Words Fail Me Part 9

A tip that I learned as a business journalist has stuck with me over the years. It's worth pa.s.sing on, and it's useful for writing about more than money.

When a number changes, whether it's going up or going down, it moves from one point to another. So we're tempted to write things like this: As El Nino arrived, the temperature rose from 5 to 10 degrees.

But just how warm did it get?The phrase from 5 to 10 could be read in two ways. It might mean the temperature started at 5 degrees and rose to 10. Or it might mean the increase was between 5 and 10 degrees, so the temperature might have ended up at 40, for example, after beginning somewhere in the 30's.

It's easy to get around this problem. Just put the to ahead of the from: As El Nino arrived, the temperature rose to 10 degrees from 5. Or if you do want to describe an approximate increase, make it: As El Nino arrived, the temperature rose between 5 and 10 degrees.

If you keep to in front, your readers will know where you're coming from.

The Symmetry of Your Digits.

I can't promise this problem will be on the SAT's, but it sure comes up a lot: If one in every ten boys starts school early, and three in ten girls, does that mean four out of ten children start school early?

No. If you got it wrong, here's a little remedial math.

First of all, you can't mix the proportions unless there are equal numbers of boys and girls. a.s.suming that's the case, you don't add the statistics; you average them. If one in ten boys and three in ten girls start school early, then two in every ten children start early.

The principle is the same with percentages. If 8 percent of American men and 12 percent of American women are overweight, that doesn't mean 20 percent of all American adults are overweight. The answer is 10 percent, again if we a.s.sume there are equal numbers of men and women. You don't add the two percentages; you average them. (Remember that if the groups aren't the same size, averaging won't work.) As with so many other things, the truth lies in between.

When Less Is More.

A lot of us can't tell our ups from our downs. If we're comparatively impaired, we might call something a "decrease" when in fact it's an increase-but an increase that's smaller than average, or smaller than last year's, or smaller than expected, or whatever. A lesser increase is still an increase, not a decrease.

Journalists are often guilty of this mistake, especially when they write about budgets. A story on school spending might refer to a "decrease" in maintenance costs when the amount in fact increased-but the increase was smaller than the one expected. As a result, we get a story about "budget cuts" when the budget has actually grown. Sometimes less really is more.

Mean Streets.

I'll bet the average person doesn't know the difference between average and mean, median and norm, or any of the combinations thereof. The average dictionary may not be of much help, either. Not all dictionaries give precise mathematical meanings.

Imagine you're taking a seminar in desktop publis.h.i.+ng. The five students in the cla.s.s get these scores on their midterm exams: 60, 84, 87, 94, 100. (All right, you're the one who gets 100.) Here's how to find the average, mean, median, and norm.

*The average is 85: the sum of the scores (425) divided by the number of students (5).

* The mean, also known as the arithmetic mean, is 85: same as average. (Some dictionaries and usage guides define mean in a looser sense, as the mid-point between extremes.) * The median is 87: the score that falls in the middle when the numbers are arranged by size. If there's an even number of scores, add up the two in the middle and divide by two.

*The norm is in the 80 's: a less precise term, it's sometimes used to indicate average or median or just "normal"; avoid it when you want to be exact.

If you can remember all that, you're way above average.

Figure Skating.

Writers who are careless with figures are on thin ice. What's the weak spot here? Hundreds of ice fishermen aren't licensed in Minnesota.

If you don't see what's wrong, here's a clue. Not all ice fishermen are in Minnesota. No doubt there are many thousands, from Maine to Siberia, who aren't licensed to fish in Minnesota. Here's a better way to say it: Hundreds of ice fishermen in Minnesota aren't licensed.

When you write with numbers, be sure your wording isn't misleading. Readers may guess what you mean, but why should they have to? If there's any ambiguity, rearrange the words, as in the example above, or add any information that may be missing. Something's missing here: S even out of ten people are robbed by someone they know.

I doubt it. Most people are never robbed by anyone, strangers or otherwise. Say it this way: Seven out of ten people robbed are victims of someone they know.

Statistics can be treacherous. As Disraeli supposedly said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, d.a.m.ned lies, and statistics."

PART 3.

Getting Better All the Time.

20. Lost Horizon.

WHAT'S THE POINT OF VIEW?.

From where I sit, it's easy to look up from my writing and glance out the window. Much too easy. A short glance can turn into a long, lingering gaze. A reverie, even. That's why I draw the curtains when I start to write. I'm more likely to stay focused on my work if I can't look away.

I want my readers to stay focused, too. I want them to look where I want them to look, to see what I want them to see. To control what and how a reader sees, a writer controls the point of view, or perspective.

If you're writing a job resume, for instance, you'll want to mention your award for community service, but not the time you got busted for disorderly conduct. That's using perspective. As you can see, point of view is more than just the voice a writer uses to address readers-personal or impersonal or somewhere in between. By limiting what readers know, point of view influences what they think.

In simple, straightforward writing, like a thank-you note or a quick e-mail, we don't need to worry much about perspective. But when the writing is more complicated-a long article, a story or a novel, a piece on a sensitive subject, anything intended to persuade-the point of view becomes more of an issue.

Whether you realize it or not, everything you write has a perspective. And you change perspective all the time, perhaps without even knowing it. For starters, your point of view s.h.i.+fts whenever you use an anecdote or a funny story at the beginning of an essay, a speech, a short story, or any other kind of writing. When you begin with something specific or personal and then move to a wider topic, you've changed perspective.

Remember that readers can go only where you take them. If your point of view is jerky or inconsistent, if it's not clear or convincing, they'll lose their way. No matter what you're writing and no matter who your readers are, they need to know where they are and why: Whose voice is this? Whose opinions are these? Whose shoes am I standing in? Where am I supposed to be looking? These are questions about point of view.

Get Some Perspective.

We've all been fooled by card tricks. The hand may not be quicker than the eye, but when the cards are moved around often enough, it certainly seems that way. If you don't want your readers to get lost in the shuffle, don't move your cards around too quickly.

When a writer switches point of view for no good reason, readers become disoriented. A case in point: As Leo gazed longingly into her blue-gray eyes, Molly realized he was standing on her foot.

Sentences like that remind me of an old record alb.u.m, How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All? There's no reason to jump from Leo's point of view to Molly's. The result is a yo-yo quality. Make it: As Leo gazed longingly into Molly's blue-gray eyes, he didn't realize he was standing on her foot. That way Molly is the only one who's uncomfortable.

Easy Does It.

I learned to drive on a stick s.h.i.+ft, and the car protested loudly until I got the hang of it. s.h.i.+fting smoothly takes practice, in writing as well as in driving. A clumsy s.h.i.+ft in perspective can be as grating as the sound of grinding gears.

Even when there are many things to describe, it's possible to move from one to another smoothly. Say we're writing about a busy harbor town in a piece for a travel magazine. We start out small, with a particular red fis.h.i.+ng boat bobbing at anchor. Then we pull back, describing the pattern all the brightly colored boats make on the blue water. We pull back farther still, to include some gulls overhead, then the wharves at the foot of the village, then the bustling dockside street, then the houses extending up the hill and thinning out as they get farther from the water. Notice how the perspective s.h.i.+fts smoothly, moving from small to large, from particular to general, like a zoom lens on a camera.

Then let's say we add the fact that the red fis.h.i.+ng boat has nets spread on its deck, dryingin the sun. Cras.h.!.+ There we were, hovering somewhere in the sky above the village, when the bottom dropped out.

Be kind to readers. Let them down gently.

The More Things Change.

Once you're aware of how perspective works, you can use it in a special way. You can organize a long piece of writing, even an unwieldy one, by alternating the points of view.

Suppose you have to prepare an article about the discovery of some primitive cave paintings. You have piles of material, falling roughly into two categories. On the one hand you have your own observations about the site, the scientists involved, and the details of the discovery. On the other you have more general information about the history of the region and its people, the evolution of ancient art, and other background material.

You might organize your article by alternating the two points of view. You could begin by describing the site as you saw it, then pull back to fill in some history, zoom in on the scientists as you witness their big find, zoom out again to include something about the artistic development of primitive people, then back in to the scene and efforts to preserve the paintings.

This method of switching perspectives-from near to far, general to specific, personal to impersonal-has long been used by fiction writers, not only to change the point of view from character to character, but also to alternate scenes in the present with flashbacks to the past.

The technique has become popular with nonfiction writers, too. It works so well as a means of organization that you'll find it in books and articles of every conceivable kind. It's popular because it works. But it works only if the s.h.i.+fts in perspective are graceful.

An effective way to s.h.i.+ft smoothly from one perspective to another is to bridge the points of view with a common element. If you're writing a profile of a present-day farm family, for instance, you might change your subject and your perspective by ending one paragraph and beginning the next like this: Gunnar Bjornstrand surveyed his parched field one last time, then idly picked up a fistful of earth and let it run through his fingers.

It was the rich, black soil of Potawatomi County that had drawn Scandinavian immigrants to the area 150 years earlier.

That s.h.i.+ft is a big one in viewpoint and in time, but it doesn't jar the reader. In this case, the gap between the parts has been bridged by a common image, the soil.

You don't have to use a common element to move smoothly from one perspective to another. What matters is that the s.h.i.+ft makes some sort of sense. A reader who can't see why the perspective has changed will feel like a tennis ball being whacked from court to court.

The Beast in the Jungle.

In a piece of fiction, the change in perspective is often un-intrusive, especially when the writer wants to interrupt the action as little as possible. There's a neat s.h.i.+ft in Hemingway's story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." The setting is an African safari, and we join it in mid-paragraph. In this pa.s.sage, we see the hunt first through the eyes of a wounded lion as he's shot a second time, and later through the eyes of the hunter: "Then it crashed again and he felt the blow as it hit his lower ribs and ripped on through, blood sudden hot and frothy in his mouth, and he galloped toward the high gra.s.s where he could crouch and not be seen and make them bring the cras.h.i.+ng thing close enough so he could make a rush and get the man that held it.

"Macomber had not thought how the lion felt as he got out of the car. He only knew his hands were shaking and as he walked away from the car it was almost impossible for him to make his legs move."

Maybe we can't write like Hemingway, but we can try to s.h.i.+ft gently so readers won't hear the gears grinding.

Name That Tone.

You're watching a horror movie, maybe Friday the 13th, Part VIII, but with the sound track from Mary Poppins. Should you scream, or laugh?

If a writer's tone doesn't match the point of view, readers won't know what to think. You wouldn't begin a funeral oration with a vaudeville joke, unless you were burying Henny Youngman, or write about what a b.u.mmer life is when you're trying to cheer up a depressed friend.

You can't maintain a clear point of view without a consistent tone. If your att.i.tude is inappropriate, or if it veers around for no good reason-from tragic to flippant, sympathetic to hostile, optimistic to despairing-the perspective gets confused, and so does the reader. I think that's one reason we seldom read convincing fiction with a deranged person as the narrator.

Since your tone is part of your point of view, don't change one without changing the other. And when you do change your tone, be clear about it. This is another case where you have to put yourself in the readers minds. What will they think? How will they feel? Is that what you want them to be thinking or feeling?

Your choice of words can make a tremendous difference in tone. Say you have to write a campaign ad criticizing one politician and praising another, though the two hardly differ (it's been known to happen). Your mission, obviously, is to send out good vibes for your guy and bad vibes for the compet.i.tion. Here's how minor differences in wording can convey an approving tone for Tweedledum and a disapproving tone for Tweedledee.

Suppose both candidates are windbags whose most recent speeches lasted not quite sixty minutes. You might write that Tweedledum spoke for barely an hour, while Tweedledee spoke for nearly an hour.

Perhaps both support new programs costing just under $2 million. Your candidate's program would cost less than $2 million. The other candidate's would cost almost $2 million or upward of $2 million.