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Continuous Improvement for Writing — Semantics:
Wayne Smith, Ph.D.Department of
ManagementCSU [email protected]
Using Signage and Culture in Los Angeles to Help Improve Business Prose and Rhetoric
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The “English of Business”
• Sentence Economics– Do I know what counts as value and impact for
the reader?• Sentence Accounting
– Has message waste and message noise been minimized?
• Sentence Law– What are the rules and patterns governing
sentence structure?• Sentence Statistics
– Has systematic uncertainty (and therefore ambiguity) been controlled for in the sentence?
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(We assume that the latest, greatest writing technology will “catch” errors in composition, prose, and rhetoric—
we couldn’t be more wrong.)
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Some Errors Beyond the Reach of Current
Technology• Hacker, D., and Sommers, N. (2011), “A Writer’s Reference 7th ed.”, Bedford/St. Martin’s
• “[Current word processors have difficulty with]…writing context and culture, appropriate style of discourse, degree of ‘assertiveness,’ faulty parallelism, misplaced and dangling modifiers, homonyms, missing words and omitted verbs, shifts in verb tense or mood, coordination and subordination, sentence variety and fragments, run-on sentences, common redundancies, unnecessary wordiness, jargon and abbreviations, clichés, sexist language, irregular verbs, pronoun agreements and references, missing or misused commas, semi-colons, apostrophes, hyphens, quotation marks, capitalization, and problems with emphasis.”
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No computer word processor can make appropriate headings—you have to
specify it manually
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Headings - “Meat” Snacks
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Computers aren’t good at detecting (automatically) how a reader will
interpret a writer’s belief or intention
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Semantics-unintended En.
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Computers aren’t good at detecting sarcasm, irony, allegory, motifs and other semantic (“meaning”) issues
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Semantics-unintended En.
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In addition to word order, sentence order matters too, but word processors
don’t help at all
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Semantics – Hair cuts
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Technology can’t understand the concept of “validity”
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safety/spanish-prop door 1
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Safety/spanish-prop door 2
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(One needs to read and write “artful” sentences, and skill with both requires
extensive practice.)
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Elementary Tips for Improving your Prose
• Practice use of “although” and “despite”– These help with understanding “contrasts”
• Practice use of “because”– This helps with understanding “cause”
• Practice use of “for”, “and”, “not”, “but”, “or”, “yet”, and “so” (aka “FANBOYS”)– This helps with understanding “relationships”
• Source: Tyre, P. (2012) “The Writing Revolution”, Atlantic, Oct. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-writing-revolution/309090/
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Intermediate Tips for Improving your Prose
• Think of prose as “your [or your organization’s] brand”. Seriously consider reading:– http://ocw.smithw.org/bus302/developing-revising-prose.pdf
• Everyone (including well-educated, well-experienced, well-meaning individuals) benefit from routine practice to continuously improve prose– Read your text aloud to yourself– Practice with multiple variations of subordinate clauses
to augment multiple variations of main clauses
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Simile
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In-service training
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21
Transitions (between sentences)
Relationship Between Ideas
Transitional Words and Phrases
Similarity between the previous point and the next one
Similarly, Also, In addition, Further, Furthermore, Moreover
Difference between the previous point and the next one
However, Nevertheless, Nonetheless, Although, On the other hand
Enumeration of points First, second, third, etc.
Causal relationship Consequently, Therefore, Thus, Because
Temporal relationship Subsequently, Previously, Later, In the meantime, Then, Recently
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(The subjects of rhetoric, philosophy, and logic, for example, are much more
aligned with success, especially life-long success, than we give them credit
for.)
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What is the difference between the sense of a
word the representation of the word?)
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What’s not written can matter just as much as what
is written
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In N Out burger –up close
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There is even a “Philosophy of Language” too
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28
“Philosophy of Language”
Speaker (S) Hearer (H)
Prior-intention(decision)
Intention-in-action(decision)
Belief(statement-assertion)
Desire(affirmation-statement)
Understanding(explanation or prediction)
Meaning(constitutive or causal)
Intentionality(conscious or subconscious)
Representation-level
Proposition-level
Conditions of Satisfaction-level
Consciousness
Reality
Consciousness
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Bottom-line:
write everything assuming your writing will outlive you
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In-service training
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“Back Pocket” (Extra) Slides
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Some words are important, but not common
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Semantics – “Paradigm”
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Some words are important, but have multiple lexical meanings and
connotations
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Semantics – “Paradigm”
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Over the last decade, my MGT 360 students have identified the word
“paradigm” as the most commonly used but most misunderstood word they have encountered in their MGT 360 coursework and library readings
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Semantics – “Paradigm”
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Literature or Folklore
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