Peer to Peer Magazine

53 WWW.ILTANET.ORG Harmonic Tones Create Symphonic Messages FEATURES move in tandem with client development and leverage big data analytics in our competitive and collaborative business path forward. The Correction: As the Executive Commiee strategized our business plans for 2017, we focused on beer aligning our processes and technologies with our clients' needs, and we commied to an analysis of data in our plans to innovate our services, provide value and remain competitive. The Lesson: There are dozens of micro-lessons here. Write for clarity, not to impress your readers with your massive vocabulary and ability to create complex sentences. Determine the important message, choose language that clarifies that message and respect your reader. Lesson 5: It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Gerund-Man! The Problem: Have you noticed how confusing news headlines can be? "Developing Limbs May Help Biologists Explain Much More." Is that first word a noun, a verb or an adjective? Here, "developing" is intended as an adjective (a participle) but can easily be misconstrued as a noun –– a gerund, in particular. We are both amused about and rooting for those biologists whose limbs, now developing, will allow them to explain much more. We learned about the curse of knowledge in lesson three; that same curse can affect the simplest of sentences. Remember, we know what we are talking about, so it is difficult for us to notice that our statements are not crystal clear. Among the many enemies of clarity, one worthy of particular mention is the gerund. Gerunds end in "ing," and they are nouns derived from verbs. They can get us into trouble, especially if there are two words ending in "ing" back-to-back. The Example: The department's communication plan includes a focus on avoiding annoying people. The sentence is simple enough. Without context, a reader is le believing the writer wants to avoid people who are annoying –– reasonable enough. We see "annoying" as an adjective (those annoying people!), not a noun (acting in an irritating manner). And so the trouble –– and the negative tone of that interpretation –– begins. If we expressed these terms in purer noun forms, the phrase would read "a focus on the avoidance of our annoyance of people," but that doesn't sound right. The best correction is usually the simplest one: Express your verbs as verbs and your nouns as nouns. The Correction: The department's communication plan includes a focus on avoiding ways we might annoy people. The Lesson: Use gerunds sparingly and wisely to eliminate one common slippery slope. An Exquisite Symphony of Words Like a masterful musician, a great writer works to improve his cra, his style and his tone with every opportunity to communicate. These five lessons provide guidance to create harmonic tones in your exquisite symphony of words. Bravo! P2P Write for clarity, not to impress your readers with your massive vocabulary and ability to create complex sentences.

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