The power of words… and Twitter

When people ask what industry I work in, I usually say ‘words’. I could say editing or writing, I could say language or, the very general, education, but for me it all comes done to words. This then requires some explanation, which I’m very happy to give, and people usually seem more intrigued with this response.

Over the years I’ve narrowed down my work focus (starting with education then the English language, writing and now words). Focusing in more and more has been a very natural and easy process, and sometimes even unconscious. It’s much easier for me to express my thoughts (the words running round my head) than my feelings (often frustratingly too abstract or subjective to find a good word match).

I remember as a child writing draft copies of letters. After some contemplation I’d edit my first attempts, finding better words, adding or deleting phrases, maybe even reorganising my ideas. I think I understood, even then, the power each word has, influencing each other, building to create a whole and how they could affect the person reading them. Words are powerful tools. They can inspire, they can influence and they can move.

I’ve probably always preferred the written word to the spoken word (perhaps this is related to my control issues?). As a teenager I did spend my fair share of time on the phone (what girl hasn’t?), but, unlike most of my friends, I kept writing letters and notes. So when I discovered email it was my dream come true. I could draft and edit to my heart’s content, and I didn’t have to feel guilty about not calling. Going back to teenage girls for a moment, observing my nieces, they prefer to communicate with texts and Facebook updates than speak on the phone. If only I’d been born a generation or two later.

Anyway, this leads me to Twitter and my love/obsession relationship with it. I love it for its 140-character restriction. It forces me to express myself concisely and, I hope, more precisely (I can’t just gush out a wordy stream of consciousness, which I sometimes do on Facebook and then regret). And I love it for being able to connect with people I would otherwise never physically meet or ever have the chance of communicating with. The written word has gained some of its power back.

At last week’s 140 Characters Conference London Meetup I was able to physically meet some fellow twitterers. We heard JP Rangaswami (@jobsworth), BT Chief Scientist, touch on personal experiences of the value of Twitter’s network as an information service, which he’d talked about at last year’s 140 Characters London Conference (learning how to rescue a lost hamster and tracking down a difficult to buy Canadian folk rock album). And Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver) shared his feelings about being able to connect with people the world over, whether it’s just to say ‘hello’ or to get help unloading his car in a sticky situation.

A recent heart-warming example of the power of social networks was Wyclef Jean being able to raise $1m for Haiti earthquake victims by appealing on Twitter. Being able to reach out to a large number of people who, in turn, reached out to other people, meant the money was raised very quickly, much quicker than for previous disasters. Wendy Harman, social media manager for American Red Cross said, “I think we have crossed the threshold of novelty with Twitter. People now want to use it to get something good done.” Words turning into good deeds.

I have also felt the love and support of strangers through the words I have tweeted. Most specifically related to the death of my daughter, Sofia. While she died almost two years ago, we have had to cope with other things some time after her death. At the end of last year when there was an inquest into her death I was able to find love and support online at any time of day by typing a few words. And more recently, we discovered another very disturbing fact related to her death because of an interview we agreed to do. Again I reached out, not only to friends and family, but to my network. And the support went beyond my network. Even before we’d read the newspaper article there were people on the other side of the world tweeting it and giving us words of support. I was even sent more information of other similar cases by strangers. Words connecting people. Words educating people. Words moving people.

Some people may say my focus is wrong, that it’s not words connecting people but social online networks connecting them. I would merely say that online communication is nothing without words.

Connect with us on Twitter: @editingangel, @awillicombe

Editing Angel is named in memory of my daughter and beloved angel, Sofia Valentina Willicombe Figus (11 Feb 2008 – 14 Feb 2008).

If I haven’t convinced you of the merits of Twitter, Editing Angel offers ghost tweeting services. Contact me for more details: anne@editingangel.com

To befriend or to unfriend. Is that really the question?

I love language because it’s a living thing. It adapts to its surroundings, it’s malleable, it’s vibrant and also sometimes beautifully elusive. Language isn’t static or cold; it has a life all its own.

Yet, I admit there are some twists and turns of the English language that give me shivers. From hearing ‘innit’ as a universal question tag in my East London neighbourhood (We’re friends, innit?) to reading the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of 2009 (the verb, to unfriend).

Part of me recognises that as the world around us changes, logically it moulds language into different forms. The daily influence social networking sites have on most of us is just one example of this, and also perhaps one of the more powerful ones at the moment on the English language (without the impact of Facebook, the word of the year would certainly have been another word).

Honestly though, I’m hoping that ‘unfriend’ has the same longevity as its most recent predecessors. I’ve never heard anyone use 2008’s ‘hypermiling’ (making adjustments to one’s car or one’s driving techniques to maximise fuel-consumption) nor the word of 2007: ‘locavore’ (someone who buys from farmers’ markets or grows their own produce to be more environmentally friendly). Let’s hope this trend continues!

The death of Wikipedia?

While Wikipedia is the fifth most popular website in the world and the number of people using it continues to increase, recent research has discovered that its volunteer editors have been leaving in vast numbers and this trend looks set to continue. Does this mean Wikipedia has had its day?

Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger created Wikipedia in 2001 with the aim of empowering people with knowledge by compiling a free encyclopedia for everyone in the world. It uses open source software and is a non-profit organisation relying on fundraising. In 2007 it had grown to 2 million articles and today it has more than 14 million articles in over 250 languages.

Many think Wikipedia’s success has been due to its simple yet radical principles; anyone can write and edit Wikipedia’s articles. However, Andrew Lih, the author of “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia“, sees Wikipedia as merely having extended the hacker culture of a free and open cyberspace to mainstream Internet users.

Students the world over use Wikipedia as a resource whether their teachers or parents like it or not, or are aware of it or not. I’ve come across lecturers who despise it with a passion, while others accept their students’ use of it. I actively discourage my university students by focusing instead on the importance of approaching online sources with a critical head. Yet I have to admit relying on Wikipedia when I want to find out information quickly (Wikipanion is one of only a few iPhone applications I use on a daily basis). I hang my head in shame, but also wonder why people are preferring to only use Wikipedia passively.

One reason put forward for the rapid decline in volunteers is the increase in bureaucracy, which has taken the original fun out of freely contributing content. Wikipedia adopted additional rules to exercise more control and avoid entries like John Seigenthaler being wrongly accused of involvement in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy (and, my personal favourite, that David Beckham was an 18^th century Chinese goalkeeper), but in doing so could be seen as becoming more like the organisations it originally set itself apart from. Yet without good quality control, Wikipedia is an unreliable resource which can’t be taken seriously.

But how will the lack of editors affect Wikipedia? Losing 49,000 English language editors in the first three months of this year must have some impact. Are we seeing the demise of free user-generated content or is it merely a natural evolution?

Have you asked yourself any good questions lately?

I recently found out about ‘afformations’ after reading a blog post by my friend Khuram Malik. I was very familiar with the more well known affirmations, having used them on and off with varying degrees of success over the years. ‘Afformations’, however, immediately made more sense and gave a stronger punch of positivity more easily. And they’ve also led me to think how small changes in language can greatly influence the effect that language has on us.

But what is the difference between ‘afformations’ and affirmations, I hear you say. An affirmation is a statement regarding something you would like to be true in your life, for example, ‘I am happy’. You repeat the phrase over and over in order to change your subconscious mind, and therefore hopefully change your thinking and attitudes. ‘Afformations’, on the other hand, are questions which you ask yourself, questions which assume what you want to be true in your life already is true. So instead of chanting ‘I am happy, I am happy, I am happy’, you could ask ‘Why do I feel so happy?’ Go on, say both of them now. Do you notice any differences?

The idea behind ’afformations’ is that instead of making your mind focus on, in this case, the happiness you lack, your brain is now focusing on the happiness you DO have, and the things and people already in your life that bring you happiness. It produces a much more positive result immediately and have you worked out why?

Any good presenter or writer knows that an effective way of getting or keeping their audience’s attention is to ask them questions. We can’t help ourselves; even if we know a question is rhetorical or know the person who posed the question won’t hear us, our brain immediately wants to supply an answer, working away like a search engine to come up with a response. It’s a well-used sales technique to engage the target audience: Have you driven a Ford lately? Where would you like to go today? Statements don’t involve us to the same extent; questions immediately grab us, naturally motivating action and encouraging reflection.

Language is a powerful tool and even a subtle difference, such as changing a statement into a question, can produce an entirely different result. Being aware of this means you have another instrument in your belt for communicating more effectively, whether you’re a manager encouraging your team to come up with solutions to a problem, a teacher leading students to discover an answer for themselves, a copywriter persuading future clients they need a service, or you making another step along your personal development road. Perhaps you should spend less time worrying about finding the right answers and more time formulating the right question.

“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.”
– Naguib Mahfouz (Egyptian writer and Nobel Prize winner)

How to weaken an argument in three quick steps

Presenting a weak argument, whether you’re trying to convince a possible customer they need your product or discussing Tarantino’s latest film with a friend, couldn’t be easier. There are just three simple quick steps to make any statement unconvincing. If you manage to do all three of them, any assertion you make will be powerless and completely ineffective.

One: give no support

Don’t give any justification for your reasoning. It is enough to simply state it. You may repeat it as many times as you like, in fact the more times you repeat it the weaker it will become. Not having to convince someone of the value or benefit of your assertion by coming up with relevant supporting facts and examples saves you a lot of time and effort.

Two: make your argument one-sided

Don’t waste time considering the other side of the argument; yours is the only valid one. By acknowledging there are two sides (or even more) to an argument, you are conceding that your side may not be the right one (and that can’t possibly be true). On top of this, you’ll have to criticise or show the other perspectives are less valid in order to eliminate them.

Three: don’t anticipate objections

If you consider any opposing viewpoints, you’re just going to have to spend even more time and effort coming up with ideas to counter the specific concerns that may be raised. You will also need to thoroughly identify any objections and then either suggest solutions or point out the weaknesses of them. Instead, deliberately trivialise the evidence against your case or, better still, ignore it, don’t be objective and never change your position even to make a small concession.

While some say the best way to win an argument is to avoid it, the best way to convince someone not to take you seriously is to make your argument as powerless and flimsy as possible. Strengthening an assertion takes time and effort and thought; weakening it requires almost no effort or time or thought at all.

How to confidently use semi-colons in two easy steps

I love semi-colons. I take every opportunity to use them and hope that, by example, I encourage other people to use them (I hope this isn’t merely wishful thinking). To be honest, I have never understood why some people are afraid of using semi-colons; probably it’s more a fear of misusing them.

The semi-colon is an underused, yet powerful, punctuation mark. Just as our tone or hand gestures, for instance, can help us to be understood clearly when we speak, so punctuation helps us to communicate more clearly when we write. In the words of Lynne Truss, who wrote the bestselling guide to punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, “all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places… If [punctuation] goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable”. So, even though the semi-colon is not as commonly used as commas or full stops, it does have a very important role to play in helping us communicate our message as accurately as possible.

While I often hear people (myself included) complaining about the misuse of apostrophes, and overuse of commas and exclamation marks, the semi-colon doesn’t usually get a lot of attention. Although, oddly enough, the writer Kurt Vonnegut warned people against using them because “They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” On the opposite side, George Bernard Shaw advised fellow writer T.E. Lawrence, after reading his autobiographical Seven Pillars of Wisdom, “You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life.” People are always going to disagree when discussing language and its nuances. Why not just take from this argument the fact that semi-colons should be used with care and consideration.

If you are feeling encouraged to use semi-colons, but are not completely sure how to, let’s refer to Swan’s Practical English Usage. Very simply, Swan explains the semi-colon has two uses.

1)  Instead of full stops, to join two grammatically independent phrases which have a closely connected meaning.

Some people work best in the mornings; others do better in the evenings.
It is a fine idea; let us hope that it is going to work.

If, however, either of the phrases are complex, it is better to use a full stop instead of a semi-colon:
It is a fine idea to cut back on advertising to save money this quarter. Let us hope that it is going to work, otherwise some jobs may have to be cut.

2)  In lists, when the items are complex or contain commas.

You may use the sports facilities on condition that your subscription is paid regularly; that you arrange for all necessary cleaning to be carried out; that you undertake to make good any damage; that you inform staff of any facilities that need fixing, cleaning or updating; …

To test your prowess with semi-colons, try these exercises.

Reading books online for free

Here are our favourite sites where you can freely access reading material online.

Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg, the oldest online provider of texts, has over 25,000 free books to read. The number of books can be daunting, but you can search for a specific author or title, by ‘bookshelf’ (category) or you can browse the top 100 downloads. It is a very good source of classic literature, including plays and poetry.

Bibliomania
Bibliomania has more than 2,000 classic texts with the addition of study guides, biographies of authors, articles and interviews. You can also post your questions or opinions on the messageboard. You can search by author, title, type of literature or theme, or browse the latest recommendations by the site.

Short Fiction
If reading a complete novel online is not for you, why not try reading short stories instead? This website has over 2,500 short stories which have been submitted to the site by their authors. Genres include fantasy, horror, science fiction, young adult and travel. As well as the usual search filters, you can also search for specific words or phrases, and there is a forum where you can read and leave your comments about the stories.

Story
Run by the charity Booktrust and supported by the BBC, this site promotes the short story. While the number of stories can you download are fairly limited, they are all by published authors. There are also articles on writing short stories, reviews and a list of recommended classic short stories.

Wowio
One of the only sites with a selection of comic books as well as a good range of fiction and non-fiction.

If you prefer to listen to stories, try these websites:
LibriVox
BBC Radio 4
Short Story Radio
Spoken Ink
Shortbread

“What’s another word for thesaurus?” (Stephen Wright)

A thesaurus is a great help if you want to increase your vocabulary. Whereas a dictionary gives you a definition and the pronunciation of a word, a thesaurus lists synonyms (a word or phrase which has the same or similar meaning as another word or phrase) and also sometimes antonyms (a word or phrase which has the opposite meaning of another word or phrase) of it.

The word ‘thesaurus’ comes from Latin and Ancient Greek, and means a collection of important or valuable things. The most well known modern thesaurus is ‘Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases’ which the British Dr. Peter Mark Roget began work on in 1805, publishing it in 1852; it has not been out of print since. However, there are other examples even dating back to around 100AD – the Greek author Philo of Byblos wrote a dictionary of synonyms around this time.

It took Roget almost fifty years to single-handedly complete his thesaurus, although he did not devote himself entirely to it until he had retired from medicine in 1840. Even so, it was a huge achievement for one person. In comparison Samuel Johnson devoted nine years of his life to compiling the first English language dictionary and he had six assistants (all crammed into his attic, by the way).

The University of Glasgow’s English Language Department has spent more than forty years producing the ‘Historical Thesaurus of English’ (HTE). As its name suggests, this latest thesaurus does not just list synonyms, but groups words in chronological order beginning with the oldest from Old English up until the newest words of 2003; in total it covers more than 920,000 words. It is claimed to be the largest ever thesaurus and the first historical one in any language. You can find where a word came from and how it evolved over time. You can also search for words which were used during a particular period of time enabling you to find all the words Shakespeare had available to him meaning ‘happiness’, for instance. No wonder it took such a large team of people so many decades to complete it and from such humble beginnings (they started by writing words on individual slips of paper).

While for most of us the HTE will be too expensive (around £250) and even too cumbersome to have our own copy when it is published in October, the good news is it will be available online in the future, linked to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Getting your head around English spelling

or ‘Y iz Inglish speling sew difikult?’

Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well.
- Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to his daughter

English spelling causes problems even for native speakers, who often rely on dictionaries and spell checkers much more than speakers of other languages. Compared to other languages, English is arguably more irregular and more complex.

The English language has a complicated history, borrowing words from almost every other language (Latin, French, Greek, German, Arabic and Chinese just to name a few), often keeping the foreign spelling but pronouncing the word in an Anglicised way. For a large part of its history, achieving any kind of consistency in spelling was not considered important. The invention of the printing press, in the late 1400s, began to encourage conformity of spelling to a certain extent to make the process easier for printers. However, it was not until the mid 18^th century, when dictionaries began to be published (the most influential being Samuel Johnson’s ‘Dictionary of the English Language’, 1755), that English spelling really started to become standardised.

There are English spelling rules, but they can be quite difficult to remember because of their complexity, and, of course, there are always exceptions to these rules, as there are always exceptions to any rules. So, what can we do apart from carrying a dictionary around with us if we wish to be ladies and gentlemen who spell well?

Knowing just some of the English spelling rules will make you a more confident speller. One rule that many native English speakers repeatedly chanted at school is ‘I before E, except after C’. I still hear this in my head when I am unsure if a word is spelt with an ‘ie’ or an ‘ei’. The UK Government recently and controversially advised primary school teachers not to teach this rule believing it not to be effective because of the exceptions to it (for example, ‘seize’, ‘weird’ and ‘veil’), yet many people believe that it is worthwhile learning when it is a simple rule to remember and generally true.

You can also make up your own ways of remembering spelling including using mnemonics to aid your memory. I taught myself the difference between ‘stationery’ and ‘stationary’ by thinking that ‘stationERy’ is ‘papER’ and ‘stationAry’ is ‘inActive’. A past student who found it difficult remembering whether to double the ‘c’ or the ‘s’ in ‘occasionally’ made up the phrase ‘I watch The O.C. with my Cat occasionally’ to remind herself that the word started with ‘occ’. Even after more than twenty-five years, whenever I write the word ‘rhythm’, I hear my whole class loudly and rhythmically tapping out ‘R, H, Y… T, H, M…’ on our desks while our teacher ‘conducted’ us.

Finally, the more you use words that are particularly confusing for you in their written form, the easier it will be to remember the spelling. But, if you are still pulling your hair out, take heart in the words of a famous writer, who would have probably enjoyed, had he been alive today, the shorthand spelling that is normal in text messaging:

I don’t see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing. I have a correspondent whose letters are always a refreshment to me, there is such a breezy unfettered originality about his orthography. He always spells “Kow” with a large “K.” Now that is just as good as to spell it with a small one. It is better. It gives the imagination a broader field, a wider scope. It suggests to the mind a grand, vague, impressive new kind of a cow.
- Mark Twain, speaking at a spelling match, reported in the Hartford Courant, 1875

One comprehensive list of spelling rules

200 most commonly misspelled words

Social networking in English

I have been thinking about the prevalence of the English language. The number of people who speak it as a second language throughout the world now supposedly outnumber those who speak it as a native language, and there have been estimations that in less than twenty years there will be more Chinese speakers of English than native English speakers. Technology has certainly helped push English to its important position, and technology has also shaped the language and how we communicate in it (the dictionary team at Oxford University Press monitor how social media is changing English). English has become the language of online social interaction and a neutral language of communication.

The popularity of online social networking has encouraged more and more non-native English speakers to express themselves in English in order to communicate with a larger audience. It is natural for a group of people to use the language that is most common for the majority of them, coupled with the media being used to communicate (English being the language of computer science), thus the predominance of English.

With social interaction comes the exchange of information and social networking sites have become venues where people are able not only to express their views from the mundane to the profound, but also show their support for certain issues. You can show all your contacts/friends/followers which causes you feel strongly about and encourage others to feel the same. You can also report personal accounts of current situations, thereby influencing how news is spread and how quickly it can be made available to a worldwide audience.

The US government confirmed today that they had asked the social networking site Twitter to postpone its planned maintenance period at the start of this week to a time that would less impact its Iranian users. These users have been giving first or second-hand reports, predominantly in English, about the protests and disturbances in Iran since the disputed election. This meant Twitter was miles ahead of the traditional media sources, such as CNN, in reporting the initial situation. Even when the main stream media caught up, many were directly quoting information from Twitter, making the Iranian tweeters more like reporters than eye witnesses. Not only are we seeing the growing importance of social networking sites in spreading information, but the importance of English as a neutral language of communication, the common language of the majority.