Shoot Me

In my last posting, I mentioned how much of my work entails writing. In a manner somewhat similar to how I view building construction, I think that sentence structure and composition should follow established rules. I think this curiosity might has started with the 'by the book' teachers I had in elementary school who taught us how to diagram sentences. It was all very structural. Looking at subject and predicate, parts of speech, modifiers and all that stuff was great fun. Yes - now you can see the inner nerd.

Later, there came a growing fascination with how proper punctuation makes more order out of the potential mess of throwing words together. On this subject, there is no better reference than Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the wonderful book by Lynne Truss. Her extended title, The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, is apt.

An interesting aspect of all this analysis is that I eventually came to realize that if you want to write in a manner that is conversational, you have to ignore the rules. Imperfect sentence formation, use of jargon, bad grammar, you name it - they're all part of the game. The old biddies at Old Tappan Elementary School would be aghast. Me - I just stumble along. Okay, please don't shoot me.  

Writer's Block

Much of what I do to put food on the table involves writing. Specifications, reports, newsletters, memos, simple correspondence, and this - my blog.

All the other stuff has a purpose, an agenda if you will. The outline , the format, the intent, and occasionally even the content can be predetermined. Sometimes this all may be a business variation of paint-by-numbers, albeit hopefully with some intelligence and business acumen to make it cogent.

This blog, on the other hand, has no prerequisites. I can write about whatever suits my fancy.  Recently I read another that I like to follow entitled "Nothing Special". It seemed like a drawn-out Tweet or Facebook post - decidedly humdrum. I wondered what prompted it.

I normally want these postings to be germane to my business purpose, but how could this be when nothing truly unique comes to mind? Maybe I should write about why I like two spaces between sentences, but Blogger messes with my formatting when I do that. But, that would be "Nothing Special". Don't lose faith, the next post will have more content.