OK, OK, I’ll admit many of us are picky about writing when we’re off the clock, too. Editors and grammarians tend to revel in pointing out errors wherever and whenever they are found — all the better if the errors create amusing misunderstandings.

With that in mind, wordslingers and redactors alike may enjoy the editorial pickiness to be found at these punctuation-related websites:

• Comma Clout explores the wiley ways of that punctuation workhorse, the comma
• Apostrophe Abuse documents the many ways the poor little apostrophe is kicked around
• The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotes — well, the name really tells the story, doesn’t it?

If, instead of making you giggle, these websites leave you scratching your head over what exactly is so wrong about CD’s and “hot” breakfast sandwiches, then a trip over to the Grammar Girl website might be in order. Mignon Fogarty’s podcasts and blog posts give you just what the site says — quick and dirty tips for better writing.

Most newspapers and magazines are written for a 9th or 10th grade reading level. Why? Because these publications want their writing to be quickly and easily understood, with a minimum of confusion.

Simple writing is not about “dumbing down” your ideas. It’s about making them easily accessible to as many people as possible. Simple writing won’t make you look like a neophyte; it will give your ideas power, helping them spread faster to more places. If you want people to talk about your book, they have to understand your content and be able to describe it to their friends in a few sentences.

Avoid industry jargon and business buzzwords. Nothing locks people out of a conversation or makes their eyes glaze over faster than a paragraph crammed with acronyms, insider terms, and words larded up with extra syllables in an effort to sound lofty. Businesspeople, I’m looking at you. Cut wastage, drop utilize, and forget orientate when waste, use, and orient will do the trick.

Write like a human being. If you’re struggling to convey a big idea in plain words, ask yourself what you would say if you were having coffee with a friend. This friend knows you — there’s no need to puff yourself up to impress her. But she doesn’t know your area of expertise — so skip the industry shorthand. Your imagined conversation should help you with phrasing, flow, and word choice.

What Does Complexity Cost You?
This blog post started out as an entirely different article. I wanted to write about a new technology I’d heard about called SharedBook. I first read about SharedBook on Mike Shatzkin’s blog. The capabilities of the technology, as described by Mike, sounded really interesting:

This is a wikipedia-type capability with a spin that publishers and authors will really like. With wikipedia, the edits and annotations from “the crowd”…actually change and revise the content itself. With SharedBook’s annotation technology, the original published content remains locked, and the changes are appended as footnotes! The footnotes can be associated to a chunk, a paragraph, a word, a symbol, a diagram, a picture. Whatever you like. And using the capability to manipulate content into a one-off book that SharedBook is known for, a reader can order up a printed book with whichever of the footnotes the reader wants in their own copy of the book.

So off I went to the SharedBook website to learn more. After five minutes of poking around, I was no wiser than when I had arrived. This is a sample of what I found:

One of the unique aspects of this data integration involves mapping the data into a rich data model that allows flexibility for clients, partners and users to collaboratively manipulate the data in a client-supplied environment.

Huh? Tell me what you mean, man. I think the above sentence is trying to say the same thing that Mike said. But which one do you understand?

Whether writing a website or a book, have a human conversation with your readers. Cut the jargon and the fancy words. It’s all about the simple.

From the website:

Conspiracy of the Rich: The 8 New Rules of Money will be an interactive project in which Kiyosaki will not only offer his written ‘draft’ chapters online, but invite feedback, commentary and questions from readers across the globe via website forums and blogs. Reader feedback will then be incorporated into the book as it is written and released, chapter by chapter, on the Internet.

This Confident Writing Challenge asks everyone to define their best posts of 2008. Most useful, most fun, and most original are easy. The best, though? Always the latest one.

But whether you love writing or find it painful, soon or later you will face that accursed foe: writer’s block. You have things to write. You know you should write. But somehow you can’t make it happen.

Many successful writers will tell you that the key to unblocking is discipline. Force yourself to write for a certain amount of time each day, whether you feel like it or not. Write junk or write a masterpiece, just write.

Cue Write or Die from the Dr. Wicked Writing Lab.

Wrote or Die is a simple (dare I say wickedly simple?) online application that helps you set a goal and get it written. You choose either the number of words you want to complete or a time limit. Set your grace period to Forgiving, Strict or Evil, and then set your punishment mode: Gentle, Normal, or Kamikaze. With Gentle, you get a nice little pop-up window if you stop for too long. On the Kamikaze setting, your words start to erase themselves. Talk about incentive!

The tool is a great boost for just letting loose with ideas, getting words on the screen, and gaining momentum. Later you can go back to edit and refine.

I used the tool myself to write this post, and the idea that I’d be buzzed if I didn’t keep going provided just enough push to keep my fingers flying. It was kind of fun, actually.

The tool has a secondary benefit as well: it helps you identify the habits that might be slowing you down. I couldn’t believe how much I was trying to erase and re-write things I had started, and how often I stopped to re-read what I’d just written. Fighting those urges will help me be more a productive writer.

I can see Write or Die becoming a tremendous tool for authors. Set yourself a goal of a page or a chapter and see how far you can get with just letting the ideas flow. It’s always easier to edit than to create, and a session with Dr. Wicked gives you the raw material you need for getting started.

When you’re done, you get a gratifying note that tells you how many words you wrote in what amount of time. I was a bit surprised to learn that I had written this whole post in 8 minutes. And surprisingly, it took less editing than I thought to make it ready for publishing.

An ellipsis takes the place of words that have been removed from a sentence. For example, here is a full sentence:

His artwork is so striking and so beautiful that it belongs in a museum.

This is the same sentence with some of the words taken out and an ellipsis inserted:

His artwork is so striking … that it belongs in a museum.

Notice that there is a space on either side of the dots.

An ellipsis can also be used to indicate a thought that has trailed off, most commonly when writing dialogue.

Adam scratched his head and said, “I wonder …”

When in doubt about how and where to use an ellipsis (or any of 12 other punctuation marks), Jeff Rubin, the brain behind National Punctuation Day, has an excellent primer on his website.

When evaluating and hiring a professional editor, it helps to be clear about what you need and what you can expect.

To start, you should know what kind of editing you are looking for. There are many different levels and varieties of editing. Probably the three you will encounter the most are substantive editing, copyediting, and proofreading.

Substantive editing
Sometimes called developmental editing, substantive editing looks at both the content and structure of a manuscript as a cohesive whole. Does the story or argument flow logically? Are there obvious gaps in a certain area? Too much information someplace else? Substantive editing can involve re-ordering large chunks of text, removing text, adding text, and even rewriting.

Copyediting
Probably the most misused of all the terms, copyediting is often used as a catchall phrase for any and all kinds of editing. Strictly speaking, however, copyediting checks for errors in grammar, usage, spelling, punctuation and other mechanics of style, internal consistency, cross-referencing, labelling, and so on.

Proofreading
Proofreading is the final review of a fully formatted and typeset manuscript. It’s meant only to catch small errors such as the odd spelling mistake or hyphenation snafu that might have been missed at the copyediting stage, or that appeared during the layout process.

The above definitions are fairly standard but there are variations. Not every editor defines editing terms in the same way. It’s therefore crucial that you discuss in detail the exact nature of the services your editor will provide.

Before hiring an editor, make sure you understand the fee arrangements. Some editors charge by the page or word, while others charge by the hour. Still others charge a flat project fee. One method of charging is not necessarily better than other. Just be sure you know what you’ll get for your money. If you are being charged by the hour, ask the editor to provide an upfront estimate of how long the project will take so there are no surprises when the final invoice arrives.

Here are a few final tips for working with an editor:

• Some editors specialize either by format, by topic, or both. For example, an editor might be a specialist in audio scripts or might focus solely on medical books. You may want to look for an editor with particular expertise in your subject matter, especially if you are writing about a highly specialized field.
• Be open-minded towards an editor’s suggestions and changes. It can be hard on the ego to see your painstakingly crafted manuscript go under the editor’s knife. But keep in mind that if an editor is making alterations, it’s because he or she thinks it will improve your work. And in the end, a good product makes you look good too.
• Establish and maintain clear lines of communication. Know what your expectations are and convey them. Ask the editor to keep you in the loop as the work progresses.

The exact details of how this story came to be are a bit sketchy. Most sources say it was a contest or challenge that Hemingway took up. A handful say he bet his round-table cronies (William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dororthy Parker et al) that he could write a novel in six words – no more, no less.

Whatever the circumstances surrounding the story’s generation, the result was astounding:

For sale: baby shoes. Never used.

A complete and compelling story in just six words. They are six words that stay forever etched in my memory.

I thought of them the other day as I went to create my next 140-character Twitter post. I wondered how long it would take someone to launch a Twitter writing contest to tell a complete story in 140 characters. I didn’t have long to wonder because the very next day I heard about this contest over at Copyblogger.

The six-word story contest, the 140-character contest and others like them are all about writing fiction. What if you brought the same paucity of words to non-fiction?

Could you write an “all you need to know” guide in say, 25 words or less? I throw down the gauntlet to non-fiction writers everywhere.