Author: joediorio1

By Joe Diorio

A single word – don’t versus stopped, responsibility versus control, and the absence of the preposition at – can make all the difference in a message.

Don’t not stopped. Five years ago, I decided to stop drinking alcohol. No, I didn’t have a substance abuse problem. I just decided it would be better for my overall health if I didn’t drink alcohol.

Nowadays, if I’m at a social event and someone asks me if I’d like to have a drink I say, “no thank you,” then I am mindful to add, “I don’t drink.” I specifically do not say that I stopped drinking.

Saying “don’t” indicates just that. I don’t drink. But saying “stopped,” sometimes gives people the impression that alcohol for me was a problem. I know this because I have used the word “stopped” and someone asked me if I am in a twelve step program.

Responsibility, not control. Just recently, during an interview with ABC News, actor Matthew McConaughey was discussing his efforts to curb gun violence. McConaughey, a native Texan, is from the town of Uvalde, which was ground zero for a horrific mass shooting at an elementary school just last year.

McConaughey said he is for the idea of gun “responsibility.” He specifically did not say gun control. “No one wants to be controlled,” he said. “But responsibility is still something we can all go, ‘Yeah, I’ll take responsibility.’”

The absence of the word “at.” Television station WPVI in Philadelphia caught some flack recently when reporters referred to activities along the New Jersey shoreline as happenings “down at the shore.”

Now, “down at the shore” is perfectly acceptable grammar. But a piece of Delaware Valley dialect refers to the New Jersey beaches by saying “down the shore” and omitting the preposition “at.” A colleague in TV news used to record a travelogue segment she called “Down the Shore.”

Philadelphians who watch WPVI are not amused by this adherence to proper grammar, writing to the TV station questioning why the anchors don’t speak – well – don’t speak Delaware Valley. In its defense, WPVI points out that saying “down at the shore” is grammatically correct.

For the most part, Philadelphians reaction to this defense was “fuggetaboutit.”

Sometimes it all comes down to a single word. Let’s write carefully out there people.

By Joe Diorio

Local television news often provides great content for this blog. Just recently a local network affiliate aired a story about a new police training center and referred to the building as a “facility” no less than seven times in a two-and-one-half minute long story. And to reiterate, “facility” is my least favorite word; it’s a sign of lazy writing.

But local television also is a great source for inspired prose, especially when Taylor Swift is in town for a concert. You need to calm down, shake it off, and breathe (see what I did there?) and tip the collective hat to Chris Long, a sports anchor for KSTP-5 in Minnesota. When Taylor Swift’s Eras tour arrived in Minneapolis, Long used his television broadcast voice to deliver his sports report, weaving in the title of 47 Swift songs in his report. That’s above and beyond in the creativity department. You can click here to see Long’s report.

Don’t talk like you’d write (and don’t write that way, either).

One of my favorite episodes of “The Simpsons” shows Mrs. Krabappel, Springfield’s fourth grade teacher, questioning whether “embiggen” is really a word (I checked the dictionary – it is. First recorded use was in 1998, meaning it may well have come from “The Simpsons” TV show.) and Miss Hoover, Springfield’s third grade teacher, tells Mrs. Krabappel that embiggen “is a perfectly cromulent word.” (And one of my proofreaders said she once heard Frank Zappa use “cromulent.” So there.)

Sometimes we trip on words as we are trying to sound smart. That may explain the language used by Joe Cronin, general manager for the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association. Cronin described a recent meeting he had with player Damian Lillard as a “good dialogue.”

OK, I get it. Saying “good dialogue” is an acceptable substitute for “good conversation.” Both “dialogue” and “conversation” are nouns, and each word shows up in the dictionary definition of the other. Still, we should watch out for that deep desire we all have for fancy talk, no matter how cromulent the words are.

Almost 50 years ago television journalist Edwin Newman, in his book, A Civil Tongue, lamented the use of overly flowery talk, citing a Kansas City, Missouri meteorologist who said, “the heavy storm system that performed over our area last night.” (“Music by Rossini?” Newman asked.) More recently, Jeff Butera, a television journalist in Southwest Florida, author of Write Like You Talk: A Guide To Broadcast News Writing, urged writers to avoid what he calls “journalese” when they write. Both men offer everyone a good dialogue on how to embiggen their writing. (OK, I’ll stop.)

I wrote this, RIGHT?

Just as my skin crawls when I hear the word “facility” overused, communications consultant and media interview trainer Julie Parker feels the same way about the word “right” being used at the end of a sentence.

“It’s still happening. The question dropped at the end of a sentence that’s not really meant to be a question. ‘Right?’ is everywhere. On podcasts. On TV. On Peloton. It can distract your audience, or worse, annoy them. Gently tell people they’re using it. Help eliminate it,” she writes on her Twitter feed. She calls the use of “right” at the end of a sentence a verbal crutch that just isn’t necessary, adding that it “can muddy your message.”

Revenge spending is making a comeback.

On June 13 The New York Times reported that the travel industry is witnessing a significant increase in “revenge spending,” money spent to travel because we were cooped up at home for several years during the pandemic.

According to Google n-gram, revenge spending first showed up in our lexicon in the 1980s. It peaked around 1993 and slowly started to vanish by 2003. But it’s back as are so many delayed vacations.

Let me know if you heard this one.

I’m curious about the term “Pinned Tweet,” referring to a tweet one can have permanently show up at the very beginning of their own Twitter feed. I’m using it in my next book and wonder if it is familiar to readers. Let me know. (Yes, there is a next book on the horizon. This one is about crisis communications. You have been warned.)

Let’s write carefully out there, people.

Joe Diorio’s first book, A Few Words About Words, is available now. His next book, Murders at Trask: Crisis communications and the art of making nothing happen is forthcoming.

By Joe Diorio

The phrase “clawing back” hit my radar during the recent negotiations over raising the federal debt ceiling. It was used to explain how the government would reclaim unspent COVID-19 relief funds.

The term claw back is defined as a strenuous or forceful action (Merriam-Webster) or a violent tearing action (freedictionary.com). In this case it conjures images of a federal bureaucrat – probably a GS-7 or lower – forcefully wresting money from the hands of some freshly identified ne’er do well. Was that an accurate explanation?

I canvassed a few folks in the news business to see if I have just been out of touch with newer terminology. A few had heard of it, but most had not. One reporter said she saw it used during the Bernie Madoff trial in the early 2000s; it referred to efforts to reclaim the millions of dollars investors lost by working with Madoff.

Google ngram, an online search engine that charts the frequencies of any set of search strings using a yearly count of ngrams found in printed sources published between 1500 and today, shows the phrase really took off in the early 2000s. Also, if you recall (or check Google) most of the money Madoff absconded with was never recovered, so clawing back in that case was not successful. Why, then, use a phrase that refers to an eventual fruitless effort?

This will sound off-topic but, trust me, it isn’t. Monkfish is the commercial name given to Lophius Americanus fish. It’s more appetizing sounding than “Fishing Frog,” or “Sea Devil,” which are other names for Monkfish. Perhaps saying you will claw back COVID funds sounds like Uncle Sam is doing his part to be mindful of taxpayer money. In other words, it’s a good P.R. term that grew out of a committee.

Punctuation is important

Does this mean you CAN or SHOULDN’T swim there?

If the photo isn’t proof enough that punctuation matters, then consider a recent email from U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) who on May 22 was touting laws he created, including, the Protect Our Law Enforcement with Immigration Control and Enforcement (POLICE, as it is called in the email … see what he did there?) Act, “to make the assault of a law enforcement officer by an alien, a deportable offense.”

Not sure if alien includes E.T. or that thing that bursts out of human chests, but the comma after “alien” seems as unnecessary as the acronym.

Throwing rocks with a knife

On May 20 an NBC affiliate in Fort Myers reported the arrest of a man for “throwing rocks at a window with a knife.” Drop me an email if you know how to throw a rock with a knife.

I was _____ years old when …

I heard the local meteorologist use this term recently, and it triggered the “where’d that come from” bone in my head. It’s an increasingly popular idiom, referring to some seemingly common piece of information that one has just learned. Its first appearance was in 2015 when a Twitter user talked about learning she was wearing the wrong size bra.

Google ngram is not tracking the use of the phrase (yet). Let me know if you have seen an increase in its usage.

It’s spelling bee time!

… and I am a horrible speller, but I do enjoy me a good story about offbeat words, like the one The New York Times ran on May 26 about words that have been in the Scripps Spelling Bee. Enjoy!

Let’s write (and that includes spelling) carefully out there, people.

(Read on. It’ll make sense.)

By Joe Diorio

On April 20 SpaceX launched its heralded “Starship” rocket on an unmanned test flight. The 400-foot-tall rocket and booster is designed to eventually take humans to Mars. 

The blastoff was impressive, but about three minutes into the flight the giant spacecraft started doing 360-degree spins. The anticipated separation of the Starship itself from the Super Heavy booster, which is powered by 32 individual Raptor engines, didn’t occur.

(By the way, other than warp engine, Raptor is about the coolest name there is for a spacecraft engine. Fight me on this one.)

They weren’t in Houston, but they had a problem. So, they did what any space flight operation would do when the spacecraft encounters some bad juju; somebody punched the self-destruct button making Starship and the Super Heavy booster explode. They called this maneuver a “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly” or RUD.

Twitter had a field day with that term.

“We’re pretty good with synonyms, but rapid unscheduled disassembly is a new one, even for us,” tweeted @Dictionarycom.

“Rapid unscheduled disassembly has to be one of the funniest ways of saying, ‘shit, our rocket blew up,’ said @H_MitchellPhoto.

“Rapid unscheduled disassembly is such a friendly way of saying, ‘it blew up, but we learned a lot on the way,” said @MKBHD.

“Have decided my tanks have not been getting destroyed. Instead, they have ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly, said @DarthPutinKGB (obviously – hopefully? – a parody Twitter account.)

My favorite? “I do not destroy my toys. They simply experience a rapid unscheduled disassembly. This has nothing to do with me,” wrote @dog_feelings.

SpaceX went back to the drawing board. Twitter writers will be waiting, I’m sure.

Writing Lesson for All

Last month I put a writing assignment in this newsletter, asking readers to describe the following as though you are an angry motorcycle cop: Opening the windows and letting in fresh air. I received some impressive entries:

From Jerry Lademan, a semi-retired broadcast journalist from Upstate New York: “The veteran cop was increasingly annoyed at the stuffy air in the cramped room at the back of the precinct office, and the long wait for the disciplinary board’s return only made him more ornery than usual. The office had only one antiquated window that was probably an original from the building that was soon to be replaced with a shiny, new department HQ across town. Screw this, he grumbled under his breath as he got up from the hard wooden chair and went to the window. He put his stubby fingers into the casement opening and heaved upward. The window, which probably hadn’t been opened since he was a rookie in the 1980’s remained stubbornly shut. Another thrust. The balky frame again creaked and groaned but barely budged. His anger at the window brought back memories of the anger he felt the day of the fateful traffic pursuit. With a final, mighty push the window gave, but as it did the inside pane shattered. The sound of the cracking glass was joined by another sound—of the oak door announcing the arrival of the top brass who would decide his fate.”

From Tim Fallis, Ph.D., an advisor to Par Hawaii Refining: “Eyes smoldering with contempt behind oversized aviators, inhaling bitterness and exhaling rage, she cranked the jalousie as if it were an AMC Harley she loved and hated in equal measure.”

But my favorite came from a former coworker at Ketchum Communications, Doug Rose, who asked ChatGPT to do the work:

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, huh? Cracking open those windows like you own the damn road? You think just because you’re behind the wheel, you get to decide when and where to let in fresh air? Well, think again, buddy! You’re not the only one on the road, and your actions affect everyone around you. You wanna let in some fresh air? Fine, do it when you’re parked on the side of the road, not while you’re driving and endangering others. So roll up those damn windows and focus on the task at hand, driving safely and responsibly. Got it?”

I’m still accepting submissions. Show me what you can do!

Lesson learned

A few years ago, a reader rightfully chastised me for improperly writing “less” when I should have said “lest.” From that day forward I use two or three proofreaders on each issue of AFWAW, lest I screw up again.

That lesson came in handy on April 19 when the daily crossword puzzle clue for 71-across was, “For fear that.” Four letters. The answer, as I learned way back when, was “L-E-S-T.”

Let’s write carefully out there, people.

Making Grammar Cool Again

By Joe Diorio

Everyone can use a workout to stay in shape. (That’s probably the lamest opening line I have ever done, but I’m sticking with it.) So here are a few exercises to tone up our writing.

Proofreading tip. For me, proofreading is the toughest part of writing. “I’ve already written this,” my brain tells me. “There are no mistakes.” Of course, it’s right after I hit “send” on that email when I realize I really wanted to write “duck.”

That said, here is a nearly foolproof proofreading technique:

1. When you finish what you are writing, stop and play a game of solitaire on your phone. It doesn’t have to be solitaire. Just do something other than look at what you wrote.
2. Next, return to the document and change the font. Sans serif to serif or vice-versa, doesn’t matter.
3. Then proofread the document.

This simple procedure works wonders. Changing the font will trick your brain into thinking you are reading a brand-new document and you will inevitably catch mistakes you might not catch otherwise.

Shaking the cobwebs loose. Part I. Regardless* if you are writing a business press release or a passage for your great American novel, we all need to shake our creative juices.

Describe this as though you are an angry motorcycle cop: Opening the windows and letting in fresh air.

Stop laughing. It’s an exercise to stretch your creative juices and NOBODY has to see what you wrote. I have used the Ernest Hemingway quote about first drafts far too often, but just trying an exercise like this works. Try it. Here’s my attempt:

Wasting little time, he ripped the double-hung open like it was an offensive lineman in his way.

Send me yours!

Shaking the cobwebs loose. Part II. If you’re stuck, try changing one aspect of your draft. Writing a scene for a novel? Change the weather. Writing about a new gadget the Trask Company will roll out to the market? In your draft (and I can’t stress this enough – in your DRAFT, not anything you send around for review) write about the new gadget’s global killing effects. Writing about something that is completely off-topic will help you generate fresh perspectives.  

The “est”?

After defeating the Villanova University women’s basketball team to move into the “Elite Eight” of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship tournament, University of Miami Coach Katie Meier told reporters, “there is no ‘est’ here. We’re just looking toward the next game.”

Meier’s use of the term “est” is a crazy-shortened version of the word “best.” It’s colloquialism for sure, but it’s one that I admit I hope doesn’t catch on. After all, take away ‘est’ from ‘best’ and you are left with ‘b’ and methinks a shortened word should have enough left to have the original meaning attached to it.

The practice of shortening a word to an idiom isn’t new. Fifteen years ago when the Philadelphia Phillies were winning Major League Baseball championships every year, a popular T-shirt sported the word “ill,” stylized with the same font used in the word “Phillies” uniforms. 

Book News

Mark your calendars for May 2024 (or thereabouts). That’s when my second book, Murders at Trask. Crisis communications and the art of making nothing happen will be published. It is a look at crisis communication planning and is loosely based on a mass shooting event that I, sadly, was in the middle of 40 years ago.

I shall be relentlessly promoting, asking for early reviews, etc. You have been warned.

Let’s write carefully out there, people.

* Yes, I used regardless, not irregardless. (But both are words. Honest.)