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The bid committee and I

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, communications, marketing, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, Whistler, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »

When the news came that Vancouver would be hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics, I was jogging down from the Stadium-Chinatown Skytrain station to the Yaletown office where I was working. I didn’t hear the announcement, but I heard a cheer go up from the offices on all sounds of me.

Personally, I was surprised. At that point, I had no strong feelings about the Olympics one way or the other. But I had thought that the logistical problems of keeping people moving along the road between Vancouver and Whistler would prevent the bid from being successful. Even more importantly, my own contact with the bid committee hadn’t impressed me much.

About six months earlier, I had applied for a job as a writer on the bid. It wasn’t a position that strongly interested me, but I thought it worth a hour or two of my time to satisfy my curiosity. So, I duly strapped myself into my interview suit, stripped any obvious signs of eccentricity from my person, and presented myself at the Gastown office of the bid committee.

I was interviewed by two women who I quickly classified as marketing and communication workers. That isn’t prejudice; I’ve done similar work myself, after all. But, after a while, you get to know the signs. The two women talked in generalities, and displayed an artificial optimism and enthusiasm at all times. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine them taking part in a casual Friday.

Mostly, the conversation went well enough, so far as conversations during a job interview can ever be said to go well. But when I asked about how the logistical problems might be overcome, the women’s reply boiled down to, “Somehow, everything will work out..” I could also see that, in their minds (and probably on their clipboards), I had set a black mark against my name. That was all right; their replies had cost them points with me, too.

However, two other points were what really disturbed me. First, they said that working on the bid committee would be no guarantee of a continued job if the bid was successful. Since I was sure that the leaders of the committee would land jobs in Vanoc, that seems a lack of loyalty to staff members.

Secondly, as part of the interview, they asked me to go home and write seven or eight pages on how I would promote the Olympics. That is a considerable effort to ask someone to do on spec. Combined with the lack of a guarantee of continuation, I concluded that the request showed a cavalier attitude towards employees. I thought for a couple of days, then phoned the interviewers to say that I would not be responding to their request and that the job no longer interested me.

I have no idea whether those particular women found work with Vanoc. I no longer even remember their names. But it seems to me that their attitudes are echoed in everything I’ve heard from Vanoc ever since, from the feeling that problems would work themselves out to the assumption that local residents will put their lives on hold for the duration of the games next month.

It is not an echo that promotes happy thoughts about how the games will be organized and what the after-effects will be. Frankly, it has kept me from supporting the games ever since. I might talk about the financial and social costs, but behind them is an emotional core of distrust based on this one brief encounter.

This attitude puzzles people from outside the Vancouver area. When I was in Calgary last spring, people were surprised by my lack of enthusiasm. Remembering the Calgary games twenty years and the very different social attitudes in which they took place, everyone assumed that I must be looking forward to the occasion. They were surprised by my lack of enthusiasm, even when I explained my reasons. I’m not sure they ever did understand.

However, I don’t think my attitude is unique in anything other than its origins. No doubt it’s the company I keep, but I’ve found that only one in four – or thereabouts – actually supports the upcoming games. The intial cheering at the news of the bid just doesn’t seem to have lasted.

In fact, I’ve only found one person who defended the games with any passion, and her criticisms were bizarre – she argued that nobody who objected or even questioned the games should use the newly improved highway to Whistler (never mind that she also insisted on the official line that such improvements were not part of the costs of the games). But of eight or nine people in the store, nobody felt like taking her side in the discussion.

Maybe more people will show enthusiasm as the games approach, but, I don’t expect that most people will. The average person in the Vancouver region seems resigned to the games, largely indifferent and if anything mildly hostile, although you wouldn’t know that from the media.

You might say that, for most of us, 2010 will be divided into two parts: enduring the preparations and the games themselves, and the rest of the year. And, like most people, I find myself looking forward to the rest of the year far more than the preparations and the games. If I became dubious earlier than others, it is because I was exposed to the spirit of the games earlier than others.

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Closing paragraph strategies

Posted in Bruce Byfield, closing paragraphs, composition, essays, Personal, rhetoric, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »

(The following is a handout from my days of teaching first year composition at university. It consists of some informal examples of closing paragraph strategies, but should be equally useful for formal essays. Anyone who finds it useful can reproduce it, so long as they give me credit for it)

Summary:
Will North Americans continue to take their high standard of living for granted? Probably not. As we have seen, North Americans use more energy, buy more goods, and create more garbage than even the Europeans. Yet this state of affairs is barely fifty years old, and already it is changing. The North American standard of living has been declining for over a decade, and, as Europe and Japan retool for modern technology faster than we are able or willing to, there is every sign that this decline will continue. Indeed, many people believe that we are overdue to return to a more equitable rate of consumption. Perhaps in another century, historians will look back at Twenty-First Century North America in astonishment, and shake their heads with both envy and disgust.

Final Generalization:
As these examples demonstrate, social networking is transforming the way people work as well as how they play. Clearly, our lives are in the middle of a transformation whose end we cannot yet perceive..

Final Example:
One final example will illustrate the need to quarantine exotic birds. In 1934, a small shipment of cockatiels with Newcastle’s disease arrived in Holland without going through quarantine. Before the birds could be traced and destroyed, thousands of domestic poultry had to be destroyed to stop the spread of the disease, and dozens of farmers lost their livelihood. To make matters worse, 39 people caught Newcastles’ and died from the disease. Ever since, Dutch officials have insisted on a three month quarantine for imported hookbills. Without such precautions, the risk of financial health and illness are simply too high.

Final Analogy:
The disappearance of homo neanderthalis and the prevalence of homo sapiens can be compared to the Norman conquest of England. Contrary to popular belief, there was no widespread slaughter of the Anglo-Saxon population of England by the Normans. Many Anglo-Saxon leaders had died in battle, and many of those who were left chose to swear allegiance to the Normans rather than face execu­tion. Few of the middle-class or laborers were killed, for the simple reason that they were needed to run the country. Anglo-Saxon language, customs and culture were modified, but not destroyed by the Normans. Four centuries later, neither Norman nor Saxon existed–they had all become English. If such assimilation has happened so quickly in historical times, it could just as easily happen in prehistoric times as well, especially since we cannot pinpoint the disappearance of the Neanderthals to within more than five or seven thousand years. It seems likely that, instead of being slaughtered, the Neanderthals inter-married with homo sapiens, disappearing as a distinct species, but contributing their genes to present-day humanity.

Call for Action:
Such evidence indicates that the attempt to do without government automobile testing is a failure. Over half of the vehicles on B. C. roads are mechanically faulty, and over two-thirds do not meet federal emission standards. Clearly, the provincial government must act at once to put an end to this dangerous situation.

Mention of Related Issues:
Obviously, this paper cannot cover all aspects of the question. Given that some dinosaurs were warm-blooded and evolved into birds, what happened to the rest of them? Was giganticism an evolutionary experiment that failed spectacularly? Or did the dinosaurs have some help–perhaps the meteor strike that some theorists have speculated on recently. Or are modern reptiles the direct descendants of the dinosaurs? These are large questions, but they need to answered before our understanding of what happened to the dinosaurs is complete.

Denouement:
There is little left to say. Defeated in his attempts to bring responsible government to the Crown Colony of Vancouver Island, Richard Blanshard returned home to England. He married well, and became known in his home town for his charities. He never held public office again. James Douglas, his successor as governor, continued to represent the interests of the Hudson Bay Company in the area for another twenty years, doing all he could to prevent the rise of responsible government. Douglas became rich, and the center of high society in Victoria. Today, he is known as “the Father of British Columbia” by people too ignorant of the past to know how hard he fought to prevent its existence.

Rhetorical Question:
The issue, then, is clear: do we have the right to imprison and mistreat animals so that we can view them at our ease? Or does anyone dare to suggest that we have no responsibility to our less intelligent neighbors?

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Opening paragraph strategies

Posted in Bruce Byfield, composition, education, essay writing, opening paragraphs, Personal, teaching, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 4, 2009| 1 Comment »

(The following is a handout from my days of teaching first year composition at university. It consists of some informal examples of opening paragraph strategies, but should be equally useful for formal essays. Anyone who finds it useful can reproduce it, so long as they give me credit for it)

Explanation of Topic’s Importance (Anticipatory Summary):
Computers abound in our houses and offices, exchanging information via modems. Programmers are constantly finding new applications for existing software, and computer technicians are refining the hardware so fast that a new computer is no longer state of the art six months after it is sold. We live in a computer-dominated age, and every citizen should have some knowledge of computers. They make routine decisions in business, education and government, and monitor our defense systems. They help individuals to manage their private affairs, to organize their personal records, and to access goods and services, and municipali­ties and legislatures depend on them for planning future develop­ment. Since a knowledge of computers is so necessary for all of us, computer education–“computer literacy,” as the jargon has it–plays a significant role in our society. To understand this role, we must first consider the importance of computer education to the individual citizen and to the country as a whole; next, we must assess the present quality of computer education at all levels; and, finally, we must examine the ways in which computer education can be improved.

Examples:
For many years, automatic vending machines have dispensed such products as salted peanuts, chewing gum, cigarettes, soft drinks and candy bars. Now these robot sellers are becoming more ver­satile. At one eastern airport, the simple act of inserting a coin in a slot will get you a magazine, a pen, a toothbrush, a pocket comb, a handkerchief, a necktie, a suit of underwear, a cup of hot coffee or chicken soup, a set of puzzle toys, a spray of perfume, an insurance policy or a shoe-shine. There are other machines that will take your blood pressure or give you a thirty-second dose of pure oxygen. One corporation has designed an automatic snack bar–a cluster of automatic vending machines that offer toasted sandwiches, hot soup, chili, baked beans and hot pastries and pies. Another firm has produced an automatic cafeteria with a menu of over fifty dishes, including a roast-turkey dinner; the machines even say “thank-you” in a computer-generated voice. These are only a few examples of the many types of vending machines. How are these mechanical conveniences constructed? What effect do they have on buying habits? As we shall see, the vending machine plays a major role in modern commerce.

Definition:
Although manufacturers are reluctant to discuss it except in general terms, copyright violation is becoming increasingly common in our society. Briefly, copyright violation may be defined as the unauthorized use of an artistic product such as a book or a software program by anyone other than the creators or their representatives. It may involve the use of material in slightly altered form, or the copying and distribution of the work, with or without profit. Some people, especially artists, are violently opposed to copyright violation; others, especially software users, consider it their right and something which is inevitable. However it is viewed, it raises ethical issues of great importance.

Cause and Effect:
For the past two years, I have run an average of four to six miles every morning. The results have been amazing. The daily exercise keeps me calm and alert for the rest of the day. It allows me to eat what I want without worrying about calories, and to sleep well every night. It gives me more energy, and, most of all, it gives me a self-confidence that carries over into everything I do. My experience has convinced me that everyone should have some form of daily exercise.

Comparison and Contrast:
For many years, we have thought of the Vikings as bloodthirsty savages who did their best to destroy European civilization. Now, we are starting to understand that this view is too limited. The Vikings were certainly no more bloodthirsty than those they attacked (who generally defeated them, after all), and in many ways they were more advanced. At a time when merchant ships hugged the coast both for safety and for ease of navigation, the Vikings were building sturdy yet light boats that were capable of surviving all but the roughest storms, and boldly sailing across the open ocean using their navigation skills. At a time when most people lived and died within ten miles of where they were born, the Vikings ranged from North American to Russia, and from Greenland to central Africa. Most European art during the Dark Ages was a crude attempt at representational art; the Viking had an intricate abstract art style that we are only now starting to appreciate. Similarly, while most European literature was oral and poetic, the Vikings had complex poetry and detailed prose stories about the deeds of their ancestors. Until early in the twentieth century, a woman in France or Italy had little say in who she would marry, and almost no right to property or divorce; a thousand years ago in Iceland, women had all these rights under written law. As archaeologists have started to reevaluate Viking culture, we have learnt that, far from the horn-helmeted savages of popular imagination, the Vikings were a literate and sophisticated people who were probably closer to us in their assumptions than the southern Europeans of the Dark Ages.

Rhetorical Question:
Can chimpanzees talk in sign language, or do they simply learn what to do to get what they want? Are dolphins and whales possessed of an intelligence equal to ours, but subtly different in nature? Can parrots really have the intelligence of a five year old child? Biologists are divided about the answers to such questions, but the fact that these questions can be asked at all challenge our assumption of our uniqueness. How the question is eventually answered will have a sweeping effect upon our religions, science and ethics.

Illustrative Anecdote:
Once, I made the mistake of telling the woman who was cutting my hair that I wrote poetry. “Must be nice,” she said. “Just light up a joint, sit back and wait for inspiration, then write whatever comes into your head.” At the time, I could have told her that I didn’t smoke tobacco, let alone anything stronger, but, when I think of all that I have learned in the intervening years, I realize that I could have said a good deal more. Like most people, she had a romantic view of writing that is almost totally unrelated to the reality. The truth is not only that few writers use any stimulants stronger than coffee (at least, while they are writing), but also that they hardheadedly plug away at lonely and time-consuming work that, far from being easy, can ruin your nerves in a week if you take it too seriously.

Opposing View to Be Refuted:
Many people think that keeping parrots is like keeping fish. Just as you keep fish in a bowl, feed them, and sit back and watch them, so you keep parrots in a cage, feed them, and sit back and watch their antics. Pet-store owners tell me that this assumption is so strong that some people buy parrots to match the decor of their living rooms. I don’t know how many people act so careless­ly, but I do know that they are in for a surprise. Far from being passive animals, parrots are curious, intelligent birds, that have to be watched constantly and demand hours of attention each day.

Relevant Quote:
“Violence,” Isaac Asimov writes in his Foundation series, “is the last refuge of the incompetent.” Salvor Hardin, the character who adopts this aphorism as his motto, goes to great lengths to prove it, inevitably outwitting his enemies when he applies it. Cynics may doubt that avoiding violence in real life is as easy as it is for Hardin, but, if my personal experience is any indication, Asimov may have a point. Admittedly, avoiding violence is harder than giving into your impulses, and requires more patience. Yet the simple fact of making the effort is worthwhile for at least two reasons: it leads to creative thinking about problems, and, if successful, to more permanent solutions.

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Invalid arguments

Posted in Bruce Byfield, composition, education, essay writing, invalid arguments, logical fallacies, Personal, teaching, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 23, 2009| 2 Comments »

(The following is a handout from my days of teaching first year composition at university. It is meant to be a very basic introduction to the complicated study of logical fallacies. Anyone who finds it useful can reproduce it, so long as they give me credit for it)

For thousands of years, people have been cataloging invalid arguments. These are arguments are invalid largely because they are illogical. That does not mean that they cannot be extremely effective; the associational fallacy, for example, is the basis of a good deal of advertising. But the illogic does mean that they should not be accepted in an essay, which is meant to be the construction of a logical structure of ideas.

Over-Generalization:
Too large a conclusion is drawn from too specific evidence.
Example: Three regional airlines have just gone bankrupt, and many of the larger lines have discontinued flights on certain routes. The North American commercial transporta­tion system is in chaos.
Airlines are not the only form of commercial transportation, and bankruptcies and discontinued routes might not be enough to justify calling the result “chaos.”

Over-Simplification:
Too many considerations are left out for the conclusion to be valid.
Example: Getting a good grade in English is easy. All you have to do is write essays of the required length and repeat the teacher’s opinion.
Grammar and punctuation, structure, and even original thought are also factors in getting a good grade.

Either/Or:
Only two extreme positions are acknowledged, and no alternatives or mixed positions. Sometimes called “the excluded middle.”
Examples:
a.) America: love it or leave it (a statement made by political conservatives in the 1960s)
b.)What do you want: good grammar or good taste? (a slogan once used by Winston cigarettes)
You can criticize your country and still want to live there, and good grammar has no relation to good taste, so it can hardly be its opposite.

Post hoc ergo procter hoc (Latin, “after this, therefore that”)
Because one event occurs after another, it must be caused by the second event.
Example: I carry a gun so I won’t be robbed. It must work. After I was robbed a year ago, I started carrying a gun, and I haven’t been robbed since.
From this statement alone, you can’t be sure of any cause or effect. The speaker may not be going to the same parts of town as before, or maybe they have just been lucky.

Non sequitur (Latin, “it does not follow”)
No logic exists between two parts of an argument
Examples:
a.) “I made the decision myself, because if we listened to experts, we’d have a tyranny of expertise, and then where would we be?” (John Fraser, former Minister of Fisheries)
b.) “I couldn’t have kicked that girl to death. I wear soft shoes” (a murder’s explanation of why he was innocent)
Why should Fraser insist on making the decision when the whole point of experts is to have someone with advice worth listening to? Similarly, you can still kick with soft shoes – or even when you’re barefoot.

False Analogy
A poor choice of metaphors or of similar situations.
Examples:
a.) Some people cannot be educated. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
b.) A well-run office is like a machine. You should be able to replace people without disturbing the office’s efficiency, just as you can replace a bolt or a gear in a machine.
You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, because silk isn’t made of pigskin, but it’s not clear that people are that inflexible.
As for an office being like a machine, every organization has an informal organization that compensates for problems with the official organization. For instance, a receptionist may compensate for a company officer’s inability to keep to deadlines. Replace that receptionist, and the office may become disorganized.

Ad Hominem (Latin, “to the person”)
Attacking the person who holds the argument, not the argument itself.
Examples:
a.) People who complain about the conduct of Cabinet Ministers have a vested interest in attacking the government.
b.) Ignore what teachers tell you about writing. They’re all frustrated journalists and novelists who aren’t good enough to compete in the commercial market.
Both these statements may be true or false. But, either way, they do no mean that the attack isn’t valid or that their advice isn’t worth following.

Ad Populum (Latin, “to the population”)
An argument that appeals to popular prejudice or belief.
Examples:
a.) Canadians have worked too hard to see their jobs stolen by recent immigrants, or, even worse, to support them when they go on welfare or unemployment.
b.) Everyone is entitled to an opinion.
The first example tries to appeal to anti-immigration prejudice, the second to the popular wisdom of a cliché. Neither replaces a reasoned argument.

Associational Fallacy
A position is made attractive by who holds it – either a famous person, or people with desirable qualities.
Example: I have no crystal ball. But based on our previous mailings, I’m willing to go out on a limb and make a prediction –
Of all the people who receive this invitation, only a very special group will select accept.
You can easily spot them in any crowd. The young in mind, no matter what their age. Eternally curious. Open to new ideas. Alert to future possibilities. Those fortunate few who didn’t stop growing – intellectually – the day they left school. (a magazine subscription offer in the mail)
The implication is that, if you subscribe, you will prove yourself open-minded and curious, too.

Appeal to Authority
A position must be correct because of who holds it. Alternatively, some greater force such as God or a natural order may be mentioned. Note that this has nothing to do with citing who you got an idea from.
Examples:
a.) Biology is destiny. Women must be dependent on men.
b.) It is historically inevitable that capitalism give way to socialism.
Here, “biology” and “historical inevitability” are represented as greater than human forces with which no one can argue.

Circular Argument
An argument in which the first statement depends on the second, and the second on the first.
Example: There are no drafts of the last half of the poem because Shelley never finished it. If he had finished it, we would have had the drafts.
Besides being faulty reasoning in other ways (the drafts could have been lost), this argument simply goes round and round.

Dormitive Explanation
Similar to a circular argument, the second statement simply repeats the first one – bu tthe repetition is disguised because of a change in wording.
Examples:
a.) Opium puts people to sleep because it contains a dormitive principle.
b.) Ted Bundy killed young girls without remorse because he was a sociopath with a disturbed libido.
“Dormitive” is an adjective that refers to sleep, and a sociopath does things without remorse.

Value Judgment
A position is attacked or defended because of its moral or ethical qualities.
Examples:
a.) That is an evil position to hold.
b.) My plan is simply common sense.
Arguments are supposed to be about logic. The morality or ethics of them are irrelevant.

Equivocation
A word or phrase is repeated, but with a different meaning each time.
Examples:
a.) The law is clear on this point. You can’t argue against it any more than you can argue against the law of gravity.
b.) Since evolution is just a theory, my theory about the origins of life are just as good as any biologist’s.
You can’t argue against gravity because it is a description of how the universe works, but the laws of a country are made by humans and regularly argued. Similarly, a theory is just below a law in science – a position that best explains the evidence – while a “theory” in ordinary conversation is just an opinion.

Confusion of Logical Types
A logical type is a level of organization. For example, a body is of a higher logical type than an organ like the liver, and an organ is of a higher logical type than a cell. You cannot compare or contrast different logical types because they create the absurdity of the parts of something being discussed as equal to the thing itself.
Example:
a.) The needs of the individual are more important than the needs of society.
b.) Ignore the details and concentrate on the larger picture.
Give too much priority to either the individual’s or society’s needs, and you are likely to have trouble. In much the same way, the larger picture is composed of details, so you cannot ignore them.

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The keyboard or the pen

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , on September 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »

When did I stop writing with a pen? To my chagrin, I realize that I am unable to tell more closely than the nearest five years. But I wonder what the transition to the keyboard has done to my writing.

These days, I compose almost everything at the keyboard. The exceptions are paragraphs that arrive ready-formed in the middle of the night, or when I’m away from home – and even the away-from-home fragments might soon be written with a keyboard if I get the netbook I’ve been eyeing.

I didn’t used to be that way. I learned to touch-type when I was in high school (and a more boring class I never took), but for years I was convinced that I need to write everything in order to do my best work. So far as I was concerned, typewriters, then computer keyboards were only for the final draft.

I even had a theory about why writing everything by hand was necessary. The movements of my fingers and hands, I speculated, were closely connected to the rhythms of my brain. On a keyboard, I couldn’t get into that rhythm. And I had to write, too, not print, because the connections between the letters helped to keep my thoughts logically connected, too. These things were so important that I had to write out a final draft as neatly as possibly, with a minimum of cross outs so that I knew that my thoughts were well-formed.

By contrast, typing into a computer requires discrete movements of the fingers, rather than actions of the entire hand. The letters were disconnected, so I could get no sense of the rhythm of my thoughts. Moreover, the words on screen looked so authoritative that I was less likely to criticize them. I was sure I could never get the same rhythm or precision on a computer as with a pen.

But as I switched from being a university instructor to a technical writer, the amount of writing I had to do increased by five or six times. Often, too, I had no room for both a keyboard and writing paper at my work station. So, by default, the keyboard began to win out.

Even so, I resisted. When I had to figure out a procedure, I generally roughed it out on paper first. I also planned the structure of documents – or at least their main points – on paper. Nor have I ever entirely abandoned such habits. Whenever I am having problem with structure, I am still apt to outline on paper before writing.

But, increasingly, I had less time to write everything longhand and then type it into the computer. I believe I wrote most of my Maximum Linux columns long hand in 2000-01. And some technical writing like the manual for Progeny Debian was written entirely on the computer at the same time that I was writing press releases longhand. But, by 2005, when I returned to journalism, I was relying on the keyboard and reconciled to it.

Yet exactly when in that period I made the switch is impossible to say. By the time I made it, the switch did not seem so major.
Even so, my half-developed ideas about the advantages of writing by hand do not seem completely wrong, even now (although, these days, I wonder if what I was following was not the rhythm of my thoughts but unconscious sub-vocalizing). I had to learn the rhythm of typing in a way that I never had to learn the rhythm of writing; I grew up with writing, and came to typing later in life. For a while, I actually felt tone-deaf when typing because I hadn’t developed an ear for its rhythms.

There are other differences, too. When writing by hand, I seem more precise. Even now, I have a larger vocabulary than when I type, and more precision in word-choice and in the development of ideas. I am conciser, too – I long ago learned that, as fond as I am of conjunctions, one of the first tasks when I edit something I typed is to breakup the compound sentences.

Analyzing the difference, I have to say that I have a much different style when I type compared to when I write – and that, probably, it is an inferior one. That conviction is why I always prefer to print out a finished piece of writing so I can be more critical of it than I can usually be while staring at the perfectly formed letters on the screen (although, in the last couple of years, my on-line editing has improved immensely, probably through sheer practice).

But against these disadvantages, I can say that, for some reason, I am more able to envision the entire structure of long pieces when I am at a keyboard. Perhaps that’s because the discrete movement of fingers is (if you pardon the pun) more digital and therefore encourages analysis.

Just as importantly, the rhythm of typing is always urging me onwards. That makes first drafts easier to do, and increases my overall work speed. If I need to be sure that I go back through a keyboard-written article and eliminate phrases that fit the rhythm more than the sense, at least I get that all-important first draft done easily, so I have something to respond to. By contrast, when I use a pen, I become too exacting, which is probably one reason I wrote very little by hand compared to by keyboard.

Having written occasional bits of poetry, where precision counts, I find that I regret moving away from writing everything by hand. But as a full-time hack, I count myself lucky for having discovered how much easier completing a work is when I use a keyboard. In fact, if not for keyboards, I probably never could have become a professional writer of any sort. If I have lost something by rarely writing by hand (and I think I have), I have also gained much more – nothing less than increased competence and fluidity.

Under these circumstances, it is hard to be nostalgic about writing by hand. Unless (as happened a few months ago) a power outage obliges me to fall back on handwriting so that I can make a deadline, I don’t expect that I will be returning very often to the pen again. I no longer need to.

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What job skills do English majors have?

Posted in Bruce Byfield, careers, corporate communications, corporatelife, education, employment, English majors, Personal, reading, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 3, 2009| 3 Comments »

What skills do English graduates bring to the job market? More than you might think – and far more than all the jokes about their unemployability would have you believe. In fact, many of the skills developed by English markets while reading novels and poems make them ideal for senior positions.

To start with, English majors may be comfortable with reading. I don’t mean simply that they can read; I mean that they can read with some ease. Many read as instinctively as they hear. It has become a reflex in them to read whatever words are put in front of them.

Moreover, because they are comfortable with reading and have practiced it, they can read more quickly than most people.

These may seem like minor skills, but when you consider the number of reports, emails, memos, and other documents that the average manager has to plow through every week, they mean increased efficiency; I’ve known at least one politician who found that the worst parts of being an elected official was reading the weekly paper work.

Even more importantly, English majors may have learned not only to be comfortable with reading, but to have gained some skill in it.

If you look at the comments beneath almost any article published online, one of the first things that will probably strike you is how few people can read a comment in context. More often, people take things out of context, and come up with the most fantastical over-simplifications, exaggerations, and misreadings.

Nor, naturally enough, can the average person summarize accurately. In fact, most of the critical skills that English majors learn when producing essays are beyond the average person. After all, you can hardly analyze or compare accurately when you haven’t read accurately. These skills are especially important if you need to keep abreast of legal matters, but they matter almost as much when you are writing marketing copy, producing a white paper on technology, or writing a business plan or competitive analysis.

Finally, like most Art students, whose grading is based largely on essays, English majors have probably learned to research – to find sources, absorb them quickly, and evaluate them both on their own and in comparison to other sources. In other words, they have learned to process information, and reach conclusions that are logically based upon that information. This ability is continually useful in daily business, and, on the Internet it can be invaluable. After all, what is the Internet, if not a giant library waiting for an expert to use it?

Of course, not every English graduate possesses these skills. Because the subject matter of English Departments is subjective, students can coast through them more easily than they can in other Departments. Even in English graduate school, you can find students who don’t read unless they have to, and whose essays have more to do with striking a pose than actual analysis.

But, having been a product manager and a director of communications, I can’t begin to tell you how often I’ve looked down at the task that I’m doing and realized that what I learned taking an English degree has helped me breeze through it.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, English major do graduate with employable skills – in fact, ones that will help them if they ever become managers or team leaders among the creatives. The only problem is, they don’t realize everything they’ve learned, so they don’t express it.

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Written tics

Posted in Bruce Byfield, George Orwell, Harry Turtledove, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , on August 10, 2009| 1 Comment »

I like to say that the secret of writing well is an understanding of structure. This emphasis on structure probably explains why I am quick to pick up on any writer’s tics – the favorite phrases that they overuse, and fall back on for an easy means of expression.

Some tics belong to a group of writers. For instance, in the 1990s, every second fantasy and science fiction writer seemed to use the sentence “He shook his head to clear it.” The subject of the sentence was never “she;” even now, you can find over 7800 instances of the sentences on Google with “he” and none with “she.” It was used to express astonishment, or, sometimes, a change of direction in thought. Never mind that nobody actually shakes their head in either circumstance. For a while, the phrase was so common that for a while you could make an accurate guess about who had been reading whom.

However, more often, tics belong to individual writers. George Orwell, for example, was fond of lists of all sorts. More recently, Harry Turtledove, the alternate history writer whom I read when I want some intelligent light fiction, has shown such an extreme fondness for having characters “Am I wrong?” or some variation that I find myself keeping count as I read. Turtledove is an extremely prolific writer, so some tics are almost inevitable in his work, but the question always seems unidiomatic to me, especially when asked by a Nazi officer or a Roman governor, perhaps because – to my ear – it would sound best when spoken in a New York Jewish accent.

For me, the worst sense of this awareness of tics is that I am always painfully aware of my own. When I speak, I am painfully aware of every “um” that I utter. When I write, the situation is far worse. I have managed to retire a habit I had a decade ago of starting a sentence with “sure” to give informal emphasis, but other habits have crept in to replace it, such as my fondness for “chances are.” I also have an unusual fondness for the dash, because I tend naturally to a digressive style with quick asides and changes of thought.

But my most obvious tic is a fondness for conjunctions. Because I think hard about structure, I want to make sure that how one sentence or paragraph connects to another is obvious to anyone who reads my writing. The result is that my first drafts are peppered with “however”s, “but”s, and “similarly”s. Give me the faintest hint of a list, I’ll trot out “to begin with” or “firstly.” I’m not sure where the habit began, but I suspect that it’s legacy of teaching composition to hundreds of first year university and college students.

Such tics are, in fact, a form of cliche. Especially when writing quickly or in a first draft, almost everybody will reach for their own set of cliches because they are more concerned with a rough expression of their thoughts than precision or choosing their words carefully. And nothing’s wrong with that. Even Shakespeare had his share of tics, including a fondness for “the primrose path.”

But if you’re a writer with any interesting in expressing yourself well, you will become aware of your own tics, and try to vary or severely limit them. For instance, my tendency to conjunctions is so strong that one of the first things I do when revising is to see where the connection between thoughts is so obvious that I can leave out the conjunction. Usually, I can delete forty percent of them or more. The same is true of my dashes to an even greater degree.

I’m also on watch for new tics creeping in. Otherwise, I risk becoming a parody of myself, a set of mannerisms rather than someone expressing any serious or entertaining thought.

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Where are the free software news sites?

Posted in Blogging, Bruce Byfield, Free Software, journalism, open source, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2009| 3 Comments »

Nine months ago, Linux.com stopped publishing. Four months later, the announcement came that its web address had been bought by the Linux Foundation. The change wasn’t the end of independent news about the free and open source software (FOSS)community, but it has left a gap that is still unfilled. And, although as a ex-stringer for Linux.com, my bias is obvious, I can’t help thinking that the community is poorer for it.

Don’t get me wrong: Under the Linux Foundation, Linux.com is far more of a community site than the old version ever was, and often more imaginative, too. I’ve written the occasional article for the new version of the site, and hope to write more for it in the future. But the Linux Foundation has never pretended to be interested in a news site, and it runs far more how-tos than news stories. When it does run news, it tends to mention the bare facts, and add some off-the-cuff commentary. The new site simply has different priorities from the old.

Other news sites exist, but many of them appear to be limping along on starvation budgets. Most stories on Linux Planet and Linux Today are recycled, with the exception of editorials and blog entries by editor Carl Schroder. Datamation and Linux Pro Magazine publish only a few new stories online each week. The Heise publishes more, but is spotty in its coverage, and rarely has stories of more than five hundred words. The most consistent producer of new stories is LWN, and its stories are handicapped by the fact that the site publishes its main edition weekly, which means that its in-depth coverage tends to be confined to ongoing rather than breaking news.

Possibly, I’ve missed one or two sites. Also, some blogs or planets provide news and insightful commentary in their own limited subject matter. Yet the fact remains: the FOSS community has less independent news than it had a year ago.

No doubt some people in the community are hardly aware of the fact. They are busy with their own projects and jobs, and have only a passing interest in what is happening in the rest of the community. Still, from the countless comments I’ve had from people who assume that I’ve disappeared, the old Linux.com was where much of the community went to be informed, and they haven’t moved to the other news sites (if they had, they would know where I’ve been, because I’ve written for most of the other sites in the last nine months).

This lack of news concerns me – and not just as a writer who might benefit if the situation changed. The FOSS community is a complex, quickly changing place, and reliable sources of information can help it to function. Although news sites cannot cover everything, and their selection of what to cover may mean that some events are omitted or under-emphasized, they make the effort of keeping informed much easier for each of their readers. Without news sites, keeping informed requires much more effort. In effect, the sites make the effort for all their readers.

Nor is that a bad thing, so long as the sites make good faith efforts to be thorough and uphold journalistic integrity. If they sometimes make mistakes, they will also publish followups. If they publish a commentary expressing one side of a controversial subject, the next week they may publish another commentary that gives the other side. Although individual articles may fail to meet the highest standards, the overall result of having news site is a better informed community – and an informed community, of course, is essential for the proper functioning of a democratic, grassroots organization like FOSS.

Theoretically, blogs could fill the current gap in news sites. And, in practice, that is where many community members are probably turning. But, while I have nothing against blogs (obviously, or I wouldn’t be writing one), they are only a partial substitute for a news site with journalistic standards.

Blogs can announce news, and comment on it. However, with few exceptions, their writers are less likely than journalists to investigate news, or attempt to balance their sources. Most blogs tend to be short on detail, and to miss nuance. All too easily, they serve to repeat rumors and half-truths that a journalist is more likely to investigate and debunk as necessary. Few bloggers even attempt to uphold journalistic standards, which means that you frequently have to be familiar with the blogger’s previous works before knowing if they are a trustworthy source of information. As flawed as journalism often is, at its best, it holds to higher standards than bloggers and is more reliable overall.

As both a reader and a journalist, I would like to see the gap in FOSS news site filled. The question is, how is that possible? So long as they are under budgetary restraints, the remnant news sites are unlikely to increase their coverage. A group of writers might start a new site, but they would need to have other income while they built audience and revenue. Could an investor or a philanthropist help without compromising the independence of a new site?

The question has no easy answer. However, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that finding any answer is important.

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Walking away from a gig

Posted in Bruce Byfield, careers, employment, freelancing, jobs, journalism, Personal, revisions, self-employment, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 27, 2009| 2 Comments »

If you’re a freelancer, you tend to be haunted by the thought of lacking work. Yet today, against all my freelancing instincts, I walked away from a source of income without having anything to replace it. It was not a step I took easily, but I had no choice if I wanted to keep my self-respect.

The problem wasn’t that the editor was doing their job. I’m a professional, and I have no illusions that my work is perfect or can’t be improved upon. I am incredibly inefficient at editing my own work (although a demon at editing others), and I generally welcome observations that make my wording clearer or more accurate.

Why wouldn’t I? An editor who points out problems before they see print makes me look good.

At the same time, I have worked with half a dozen editors, and I know what editing is generally required to make my work presentable. The number of revisions are roughly the same, no matter who the editor, and rarely require more than half an hours’ work – often less, and almost never more than an hour.

With this editor, though, revisions averaged three or four hours. I admit that he received a few pieces that I wrote while ill or under personal stress and that I should not have submitted in their current shape. However, regardless of the quality of each submission, the editor would almost always return a couple of pages of notes, amounting to a rewrite of the article.

Even if I didn’t have considerable experience, I could have guessed that this amount of revisions was unreasonable. The few times the senior editor looked over a submission, the changes were far fewer, and often minor enough that he made them himself rather than send them to me. But I continued to submit articles, partly because the pay was halfway decent, and partly because I told myself that things would get better once I learned the expected style.

The trouble was, the comments never lessened. Each article I wrote for the editor took twice as long to complete as anything else I wrote. If the revisions weren’t about typos, they were about content.

By my count, about one-third of the comments were legitimate improvements to the article. Another third consisted of explanations of how the editor would have written the article or shibboleths such as insisting that an article should never end in a quote, and one-third nonsense such as labeling a long but grammatical sentence a run-on sentence. I didn’t mind the legitimate improvements, but, to say the least, I felt that I was humoring the editor about the rest just to receive a pay cheque.

Asking other writers, I found that I was not entirely being singled out. Other writers told me that they also expected to waste half a day answering the editor’s notes. But the experience of others showed that the editing process was clearly being used to assert the editor’s authority.

In fact, the criticism was so unrelenting that I began to entertain serious doubts about my writing ability. Once or twice, when I was sick, I was so rattled about the thought of the revisions to follow that what I submitted was definitely below my usual standards. Why bother for quality when you know your article is going to be shredded regardless?

Even so, I might have endured the process while I waited for better times if the work had been regular. But the editor started forgetting my submissions – or so he said – and the one article per week slipped to one article every two weeks. Answers to my queries were delayed so that I had less time to research and write. I strongly suspected that the editor was pressuring me to quit so he wouldn’t have to take any action himself.

This morning, a submission of better than average quality received the same treatment as usual. Annoyed, I queried a couple of points – including one about the slant of the story, which I had based on the senior editor’s request – and received the usual ungracious reply.

Suddenly, I had enough. I was receiving less and less money from the editor anyway, so I had little to lose. Abandoning all plans of waiting until I found replacement work, I emailed saying that I was withdrawing the story and would not be submitting more. With an effort, I refrained from saying anything else.

The reply was a cheerful thanks for my work and best wishes for the future. So far as I was concerned, it was proof that my email had given him exactly what he wanted. Anyone who placed any value on my work, or didn’t want me gone would have asked for reasons.

I still feel nervous and wonder if I have done the right thing. But you know what? I feel so much better now that I’m out of a toxic situation that the challenge hardly daunts me. I’ve already been through far worse.

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An evening’s return to pre-computer days

Posted in Bruce Byfield, lightning, Personal, reading, thunder, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , on July 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday, my work on the computer was interrupted by a sustained thunder storm. The storm lasted for hours, so I lost an opportunity to work, but, in doing so, I rediscovered my former pleasure in reading as my dominant leisure activity and in writing by hand.

When the first of the thunder rolled out above me, I was about ten minutes from finishing an article. The sound was distant, but I know how quickly a storm can cross the sky. With memories stirring uneasily about how I had lost a couple of chapters of my thesis to lightning directly overhead, I shut down the computer without waiting for a proper shutdown, and finished the article as best I could by hand. Then I started looking for ways to amuse myself, only to realize that I couldn’t do much of what I wanted to do because of the storm.

I couldn’t go for my daily swim, because a pool is high on the list of places you should avoid during a thunder storm. I did a few chores around the house, but most of what I wanted to do required electricity, so they didn’t seem like sensible ideas, either.

As for leisure activities – well, I didn’t think the stories I heard in childhood about lightning leaping through the screen of a TV were likely, especially these days when cable is more common than an antenna, but I didn’t want to take the chance of being wrong. So, no watching the news or a DVD. No music either, except in the portable player.

I did think of working on the laptop, but the battery was low. Besides, to continue my work, I needed an Internet connection, which would expose the laptop to the same risk as any appliance I might use. I hadn’t felt so out of sorts since the power went down a couple of years ago.

Vaguely, I felt ridiculous. After all, I hadn’t had a computer for much of my life. How had I amused myself before? I imagined myself camping, moping around and complaining about the lack of a wireless access point. How, I wondered, had I become so dependent on electronic devices that I had no personal resources to keep myself busy?

Maybe if I went for a run? But that didn’t seem something I should do in a thunder storm, either.
The trouble was, I hadn’t expected to be interrupted. Listlessly, I put a few DVDs away, and did a bit of tidying her and there, still hoping that the storm would pass and I would get my swim after all.

After three hours, I gave up that idea. From the darkness outside, you might have guessed that sunset had arrived, even though it was still two hours away. Lightning kept catching my eyes whenever my head swung towards the window, and on the porch the rain was rattling against the floor like an animal against the bars of its cage.

Reluctantly, I settled down with a light book. When that paled, I started some writing by hand – the old-fashioned way, the way that I preferred before the pressure of deadlines forced me to learn to compose on a computer. Everything was magnificent, but also a bit frightning.

Both activities felt surprisingly comfortable. How long had it been, I wondered, since I read as my dominant leisure activity, instead of reading a few pages here and there on breaks during my day? Probably not since the last time I was sick in bed, when I couldn’t really appreciate it. As for writing, it had been years since I had scrawled more than a paragraph that arrived in my head in the middle of the night. Yet both were surprisingly pleasant activities – productive, but somehow less rushed than reading or writing on the computer.

Naturally, I logged on to the computer as soon as the storm seemed safely past. Nor do I regret doing so. For efficiency and ease of use, computers are impossible to beat, and in most ways I don’t regret my dependency on them.

Still, there is something to be said for the total relaxation of reading a paperback sprawled back on a couch, and words written by hand somehow seem to express thoughts more accurately than a keyboard could ever hope to.

I doubt that I’ll do either as much as I did in my pre-computer days, but both are sufficiently satisfying that I think I’ll make more time for them. In some ways, I’ve missed them.

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