Indecent Prepositions

Are you excited for this post?

If so, you're probably a lot younger than me.

To baby boomers and our elders, "excited for" was something you said about a person. I was excited for my sister when she landed her first job.

Just recently, I was excited for my gay and lesbian friends when their marriages finally, finally became recognized all over the United States.  They are people, and they matter to me.

But I was excited about the decision that made their marriages legal. It was an event!

All prepositions are not created equal

Words like "about" and "for" are prepositions. They're the useful little signposts that point out relationships. Not the "Is Ben going to get back together with Jennifer?" kind of relationship, but the kind of relationship between words in a phrase or sentence.

But prepositions do have one thing in common with romance: if you put the wrong couple together, they are not going to get along. People observing these mismatched pairs may wonder "What are those two doing together?"

Or, they may even appear to have a different relationship than they do, and that causes confusion. Watch a guy flirting with a woman he thinks is single, and how his face falls when her husband shows up. Using the wrong preposition with the phrase can confuse people just as badly.

What's wrong, and what's just different?

"Excited for" is not wrong. I recognize that. Language changes. Meaning shifts. This particular way of saying things is so popular that I see people older than me online saying they're "excited for" an upcoming event. And nobody has trouble figuring out what it means, when they see it in a context.

(Yes, "excited for" still gives me pause, and I have to remind myself that the person saying it isn't an airhead. But that's my prejudice. It's up to me to handle.)

Similarly, language changes from one place to another. I grew up in Pittsburgh, where, when we're waiting to pay for our groceries, we stand in line. My wife grew up in New York, and she gets impatient about standing on line. She's not wrong--at least about her preposition--even though "buying something online" means something totally different today! 

Which words go together?

Sometimes, though, I see prepositions being used in phrases where they just don't belong. The person writing is just fumbling with the words, as if they were interchangeable. To my mind, there's something squalid about it.

Here are some actual examples. I am not giving the sources to avoid embarrassing the writers.

• "It wasn't IQ that was separating successful students to the ones who struggled." No, it wasn't. You don't separate to. You separate one thing from another.
• "Antisemitism is discriminating people just because they're Jewish." No, it's discrimination against Jews. You need the preposition!
• "Sexual harassment is the right of every American...." That sentence appeared in an otherwise very good student essay. What the writer meant, of course, was "Freedom from sexual harassment is the right of every American."

There are other cases where the preposition you choose expresses a slightly different shade of meaning. "Arguing with" someone is not "arguing against" them. The first might be a private conversation. The second is probably a public debate.

If you choose the wrong preposition, other people may still understand you--or they may misunderstand you completely. Either way, you're making them do all the work. And you're putting yourself at the mercy of their ability to understand. Respect yourself: make the effort to learn and use the word that says what you mean.

My Communicate! Blog

You may have noticed that in this blog, Welcome to My World, I've gone back to musing and ranting about Jewish and political topics from my personal perspective. 

I've moved the more professional topics (about social media, writing, and communications strategy and technique) to a new Communicate! site: http://dennisfischman.wordpress.com.

If you're interested in any of those topics, you're invited to follow that blog too.  And if you're not, just stick with this one.  I've got plenty of good things for you to read coming out in July.  Thanks for reading me!

A Priest, a Rabbi, and a Communications Pro Walk into a Bar...

Can you tell a joke?  Then you can write for blogs and social media.

I don't mean to say that what you write has to be funny.  Although, God knows we could use some humor sometimes!  But jokes have the basic ingredients you need to make people want to read what you write, and then, to remember what they've read.

Jokes invite the audience in.  Whether it's "knock-knock," or "What did the one say to the other?", or "A priest, a minister, and rabbi walk into a bar," jokes get the listeners involved. You can see them lean forward, wondering what comes next. 

The next time you write, look for the opening line that makes your reader want to read the next line.

Jokes have a structure.  Human beings like to know where they're going and how long it's going to take to get there.  People waiting for a bus or subway are much more content to wait if they see a sign that says "Next train to Alewife Station, 10 minutes."  When they're listening to a joke and they hear that something happens three times, for instance, they know something unusual is about to occur and they're waiting to find out what it is.

The next time you write, look for the structure that tells your reader when the main idea is going to arrive.

Jokes have a punch line.  Sometimes people even forget how the story went, but they remember "That's what she said," or "I'll have what she's having."  It's the payoff.  It leads to a reaction: laughter, or a groan, or both...but an emotional response.

The next time you write, figure out the response you want to provoke first.  Then, tell the story that will elicit that response from your readers.

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi went into a bar, and the bartenders said, "What is this, some kind of a joke?"

I'll bet you remember that one.

"Three Ways You're Making Sure I Won't Read Your Tweet"

"It's like drinking from a fire hose," people say about social media. We all know the problem: there's so much information out there, how do I pick what to read?  Or, from the writer's side: there are so many writers competing for an audience out there, how do I make sure that readers pay attention to what I say--or that they even notice it?

I've been following on Twitter since May 2012, and I've noticed contributors using the same few strategies for getting attention over and over again.  They must work.  In fact, some of them hook me.  But I'm always sorry afterwards.  Even if the content I read was worthwhile and useful, I feel a little soiled because of the way the writer lured me in the first place.  Those sordid strategies include:

1. Scare tactics.  If you called me up on the phone and asked, "Are termites eating your foundations?", I'd say NO and hang up.  I don't respond to a hard sell.  I know it's not in my interest to do so.  Same thing online.  If the message is "Read this or your competitors will eat your lunch," I'm beginning to skip right by that tweet without opening the link.  I'll take my chances on missing a bit of information just to avoid being taken for a sucker.
2. Negativity.  "How your blog is turning people off."  "The mistakes you're making on Facebook."  Now, I'm not perfect.  I know I have a lot to learn.  But couldn't you possibly present me with an opportunity to do better, instead of telling me that everything I'm doing is wrong?
3. Arbitrary numbers.  Nothing wrong with presenting a list of  four questions, or top ten links, or twenty-two websites...except that everybody's doing it.  After a while, all these numbers run into each other and blur.  They sound like a gimmick, and they are.  Can we possibly save numbers for when they matter?

You may have noticed that the title of this blog entry uses all three of the strategies I think are being worked to death.  How did you respond when you read the title?  What do you think now?  What are some different (and perhaps better) strategies for standing out and being read?

Incensed about "Incent"

I haven't been so mad at Joe Kennedy since he failed to oppose the first Gulf War.

What is it that has my dander up, you ask? Is it the proposal that he and his group, Citizen Energy, are advocating to tax Big Oil's profits so we can offer fuel assistance to the poor and invest in alternative energy? No, I am all in favor of that! Is it the development credits he wants the government to offer "to incent the industry to find new energy sources"? No. I think it's a bad idea to bribe the rich to do what they ought to do anyway--but that's not what irks me right now.

It's that word "incent." Or rather, non-word. I am perfectly willing to admit that language changes over time. Shakespeare invented hundreds of words that didn't exist before he wrote his plays. I am just not willing to admit "incent" to the language without a fight.

Here are ten ways Joe could have proposed his tax credits without polluting the English language:

1. Motivate the industry
2. Convince the industry
   
3. Provide an incentive to the industry
4. Offer an incentive to the industry
5. Grant an incentive to the industry
6. Nudge the industry
   
7. Spur the industry on
8. Give the industry a reason
   
9. Attract the industry
   
10. Light a fire under the industry

Joe could have chosen the turn of phrase that most precisely conveyed what he meant. "Providing" incentives, for instance, he would have emphasized what he was doing for those rascals in the oil industry, whereas "granting" an incentive would have placed the stress on how generous we, the public, would be to do so--and "spurring" the industry makes them seem like a lazy horse that won't go anywhere without a sharp kick in the sides.

Instead, it's Joe's language that's lazy, and it won't carry us where he wants us to go. Ask youself: when in my daily routine do I "incent" anyone? If you don't do it in normal life--if it takes you a moment even to understand what the word means--why would you be persuaded to do it in public affairs?

This post is dedicated to the Grammar Vandal, my tenant, Kate McCulley. Next month she moves into Boston to live with her sister. Her blog remains at www.thegrammarvandal.com, and I urge you to check it out.