogger’s writings? [/shameless appeal for comments] 🙂

Monday in the HTMLab

Professional Web Writing

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Drawing on my experience as an English major in college as well as my short time in Language Arts education, I have written the following article about sharpening and improving your writing for a businesslike Web environment.

Writing for a Business? Make It Look and Sound Like It!

Many online writers, including myself on a fair number of occasions, write in a more conversational style, much more casual and open. This is great for a personal blog or website, and is much more relatable for an anecdotal site.

However, if you’re writing for business, writing for advertising, or anything else that involves the need for clear and quick communication, you want to be as concise and correct as possible. Users who visit a business site are there to get info as quickly as possible, and you need to make that info-gathering process easy.

The three main issues I see with many amateur business communications are that there are too many misspellings and grammar mistakes, too many texting and Internet abbreviations, and lack of attention to phrasing and sentence construction.

Misspellings and Grammar Mistakes

Reading a well-written text is a delight to the eyes and the brain–the content enters your brain easily and quickly, and you feel like you’re truly learning something and making progress.

Trying to read a horribly-misspelled text with grammar mistakes all over it, on the other hand, is a mess; every sentence, or even every word, has to be paused over to decipher its meaning. It’s as if you’re not fluent in the language anymore.

Just as no one would go to a job interview without dressing, smelling, and speaking their best, no one should present a professional communication of any sort that has misspellings and grammar errors. Every error is like a tear in your suit jacket, a stain on your pants–it detracts from the text’s meaning, and others not only won’t be able to make sense of what you’ve written, but they’ll also have a lower opinion of you for writing that way.

If you are unsure of how to spell a word, here are several ways you can get help:

  • Search online for proper spelling and word usage, using sites like Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com.
  • Craft your writing in a word processor so you can catch common spelling errors. OpenOffice.org is a good, free word processing software option, as well as Google Docs. Remember, though, these programs don’t catch everything!
  • Lastly, proofread and read your work aloud to get rid of sound-alike/spelled-different problems, like their/they’re/there and your/you’re. You wouldn’t believe how much reading your words aloud helps you find problems in your writing!

Sound-Alike/Spelled-Different Examples
Incorrect: I’m sitting over their. (you’re sitting over their what? Whoever you’re talking about might not appreciate you sitting over their possessions.)

Correct: I’m sitting over there. (“there” as opposed to “here”…a location. Remember that there and here both end in “-re”, if nothing else reminds you of which form to use.)

Incorrect: There going to the store. (There are no people mentioned in this sentence at all. “There” references a location, or perhaps a pointed-out object.)

Correct: They’re going to the store. (“They are going to the store.” Whoever “they” are, they are going as a group to the store.)

Incorrect: You’re hair looks good today. (literally translated, “You are hair looks good today.” Is that really what you meant to say?)

Correct: Your hair looks good today. (Just like the word “their”, “your” ends in an “r”–both words indicate possession of the noun following it. At last, you finally possess the complimented hair follicles in question!)

Texting Abbreviations and Emoticons

Using texting/Internet abbreviations and emoticons is fine for personal communications or blogs, but for business websites or other professional sites, these two writing features give your work an adolescent, too-casual feel.

Examples
Txtspeak: Oh, lol, this sounds so stupid, but…
Real English: I feel silly saying this, but…

Txtspeak: So I completely failed at that, too, xD
Real English: Yet another hilarious failure on my part

Txtspeak: omg, this gets on my nerves
Real English: This annoys me greatly/This bothers me too much to be silent

Txtspeak: do u undrstnd wht i’m tryin 2 tell u?
Real English: Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?

If you want your communication to be taken seriously, you have to omit the textspeak. Not only will this make your writing look and sound more mature, it will also make it clearer for all users to understand.

Bad Phrasing/Sentence Construction

If every sentence. On your blog. Is broken up into. Parts like this. With lots of unnecessary punctuation…it makes it very hard to follow what’s being said.

On the other hand if your blog contains absolutely no punctuation whatsoever and you have lots of “and”s and “but”s and “or”s everywhere you have no periods to show where one thought ends and the next begins…it’s also very hard to follow what you just said.

Good sentence/paragraph construction not only makes a better story, but it makes for a clearer read, too. And clearer reads mean that more users will read what you have written, because it’s easier.

Using punctuation like verbal pauses is the best way to remember how to use them. Commas are for small pauses, just grabbing a breath before you continue on with your thought. Periods are for big pauses, where you’re about to transition to another thought. And semicolons are great for joining two small (but complete) thoughts together into a bigger sentence; usually, the two little sentences need to be at least related for the semicolon to work, though.

Directly related to sentence structure is paragraph structure. If you build your paragraphs so that your first sentence introduces your topic, the middle sentences expound on the topic, and the last sentence sums up and transitions into the next paragraph, your audience can better understand. Not only is this a good way to write for school, but it also helps fully explain your topic for business site purposes, too.

Lastly: PLEASE don’t type everything in one huge paragraph. “Walls of text” are not attractive to users who are looking for information quickly; a huge paragraph puts them right off of reading. (Preaching to myself here…I’m infamous for unintentional walls of text!) A good rule of thumb is to break for a new paragraph when you either get to a new topic you want to discuss, or when your paragraph is at least five typed lines long on your page.

This structure is beneficial for memory, because we generally remember information in “chunks.” When you’re writing for information purposes, you group like information together in the same paragraph, and you break up large portions of information into small, “bite-size” pieces so that people can take it in better.

Summary

Making your writing as professional as possible for the Web is like dressing your writing in its best for an interview–you want to make your writing give off the most sparkling first impression it can. Watching your spelling, grammar, Internet abbreviations, and writing structure is key!

Saturday with the Spark

Everyday Writing

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What can you use writing for in your everyday life?

For many, writing is confined to their to-do lists, but there are many ways you can incorporate writing even if you don’t think of yourself as “creative.”

For one thing, look at the plethora of status updates and tweets that go around the Web on a regular basis. These bitsy life updates speak volumes about the people who make them, just as much as writing a long blog post would.

Today, I want to encourage you to write every day, even if you don’t think of yourself as a writer, even if words come with difficulty. Writing can be helpful, soothing, invigorating, and even cathartic. Try the following tips to incorporate a little bit of writing in your day:

Just a Word, a Sentence or Two

  • Leave a little positive note for yourself to discover in the morning. Just as you take time to write out or type up a to-do list, which can be more negative in tone, take a few minutes and make a happier-sounding note. Something like “smile, it’s almost Friday 🙂 ” or “don’t forget your awesomeness” can make you grin long enough to face your day with a little more happy.
  • If you hate writing (and reading) your to-do list, add jokes or hilarious phrasing. One of my permanent to-do lists is titled “THINGS I GOT TO PWN TODAY OMG LOL”, and it’s full of Internet and LOLCat references. (“I can haz chek in the bank?” XD) It makes me laugh every time I read it!

    It also casts my to-do list in a new light; each part of the list is something I have to pwn (defeat) rather than just drag myself through. I can pretend I’m a to-do list warrior!

  • Try a Twitter account, and post one short thought of yours, once every day. It can be a random philosophy you thought of, a question for other users, a grumble about something bothersome, or even just a statement about your day. The 140 character limit forgives those who don’t care to write a whole lot every day (one reason it’s called a “microblog”).

Step Up to a Paragraph

  • If you have a lot of worries running marathons in your head like I do, try writing them down in paragraph form. These five questions will help you shape your worry paragraph and get that worry out of your head at last:
    1. 1st sentence: What am I worried about?
    2. 2nd sentence: Why does it bug me so much?
    3. 3rd sentence: What is the worst-case scenario for this worry?
    4. 4th sentence: What is the best-case scenario for this worry?
    5. 5th sentence: What can I do to make the best-case scenario come about?

    Here is my example “worry paragraph:”

    I’m worried about my hard drive being unrecoverable. I fear losing 8 years of very hard work that isn’t backed up. At worst, I’ll have to restore data from my old laptop that died in June 2010, which means losing a year and a half of irreplaceable work and purchased digital content. At best, I will get all my data back. I can’t do anything personally to get my data back, but I can have it shipped to a data recovery company who can potentially take care of it.

    What this does is to quantify the worry. Instead of formless thoughts whirling about constantly, you can refer to this worry paragraph every time you find yourself thinking about it, and the paragraph details everything about the worry you need to know. Soon, you find comfort in what you yourself have written, knowing that the process need not be thought about anymore. (Mine’s already working for me!)

  • Along the same lines, if you’re sad and anxious, write a “5 reasons to smile” paragraph. All you have to do is find 5 answers to the question “How is my life going well today?” No matter how big or small the reason, if it makes you smile, it’s worth writing about.

    Here is my example “smile paragraph:”

    The headache I had yesterday is all gone (woot). So is the swelling on my ankle (yay!). I got all the gift wrap I need for under 12 bucks today, spending almost $20 less than I thought I was going to. I was able to fix the family laptop’s software problem. And I get to sing with my church choir today and tomorrow.

Try a Series of Paragraphs

  • Try an old-fashioned journal entry if you don’t want to post things on the Internet. Grab any size piece of paper and pen/pencil, and just start writing your thoughts down. Anything that’s on your mind, written any way you want to state it. Own the fact that you ARE writing! You can do this!

    Once you’ve written it, you can either read it over right away, hang it up somewhere prominent as inspiration, or file it away for later–just make sure to return to it within a week, and see how your writing affects you. You have to love your writing first before the passion for it seeps into its very substance, and to love it, you must experience doing it and reading it afterward.

  • Do you have a strong opinion about something? Write about it! Just like I write my opinions in my blog posts each week, you too can write a blog post or Facebook note about whatever you wish to.

    The following structure is something I go by to help me form my posts. It’s largely based on the five-paragraph essay style; you can take the girl out of English classes, but you can’t take the English-class training out of the girl. 😛

    1. Introduction/Hook: Make your topic sound interesting. Rhetorical questions about the topic (see where I used that in this very post? :D), or a personalized anecdote referencing the topic really makes me want to read about it.
    2. Background Info/Basic Concepts: For those who don’t know very much about the topic, give a little bit of basic information. This also gives you a chance to talk about the big concepts behind your opinion.
    3. Your Opinion: The meat of your blog post. Explain why you think what you think, in as plain language as possible.
    4. Others Who Agree or Disagree: Gather information from other bloggers or just other people about why they agree or disagree with your position; this gives your user a broader view of the topic than just your opinion. Quote the other people you’ve consulted, and link to them if possible within this paragraph.
    5. Sum It Up: Condense down your points into short sentences for a good summary. One sentence to describe the main point of each paragraph before your summary works very well.

Summary

Writing need not be intimidating. In fact, if you get a little bit of practice with it and accept your writing as it progresses, you can find yourself surprisingly expressive. Trying some or all of these various writing tips can give you the experience you need.

Start out small, maybe less than 140 characters at first; then, as you get more confident, try writing paragraphs, and then series of paragraphs. Who knows, you may be the next blogging sensation!

Saturday with the Spark

What Do I Write About?

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“It’s perfectly fine to try my hand at writing,” you might say, “but I have no idea what to write ABOUT.”

Subject matter is important when you’re writing, whether you’re writing creatively or informatively. But you cannot let yourself get hung up on subject matter and stop writing completely. If you stop writing because you feel you don’t know what to write next, you risk hindering your creativity permanently–first, you’re afraid you don’t know anything to write about and you stop, and next, you’re afraid to start up again because it’s been so long since you tried, and so on.

So, how can you decide what to write about? The following blog article delves into the various ways:

Write About Your Life

No one can tell all that there is to know about your life except you. You are the one who has had the first-person experiences you have. Whether they are funny anecdotes, sad memories, wild and crazy tales, or even just small, wistful moments, they are YOUR stories, and they ARE worth writing about.

Why are your personal stories worth writing about? Because when you share about your life, you are sharing a story that could inspire someone else to get through a similar situation he or she is going through. Humans are social creatures, after all, and we like to know that we’re not alone in whatever tough or strange situation we get into. That’s why social media is so big right now–it’s suddenly very easy to uplift each other by sharing about our own experiences. When you write about your life, whether you choose to make it a Facebook status, a Twitter message, a blog article, or an email to someone else, you are taking time to reach out to someone else and tell them “Hey, I went through this, too. I understand.”

Write About One of Your Passions

It’s darned near impossible to write about something if you could give a flying flip about the subject matter. If you want to write something to interest your audience, write about something that you love–your very passion for it will draw others in.

Take this blog as an example. I write about six subjects I love, all week, every week (giving myself time off on Sundays, of course), and I have passion for each one. Because I love each of the subjects I write about, I’ve taken time to become more knowledgeable about each one, and I can write about being thoroughly involved in each subject’s activities.

Writing about things I’m passionate about even entered my schoolwork once–I was giving a presentation in one of my graduate English classes, which was part of my huge final project. I was covering how girls fare in education, and at one point, I covered a sub-topic about girls and gaming, which is becoming much more popular as more girls feel “normal” playing video games. After the presentation was over, the professor and several students commented that most of my presentation was delivered in a rather flat way, but that they were really interested to hear about the “girls and gaming” segment because I looked so much more lively and so much more interested in what I was talking about. I ended up making the “gaming girls” segment into my major final project, and I had a whole lot more fun writing about that than I had had working on the other, larger-topic presentation.

Whatever your passion is, whatever you love doing, seeing, or being involved in, that can be a source for your writing. Don’t worry about it, thinking “But no one else will find this interesting”–remember, in this age of the Internet, there are bound to be people who will find your digital writing VERY interesting!

Write About A Subject that Gets No Attention and Needs It

This is how social activism and social projects get started. From well-established groups like MADD all the way down to growing projects like Freecycle, these projects all began with someone talking and writing about a subject that had gotten very little attention and needed it. Whatever subject or issue you firmly believe in, whatever has gotten your attention and keeps you awake at night, write about it. The very act of communicating about it can start the social ball rolling and fix the problem, raise awareness, or just help people come together and share their personal stories with each other.

This doesn’t have to be for just solving problems, either–this can be about happy events, such as a new group of local moms working together to help each other with kids, or a new chapter of a family-friendly social group starting up in your area. Whatever you need to advertise about, tell others about, your writing can be a powerful, personal voice for that topic.

Summary

Writing does not have to be frightening–in fact, writing can be incredibly freeing for your mental “voice,” your thoughts, feelings, and dreams. I know I can say a lot more through writing than I ever could by speaking–I’d stammer and chase too many topic rabbits, while my writing voice flows as smoothly as water. I hope these three tips about choosing a subject matter help you figure out where YOUR voice belongs…and I hope it inspires you to start or continue your written communication with the world.

Monday in the HTMLab

Writing Your “About Me” Page

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It always feels a little narcissistic, putting together an “About Me” page. A whole page just about yourself? What do you put in for interest’s sake, and what do you leave out so as not to make it too long? What can you put in safely, and what would get you possibly into identity-theft trouble?

As a webmaster and designer since 2003, I’ve been doing “About Me” pages for my various websites for a number of years, but I’m certainly not the absolute authority on them. I have, however, had a lot of experience with writing, and that has stood me in good stead when creating personal descriptive pages. The following tips are all bits of advice that have helped me over the years.

A Few Do’s

  • Do include some basics.

    Your Internet nickname (possibly first name), your age, gender (if you wish), and the country, state or province you live in is always appropriate for an About Me page. Including your career field and a few hobbies is also interesting for users, since it gives them a small window into what kind of person you are. And a random, small list of a few things you like will further illuminate your personality without being too in-your-face personal.

  • Do format it beautifully.

    Whether you’ve got a long About Me page like I have (heck, mine’s almost an autobiography, LOL) or a short one, format it and section it off with headings, subheadings, and otherwise styled text. Nothing is more overwhelming than seeing a wall of same-styled text running down your screen. Break your content into paragraphs by subject (career, likes/dislikes, web design experience, etc.), or break it down by the time in your life that it happened (middle school, high school, college/first working years, etc.).

  • Do choose your images carefully.

    If you’re going to include images (more about that later), choose them carefully. Select colorful, sharp photos or images that directly supplement the text of your page, so that the images contrast well and provide visual interest for your readers. And don’t let the images overwhelm the text–the About Me page is all about the written content, unless you’ve done a complete pictorial About Me page (which is entirely possible!).

A Couple of Don’t’s

  • Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want your boss/religious leader/parents to see.

    Since the Internet is open to anybody, it can feel as though you’re free to air all kinds of dirty laundry to whomever may come by. But a few grounding guidelines can save you from unintended disasters. For instance, if you’re going to reference any family members, friends, or co-workers in your About Me page, best to keep their names out of it; if you’re going to talk about any personal hobbies that might raise a few eyebrows at your job, worship center, or home, you might think about making a password-protected page for that, or just not writing about it at all unless your site is directly associated with it.

  • Don’t post absolutely everything about your identity.

    For instance, never post your last name on an unprotected webpage, and it may be safer even not to use your real first name. Posting your exact location (city, street name, etc.) is also a safety no-no, due to Internet creeps. Lastly, posting your birth date (full date, I mean) is downright dangerous, sadly enough–keep that off your personal page. And I don’t think I need to say much about bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, etc.

  • Don’t post a picture of yourself that’s too detailed.

    As I was talking about images earlier, I mentioned that you should choose images carefully. Not only should they look great alongside your text, but they shouldn’t be complete facial portraits. Perhaps an artsy-style Photoshop avatar of your picture, or even a cartoon version of your face, but for safety reasons, leave the real profile picture to Facebook. I hate that we have to be this careful, but enough crimes have happened to prove that one cannot be too cautious when posting things about oneself on the Internet.

Writing Style

When you’re writing an About Me page, you need to consider the type of site you’re writing the page for.

Is This Site for Business/Work?

Doing a business- or work-related site means that your About Me page’s tone should be professional, cool, and collected, and your grammar, sentence structure, and spelling is exemplary. This is the place to state your career skills, job aspirations, and personal vision for yourself. This is not the place to describe any fetishes, quirks, or personal problems unless they directly relate to your work and/or career.

Is This Site for Community/Social Organizations?

A community-oriented or more social-oriented About Me page warrants a little more familiar tone than the all-business About Me page. Your tone can be more conversational and friendly. This is the place to show why you love this particular community or social group, why you’re a part of it, and what parts of your life mesh with it. This is not the place to brag about how much you do for the group, how much you hate certain people in the group, etc.

Is This Site for Personal/Leisure Use?

More personal and leisure-time sites allow you to be the most familiar in tone on your About Me page, since you’re likely letting them into your life with each page of content on the site. This is the place to tell a little more about your personality, your everyday life, and your life passions. This is not the place to list tons of accomplishments, awards, or other shameless plugs–it comes off as bragging.

Working with Content

Keep in mind that your readers are not necessarily your most trusted confidants or therapists. While you may feel comfortable, especially in a blog setting like mine, getting a large load of emotional baggage off your chest, try to keep your About Me page as positive in tone as possible.

If physical pain or a specific medical condition is part of your life (the way it is in my life), for instance, you may just want to write something like “I deal with [name of illness here], and I talk about it on this site because it has affected my life.” Writing about it in this non-confrontational way allows the user to know some of your struggles without feeling as though they’re walking away carrying the burden of your life with them.

Emotional and spiritual battles fall under the same heading. Whatever you’re carrying in your life, you can write a bit about it, but don’t get too deeply into it in your About Me page–let it be known, but maintain a more positive stance.

And of course, if you’re writing for a business site or a social organization site, you might want to keep out any personal struggles altogether unless your business or organization deals directly with the kinds of problems you’re facing. For instance, the leader of a local cancer organization could write about being a cancer survivor on that social organization’s page, but he or she might want to leave that off their LinkedIn profile.

Tailor Your Page to Your Particular Site’s Purpose

Each of my About Me pages on the Internet is slightly different, based on what the site is about and who I’m trying to reach.

On my novel blog, my About Me is a little blurb with my name, age, state of residence, and how long I’ve been writing the novel, plus a link to my domain. On this blog, my About Me page references all the things I do in my everyday life and how it feeds into my blog articles; it also links users to my much more in-depth About Me page on my domain, which is wayyyy detailed about me without giving too much about my identity away.

When you create a site, remember that the people who find your site are typically just interested in that subject matter, and as such, they want to hear why you’re qualified to write about it. Keeping your About Me page steered towards that topic while still making it about you is a tightrope walk, but it can be done.

Let Creativity Reign

If you have a more media-driven idea for your About Me page (like I suggested before, a page full of meaningful images, a poem that you feel describes you completely, or even a video or music clip that you love and has personal meaning for you), try it out! Even if it doesn’t end up working for you, at least you gave it a shot. A memorable About Me page is much better than one that plays it very safe. Just make sure that your target audience will not be offended and will be able to access your content.

Don’t Limit These Ideas to Self-Created Pages

Wherever you go on the Internet, you can keep these ideas to reference for all your social media pages. Profiles on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Last.fm, and tons of other sites can all be sculpted using these same tips. It’s not about lying to your visitors, but making sure that your profiles are honest without being too gritty.

Summary

In a way, when you write an About Me page, you’re performing a delicate dance for your visitors. The most attractive dance is one in which just enough but not too much is revealed, because it leaves viewers wanting to know more. Likewise, when you write about yourself, you want the visitors to know a little about you, but not so much that they never come back after one visit, because they feel they “got the whole picture” already. Walk that tightrope!

Saturday with the Spark

When Writing Feels Like Punishment

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Sometimes, even for the best writers, writing feels more difficult than it should be. For people who don’t enjoy writing, just the very thought of writing is punishment enough at times. You hit what feels like an impossible hurdle (criticism from someone else, self-criticism or self-censorship, etc.) in the process of writing, and you go airborne for a few seconds, struggling to get yourself back into the writing groove. But instead, you end up landing hard, with all the mental wind knocked out of you. After something like that, it’s hard to feel like ever writing again.

I’ve hit walls in my own writing plenty of times. Sometimes, it was while struggling to complete/excrete a term paper in college (“excrete” is what it feels like to try to compose a 10-page paper from scratch 2 nights before it’s due). Other times, it’s been in my own creative writing or personal writings–some days, it just doesn’t pay to open Microsoft Word, because all I do is sit there, type a bit, Backspace it all, type some more, highlight and hit Backspace again, etc. It’s not fun to feel like you just flat can’t write.

But, as with all obstacles, there are ways around this feeling. Here are the ways I’ve developed over the years to getting back on the writing horse and trying again:

If You’ve Produced Something Terrible, Don’t Erase It

The worst thing you can do, when you start thinking how much your writing resembles something in a communal toilet, is to flush it away. Cut and paste it into another file and save it for later, maybe, but don’t just Backspace a whole page (or delete a whole file) of your hard work.

Even if you don’t feel like dealing with it right then, saving it as a separate file for later will help you remember to go back to it when you have more mental energy, when you have more time, etc. If you delete it completely, you’re likely to completely forget about it, possibly losing a great diamond in the rough sands of your life.

This is what I do when I’ve come up with a blog post that I suddenly REALLY don’t want to post anymore. I don’t completely delete it, but I save it in a new file and start writing on a different post. (I’ve got one file saved as “rant rant rant,” where I went kinda batpoo crazy on a topic and decided it wasn’t right for that particular article. I don’t know what I’m going to use “rant rant rant” for, but at least it’s there, lying like a fabric remnant in a dressmaker’s closet, ready to be used whenever I’m ready to go back to it.

If Your Writing Is Just “Off” Today, Stop for Today

Some days, even if you love writing like I do, you just aren’t feeling the “writing bug.” When you start to type the same sentence 5 times and end up Backspacing it, or you just stare at a blank page or screen and feel like SOMETHING wants to come out, but you’re not sure what, you need to stop for the day. I’m not saying stop for a lifetime–no, no, never stop trying to write permanently–but just take a break from it for the rest of the day, whether that’s a few hours or almost a full day.

This would happen a lot to me during college, when I would struggle to write papers–I just wasn’t feeling up to being the super-critical English major that day and the subject matter just felt too difficult to tackle. So I’d save what I had been working on and would go read instead, or get out of my dorm room and walk around some, or call a good friend and talk about it. Taking time away from the heavy task I was working with helped me get more relaxed and feel like I could write anything again, instead of feeling like there was some gremlin sitting on my shoulder who was critiquing everything I wrote as I wrote it.

Talking to others, reading, doing a little Internet searching or surfing, etc., can also give you new ideas on how to put together your written thoughts. It may be that the random comment your friend made about the book you’re giving a report on jogs your thinking: “Yeah, that IS a weird detail that the author put in…wonder what it means?” Then, suddenly, you may have a totally new direction for your paper.

If You Don’t Know Much about Your Topic, Learn About It

Yes, I know, seems kind of elementary. But you wouldn’t believe the number of times I had to coax my middle school students into writing about something they didn’t know about. They kept whining, “But I don’t KNOW anything about this!” My answer was always, “Then find something out about it. We’re in the library for a purpose, after all.” 😛

No matter what you’re writing about, whether it be search engine optimization or the Post-Colonial period, fractal geometry or painters in Florence during the Renaissance, if you know little or nothing about the topic, then research is your best friend in the world. I’ve written about research as a great tool for bloggers who want to write new and interesting content, but it also works for college papers, creative writing, letters to the editor, workplace presentations–everything. There’s nothing worse for your career, for instance, than looking plain ignorant in front of your boss and coworkers because you didn’t do your research.

Now, your research does not have to be done on those irritating formatted index cards. (God, I HATED handwriting all my research on index cards in school! So annoying and time-consuming–it made research feel like a special place in hell reserved just for me.) Remember, your research is likely going to be more internet-based, so just doing a thorough search of Google (i.e., not just the first page) could help you. Check out every link that seems like it relates to your topic, make sure the site is reputable (not just a blog-ish site created by a content robot), and then copy-paste the URL into a file to refer back to later as you write. Scanning through the content can also provide you a bit of preliminary information as well.

You can always go to the library or talk to a knowledgeable friend or family member about your topic, as well. Taking time to learn more about your topic is not just for school projects, but for anything you encounter while trying to write about a particular subject that you don’t fully understand.

For instance, I don’t know very much about the Tea Party political movement in modern America, except to know that if I saw a Tea Party parade coming down the street, I would likely soil myself and run in the other direction. However, I can learn more about the movement by research, and thus be much more informed when I hear about “Tea Party candidates” in the news, etc. Then, I can write more informed blog posts, and the Internet always benefits from more informed writers rather than more passionate writers.

If You Hate Writing, Write How You Talk

Maybe just a sentence or two, about something you have a strong opinion of. Maybe a paragraph on your Facebook status, indicating exactly what you’re going through physically and emotionally while waiting for a medical test result to come back. If you hate written communication, start by writing how you talk–write out what you would normally talk about, and focus on subject matter that you really care about.

At this point, if you’re very uncomfortable with the writing process, don’t let fears of bad grammar, spelling, or sentence structure weigh you down. Just WRITE what is in your head, in your heart. And if there’s nothing more in your head or heart after a few sentences, you’re finished, and you can move on to the next topic you want to talk–pardon me, write–about. Write for the feel of the pen moving across paper, communicating your thoughts, or the feel of the keys yielding under your striking fingers. Write for the sheer pleasure of telling your world what you think about something you really care about.

Now, if you’re still just horribly stuck and feel like you just CAN’T write, I have a story for you:

I had a young student in one of my classes who was what we would call a “screw-off,” a class-clown type who was more interested in disrupting the class and ticking off other people. But by the way he spoke in class (when he wasn’t smarting off to me, and even when he was sometimes), I knew he was a smart kid. He just didn’t respect school, didn’t care about it, and writing for class was about #90003 on his list of things to achieve in life.

One day, we read a short story in class, and I asked the kids to write at least five sentences (a full paragraph) about what they had read. I told them to answer five questions, one in each sentence:

  1. Who is the character you like the most?
  2. Why do you like this character?
  3. Does the character act in an understandable way throughout the story?
  4. How does the story show this character’s motivation?
  5. Do you think the author likes this character?

With each question, I was asking the kids to dive below the surface story and come up with some deeper answers about the story’s construction, the author’s possible purpose, etc. I wanted them to connect with the story as critical readers rather than passive readers. But the young man in question was more interested in tearing up blank notebook paper into itty-bitty pieces to craft into spitballs.

“Why are you not doing your work?” I asked–I glanced at his paper and saw that he had written “I Don’t Know” as the answer to each of the questions.

“‘Cause I’m done,” he replied, with an attitude.

“Nope, you’re not done,” I said. “‘I don’t know’ is not an answer, because you read the story–you DO know something. You’re a smart kid, you know?” He huffed and brushed his half-made spitball aside.

“You heard the story,” I said, trying a different tack. “Which character did you like?”

“Didn’t like any of ’em,” he said, laying his head down on his arms and muffling his voice.

“You sure? There wasn’t one that you understood the most–you could relate to what they were going through?”

“Pssh,” he replied. “Not any of the good guys, anyway.”

That left one character. “You liked the bad guy?” I asked, keeping any judgmental emotion out of my voice so he would feel free to express his opinion.

“Yeah, he was all right,” the young boy said. “The good guys treated him like crap and he was just gettin’ back at ’em.”

Gently, I pushed the paper of questions under his elbow. “Sounds like you have answers to questions 1, 2, and 3,” I suggested.

“Huh?” He raised his head slightly, looking at me for the first time. “Naw, that’s just opinions. I ain’t got answers.”

“In literature class, opinions are answers, if you can show me how you formed your opinion,” I nudged. “Write down what you just told me, in complete sentences. You remember how we do complete sentences?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he replied, waving away the rest of my advice. I watched the pencil tip and then the eraser dance in mid-air as he erased furiously and then wrote down actual sentences. “There, is them answers?” he asked, showing me the paper.

“Yes,” I said, nodding–indeed, questions 1, 2, and 3 had answers. “Remember, question 1’s answer needs to be a complete sentence, though. Rephrase the question as a statement: ‘I liked [villain’s name]’ instead of just the character’s name by itself.”

“Oh, okay.” For being such a reluctant student, he knew enough about what to do–he took the paper back from me, erased, and wrote again.

“Good,” I said. For question 3, I was impressed by the depth and empathy of his response: “[villain’s name] was just trying to live his life, and the good guys busted in and acted like he was living wrong. They made him feel bad, so he got back at ’em. I woulda done the same thing if I was poor like him.”

“Now, how did you know that [villain’s name] was poor?” I asked him. Now that he had answered 3 of 5 questions, he seemed to have perked up a little, though he was still toying with a tiny ball of paper in his left hand.

“Well, it had all that stuff in it about his raggedy clothes and stuff,” he replied, as if it was obvious. It was obvious, but I wanted him to see that he had more answers than he thought.

“And who told you about the raggedy clothes?” I asked.

He thought, and then looked embarrassed. “Oh, yeah, the author put it in there.”

“You’re right, the author describes how torn and dirty his clothes are,” I affirmed. “Doesn’t that sound like an answer to question 4?”

He glanced back at the paper. “Motivation? I don’t even know what that means.”

I reminded myself to break down definitions of words more carefully in the future. “Motivation means ‘why you do something.’ If you do something like steal, like this boy did in the story, you have to have a reason why you did it–a motivation to do it. Why did he steal?”

“Because he was poor.”

“You’re right,” I said, nodding. “Being poor was his motivation to steal, because…why?”

“Because he ain’t had nothin’.”

“Good, you got right to it; he didn’t have anything and needed things to live on,” I said, subtly correcting his sentence as I went. “And the author shows us that through describing his clothes, not just coming right out and saying ‘this bad guy is poor.’ Write down what you just told me,” I said again, giving him back the paper.

This time, he did this with a bit more energy and a complete sentence just like the first three answers; it seemed he was getting the hang of it. “Want to try question 5 by yourself?” I asked–it, like question 3, required depth and empathy to respond. He nodded, and the pencil eraser danced again, a merry fox-trot pattern in pink rubber.

I looked at his response: “No, I don’t think he likes him much. Maybe he feels sorry for him, but he don’t like him. He’s still the bad guy in the story.”

The young boy had struck right to the heart of the issue: the author tells a story about good guys and bad guys, but the good guys have the flaw of being too prideful and scornful, and the bad guy is worthy of pity and compassion. I disagreed with the young boy–I thought the author actually liked the bad guy best of all–but I understood where he had gotten his answer. After all, the author still classified the villain as a villain, even if he meant him to be a pitiable character rather than a character worthy of hate.

“You’ve done very well,” I praised quietly. “Look at this–you wrote even more than 5 sentences! Good job!” I grinned at him. “And you said ‘you didn’t know.'”

“Well, I didn’t think I knew,” the boy replied, finally laughing, and I got up from my position at his desk and returned to managing the classroom as a whole, with his completed assignment finally in tow.

Now, while that story was pretty long, it shows how you have to sometimes draw the answers and the subject matter out of yourself, especially if you hate writing or feel uncomfortable with it. Sometimes, you have to play the teacher as well as the student, asking yourself the questions and generating your own responses.

Some good questions to ask yourself when you’re beginning to write:

  • Who else is an important part of this story?
  • What are the facts that someone else would need to know?
  • Where can I put in details about my experience (sensory details, emotional details)?
  • Why should I write about this?

Knowing your characters, facts, details, and purpose for writing is key to communicating through writing, as well as speaking. These four parts are the heart of writing. Remembering this can keep you from feeling like you have nothing to write, because you most certainly do!

If You Keep Failing, Keep Trying

I do my best to write something, ANYTHING, creative every day. These blog posts count, because I’m having to create the content usually from scratch. My novel counts, because it’s definitely fiction. Random bits of poetry I come up with while driving counts (but I don’t write it while driving, for obvious reasons). Even the stories I write just for my own enjoyment, my own LOLs, count. Anything I can do to keep the writing juices going, I do. Generating writing, whatever it is, no matter what quality it is, is key.

If you don’t write a lot, it can feel like everything you produce is junk for a while. And sometimes you may have a “junk day” or a “junk week.” Heck, last month was “junk month” for my novel–couldn’t seem to write anything for weeks that didn’t just bore me to death. But I did not give up on it completely; I did put the novel aside, once I realized that I was hitting a brick wall, and then I engaged in some research, some question-and-answer scenarios, as well as putting aside some scraps of writing that I came up with while having fits and starts.

Once I was over the period of time where it seemed nothing was forthcoming, I went back and revamped one of the scraps with some new details, and suddenly, I could write again! Now it was interesting again, and the story began to move once more. But I had to keep trying.

And all the while I was struggling to write my novel, I was cranking out blog posts six days a week–that likely helped keep everything oiled up and running, instead of locking all the machinery down just because one machine was broken temporarily. Even if one of your writing projects doesn’t take off, if the subject matter just doesn’t work for you or it’s too hard, don’t abandon your other projects. If you juggle several, like I do and have done all my life, then you’ve always got something to take your mind off the failure of one project, and if you succeed at another one, you might be just inspired enough to come back and kick your older, failed project into a better gear.

Summary

Whether you love or hate writing, whether it’s natural or totally alien to you, these tips should help you, as they have helped me through countless bumps in the process of my own writing. The big ideas here are to keep everything you write, knock off for the day if it’s just too much, do research if you find yourself in unfamiliar territory, ask yourself questions and generate answers if the going gets really tough, and never, EVER give up on writing completely. Once you focus on the act of writing as being a pleasant thing, you’ll find that it comes more easily.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

I-N-C-O-N-V-E-N-I-E-N-C-E

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I spelled this word out in my blog title because I have seen it misspelled so often it makes me laugh. “Inconvieniece,” “incoinvenice,” and even “enconvance”…and no, sadly, I’m not kidding. As a former English teacher, these spelling mistakes (on the outsides of otherwise professional businesses, mind you!) grate on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard. It’s an inconvenience to have to decode these handwritten signs! 😛

C-H-I-L-D-H-O-O-D, “childhood”

I’ve generally been an instinctive good speller, all through my life–writing words correctly came more naturally to me, possibly because of all the reading I did, and possibly because my parents used a large vocabulary around me at young ages. Unlike math, which remains a frightening overgrown jungle, spelling was laughably easy, at least on paper. I could clearly see the word in front of me, and if it was spelled wrong, it LOOKED wrong on the page–it looked ugly, ill-formed, and I eagerly sought to change it with my trusty eraser.

(Side note: Spelling out loud is quite another animal entirely from spelling in writing; the ephemeral nature of the spoken voice meant that I could not “see” what I was spelling and could not “see” where to pick up from if I paused in the middle of a word. Once I paused, it was like I was going to have to start back over if I was to complete the word successfully. Thus, the embarrassment of spelling “tied” as “tide” in the first grade spelling bee. Even though I KNEW as it came out of my mouth it was wrong, wrong, wrong, I couldn’t keep my traitorous tongue from spitting out the wrong sequence of letters because I had stopped in the middle of the word. GRR. Even 19 years later, GRR.)

But even people like me are not immune to misspelling words in print. Just now, I typed “misppelling” instead of “misspelling” and had to go back. Why? Because my little finger got trigger-happy on the P key. Keyboards make it a lot faster and easier to communicate, but you have to be a precision instrument in order to spell correctly 100% of the time. Let’s just say I’m very good at hitting the Backspace key at lightning speed to correct myself. Just like “tied” and “tide” (darnit, I did it again–I reversed the words!), I can feel when I’m spelling a word wrong or if I’ve hit a key too many times, unless I’m too wrapped up in WHAT I’m writing about to be bothered with it.

Can You Spell “I-N-T-E-R-N-E-T?” Oh, It’s Spelled Three Different Ways?

Difficulties with spelling are everywhere, due to many factors, such as the Internet, chatspeak and textspeak, lower emphasis on reading for pleasure in our society, and even less emphasis on spelling in schools. I actually had a parent come into my classroom one day asking me why her daughter’s spelling tests were pulling her grades down–“why does it matter so much?” she asked. I almost choked on my response trying not to laugh in her face. Of COURSE spelling matters; how am I going to know what your daughter’s turning in for assignments if I have no idea what language she’s writing in?

Some spelling mistakes even change the entire meaning of the word. Misspelling “from” as “form” is rather innocuous, but if you’re in a hurry and rearrange the letters of “this” into a popular four-letter curse, you’ll likely be in trouble with your boss. I know we’re all rushing around these days, but if we can’t even be bothered to make sure we’re communicating correctly, why even bother communicating at all?

What got to me the worst during teaching was that most of the spelling mistakes my students made could have been caught (and were indeed caught) when they read their papers through a second time. I took to having my students read their papers aloud before they turned them in, just to let them share their ideas with the class if they wanted to…and if I had a dollar for every time I heard them stop reading, pick up their pencil, and madly erase and rewrite, I wouldn’t be bothering looking for a job right now. XD I probably saved students a good bit of points off their papers for spelling mistakes by doing that, and I also saved myself a few headaches correcting them. It proves that they knew the correct spelling, but were hurrying through the paper and didn’t check it beforehand.

Making Our Communication Better

Adults can benefit from even just a scanning read-through of their communications, too. The number of emails I’ve gotten with “thier” in place of “their,” “your” in place of “you’re”, and “freind” instead of “friend” are amazing, and Internet websites (even the more reputable ones) are getting worse about those kinds of mistakes, too. Spellcheck won’t catch everything, either–it might catch “freind” and “thier,” but it won’t bother with “your” and “you’re.”

How can we get back to communicating clearly? This is, after all, a big problem–if we’re communicating with people who speak another language, feeding misspelled words into a translator will spit out garbage. Heck, some other native speakers might have a problem with reading what you’ve written, if it’s got enough mistakes in it. Below are some tips for spelling even in today’s Internet-driven world:

Steps to Spelling Better

  1. If in doubt, look up the word on Dictionary.com. Better to search and be sure of the spelling than unsure and wrong, especially if you’re writing to a boss or other authority figure.
  2. Sound the word out. To go back to the word “inconvenience” for a moment: the word is pronounced “ihn-kahn-VEE-nee-ence” (or “ihn-kahn-VEEN-yince” if you’re in the South like me). If it was spelled “inconvieniece,” it would be pronounced “ihn-KAHN-vee-neese.” Sound out what you have spelled and see if it reads the same way–if it doesn’t, you likely have a misspelling on your hands.
  3. Practice using the word you have trouble spelling as often as you can in emails, text messages, and written communication. It might be awkward at first, but if you get used to how it feels to type and write the word, you’ll misspell it less often. (This really, really works–I had to use this trick with the word “socioeconomic” because I kept trying to put in a few too many “o’s.”)
  4. Before you send anything out, read it aloud. Just like it worked for my middle-schoolers, it works for me–I catch all kinds of errors when I read my work out loud, like poor wording and too-long sentences. Spelling mistakes often jump out just as easily, and you can then take the time to look up any words which you’re not sure are spelled right.

Summary

If we don’t learn how to spell and practice the art of it, our writing will be dismissed, possibly even laughed at, and we might not be taken as seriously in the workplace. Our writing is how we communicate with others, and if it’s done poorly, we wno’t be udnrestode by enyun at ale. (See how bungled “won’t be understood by anyone at all” can become? …Ugh, that deliberate misspelling was painful to type. Yuck. :P)

But that is why spelling is important, and that’s what I told the mother of one of my students: “If you want your daughter to be able to write clearly when she graduates, you’ll work with her on her spelling. Otherwise, she’ll look unprofessional and uneducated her entire life, no matter how good her credentials are.” We have to keep that in mind for ourselves and our children. We wouldn’t walk into an interview or a fancy restaurant in wrinkled stained clothes; neither should we submit a resume (or an email) full of errors.