Beyond the Elements of Style

Who or Whom? A Quick Cheatsheet

It comes up in working with clients and students alike, and over the holidays my stepdaughter asked me when to use “whom” versus “who” in writing. (There was no point in asking which ought to be used in speaking: she is thirteen, and firmly entrenched in the Sullen Adolescent Communication Syndrome, which appears to involve much more grunting, hissing, and gesturing than it does actual words.)

I gave Anastasia my standard explanation, after which she said, “huh?”

So here is my who/whom cheatsheet: for Anastasia, for students, for clients, for anyone who needs it: don’t think in terms of rules, think in terms of substitution.

And the general usage is, if you can substitute “she” for the troublesome word in the sentence, you should use “who.” If you can substitute “her,” the word should be “whom.”

Here’s an example: “Who/whom was supposed to walk the dog this morning?” Make it a statement: would you say, “She was supposed to walk the dog this morning,” or “Her was supposed to walk the dog this morning”? Clearly she; clearly who.

“To whom/whom were you speaking?” can easily be answered: “I was speaking to her,” therefore, “whom” is the correct word in that context.

There’s nothing wrong with a grammatical cheatsheet, as long as it points the user to better grammar usage! And by now I’m hoping that it will help Anastasia be … beyond the elements of style!

Alphabet Soup, Anyone?

Okay, count me in with the old fogies, the curmudgeons, those who speak of the good old days (even when, lurking in the backs of our minds, is the sure knowledge that there never was any such thing).

I love email. I love the fact that I don’t have to wait days or weeks for replies to questions I send out. I love the fact that I can email twice as many people in half the time it used to take me to write a note by hand or typewriter.

But … but. There’s email, which is a semi (at least) articulate form of communication, where typos may exist but are regarded with friendly acceptance, and yet which obey the general grammatical and stylistic rules to which we have all become accustomed.

And then there’s text-messaging-speech.

A member on a list to which I subscribe writes incessantly in text-message format. It’s not the silly abbreviations that bother me as much as the punctuation (or lack thereof) that follows no rule with which I am familiar, an almost complete absence of capital letters, and a rigorousness of thought to match.

It’s like reading messages written with alphabet cereal … in the bowl.

Perhaps as we move toward a new year we can remember that the point of all this is communication, and that rules of grammar and usage are in place for a reason: to facilitate said communication. And then we’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Don’t Let The Spammers Stop You

I wrote in a previous article about subject lines, and how spammers are making it more and more difficult to find one that works.

And now we have Second Life, with which I’m intimately acquainted, as I co-author a site, SecondSeeker.com, that reviews places in Second Life that new (and not-so-new) residents might wish to visit. And as I move about that particular virtual world, I’m struck again and again by the names that people acquire.

I should digress to say that one has a limited choice of both first and surnames in Second Life, unless one wishes to pay a significant amount of money to keep or choose one’s own. Otherwise, it’s pretty much mix-and-match with what’s available, and with millions of residents, fewer and fewer “good” names are available.

The fact is that most of them sound like the friendly bots who bring you your daily serving of spam: Hammond Gillnose, Tarteru Higglebottom, Sally Tennyfeathers, Brice Haiku.

Creative … or confusing?

Remember Lewis Carroll? In The Hunting of the Snark, he writes,

His intimate friends called him “Candle-ends,” And his enemies “Toasted-cheese.”

The Internet has changed the way that we look at a lot of things, and we’d do well to learn its lessons. But let’s not let that keep us from being creative – with subject lines, names, or indeed anything else in which we engage.

And then we’ll all be … beyond the elements of style!

The Sky Still Isn’t Falling

The appearance of Amazon’s new ebook reader, Kindle, has rekindled online debates about The End of Literature As We Know It and the probability that piracy will shortly reduce all writers to starving in garrets (if they’re not already doing so). One particularly strident member of one of my Internet discussion groups is predicting that all content will now be up for grabs to whomever wants it and that online content is merely another way to spell “screw the writer.”

And while some of these concerns are real and justified, the reality is that technology is at the helm these days. If it can be done, it will be done, and instead of complaining we’d all perhaps do best to adapt. The Navajo talk about being in harmony with one’s environment, including change in that environment; and the Darwininan notion of adaptation or extinction is very much relevant here. Reading is no longer confined to peering at words written on dead trees, and the faster we incorporate that notion into our thinking, the better we’ll all be able to weather some of the storms ahead.

For there will be storms. No birth occurs without pain, and in many ways we’re still enduring the pangs of the naiscent Technology Age. Computer use and the Internet have changed nearly everything about everything we do, and so it’s no small surprise that reading and writing are affected as well.

Many people still prefer to hold physical books in their hands. Many others happily read from laptop or ebook reader screens or even mobile devices. There’s no question of which is better, either from a quality or a moral standpoint; there’s simply a question of how we’re going to adapt.

In a recent New York Times articles entitled “Crossover Dreams,” Motoko Rich notes the number of books that appeared first online (either as blogs or in fact as serialized or full ebook offerings, all of them free) and that were later sold as print books, in some cases for very impressive advances. While they are not necessarily the norm, they do exist, one of many ways that new technologies and subsequent reader habits are changing the way books are published.

Will there be theft? Of course there will be: it’s apparently part of human nature to want something for nothing. Will those thefts overwhelm the system and destroy content creators? Of course they won’t: the majority of people do still pay for what they receive and will continue to do so, whether the format is traditional or electronic.

The sky isn’t falling yet. But it will for those who believe that they can control the way the world is moving. For the rest of us, keeping up is keeping us … beyond the elements of style!

More Netiquette!

Okay, apparently I didn’t even scratch the surface of my pet peeves in an earlier column. So I think I’ll address them one at a time – beginning, today, with one of the most obvious.

Subject lines.

If you’re on an e-list, or even if you’re simply sending emails, the subject line you choose may make the difference between whether your message is caught by a spam filter or not, or whether it is read by its intended recipient or not.

A recent plea for assistance with a technical matter on an e-list to which I belong had this subject line: “Please help.”

Wow. That’s clear. Not only does it sound resoundingly like spam, it tells me nothing about the subject of the email. You want help, you make sure that the rest of the sentence is in the subject line: “Need help accessing old files,” for example.

I cannot say how many times a day I receive an email with a subject line that reads, “From Bob” (obviously, insert name of choice instead of my randomly chosen “Bob”). You didn’t notice the From line, folks? The subject of your email is the fact that you are writing to me?

I receive, easily, over 400 emails a day. I do a lot of subject-line scanning. I know I’ve probably lost valuable information from time to time because of bad subject lines. And I very much doubt that I’m alone in this.

Please please please write a real subject line (i.e., something that refers to the actual topic of your email) in the subject line space, and then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Talking to Each Other

No matter what you do in the freelance world – writer, editor, SEO expert – at some point or another, you’ll need to market your work. Most of us don’t enjoy the process: we’re good at sitting in a room and writing, editing, or optimizing, and a lot less good at tooting our horns to attract more people to pay us to do that sitting in the room.

A necessary evil, at the very least.

One of the best tools I’ve found is to target and join multiple professional associations. And not just any professional associations: you need to choose ones where you will encounter the clients you’re hoping will engage your services. (Other groups — writing, editing, and SEO groups — may be great for your professional development, but don’t join them to get clients.) For example, if you want to target financial clients, research and then visit and/or join a few of their professional associations. You can take it a step further and participate in their email lists, advertise in their journals, attend their conferences, etc., but start with the professional associations: networking is king.

Other groups that exist uniquely for networking purposes are also worth exploring. Google “networking groups” or “networking associations” in your area and see what turns up. Typically this will involve attending regular local meetings and passing referrals to other group members along with accepting referrals from them.

Either or both choices are good, as are online networking opportunities such as LinkedIn and other such sites. Marketing doesn’t have to be a terrible chore, and you can end up with as many contacts as you make sales! And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Netiquette 101

One of the things I used to do for a living was teach people to write effective, professional, and courteous business letters. Well, the mills have pretty much closed on that particular revenue stream, but it’s worth perhaps taking a look back and seeing what got lost – and what we might want to recapture – with the advent of the internet and email.

Emails today may or may not be effective, depending on the writer; some manage to be professional; but very few people seem to feel a need for them to be courteous.

So perhaps it’s time to revisit email etiquette 101:

• DO respond when someone emails you. I’ve often sent information requests to an individual in a company with which I do business and received no response in return, even though I know that person is in front of his computer. In these days of questionable deliverability, it’s a good idea to respond with a simple “Okay, I saw what you need, I’ll get back to you by Thursday.”
• DON’T ignore emails. Not quite the same as the above; if you don’t know the answer or cannot give the person what she needs, then just say so. You’d never stay silent on the telephone and not respond to the other person; don’t do it via email, either.
• DO phrase requests as requests. Words like “please” and “thank you” and “when you have time” are as necessary in email as they are in real life (you do use them in real life, don’t you?)
• DON’T assume that people can “hear” your tone. What is meant to be humorous can be hurtful. If there’s a “wrong” way to interpret anything, someone will find it.

We all live and work on the net to some extent. Maybe it’s not too much to hope that we can all play together nicely?

And then we’ll all be … beyond the elements of style!