Here’s some more expressive writing.

Love Letter is a public art project in Philadelphia consisting of a series of 50 rooftop murals painted by local and international artists. The project began in August 2009, and is described this way:

The murals, which are best viewed from the Market-Frankford elevated transit line, collectively express a love letter from a guy to a girl, from an artist to his hometown, and from local residents to their West Philadelphia neighborhood. Love Letter, which will be documented in two books, a film, and a gallery exhibition, speaks to all those who have loved and for those who long for a way to express that love to the world around them.

For example, one mural says, “Forever begins when you say yes.” Others say, “Miss you too often not to love you” and “Look look look look any way as long as it’s at me.” (See them all here.)

For writers, it’s a reminder of how the words we choose can say so much.

For the romantic, well, it’s another excuse to admire expressive writing (like Other People’s Love Letters)!

(Thanks to Patti Digh for tweeting about the project!)

Time for a reminder to be careful out there, as we look at some of the recent errors spotted in our imperfect published world (because, of course, I am perfect and never make any myself)*:

…the pictures of the bloggers…don’t wreak of the standard sales pitch (I think it means reek)

…the project would not be aloud to proceed (allowed)

…some sight the figure as high as 41 (cite)

…you can eek out six or eight minutes (eke)

…I don’t want to temp fate (tempt)

…we spend the evening with hot totties (toddies)

…do we tow to a version of that old line (toe).

As I said, be careful out there, and watch out for “spelling by ear,” as wordsmith and columnist Alden Wood used to call it.

*Joke. I do, although I try very hard not to.

Yesterday was a big day for those of you (us) who notice and cringe at signs with extra or missing apostrophes. If people suggest that makes you a nitpicker, tell them you have nothing on former newspaperman Jeff Rubin, the founder of National Punctuation Day.

Jeff started it as a “celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotes, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis.”

Lest you think this is trivial, he points out:

“Casual shortcuts bred by e-mailing and text messaging have no place in school papers or professional business writing. In the business world, words have power and help decision-makers form impressions immediately. Careless punctuation mistakes cost time, money, and productivity.”

and

“It’s not the worst thing in the world if people don’t know how to properly use an apostrophe, but it does say something about them: that they don’t care to learn.”

Want some practice wielding your commas and your colons? Head over to E-WRITE’s 76 online opportunities to build your punctuation skills.

Meanwhile, Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty held a punctuation contest and has been sharing the entries in her newsletter and podcast. For instance, there were heartfelt odes to the semicolon (”I am in love with your very essence, purpose. / You join two sentences, / Which are independent, and make / Them stronger by bringing them together”) and the ellipsis (”I was putting ellipses where a comma would suffice…ellipses when an em dash would do the trick…ellipses when a yadayadayada would convey the same idea.”).

With that, go forth and use it’s in its proper place.

This week I had the shocking experience of having someone Not. Like. My. Work.

I say shocking because I’ve been fortunate. Over about 18 years of running my own business, I’ve been able to submit a first draft of my assignments that’s pretty close to what’s required. There may be a bit of back and forth over some wording, but generally, the client is pleased with what I hand in. I’ve received comments like this from happy customers:

• “You did a good job of capturing the essence of our discussion and the message we were looking to convey.”
• “I am impressed at how you can take a 20-minute conversation and turn it into an understandable article.”
• “I can basically provide you with details for a story and you just run with it.”
• “I am impressed with your skills of listening, selecting the most important information and putting it all together.”

So it was a good reminder to me to stay humble when an article I submitted last week did not fly. The VP who has to approve it did not like it, so I am rewriting it this week. His communications person (who did like the article, fortunately) and I have discussed the areas he flagged as a problem, and one key change that will solve much of them is a new lead sentence/introduction.

What I have learned:

• This reinforces the importance of one of the tactics I use to turn in a close-to-final first draft. That is, to interview key people involved in the topic I am covering, and ask “what do you want employees to take away from reading this article?” I had asked the VP for 10 minutes to talk about his perspective, but he did not have time.
• I could have sent a few questions by e-mail, just to confirm the sensitive areas he wanted to avoid or key areas he wanted to highlight.
• Recognizing that the VP had a new boss, I should have asked about a recent meeting he attended and whether he had commented on the project I was to write about.

I’m starting a new week properly chastened.

Woke up this mornin’ (da DA da da)
Sun shiny and bright (da  DA da da)
Finished writin’ my articles (da DA da da)
They were lookin’ tight (da DA da da)
But wait just a minute (da DA da da)
What’s that I see (da DA da da)
A note from Legal, sayin’ “we just don’t agree”!
I got the legal beagle blues, yeah, they get me ev’ry time
Legal don’t want no ’splaining, no, say folks don’t need no bottom line.

Had three employee newsletter articles fall under review by my client’s Legal department in the past week. One article was completely thrown out, or maybe deferred a couple of months. One was cut in half (”eviscerated” is the word that springs to mind) to remove “too much detail.” And I am waiting with only a faint hope that the third makes it, after being revised to take out certain potentially “dangerous” words and references.

Have you ever met a more cautious, seeing-monsters-in-every-corner bunch in your life? No wonder lawyers as a whole (and this is totally an opinion based on observation of every lawyer I have ever known) seem to go grey early.

Everyone can write, can’t they? But it takes real skill to come up with truly awful writing, like that celebrated by the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

This is almost as much fun as the Oddest Book Title of the Year contest. But instead of just finding existing examples — in this case, that fit the requirement of a bad opening sentence to a novel — entrants are asked to create their own lead to an imaginary novel that thankfully has not seen the light of day.

The contest began in 1982, and “honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton.” He’s the man who gave the world, “It was a dark and stormy night” in the opening to his novel, Paul Clifford.

The winner of the 2009 contest is David McKenzie, a 55-year-old Quality Systems consultant and writer from Federal Way, Washington. Apparently he is a repeat winner, having propelled his awful writing to the top of the Western and Children’s Literature categories before. Oh, yes, there are categories, such as Fantasy Fiction, Detective, Purple Prose and Vile Puns, with winners, runners-up and “dishonorable mentions.” But this year, he won the top prize and all the fame that goes with it.

Here’s his winning entry, in all its 88-word glory:

“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin’ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’ east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

Most of the entries are pretty funny. Some are short, but most cram as much detail as possible into a longer sentence, like this winner of the Detective category (Eric Rice):

“She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn’t wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren’t.”

I’d better not turn my attention to writing until I’ve cleared my head of these!

Have you noticed the use of somewhat dated phrases in modern copy? While they are interesting, I wonder if the reader’s eyes just skip right over the words without registering them. Here are a few examples:

“Above the fold” when referring to a web page. The graphic design term refers to locating the most important news story or appealing photo on the top half of a folded page, often a newspaper, considered prime real estate. That same concept has been extended to a web page, where it refers to the portion visible without scrolling.

“Lob it (or throw it) over the transom“: A transom was traditionally the horizontal window over a door in Leave-it-to-Beaver-era schools and offices; it could open and close, and I guess that’s where things were lobbed. These days, you’re more likely to see a fixed fanlight on a fancy house. Throwing an idea over the transom seems to mean submitting something for publication, like an unsolicited manuscript, or delivering anonymous tips.

“Representatives who are too far removed from the coal face to know the details…”: I’ve never worked in a coal mine, but I can imagine that the real work gets done right at the exposed surface of coal, and few executives are nearby. It’s probably right around the corner from the place where the rubber meets the road.

Not quite a dated term but certainly an interesting one: “eating our own dog food.” I had to look it up to find out it meant a company that uses the products it makes. Apparently the reference comes from a TV commercial in which actor Lorne Greene said his own dogs ate the food he was promoting.

I wonder what the lasting words and phrases from the Twitter era will be?

Writing in an interesting, funny, thoughtful, expressive way is always worth a try. Here are some recent examples I’ve run across:

• “By yearend, investors of all stripes were bloodied and confused, much as if they were small birds that had strayed into a badminton game.” - Warren Buffet in his 2008 annual report message for Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
• When networking, “you’ve got to jiggle all the doorknobs.” - a comment on a MyRagan post
• “In recent years, celebrity hasn’t just come down off its pedestal. It’s barged into your house. It has emptied the liquor cabinet, commandeered the couch and spent all afternoon whining about the difficulties of the artist’s life.” - writer Cathal Kelly in the Toronto Star
• “It was exhausting, like climbing into a clothes dryer for a ride.” - writer Ian Brown in the Globe and Mail.

What expressive language have you seen?

For your reading pleasure, more examples of clever writers getting a specific point across:

• “Guys like Bruce were as common as white socks sold in six packs at the Wal-Mart.”           - Jennifer Weiner in Good in Bed
• “Abiding by the rules worked until 2008, when someone let loose a pack of Irish Setter puppies in the high-rise of cards that was our financial and banking system.”
  - Quinn Cummings in the QC Report
• “…the global banking system is about as stable as a guest on the Jerry Springer Show.”    - John Heinzl in the always-funny Stars and Dogs column in the Globe and Mail.

I’m not sure this will work in a corporate setting, but it’s something to work towards!

You can’t argue with the Publication Coach, Daphne Grey-Grant, when she encourages writers to use metaphors. “They add interest, colour and power to your writing,” she says. “As readers, we all do better when we can visualize something concrete.”

So I’m creating a file of great metaphors (and similes - thanks, Gloria!) to use as inspiration. Here are a few I’ve spotted recently that appealed to me:

• “Three infants crawling around the house like Labrador puppies.” Daphne Gray-Grant
• A wine that is “well crafted for the money and widely available - the Honda Civic of white wines.” Wine writer Beppi Crosariol in the Globe and Mail
• “Imagine thousands of brands, stalled like cars in Friday afternoon traffic.” MarketingSherpa
• “As spindly as a mantis” with “his black mock turtleneck…bunching up like a flag on a listless day.” Writer Tom Junod in Esquire magazine, talking about Apple CEO Steve Jobs
• “I am the planet’s most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle).” Author Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love
• “One group stands out, with conversation as relaxed as a lingering autumn twilight.” From an article by Deborah Carr at Homemakers.com
• “Showing a smiling face to a typical Web customer is like showing a crucifix to a vampire.” Gerry McGovern in a Ragan article on web users.

What’s your favourite metaphor? Have you run across any great ones lately?