Against "Content"

There's nothing inherently wrong with the word "content."  For one thing, the word has multiple senses and uses.  I am content with having only ranch or vinaigrette to choose from among salad dressings (because at least I have the vinaigrette).  I appreciate a useful table of contents.  Nothing wrong with "content" so far.

But using "content" to stand for "meaning" or "text" or "information," for example, drives me nuts.  This is a personal problem, I realize, and fundamentally it's a knee-jerk reaction to something that's different from what I've experienced in the past.  That said, I'm going to vent my spleen against "content" and try to articulate why I think we ought to avoid what I think are its most obnoxious uses.

So You Want to Write Marketing Copy, er, "Content"

In marketing and business, it's important to be first.  I get it.  That's part of the motivation for neologisms that come from these sectors: You coin a term, it takes off, it gets used in a million hashtags, and your ad team and/or (ideally) whatever product or service you're advertising is the new hot stuff.  I think this need to be first is part of what drives the innovative use of words in ways that don't conform with the ways they used to be used.  It's why "gifting" is alright as a verb and "grow your business" has taken the place of "increase the amount of business you're doing": it's a new and unusual way to use a word (in these cases, turning a noun into a verb and vice versa).  If you're part of the "in" crowd in marketing, you'll be able to speak the language, and the shibboleths change regularly.  "Content" is one such marker, as are terms like "marketing collateral," "friction," and "storyscaping."  If you can use these words in a sentence in front of a large room of people who work in marketing without checking the faces of the audience to make sure that what you said made sense, consider yourself already part of their priesthood.

When I first started hearing "content" in the context of marketing a few years ago, I had to stop to process the word's meaning.  It was simply so different from what I was used to.  Over the years, as I heard about "content generation," "content marketing," "content mapping," etc., etc., I did not become inured to what what to me was a strange usage.  I became increasingly irritated by it.  To me, "content" means something along the lines of "stuff within a container," not "writing" or "text."

Why "Content"?

There's an easy explanation for why we might use the word "content" to stand for what it usually stands for in marketing, which could include but is not limited to writing, text, information, graphics, art, certain types of documents/texts (e.g., blog posts, whitepapers, emails, flyers, tweets), and ideas.  In other words, "content" sometimes stands for the ideas themselves and sometimes for the media through which those ideas are communicated.

Note the wording I used there: the media through which ideas are communicated.  I actually wrote "the media in which those ideas are communicated" and erased it (rather: deleted it).  There a few common metaphors for writing that are well-studied in the field of rhetoric and composition, and two of the best-known such metaphors are the "container metaphor" and the "conduit metaphor."  Both are represented in my changed sentences: the container metaphor is apparent if I write something like "the media in which ideas are communicated," while the conduit metaphor is used in a phrase like "the media through which ideas are communicated."  Both metaphors are perfectly natural, because we regularly take abstract ideas -- like the notion of communication -- and talk about them as if they were physical things -- like a pneumatic tube that can serve as a conduit from my mind to yours, or a box that I can place something in and then hand to you -- which makes it easier to talk about those abstractions.  Happens all the time.  Nothing inherently wrong with using a metaphor to help you communicate.

I won't rehash what Philip Eubanks has said well about the pros and cons of the conduit metaphor (you can read it for yourself if you're lucky enough to have access to College Composition and Communication vol. 53 no. 1), and I'll only touch on what Darsie Bowden wrote many years ago (1993) about the container metaphor here (CCC vol. 44 no. 3).  Essentially, Bowden says that while the container metaphor makes sense, according to metaphor theory, and while it can be useful, if we use it without maintaining a critical awareness of its limitations, we might be eliding some important aspects of communication.  In short, we end up thinking that communication is just a thing in a box, and we risk thinking that the value of the communication is in the fact of its existence, not in the actual ideas being communicated or the means by which they are communicated. 

I'll quote her extensively here in a moment, but first, think about your Twitter feed, especially if you don't use lists to help separate the wheat (the accounts that provide links to original, useful, timely information) from the chaff (accounts that post rehashed retweets of marginally interesting posts that are really just there for the sake of posting and, perhaps, catching one more person's attention, getting one more retweet, or gaining some sort of attention of questionable significance and value).  "Content" there can really be a massive waste of time, space, and energy, content for the sake of content, not communication.

Here's a quote from Bowden's article:

When students are encouraged to "pour" what is in their heads onto paper, they are being encouraged to view not only the text as a container but the mind as well.  More importantly, they are being asked to subscribe to a view of knowledge that enables its transfer from one container to another (from mind to text).  Within the container schema, knowledge becomes a commodity that can be transferred from mind to paper.  Once transferred and "contained," knowledge then acquires a character of locatability, which enables it to exist-conceptually, at least-both within the mind and within a paper.  Knowledge becomes static and decontextualized.  It can exist within a paper or inside a person's head and have little or nothing to do with the social and historical world outside.

In other words, "content" can quickly become devoid of value.  How many tweets have you seen that have been retweeted from six degrees of separation from the original post, and the article linked was published five years ago and is only of marginal relevance?  That's what Bowden refers to here.

If Not "Content," What?

A modest proposal: Instead of "content," let's start getting specific.  I don't say that I'm a "content-generator."  I say I'm a writer and editor.  My friends who are "content managers" are, more accurately, brand managers who specialize in communicating in a variety of media, through language and graphics, to many different audiences.  My sub-contractors who write "content" are, in fact, writing articles, blog posts, resumes, cover letters, websites, etc.

And here's why getting specific is important: When we get specific about what we do, it's easier to command respect for it.  I'm not just generating content that can be put into a box and shipped off to wherever.  I'm not FedEx, and neither are the many documents that I write and edit.  What I do takes expertise and specialization, even if it's writing clickbait (try writing a clickbait article yourself and see how difficult it is; it's far easier for someone with training in rhetoric and genre theory, I promise you).  What my sub-contractors do takes flair, creativity, and time.  My friends who work in graphic design and video production don't just make content that's easily consumed and passed by (through?); they're working with art that affects some of the most deeply-recessed parts of our human cognitive processing of communication and emotion that we have trouble describing what their work does to us.

Getting specific about what we're doing when we're "generating content" may help us start thinking about what exactly is valuable about the communication that we're generating and sharing.  If I say that I'm writing a blog post, that triggers the concept of "blog post" in the mind of whoever I'm talking to; suddenly, standards and expectations are part of the mix.  "Content," however, is so vague that it's functionally devoid of standards and expectations.  It simply is whatever I say it is.  There's freedom in that, but there's also an easy way to side-step having to meet, let alone confront or raise or change, expectations.  If we start getting specific -- saying "I create customer-testimonial videos and other graphics for online marketing campaigns" instead of "I create content for online marketing campaigns" -- we might encourage ourselves to be sure that what we're creating is worth its description.  It's a bridge too far, perhaps, for me to say "And this might lead to fewer phatic retweets of ancient articles that contribute nothing new or original to any worthwhile conversation," but a girl can hope, right?

Regardless, increased specificity is rarely harmful.  For the next week or so, if you find yourself saying "content," stop and ask yourself what you mean by that word.  Try substituting in something more specific.  It will be hard at first and will take more time and words.  But it might be worth it, especially if you're describing your own work.

How I Used to Teach the Which/That Comma Rule

For some reason, I find myself adding a lot of commas before the word "which" lately.  It's just a fluke; I don't think it's due to a moral failing of our educational system or a lack of personal fortitude on behalf of the writers I'm working with.

But it does make me sad that I'm not still in the classroom teaching students my awesome method for remembering when and why, more or less, to use a comma before "which" and when to use "which" rather than "that" in the first place.  So I've decided to share my method here instead!  I hope that all you undergraduate writers and writing teachers will find it useful.  Remember: sharing is caring!

Don't Trust Your Gut

The conversation usually began like this: I'd ask my students how they know they should use "that" instead of "which."  More often than not, they would have no concrete idea of why; they just used their intuition, if they were native speakers, and while trusting your gut may have been good enough for Stephen Colbert, it's not sufficient for command of the rules/common standards of US English. 

Here's one of my favorite examples to use in class:

This spacesuit, which I wore yesterday, was made in 1965.  It is kept in the museum that I told you about last night.

For not-entirely-arbitrary reasons, in US English "which" is a non-restrictive relative pronoun in contexts like these, and "that" is a restrictive relative pronoun (as opposed to being a demonstrative, as in "Look at that spacesuit," but I digress).  Accepting that seemingly-but-trust-me-not-totally-arbitrary rule is step one.*

What Makes "Restrictive" Restrictive?

What, after all, is being restricted?  In short: the meaning of the word that the pronoun stands for.  In the first sentence, when we start the second clause, after the comma, we need to re-establish the grammatical subject, and it sounds clunky to say "This is the spacesuit, the spacesuit I wore yesterday," so we use a pronoun to cut down on the wordiness (and yeah, you could remove "which" and "that" altogether from these sentences, but you're just eliding the re-establishment of the grammatical subject if you do so, and I'm trying to explain the grammar to you, so play along with me here).  In the case of the first sentence, the use of "which" should indicate that the additional information about the object being described--the spacesuit--is information that is not necessary for identifying the object.  That is, the fact that I wore the spacesuit yesterday does not restrict the meaning of "spacesuit" in this sentence to the object being described; it is merely a further detail, not a detail that distinguishes this spacesuit from any other.  The restricting/defining information in that sentence is probably (depending on context) the fact that it was made in 1965.

Now, what about that second sentence?  Well, the fact that I've used "that" should indicate that the additional description of the object being described--the museum--distinguishes or restricts the meaning.  Without that additional information--namely, the fact that I told you about the object (in this case, the museum) last night--you could be confused about which museum I'm referring to.  The fact that I had to add extra information to restrict or specify the meaning of "museum" means that I need to use the restrictive relative pronoun "that."  If I'd used "which" in the second sentence, it would suggest that we both already knew which museum we were talking about, and the fact that I told you about it last night would have been already-assumed or non-restrictive information.

These are just some basic examples.  Distinguishing restrictive from non-restrictive can get pretty tricky.  For example, restrictiveness can also be a property of other types of appositive phrases that aren't headed up by a relative pronoun, but that's a bridge to cross on another day and in another post...

If You Have to Trust Your Gut, Follow This Rule

What I used to tell my students was that if they could understand when to use "which" and when to use "that," they'd have better control of the language.  But, since the restrictive/non-restrictive principle gets tricky, I also gave them what I called the back-door rule.  If they couldn't figure it out but had a pretty good feeling in their guts that they should use "that" or "which" in any given case, they could remember to use commas before "which" using this simple rule, which (hey, hey!) I drew on the board:

View fullsize

This worked particularly well for the science-minded in the class.  It's a basic chiasmus, or crossing of opposites to achieve balance.  If you think of non-restrictive and no comma as being "negative" and their opposites--the use of a comma and the use of restriction--as being "positive," then you can easily remember that the positive always goes with the negative.  Restrictive "that" should have a negative--no comma.  And the negative non-restrictive "which" should always include or add a comma.  You might be relying on your gut to tell you whether to use "which" or "that," but at least your punctuation will be right, and most instructors grading papers (whether they're teaching history, physics, or English) who get bent out of shape about such things only care about whether the punctuation is correct because, frankly, they couldn't distinguish restrictive from non-restrictive if their lives depended on it.

So there you have it!  Here's hoping my neat little diagram is helpful!

*One important note: the rules about using "that" or "which" exclusively as restrictive or non-restrictive relative pronouns, respectively, don't apply so uniformly in UK English.  They're a bit more liberal with "which" as a restrictive relative pronoun out there!

A Quick Fix for Impossible Sentences

Nearly every day, I find myself grappling with an impossible sentence.  It's an occupational hazard.  Most of the time, they don't bother me.  This is probably because I think of editing as an exercise in verbal Tetris: I get not-entirely-random bits of information, sort them into an order that fits (grammar), produces meaning (semantics), and achieves some effect (pragmatics).  When the words stack up just right, I get to move up a level.  Bit by bit, everything's supposed to come together in a way that fits.

But what happens when it doesn't work that way?  What happens when pile of blocks at the bottom of the screen looks like a jumbled mess? 

A jumbled mess is what an impossible sentence feels like.  There are words there, yes, but they don't make sense, or they've been used to make all the sense all at once, or their sense is ambiguous at best.  Trying to straighten them out just seems to make them harder to deal with. 

So You Think You've Got an Impossible Sentence.  How Do You Fix It?

In an ideal scenario, I can talk or write to the author of the impossible sentence in question.  I'll read the sentence aloud or have the author read the sentence aloud, and then I'll say something like: "So, I wasn't sure of what you meant in that sentence" or "There was a lot going on in that sentence."  And the clincher: "Forget the writing.  Step outside the paper for a moment.  Don't think about the imaginary audience you're trying to impress or convince.  Just between you and me, what are you really trying to say in this sentence?  What is it that you're trying to get it to do?"

I get one of two types of responses to that question:

Type 1: The long explanation about whatever is being asserted in the impossible sentence. Sometimes it takes my student or client two, four, six, or more sentences to explain what he or she was really trying to say.  My response to that is straightforward: "How many sentences did it take you to explain that to me?"  Wait for response.  "And you're trying to fit all that into one sentence?  Try writing all that out, just like you said it.  Then determine whether it's so long and detailed that it needs to be its own paragraph.  You can polish up the language later, after you get the ideas clarified."

Type 2: The brief explanation about whatever is being asserted, plus a long explanation about why it was necessary to put that idea in that particular place in the paper.  This is the more-likely response for writers who have an impossible sentence that repeats an idea that's stated elsewhere in the paper (i.e., that's repetitious).  Depending on the circumstances, I would suggest that the author use multiple sentences to explain the idea and how it connects to other ideas in the paper (see Type 1, above), or I'd recommend leaving out whatever has been unnecessarily repeated.

Possibly Making Sense from an Impossible Sentence

Here's an example from a recent paper I edited (the words have been changed to protect the innocent, but the parts of speech and punctuation in this sentence are the same):

The artwork is a golden arch with an obvious curve, the work different from Freud’s principle of impulse control but it can rapidly abstract viewer’s gaze.

That's a whopper.  In this case, I didn't have access to the writer to ask "What are you really trying to say here?" about the sentence.  So I had to employ the Tetris strategy: What are the main blocks of this sentence?  How do they make sense independently?  How can I rearrange and reshape them so that they achieve a pragmatic and semantic purpose?

I identified the following blocks: the artwork, the golden arch, the golden arch's curve, the principle of impulse control, the viewer's gaze, and the rapid [something] of the viewer's gaze.

Already, I can see that I don't understand the vocabulary choice for "abstract," which is like being able to see the left-hand side of a straight-line piece in Tetris without being able to see its right-hand side (is it an L-shaped piece, or is it just straight?).  Here's how I rearranged the sentence to give it some clearer meaning:

The artwork is a golden arch with an obvious curve.  Its appeal is not based on Freud’s principle of impulse control, despite the fact that the artwork immediately draws the viewer’s gaze to the work’s abstract features.

I made sure to append a note to that change asking the author to ensure that the edit preserved the intended meaning.

In short, if you're looking for a quick fix to a sentence that's hard to read or doesn't make sense, set back and ask "What are you really trying to say here?"  If the answer takes more than one brief sentence, consider breaking your impossible sentence into smaller bits.  If it requires lots of apologia about trying to connect the dots to other ideas in the paper, try simplifying your points and eliminating redundancies. 

If all else fails, you can always ask your friendly neighborhood copyeditor to take a look and provide some solutions!

"The house caught on fire; also...": Why you should avoid using "also" as a transition

If there's one transition word that I wish I could wage holy (and, admittedly, self-righteous) jihad against, it's also.  As a transition, also is not your friend.  It is not here to save you.  And using it will only mark you as the noob to writing that you may or may not be.

Before I get too wound up, let me clarify: Today's lesson is especially geared to less-experienced writers, especially high-school and college-level writers, in addition to new teachers of English who're struggling to articulate why they feel queasy when they see a sentence that begins with "Also."  Even if you don't fall into one of these categories, keep reading, because I explain a principle about transitions that's helpful for everyone.

What's the problem with also?

There's nothing inherently wrong with the word also.  I'm not here to argue that it should never be used, that it's best to avoid it, or any of the other typical, universalizing, overly-generalized dicta that other writing gurus are in the habit of nailing to doorposts.  Despite my opening "jihad" metaphor, what I really want is not for us to abolish the word also but to understand that it is a top contender for Weakest and Therefore Most Useless Transition Word and should probably be avoided on those grounds.

What's the difference between transition also and other uses of also?

First, let's clarify that also, as a part of speech, is an adverb, so it's got lots of uses, functionally (rather than grammatically) speaking. 

Here's an example of also put to good use:

There are three good paths for walking to the store, but there are also two good paths for biking there.

In this case, "also" modifies the coordinating conjunction, indicating not a contradiction but an addition that is different.  "And" could replace "but," but the use of "but" carries with it a functional emphasis on contradiction, and "also" manages to squeeze in some of the additive sense that "and" would have added.

Now, here's an example what I'm calling transition also:

There are many reasons to adopt this policy.  Also, several experts have called for similar policy measures to be taken.

What the writer is trying to do here is tie the first sentence to the next one.  Sometimes, I see "also" used like this but with a semicolon instead of a period used between the two sentences/independent clauses.  Doesn't matter; the problem is still the same: the transition here is weak and vague.

I used to tell my students that also could be used to tie together any two sentences and make it seem as if there's a transition there without there actually being any there there (so to speak).  My favorite example of this was:

I went to the store today.  Also, the house caught on fire.

Huh?  What's the relationship of these two ideas?

See, that's the principle of transitions: they should always clarify what you think the relationship of Idea A is to Idea B.  If your transition misses the mark either by being vague or inaccurate, you're not doing your readers any favors.  You're suggesting that the path from Idea A is up some stairs and around the corner when in fact the way to Idea B requires crossing a highway and walking six blocks.  There's a slight difference between "and" and "but also" and a much bigger difference between "therefore" and "however."  It's up to you to help your readers know where they're going in your writing.

Still not sure how also is vague?  Try substituting another more-specific transition word in its place.  The results reveal just how comically vague also is:

I went to the store today.  Therefore, the house caught on fire.

I went to the store today.  However, the house caught on fire.

I went to the store today.  Alternatively, the house caught on fire.

I went to the store today.  Consequently, the house caught on fire.

How can you remediate transition also?

I see transition also all the time in my EFL students' and clients' writing.  Whenever I see it, I ask the writer, "What's the relationship between Idea A and Idea B?  Why did you put this sentence [or phrase] after the first one?"  In the case of my favorite example, it's hard to explain how going to the store is related to the house catching on fire.  If there's no way to explain it, I'd tell the writer to reconsider organization: Maybe one of the sentences needs to find a more appropriate place in the paper.  If the writer can articulate the reason, then I suggest that we make that reason clearer.  Chronology seems to be the most likely reason for putting Idea A (about going to the store) next to Idea B (the house catching on fire), in my example, so I might suggest using "Subsequently" as an alternative to "Also."

So, the next time you find yourself writing "also," especially at the beginning of a sentence, stop to wonder whether you're using it as the glue that ties ideas together (not just in a list or in phrases like "and also" or "but also").  If you are, ask yourself whether there's a more-specific term you could use to express that relationship.  Your readers will thank you.

Merry Christmas! Welcome to the the all-New LSE

Our slogan at LSE is, "Writing should be joyful," so I've picked the most joyful day of the year to relaunch LSE and get a fresh start for 2017!

Why the change?  Most of my returning clients know that 2016 was a very difficult year for me: illnesses, an unexpected relocation, and an unexpected death.  In the wake of having my reset-button hit, I decided that LSE needed a fresh start and a change of focus, too.

What's changing?  When I started LSE, I knew that I could rely on my experience and expertise in rhetoric and composition to meet almost any editorial need, and I knew quite a few fellow freelancers, graphic designers, speech-writers, and writers who would be excellent partners in developing more-involved projects or projects outside my areas of expertise.  But I've decided to shift the business's focus to the areas of editing and writing that I care about most: working on professional documents with small- and mid-sized companies (mostly in finance and other for-profit areas), working with academics (primarily for journal articles), and writing education.

What about that "education" part of the change?  It was always my intention with LSE to give away my knowledge about writing, editing, linguistics, and the discipline of rhetoric and composition.  That's why the Oratoria exists!

LSE is still here to help make writing joyful for you.  No matter what kind of writing and editing project you have, no matter what sector or what discipline, you can always reach out to LSE to get advice.  We’re open for consultations. Even if LSE isn't the right place to get affordable help with your project, chances are that we can put you in touch with another service that can help you, and as the LSE founder, I’m always happy to give you my honest, professional opinion about your project.

Want to know how LSE can help you with that writing project you've been putting off?  Eager to get a project off the ground in the new year?  Contact us today!