g l o s s i n g s

notes in the margins

In the past few months I’ve been helping a college student with papers he’s writing for his composition and technical writing courses and it’s been a very good experience. It’s also been a learning experience in several ways. 

First, I learned that I’m a good editor. I understand writing for sense as well as just content and by having to explain that to the student I have reinforced and reminded myself of how important it is to guide the reader, not just throw information at them randomly.

Second, I learned that I’m a good teacher.  Seeing his writing improve with each draft means I explained it clearly. Even if he still struggles with transitioning his thoughts on paper, he shows improvement and that’s the validation of my teaching. Transitioning thoughts on paper is a lot tougher than you might think because it has to make sense in a way that isn’t necessarily required in your mind or in a verbal conversation.  There are no visual cues to help you shift gears so you have to use the right words, and enough of them, in the right way at the right time to get the reader from where you are to where you want to go next. Not always an easy feat.

Third, I learned that I’d forgotten the basic path of good writing.  Helping him has reminded me of the steps. It’s not always about just typing or putting pen to paper and coming up with good content. In fact, for me, most of the time, the process of writing means I have to do a lot of research and reading to identify the rough path before I can begin the written journey.  It doesn’t even start with a thesis but rather a lot of random but related nuggets of facts/information that have to now be woven together in a way that forms a coherent paper. And even then it’s just a rough draft that will be revised multiple times until there is a smooth read which hopefully will explain, persuade, or educate the reader successfully.

Fourth, I learned that I still love writing.  That’s probably the best and most important lesson I learned from helping my young student and it’s the one I cherish most of all.

So, the next time you opt out of helping someone hone a skill or craft, consider what you might be not learning about yourself and then reconsider giving an assist.  The rewards might not be monetary but they will be invaluable.

-C

This is going to be a rant.  No two ways about it. This is one of my pet peeves with websites containing valuable content.

I am old-school enough that I usually want to read away from my monitor.  I enjoy the feeling of paper in hand, being nestled in the crook of my couch next to a soft light. I read there.  I make notes in the margins.  I absorb the content you worked so hard to provide. But I’m not able to engage your content this way because . . .

I cannot print your page because it’s not styled for print.

What happens when I try to print your page is this: I often lose a portion of your content because it’s fallen off the printer page.  To overcome this I have a few options (all of them extra work that will, depending on my mood and schedule, mean I’ll blow off the effort):

1. I can attempt to PDF the page (providing you don’t have anything funky embedded into your page that prohibits Acrobat from working its magic) where I can then scale it for print;
2. I can copy/paste into Word, where I then will have to clean up the text (which can be a heroic effort if your page is graphics heavy or table rich); or
3. I can try to reduce the print size so that it fits, which can mean almost microscopic type which is ridiculously small and nearly unreadable anyway.

So, what’s the solution? Add a print.css stylesheet to your page and let me print to my heart’s content.  It won’t take long to do this and once you have a stylesheet developed, you can use it again and again.

This is a ultra-simple and basic example of a print stylesheet from A List Apart:

body {
   background: white;
   font-size: 12pt;
   }
#menu {
   display: none;
   }
#wrapper, #content {
   width: auto;
   margin: 0 5%;
   padding: 0;
   border: 0;
   float: none !important;
   color: black;
   background: transparent none;
   }
div#content {
   margin-left: 10%;
   padding-top: 1em;
   border-top: 1px solid #930;
   }
div#mast {
   margin-bottom: -8px;
   }
div#mast img {
   vertical-align: bottom;
   }
a:link, a:visited {
   color: #520;
   background: transparent;
   font-weight: bold;
   text-decoration: underline;
   }
#content a:link:after, #content a:visited:after {
   content: " (" attr(href) ") ";
   font-size: 90%;
   }
#content a[href^="/"]:after {
   content: " (http://www.alistapart.com" attr(href) ") ";
   }

Try it, you might like it; I know I will!

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. “   (Hamlet, I.iii, ll 78-80)

Shakespeare wrote that at the turn of the 16th century and this week I experienced the full impact of what he wrote.

I have a client whose business has been struggling with the failing economy, like so many others. Not realizing, at first, the full weight of the impact on him, I sent him a final invoice, as normal, requesting payment in full.  This is typical for me to do and I’ve never had a problem with him paying his account.  All of a sudden my emails were being read but not responded to and it would take me multiple emails and voice mail messages to hear anything back and then what I heard were promises of payment that never panned out.  For 3 months this went on.

Finally, last week, I wrote him again.  This time, however, I put away my “business” tone and just wrote him the way I would a friend.  I wrote from my heart, and I didn’t bother trying to sound “professional.” I didn’t threaten, I didn’t beg, I just communicated.  I expressed to him my concern about not hearing from him and wanting to find a way for us to work out the account.  I felt good when I hit the Send button because I knew I’d been sincere and hoped that I opened a channel to a person who has integrity.

A week went by without a response.

Then yesterday I received an email from him explaining that he, too, is waiting for payment from one of his clients and if he gets it he’ll send me some money.  The mere fact that he took time, after a week, to write me and explain made me feel good about what I’d written. Now, knowing that he is struggling, the same way so many others are, I’m going to do what I’d want done. I am going to trust.  I’m going to add no further late charges, and if he needs more work done I’ll do it.

I know it’s not supposed to be “good business practice,” and there is a risk that I’ll never get paid but I understand all too well how hard it is to make ends meet.  This client has always settled his account in the past and I believe he will in the future.  He also may be like me.  I don’t respond well to threats or coercion but I’ll work hard to meet obligations to those who understood and helped me during trying times.

I believe, ultimately, it won’t be a stimulus package, or a recovery bill, that will bring us out of this mess we’re in but rather it will be people helping people in whatever ways they can.  Those who can give money, will; those who can’t will find other ways to help ease the burden, perhaps like myself by taking small amounts over a longer time without heaping on penalties.  We all want to get back to prosperity but right now maybe we have to help each other stay the course so that when the economy recovers we can then realize prosperity together.

The best way for me to do that is to give myself permission to be myself, professionally, more than to be what everyone else says a professional should be.