(Crowbert, 2007) Abbreviations.

(Rawluck, 2009) One

One of these things is not like the others,

One of these things just doesn’t belong,

Can you tell which thing is not like the others?

By the time I finish my song?

Did you guess which thing was not like the others?

Did you guess which thing just doesn’t belong?

If you guessed this one is not like the others,

Then you’re absolutely…right! (Raposo & Stone, 1970)

What the words from this famous song from the television show, Sesame Street are trying to tell us is that when something or someone is different from what is around it, it should be obvious and fairly easy to detect, just like the spoon is easy to pick out from the group of forks around it. However, when people or objects break a pattern that has been established or appear in settings where they seem not to belong, confusion may be the result. The same can be said of words you choose use in your writing.

When you write or speak, you string together words to form sentences. These sentences, in turn, build up, one after the other, to form paragraphs. Finally, the paragraphs you create, when logically connected together and organized by an underlying thematic skeleton, build up to become speeches, essays, reports, letters, novels, and the myriad of other forms of human oral and written communications,  both of which I will refer to as, “texts.” Since this blog deals with ideas for better writing, I will confine my further commentary to written texts only, but the concepts I will be discussing in this posting apply equally as well to oral ones. Anyway, as you can see from the processes just described, there is an accumulation of meaning that begins from the moment you write your first word in a text until the time you type the concluding period. As will be shown, this meaning is built up through the collection of words you choose and build upon as you write. Basic words, such as prepositions, articles, conjunctions, etc. are used primarily as placeholders that convey additional, extraneous information and smooth out and make your sentences and paragraphs more eloquent. However, the essential meaning of a text is determined by a different set of words that you select specifically because they convey the significance and rhetorical basis of whatever your topic, premise, and underlying theme (domain) is presenting. Expressed another way, this set of words share a common semantic property (meaning) or domain of interest (theme or thesis). Linguists call these meaning related word groups (lexemes), semantic fields, which is a refined way of saying a vocabulary that is unique to a particular piece and topic.

Just as every career field and workplace has its own specialized language and word set, called jargon, that it uses to communicate privileged knowledge between its initiates, its journeymen, and its professionals, so, too, does every text have
its own unique semantic field, which is developed as the composition is written and which communicates the writer’s underlying semantic strategies. This semantic field influences the reader’s perceptions of and expectations for what is being written. For example, if you are writing a piece, and you wish to express a semantic field that communicates an atmosphere of serenity and peace, you will, most likely, choose a lexeme consisting of words such as:

pacific, peaceable, calm, mild, neutral, quiet, relaxed, serene, tranquil; affable, amiable, amicable, benevolent, gentle, kind, kindly; nonbelligerent, unaggressive; submissive, yielding

This word group is filled with expressions that communicate peaceful imagery. Because the words in a semantic field
all share a common semantic property, the reader, rightfully so, forms the perception about the text that its underlying domain is one consisting of peaceful, harmonious, and non belligerent concepts. He or she also makes the assumption that the text will continue in this fashion because of the expectations the writer has led them to by the semantic relationships made in the composition. Stephan Witte and Lester Faigley describe these expectations as “cohesion ties”. What the authors are expressing here is that the semantic field and the words forming it gives a written text continuity because “lexical and grammatical relationships [are formed across sentence boundaries] that allow sentence sequences to be understood as connected discourse rather than autonomous sentences” (Witte & Faigley, 1981). Expressed differently, it is the connectedness of the words in the semantic field that permit the composition to be perceived a continuous text rather than an assortment of unrelated, separate sentences. It is this aspect that also determines whether or not a text appears focused, on task, and cohesive or diffuse, off task, and wandering. For example, if apples are the domain, the semantic field should only include talk about Delicious, Macintosh, Gala, and cider, but not grapes and bananas. If you are writing about fruit (a broader semantic domain), the semantic field can include apples, oranges, and pears, but not carrots, celery, and turnips. If you are writing
about edible plants (an even broader domain) then your semantic field could contain apples, oranges and carrots, but not poison ivy or redwood trees. Lastly, if you are writing about all plants, your semantic field, obviously, could include all plants (Pere, 2009)

In opposition to this desired cohesiveness,, if the writer, either intentionally or unintentionally, throws in words such as “belligerent”, “combative”, and “violent”, the semantic field is disturbed, the pattern and cohesive ties weaken, the cohesiveness begins to break down and get lost, and the reader becomes disoriented. Look at the following example lexeme:

bottle formula diapers cradle

What semantic relationships and cohesive ties are created among these four words? What impression does this semantic field give you of the underlying domain or connecting theme? Now, let us add the word, “cyborg” to the lexeme giving us:

bottle formula diapers cradle cyborg

What semantic relationships and cohesive ties are created among these five words? What impression does this semantic field give you now of the underlying domain or connecting theme? How does the word that does not fit alter your perception of the new domain? Now, let us add the words, “rattle” and “nurse” to the lexeme giving us:

bottle formula diapers cradle cyborg rattle nurse

What semantic relationships and cohesive ties are now created among these seven words? What impression does this new semantic field give you now of the underlying domain or connecting theme? How does the word that does not fit,violate the semantic field,. How do the words that follow the out of lace word alter your perception of the meaning of the original domain? Following the word, ”cyborg”, the word, “rattle” now begins to take on mechanical connotations, which may not be what was intended  if it had simply followed the word, “cradle” instead. This can cause confusion as to what is meant by this word in the mind of the reader. Similarly, the word “formula” as used in the original lexeme, was most likely interpreted as meaning nourishment for a baby, but, after the word, cyborg, is included, “formula” could also be interpreted as having a mathematical or chemical meaning, again, throwing off the reader. Also, think about how the words, “cradle” or “nurse”, for example, could be used appropriately as either nouns, if the infant domain is assumed, or as verbs, which bring somewhat more unusual meanings if the more scientific domain is assumed. Most English words have multiple meanings. The particular meaning intended is clarified for the reader by the other words surrounding and associated with the semantic domain (Old Dominion University, 2006). Furthermore, compare the following two examples taken from a theoretical manual for a construction crane.

Example 1

When using the FMC Link-Belt construction crane, equipped with hydraulic lifts and dealing with concrete pilings for high-moisture content soil, you should use the number three footings to prevent tippage of the machinery, as that could lead to serious injury to persons working in the area as well as irreparable damage to the hydraulic system of the crane (Old Dominion University, 2006).

Example 2

When using the FMC Link-Belt construction crane, all funky and equipped with hydraulic lifts and dealing with concrete pilings for really, really wet soil, you should use the number three footings to prevent a wipe-out, as that could seriously smoosh persons working in the area and cause irreparable damage to the hydraulic system of the crane. (Old Dominion University, 2006)

Upon comparison, we see that the first paragraph seems to be written more professionally and appropriate for its function and domain of interest. It is much more focused, on-task, and cohesive, for its semantic field is consistent and uses words that are appropriate for its audience of professional crane operators. The second paragraph, on the other hand, seems comical by comparison, for it uses many words that are in direct opposition to the semantic domain of professional crane operation. Like the spoon in the picture above, words such as “funky”, “smoosh,” and “wipeout” immediately stand out from the other contextual words around it, seem ridiculously out of place, and immediately give the impression of the author as being cartoonish and immature. It is, therefore, difficult to take this manual entry seriously. Furthermore, if I had just newly purchased a $500,000.00 crane, and I received an operation manual with this second paragraph as an entry in it, I would questing the integrity of the company, its management, and my decision to purchase my crane form them. This same principle also would apply to the use of slang, idioms, obscene words and phrases, racist or sexist language, informal and dialectic expressions, and misused words or phrases. All of these will, normally, violate your semantic field and appear jarringly out of place, distort the semantic flow and cohesion of all the follows, and, especially if you are writing a high stakes communication, negatively impact the reader’s impression of the writer and the company they work for. So, from now on, when you write, practice becoming aware of the ontology, the study of the categories of things that exist or may exist in some domain, of you word choice and whether or not the fit or seem out of place in the work you are writing. Doing so will save you later embarrassment and the potential loss of business, a job, or a passing grade.

So, as we saw previously in the words of the Sesame Street song, when something is different from what is around it and seems not to belong, it should act as a warning to us as writers that a semantic field violation may very well have occurred. If so, as seen in the previous examples, it causes confusion, distortion, and faulty impressions for the reader. It is, therefore, our obligation to identify violation, point it out to ourselves, and to fix it, not before the end of the song, but before anyone can read it and realizes that some of the words are not like the others.

Old Dominion University. (2006, May 17). College of Arts and Letters: Writing Tutorial Services. Retrieved January 30, 2010, from Semantic Fields: http://al.odu.edu/wts/students/process/semantic.shtml

Pere, B. (2009). Playing the Field. Retrieved January 30, 2010, from Songcrafters’Coloring Book: http://www.billpere.com/PDF/Semantic%20Fields.pdf

Raposo, J., & Stone, J. (1970). One of These Things (Is Not Like The Others). Retrieved January 25, 2010, from One of These Things Is Not like the Others: http://www.members.tripod.com/Tiny_Dancer/one.html

Rawluk, M. (2009). Friday, March 13, 2009 One. Retrieved January 25, 2010, from Existential Existence: A Photo blog of Michael Rawluk’s Journey through life.: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uLsWqfDxgr8/Sbr4TKKJnSI/AAAAAAAACsc/zw3HDpMI1Zg/s800/_mg_8648.jpg&imgrefurl=http://kulwar.blogspot.com/2009_03_01JnSI/AAAAAAAACsc/zw3HDpMI1Zg/s800/_mg_8648.jpg&imgrefurl=http://kulwar.blogspot.com/2009_03_01

Witte, S., & Faigley, L. (1981). Coherence, Cohesion, and. (JStore, Ed.) Retrieved January 30, 2010, from College Composition and Communication,: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~faigley/work/coherence.pdf

Arguments can be made either way for the use of contractions in writing. Formalists, such as my fourth grade grammar teacher, state, “Never, ever, ever use contractions in formal writing and never use them when writing anything in my classroom.” The informalists, on the other hand, for whom anything seems to be okay, state,“Is can’t any less clear than cannot? Is wouldn’t any less clear than would not? I don’t think so. In fact, contractions, to me, seem to be an improvement in economy, just as the use of slang, an occasional grammar mistake, or the occasional misspelled word makes my readers more relaxed and comfortable with my writing”. This statement is sponsored by the same individual who would also probably spell the word, “later” as “l8r” on a job application and, then, soon after, wonder why they were not hired for the position. My point of view lies somewhere in between these two extremes.

First of all, I agree with the informalists that, when writing relaxed, low stakes correspondences, anything should be okay when it will be received by a friend, a relative, a coworker, or anyone else who has agreed to the convention, someone who will be accepting of the use of slang or contractions (your BFF vs. your Auntie Harriet, the retired librarian),  and someone who is capable of deciphering and understanding the abridged syntax and somewhat encoded message you will be conveying. Contractions are, as I will discuss shortly in this posting, by their very nature, more informal and, when used in speech or writing, seems to put a listener or reader at ease as they seem to convey the instruction, “Relax and put your feet up as we are just having a friendly chat or reading here; there is nothing earth-shaking at stake that we need to concern ourselves about.”  Similarly, Lynn Gaertner-Johnston, in her e-zine article, Don’t Use Contractions, states,

“I use contractions to communicate a flowing, easy style. As a writer, I want you, the reader, to feel that I am talking with you and that the words come easily. I do not want to communicate formally with you. (Gaertner-Johnson, 2006). In other words, she is stating here, as I did earlier, that contractions seem to work best where there is an intimacy and a familiarity implied between the writer and the reader.

Conversely, I agree with the formalists that contractions should not be used in formal and important, high stakes writing such as a cover letter for a prospective employer, a college term paper, a company research report, or anything that is written for professional publication. I state this because formal written works are different in nature from their informal counterparts. First of all, in formal writing,  more often than not, you will not have an intimacy or a familiarity with your reader.They may want a level of formality because of their status, position, or their academic or professional training. At these times, you do not want to appear to “chummy” as it could be interpreted as a show of disrespect. If a job is on the line, why put it at risk by the use of a misplaced contraction. Secondly, many times, you do not  want your reader to be too relaxed or nonchalant because of the nature of the material you are writing; you want your reader being attentive and having their full focus. The use of more formal or technical semantic fields (vocabulary and chosen word set of your writing) and avoiding any conventions of spoken language such as contractions, slang, and idioms helps to create a cognitive context for your reader that prepares them for digesting abstract, intellectually dense material.

I, also, have my own linguistic justifications for not using contractions.  As we are all aware, they are used all the time in our spoken language because, go figure, they are a convention of spoken speech. First of all, contractions are faster to produce  and more efficient to say- ‘can’t is a one syllable word and “cannot’ is two. Therefore,  they become  informal shortcuts that we take to help us speed up and to make our communications more proficient. Instead of saying, “Do not go out into the rain,” we shorten it to, “Don’t go out into the rain.” As a result, we save time and energy when we speak, and, as a result of taking these shortcuts repeatedly, multiply the total amount of information we will be able to verbally convey to others over our lifetimes.

Because of the speech apparatus  humans are born with, the teeth, throat, vocal cords, lips, palate, glottus, velum,(Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2006) and how we produce sounds, stops- obstructing the air stream completely, fricatives- partially obstructing the air stream with friction, affricatives- stopping the air stream completely, and then releasing it,  liquids- partial obstruction the air stream with no friction, glides- little or no obstruction of the air stream, but must occur with a vowel (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2006), certain vowel and consonant combinations are easier to produce, pronounce, and to speak rapidly than others are. Therefore, we end up having to resort to playing linguistic gymnastics with our speech production mechanisms to make harder to pronounce combinations easier to produce and more efficient.

Two of these techniques I will be discussing in support of my argument are: syncope, which is the loss of one or more unstressed vowel sounds from the interior of a word (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2006), (Contributors, 2009) and lenition, which is the change in the sound produced by a spoken consonant from a stronger form to one that is considered weaker (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2006), (Contributors, 2009). Without getting further involved in a lengthy discussion of linguistics, which is beyond the scope of this posting, let it suffice to say that when we speak the words, “cannot” or “did not”, the vowel sound of the short “o” in “not” is unstressed, so, over time the it eventually fades away in usage, and “cannot” and “did not” end up being pronounced as “cannt’ or “did nt” , graphically represented, right or wrong, as our contractions, “can’t” and “didn’t”.  Similarly, when we pronounce the word, “later”, due to the interaction of the vowel-consonant-vowel, through the process of lenition, we alter the unvoiced stop sound of “t” to the voiced stop sound of “d” to make the combination of elements easier to pronounce due to the mechanics of our speech apparatus. This means that rather than correctly saying, “later”, which requires more energy to produce and is less efficient, we say “lader”. Getting back to my original argument, due to the fact that we do not encounter the same linguistic mechanics when we read , I submit that since we do not spell the word, “later” as “lader” when we write, even though we pronounce it that way, why then, should  writing “can’t” or “didn’t” be acceptable except under the most informal of situations or when you are actually trying to represent spoken speech such as when writing dialog in a fictional narrative.

My final justification for not using contractions is that it helps to prevent a common mistake many writers make, which is confusing “its,” the possessive of “it” and “it’s,” the contraction of “it is”. The same mistake is also made in distinguishing between “there’, the adverb meaning “that location,” “their,” the possessive of” “they,” and “they’re,” the contraction of “they are.” When these words are confused and used incorrectly, it really is considered quite a flagrant mistake and can really make a person look ignorant, illiterate, or, at the very least, careless in the eyes of  your supervisor, a customer, a supplier, a group you are associated with, an instructor, or any other knowledgeable or educated person. A very easy way to reduce the chance you will confuse these words is to eliminate the contraction option. If you get in the habit of writing “it is” and “they are” all the time, you are left with only “its,” the possessive of “it”- eliminating the confusion problem and making an easily distinguishable choice between, “there,” the adverb, and “their,” the possessive of “they.” The simpler you keep things, the less likely you are to make mistakes of this nature.

So, this posting has discussed the conditions under which contractions are acceptable to be used in your writing. Additionally, I have discussed my reasoning and justification for not using them as well. In Hamlet’s terms, we have debated his same existential dilemma and determined that only under a very narrow set of conditions are contractions acceptable “To Be Contracted”. For the remaining bulk of your writings, contractions, in my argued and supported opinion, are ‘Not to be Contracted”.

Contributors, N. A. (2009, December 23). Syncope (Phonetics). Retrieved January 21, 2010, from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncope_(phonetics)

Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2006). An Introduction to Language (6th ed.). London, England: Heinle.

Gaertner-Johnson, L. (2006, April 18). Don’t Use Contractions? Retrieved January 20, 2010, from Business Writing: Talk, Tips, and Best Picks   From the Job: http://www.businesswritingblog.com/business_writing/2006/04/dont_use_contra.htm

The axiom, “presentation is everything” applies to all aspects of your life. For example, everyone recalls a time when they have wanted to look their best to make a good impression on that first date or an important job interview. This same concept applies to your writing as well. Whether you are writing for an important class, a résumé for a prospective employer, or just writing for pleasure, it is important to follow accepted written protocols and to convey your ideas clearly and accurately. Mistakes in grammar, punctuation, spelling, and construction can distract your reader’s attention and cloud their understanding of your message. These things will negatively influence your reader’s opinion of the paper without their having read your work in its entirety and will, also, warp their impression of your authority, skill, and person. Remember, just as in dating and job interviews, you only get one chance to make a good first impression

Your first line of defense for proofreading, perfecting, and polishing your written work can be electronic. Most good word processing programs have spell and grammar-checkers, which can minimally check your compositions for accuracy and readability. These mechanical assistants, however, should not be relied on solely for they can not sufficiently catch every error that you are capable of in your writing. I learned this lesson myself the hard way. A few years ago, I wrote a paper for a professional group I was associated with. This paper discussed mistakes in comma usage made in the printing of my local, daily newspaper. Unfortunately, in writing this paper, I had misspelled the word, “comma” as “coma” throughout the whole paper. Because “coma” is an actual word which I had spelled correctly, the spell checker did not catch it . And, because of the fact that the error did not follow the parameters set in the preset language formulas, the grammar checker did not point this error out to me either. Obviously, there is a huge difference between a comma and a coma. To complicate this mistake even further, since I have graduate degrees in English, and since I was in a hurry, I, arrogantly, assumed that I did have to do a read through of the paper, and I, immediately, submitted it to be read in front of an academic audience. Needless to say, having this mistake pointed out to me in front of my colleagues was a major professional embarrassment that I vowed I would never repeat again.

So, your second and most important step in polishing your writing is to read your work, preferably aloud, but, if you are in public and do not want to be mistaken for a homeless person, then, you can read it to yourself. Doing this can help you catch repetitious words and phrases, which I call, “echoes”, awkwardly constructed phrases and clauses, fragments, and run-on sentences. When you speak the words aloud, your ears will help you hear how they sound when they are read. In other words, you will hear what your reader will be reading. This can and should be done, whenever possible, by an unbiased second party as well. Often, ideas that may be clear to you are not clearly articulated in your writing. At this time, another person is necessary to indicate to you what might need further clarification. Getting this feedback, hearing the spoken words flow as they are read aloud, or listening with your internal ear as you read the words to yourself will assist you in altering the flow of the sentences, if necessary, adding needed transitions between thoughts, altering your word selection when those you have chosen first do not accurately express the thoughts you are trying to communicate, or in reconstructing an clumsily strung together sentence or paragraph. So, the next time you have written work that needs to be done, do not, like I did, just pull the paper out of the printer when it is done printing and hand it directly to your instructor or supervisor without reading it first. The embarrassment you save will be your own

Lastly, your writing should never be a rushed attempt. It should always be considered a rough draft or a works-in-progress right up until the final draft is due. In other words, you should continue to write, read, and revise your material as many times as you can. After these first sets of revisions, set you paper aside for a day or two, and, then, you come back to it and read it and revise it again. When you give yourself some time away from your evolving work, your mind will then be able to catch your mistakes more readily, and you will be able to see your work more objectively each time, finding additional places you had not seen before to add more depth and coherence. Often, fresh ideas and new insights will occur to you when you have had time away from your work or have slept on it (“Slept on it” as it is used here does not mean the way I slept on my work in my high school geometry class.)

Once these steps have been followed and repeated as many times as you possibly can, you can be more assured that your written work will be nearly flawless in terms of its grammar, its spelling, its constructions, and, hopefully, in its clarity. The value of reading your works after you have written it cannot be underestimated, as it reflects the writer’s effort to perfect it. Do not just hurriedly pull it out of your printer and hand it in expecting everyone else to understand and correct your errors. You are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of your writing. After all, how you present your paper will affect other’s opinions, not just about your paper, but about you as well. So, therefore, take the time and make the effort to read your work to ensure that that opinion is a good one.