Peer to Peer Magazine

81 WWW.ILTANET.ORG Tips on How To Improve Your Writing THE WORD ON WORDS When To Pick Up the Phone I know people who spend 45 minutes composing an email rather than explain and resolve the issue over the phone in five minutes. If your email is going to weigh in at three or four stout paragraphs, especially if it's sensitive and might require some explaining, pick up the phone. Or walk down the hall. People will not judge your speech nearly as harshly as they will your writing. When To Cut and Paste For a longer email, first compose it in Word, and then either aach the document or cut and paste the contents into the email. When To Keep It in the Trail Writing is only part of what we do in email. Almost as important is keeping track of what we write so we and our recipients can find it easily. Unless we have good reason to do otherwise, we should keep all correspondence on the same subject in one email trail. Different subject, new email. When To Use Exclamation Points! Never! Remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine's prospective boyfriend fails to use an exclamation point when he takes a phone message from Elaine's friend who just had a baby?!!!!! Using exclamation points conveys the same level of sophistication as the teenager who signs "Gina" with a heart! So think about it! When To Use Smiley Faces Whether we write a leer, a book or an email, our "recipient" must interpret our message by reading only our words: We can't be there to convey emotional signals like facial expressions, voice inflection and body language. Too oen in email, instead of using the right words, we send an ambassador: the emoticon. A hundred years ago typewriters had the colon, the semicolon, the dash and the parentheses, all the tools we need to make a smiley face. The people who composed on those typewriters were as clever as we are, but not one ever put a smiley face at the end of a sentence. Why do we do it now? In a 2014 article in Social Neuroscience, one psychology researcher called emoticons "a sort of visual cliché" and "a lazy means of communicating." I don't need to elaborate. P2P GARY KINDER Gary Kinder is a lawyer and New York Times best-selling author. He has taught over 1,000 writing programs for the American Bar Association and for law firms and corporate law departments around the country. He is also the creator of WordRake, the clear and concise editing software, which Harvard Law School recently recognized as "Disruptive Innovation." Contact Gary at garyk@wordrake.com. RANDI MAYES Randi Mayes is the Executive Director of ILTA where she is responsible for oversight of all operations and serves as editor-in-chief of the association's numerous publications. A member of the American Society of Association Executives and the Texas Society of Association Executives, she has spoken and written on topics related to leadership development and association management. She's more than a little nuts about good writing. Contact Randi at randi@iltanet.org. Enjoy Gary's humor and expertise on a regular basis by by subscribing to his Weekly Writing Tips at www.wordrake. com/writing-tips. Find exercises and other writing tips on Randi's blog at connect.iltanet. org/blogs/randi- mayes.

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