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Office Peacemaker: The Informed Opinion Copyright © 1998 John Cullen |
We humans seem incredibly touchy about certain issues: religion, politics, and what we have written. Over the years, I've seen too many angry discussions about minor points of grammar boil up into office imbroglios. These workplace jousts often result in lingering bad feelings -- and unresolved conflict clearly impedes productivity. These are bad situations, and there is no need for them. Remember the old adage, "never discuss politics or religion if you wish to keep a friend?" Well, we can't do the same about writing. After writing, there comes editing. There's a saying among knowledgeable writers that you don't actually begin to write until you're editing. Experienced writers make optimum use of the editing opportunity -- and learn to be open to criticism without taking it too personally. When editing is an exchange of ideas and pressures between insufficiently prepared and poorly informed persons -- that tends to create useless conflict. Some persons don't know how to give constructive criticism (critique). Other persons don't know how to take criticism, constructive or otherwise. Many persons may or may not be aware that resources like style guides exist, but have not incorporated the regular use of dictionaries and style guides in their daily working lives. Habitually and faithfully using these resources is far more beneficial than seems immediately obvious. The conflicts I've noted can be avoided or at least mitigated by three things: Having an informed opinion that uses middle-brain thinking based on authoritative information. These elements reduce stress and increase confidence as the center of authority moves from within the person to outside. Let's examine these issues in turn. The Informed Opinion What productive writers need is an informed opinion rather than ideas about writing that are based on emotion and a lack of information. Here's the core idea: if you understand the various viewpoints about the serial comma, or any of the other common issues that raise hackles, then you can form your own, informed opinion. You're not relying on something you think you learned 40 years ago in 5th grade, or something you heard at a 3-day seminar on marketing and mousepads. You're not reinventing grammar by yourself and calling it your personal style. With SharpWriter.Com, you have entire bookshelves' worth of information. Instead of clinging emotionally to some shaky belief about punctuation or capitalization, look it up! Avail yourself of the thoughts of the finest grammarians in the world. You may find sometimes that you were wrong. That's okay -- that's how we learn and grow. Actually, often it's not a matter of right or wrong, or of some dusty rule, but a matter of thinking your way between several candidate solutions. In fact, if you start picking up some of the better written style guides, you'll discover that there's much in them that's entertaining as well as edifying. This is good stuff -- go for it! As you become an informed stylist, you move the center of authority from within yourself to outside. You no longer need to rely on the defensive child within to whack back blindly, your rule against the other person's rule, your opinion against his. You can now calmly evaluate -- are you speaking with another informed stylist, who might be willing to reason from a standpoint of knowledge rather than emotion? If not, you'd best walk away from the conversation. You only want to discuss these issues with someone like yourself who sees the value of being broadly informed. This is really a form of self-defense. Spare your feelings from being senselessly assaulted by someone who refuses to use the tools of a professional writer. The same principle that works for the individual employee also works for the company, as we'll see in a few moments.
Don't be intimidated by the many references offered at SharpWriter.Com. Explore them, pick a few favorites, and, when an issue comes up, compare what they have to say. You'll learn a lot. You'll be able to show others why you think a certain way. You'll come into the mainstream of professional thinking about writing issues. You'll find that some solutions find broad support, while others foster mutually hostile camps. You'll stay above the emotional fray and just look for the information. As an informed stylist, you'll know what are the sometimes varying mainstream positions on major issues. You'll become less sensitive about criticism, and more tolerant of someone else's informed opinion. Let middle-brain thinking be your guide. Middle-Brain Thinking Is The Key Writing, even in its most creative forms (outside the workplace) is both a right-brain and a left-brain activity. In the workplace, writing should be largely a left-brain activity. What does this mean? The human brain has two hemispheres -- left and right. Over the years, scientists have found that our brains tend to process logical, analytical thinking in the left hemisphere, and warm, fuzzy kinds of creative thinking in the right hemisphere. In popular, imprecise usage, persons who seem analytical, logical are sometimes termed "left-brain thinkers." Persons who may be creative in unstructured kinds of leaps are sometimes termed "right-brain thinkers." Most of us are somewhere in the middle, and can avail ourselves of the best opportunities in both types of thinking as we write. In the workplace, where we write manuals, memos, and reports, we need to be logical as well as creative. As in all activities, the more you practice writing, and using your tools, the better a writer you'll become. Creativity lets you grab your reader's attention and drive your point home, when it's kept within business-like bounds, as well as within the bounds of style and taste suggested by good layout and graphics practices. Logic determines the content of your writing, and the order in which you present your ideas. The middle-brain thinker analyzes a writing task and says: "Ah! I must get this information and that information. I must organize my presentation thus, thus, and thus! A table of data would help in this spot!"...and so on. That's the left brain at work. The left brain wants to analyze sentence types and create order out of chaos. At the same time, the right brain is thinking: "Hmm, let's place graphics here, here, and there to brighten things up and make the text flow. Maybe a cute little simile here, the sentence ending in an exclamation point..." That's the right brain chiming in. Together, they make this metaphorical middle brain which, during the editing process, accepts or deflects criticism from an informed standpoint to reach the best final result in the most painless way. As a middle-brain thinker and writer, you apply the best of both worlds. You'll be confident of your informed opinion, and able to maturely accept or deflect someone else's comments. You'll know whether the person commenting is an informed thinker, or someone who learned that rule of grammar 40 years ago and hasn't looked in a dictionary or style book since they took his/her book away in June of that school year. The Importance of Your Company Style Guide To minimize conflict and uncertainty in the workplace, the thinking manager does what I suggest above that the individual do -- move the center of authority from within to without. This makes it not your opinion against another's, but your employee's opinion versus one or more published (and likely degreed) authorities. It is generally unwise to create an entire company style guide from nil. Many wonderful, entertaining, and useful resources are available at the bookstore or on the Web. If in doubt, call the Reference Librarian at your local public library for assistance. I recommend a company adopt two third-party resources: (1) at least one rich, high-quality dictionary that will serve as the company's final authority on spellings; and (2) at least one widely recognized standard guide to grammar, usage, and style. You could even make electronic versions available on an intranet. In the meantime, you'll find useful resources at SharpWriter.Com. It may be useful to create a small style guide that addresses very specific, company-oriented issues, like "how to we arrange our letterhead?" or "how do we capitalize the company name?" You can insert such a style guide at the front of your third-party style guide. John Cullen welcomes your comments. |