Drum roll, please! It’s time for Word of the Year, 2011:  Occupy

Each year, the American Dialect Society votes for the “vocabulary item” (perhaps a word, perhaps a phrase ) that was in common use or had a high profile (meaning, all us common folk might not have used it but the media sure did).

Occupy, of course, refers to the movement about…uh, did anyone figure out what it was about? I live near Oakland, which got plenty of media attention for its Occupy Movement, and from what I read, the occupiers  focused on being, to say the least, an enormous inconvenience to residents, employees and small businesses in the downtown area. Hey, aren’t those business owners part of the 99%?

Dismount soapbox. Take deep breath. Let’s move on…

… and take a look at some of the other candidates, and individual category winners:

Word of The Year

Occupy beat out:

• FOMO, the acronym for “Fear of Missing Out,” which comes upon one when inundated by social media.

• the 99% - the opposite of the 1%, meaning Americans who aren’t rich. This is another way of saying “nearly everyone,” which explains why I have never heard anyone use it in conversation. So let’s turn briefly to the dictionary teams, in the US and UK, at Oxford University Press: Their global Word of the Year is squeezed middle. This term, coined by British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, defines those who of us who bear the brunt of the tax burden yet have less and less ability to pay for it. Much more precise than “99%,” and more easy to define, not to mention easy to say.

• humblebrag - expression of false humility, used particularly on Twitter by celebrities and people who think they are celebrities. Witty but hasn’t got “legs.”

None of these is my choice for WOTY, but we’ll get to that.

Most Useful

humblebrag won this category, beating out occupy, FOMO and tablet. I’d cast my vote for tablet (”lightweight portable computer with a touchscreen to input data”) because people use it, ergo it is the most useful.

Most Creative

kardash - “unit of measurement consisting of 72 days,” coined by Weird Al Yankovic, in reference to Kim Kardashian’s marriage. This makes me chuckle every time I see it! Kim Kardashian does not.

Most Likely To Succeed

Cloud (”online space for the large-scale processing and storage of data”) was the winner, over Arab Spring. Along with tablet, I believe all these terms will succeed: They will enter the common vocabulary of the American English-speaking public.

My Word of the Year

Why do I prefer Arab Spring to Occupy? Arab Spring (Global Language Monitor’s word of the year) refers to the uprisings and social protests among many Arab nations. These rebellions not only began in the Spring, they were directed to bring an end to governments and policies in hibernation, and bring truths to light but the harvest has not arrived, so we don’t yet know what fruit will be born.  Arab Spring has a more precise meaning than Occupy, and (although I don’t think it will enter common, everyday vocabulary), it will remain a quickly-understood phrase demarcating an crucial change in direction of the Arab world.  “Occupy” will fade.   Mark my words.

I’ve written before about the spoken word, because whether you’re writing it down or saying it out loud, it’s communication.

Today, I want to point out how sloppy habits of spoken language do not translate well when written down.

I was like, how can he? And he was like, well, that’s what I like. So, like, I’m suppose to like that he’s like, It’s soooo great!?

How many times did you have to read that to translate the “likes”? That is a snippet of conversation I heard at Starbuck’s last week.  (I was not eavesdropping. The speaker was on her phone in line behind me; I was a captive audience.)

If you hear that out loud, it makes some sense. But when written down, it’s inane. It’s not easy to suss out, and gives the impression that the speaker is inarticulate and superficial.

Does that matter? She was speaking out loud, not writing it down.

Yes, it matters, because sloppy speech erodes your professionalism: If you overuse “like” when talking you’ll (a) sound sophomoric and (b) you will write that way, and sound sophomoric.

Good Like

To express affection. I like him. I liked The Muppet movie. I like gravy on my potatoes.

In comparisons. Dave has scuba gear like Sheila’s. Katia has grades like a Rhodes Scholar’s.

As a conjunction. Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.

Bad Like

For emphasis. She was, like, really crazed. I was, like, sure I’d win.

To indicate exaggeration or approximation: We are, like, almost there. I am, like, quitting this job!

To quote. He was like, Get out of my face. She was like, Not me!

Alternatives

Don’t say it. The meaning remains the same: She was really crazed. I was sure I’d win. We are almost there.

Use a better word. He told me, Get out of my face or He told me to get out of his face

She said, Not me or She said she didn’t do it or She denied the accusation, indignantly

Whether you’re writing it down or saying it out loud, it’s communication. What you say, and how you say it, communicates a great deal about you. If you are running or representing a business:

• Speak and write so your customer understands your message, and understands you to be mature and intelligent.
• Speak so that, when you are quoted, you don’t sound incomprehensible or like a 15-year old Valley Girl.
• Speak so that, when you write, you easily maintain good habits of grammar.

Writing to complain the need can arise for us all.

I recently had to write a letter of complaint to Kaiser’s billing agency to ask them to correct their statement that says I suffered a sprained neck in a car crash. I had a sprained ankle. I’d spoken to them on the phone and they’ve said yeah, sure they’d change that sprained neck to sprained ankle. They didn’t. The time came for me to put my complaint in writing.

Complaining in writing helps you:

• Marshal your thoughts and organize your argument
• Express yourself respectfully. When you take time to write and review, you have the chance to reconsider comments such as you moron, incompetent dunderheads or you’ll be sorry.
• Keep a paper trail, so you have a record of who said what, and when.

Know what you want

Why are you writing? You must know this before you begin. Why is not the same as what you’re complaining about. The what has happened. Why deals with what should happen now, because of it.

• What the complaint is: You got food poisoning at the restaurant.
• Why you’re writing: You want the restaurant to refund the price of the meal, or pay your hospital bills, or make their chef wash his hands, or simply apologize.

When you consider why you are writing, you can reach helpful conclusions such as:

• It’s not that big of a deal, I don’t really need to write, or
• Hmmm….maybe it’s not their fault. Maybe it’s mine, or
• I don’t need to write ten paragraphs on two pages.  2-3 paragraphs is enough.

Be succinct

State what happened briefly. Give the facts, but not too many of them. Stick to the main points. For example, suppose I find my morning newspaper too often delivered into the shrubs.  I could write:

• Last week, I found the paper in the shrubbery on four mornings. The week before, it was three mornings. This week, it’s been in the shrubs twice already.

Or I could write

• Last week, October 12-16, I found the paper in the shrubs on Tuesday, also on Wednesday and again on Friday. The week before (October 5-9), the paper was in the shrubs on Tuesday and Thursday. This week, the paper has been in the shrubs on Monday Oct 19 and Tuesday October 20.

Both of these paragraphs contain the facts. Which is easiest and fastest to read? Which gives the quickest overview of the problem? In the first example, the word “shrubs” stands out and shrubs is the essence of my complaint. In the second example, the dates are conspicuous, as if they are important. They aren’t.

State what you want

Depending on why you are writing, you could want:

• A refund (Give me back my money)
• An exchange of merchandise (Give me a new one; one that works; one that’s better)
• A correction (sprained ankle, not sprained neck)
• A change in behavior (Stop throwing the newspaper into my shrubs)
• To be heard (We need a stoplight at First and Maple)

Don’t beat around the bush about this, or leave it out of your letter.  I’ve seen complaint letters about true problems, but the writers never say what redress would satisfy them. Maybe you won’t be promptly given you all you ask for, but provide a point of negotiation, so they can say “Too much,” “Just right,” or “Here’s more!”

Threaten politely

Sure, you can say what you’ll do if you don’t get what you want. You might choose to let the reader know that you will take legal action, or write a review on Yelp, or tell all your Facebook friends what happened. I told Kaiser’s billing company that I will not pay my bill until the bill is correct. They agreed to that.

Be matter-of-fact about such threats, without rancor. If I do not hear back from you by the end of this month, I will involve my lawyer in this discussion is a simple, drama-free statement.

Keep your integrity about this. It dishonors you if you threaten to tell all of your Facebook friends about the miserable vacation unless the cruise line gives you a refund, and the cruise line gives you a refund, and you then tell all of your Facebook friends about your miserable vacation.

The First Rule of Complaining

It all boils down to, as so many things do, The Golden Rule. The first rule of the civilized complaint is to always, always, always speak as you would wish to be spoken to.

I highly recommend to you Steven Pressfield’s short but powerful book, The War of Art. You could read in an hour to two, but don’t. Savor it. Better yet, ponder it. Let it sink in.

Pressfield begins by noting Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

He is speaking of creativity, since he himself is a writer, he often using writing as the example. But he does not exclude the seemingly non-creative. He also considers the plumbing supply store, because there is no reason the plumber or the business owner should not consider their work creative. Whatever your work is, you can make it art. So don’t pass over this book because you aren’t “artistic” or you don’t have a “creative” job.

In the first section, he introduces the concept of Resistance. Many of us name this Procrastination or Laziness. Whatever you call it, Pressfield defines the symptoms and consequences of Resistance, which so many of us let block the very creativity we yearns to explore and develop. He then covers the antidote to Resistance: being a “pro” and taking the work seriously, whether it’s how you earn a living or it’s a hobby you enjoy.

The War of Art is easy to read, often amusing, pithy, with down-to-earth examples. It’s a pep talk, not a how-to manual (we all need to hear from Knute Rockne now and then).  Pressfield is, at the least, a theist. He speaks about God and the divine spark in all of us, but he covers the pantheon, urging us to  accept guidance from the angels and the Muses.

This book is not just about the problems of procrastination or about silencing the inner critic. Pressfield makes the case that the world of mystery and genius is not beyond our world of physicality and linear time. It’s a world that we can inhabit, must inhabit, because it’s where we find and enjoy that which is, for each of us, creative. And when we enjoy it and develop it, we can share it with others for the betterment of their world, and ours.

Soap box time. I’m anti-multitasking and I’m here to say why.

I have clients and colleagues who multi-task in an unproductive way: They make phone calls while concentrating on something else. (Often, they’re driving. Sometimes, they’re on their computers while also pretending to be on the phone with me.)

They think they’re being productive. They think they’re getting two things done at once. Let’s look at what they are actually communicating:

I’m not concentrating on the point of this phone call

These people lose track of the conversation. They struggle with simultaneous, competing thoughts, such as “Can I merge safely into traffic now?” and “What was I saying to Lindsay?”

In these conversations, the word “..uhh….” predominates, while they try to remember the point they want to make.

Let’s say a client calls me from her car to talk to me about web page content.  I guarantee you she’ll have trouble remembering  the word web page. So I hear… “Yeah, I’m thinking about, since the …uh, ….the uh…the web page…. uh, the uh….it’s… uh, design, we’ve changed it to, uh….to uh, ….it’s green now, maybe we should say uh….say uh…. ”

Frustrating, no? Big waste of my time, yes? I’ve had clients call with three minutes of information that takes them eight minutes to cough out.

(This is character-building: I have so far exercised enough patience to never demand , “What?!” from a distracted client. Of course, now, I’m ranting in a blog posting…)

When you’re multi-tasking, you reduce your ability to choose words quickly and wisely.  Often enough, I get a follow-up email (or even phone call) that goes over the same ground or clarifies a point badly made in the original phone call. This makes “multi-tasking” not an efficient way to kill-two-birds, it leads to extra effort over more time.

I don’t care enough about you to focus on you

Multi-taskers also communicate non-verbally. It’s disheartening, at the least, to have a conversation with someone who is concentrating more on the traffic than on our conversation. If the traffic needs your attention, get off the phone! You’re a danger to yourself and others.

Multi-tasking on the computer? If you’re typing an email while you’re talking to me, you’re telling me that I am not your priority. Do you think I can’t hear your keyboard clicking? Why did you call if you have no intention to focus on our conversation?

I’ve also had conversations with people who suddenly interject an odd scrap of news, “Wow, the Giant’s lost again!” That lets me know that they’re busy reading the Web while “talking” to me.

Think about this the next time you’re talking to a client or to a pal. How do you want them to perceive you? As caring? As interested in their business and their lives? Then pay attention.

Some people call it “multi-tasking,” but I call “letting yourself get distracted.”  But what we’re going to call it doesn’t matter, what matters is what you’re getting accomplished.

• Are you speaking with clarity and efficiency?
• Are you focusing on the person you’re speaking with?

Deliver a message that says I’m focused on the topic and on you. You might find that single-tasking saves you time, energy, your reputation and friendships.

One of my favorite clothing stores had their big summer sale recently. They posted signs in their windows and throughout the store: End of Summer! Final Sale! 45% Off!  Lucky me, I found a snazzy orange top which I was 90% sure would look great with my floral print skirt.

10% of uncertainty didn’t worry me, because the store has a decent return policy. I’ve often taken a garment home, found that it did not work with my wardrobe, and then brought it back. In fact, the salespeople often suggest doing so.

But as the sales clerk rang up my purchase, I saw again that phrase “Final Sale” flash on the cash register LCD.  Does Final Sale mean this is the final sale for the summer, or does it mean All Sales are Final? Startled, I asked “Can I return this?” No: All sales are final.

Hmmm….maybe that’s what the signs should say.

This store has always let customers return clothes. Suddenly they changed the rules, without explaining the change. They posted a sign, but used ambiguous wording. The sales clerk rang up my sale, without asking if I understood “no returns” on this merchandise.

It’s as if they were trying to irritate customers.

I’ve spent hundreds, nay, thousands, of dollars in this store over twenty-some years. So chances are high that I will spend more in the years to come, unless something changes my mind about the merchandise or the quality of service.

They risked my continued patronage over a $30 top.

Don’t try this at your business. Instead, say what you mean.

• If you have a policy, be straightforward about it to your customers.
• If you change a policy, clarity and disclosure become even more important.
• If you’re reluctant to explain your business policies, examine what about them embarrasses you. Fix them or be frank about them. (You’ll never please everyone. If you don’t work on weekends or don’t allow dogs in the bakers or don’t accept credit cards, say so and don’t apologize about it.)

What will you accomplish by evasion or equivocation?

• You’ll look shifty, untrustworthy.
• You’ll erode custom confidence in your business. Less customers = less revenue.
• Your reputation will suffer when customers repeat their unhappy experiences to others (as I am, here, repeating a story about my experience at Talbots).

It’s all about truth in advertising and customer service.  Truth and service. You’ll never regret offering both.

Ah, the good old days! When we could say “the 40s” or “the 90s” and the words flowed easily and everyone understood each other.

But now… what? This century is not only uncomfortable to live in, it isn’t easy to refer to.

How to Write It

If you want to abbreviate a year, let’s use 2006, you can write ‘06.  Yes, there is only one apostrophe.

If you refer to the decade, for example, the first decade of the current century, or the decade just before ,do not place an apostrophe before the s. Write the ’00s and the ’90s or whatever. These sentences are spelled correctly:

“I taught school during the ’90s.”

“I went into foreclosure in the ’00s.”

How to Say It

Writing it is easy. Saying it all out loud brings complications.

The Year

’00s can be pronounced “the ohs,” the “oh-ohs, or “the zeros.” Technically, I understand all to be correct, but let’s face it “the zeros” is silly. People will laugh. I know I will.

If you want to refer to a single year, again 2006 will be my example, you can refer to it as “oh-six.”

Way, way back at the turn of the previous century, the expression “aught-six” was common. Aught is an archaic form of zero or nothing. (Yes, it’s aught. I am not misspelling ought. They are homophones: They sound alike.) I can’t recommend using aught. People won’t laugh, they’ll just look puzzled and ask what you mean. Skip having to explain yourself;  use 2006 or ‘oh-six to begin with.

The Decade

What to call 2000-2010? The Terrorism Decade? The War Decade? Time Magazine dubbed those years, understandably, The Decade from Hell: 9/11, Katrina, the Bush/Gore presidential voting debacle, swooning tech stocks in 2001, crashing economy in 2008, and too much war. Many people I know don’t refer to the decade with a particular term, as much as with a grimace and an abrupt wave of hand, as if to push the past further away.

Let’s refer to those years as The Turn of the Century. Sure, that term was also applied to the early 1900’s. But the context defines: If I spoke today about a job I lost at the turn of the century, would you think I meant 1906? If you read, this month, a biography of Teddy Roosevelt that spoke of the turn of the century, I doubt you’d be puzzled as to what years the author meant.

Once we get into the year 2013 and into successive decades (and they’ll be here before you know it), we’ll start saying “the Teens” and “the 20s,” just as people did during the 20th century (and probably did ever century before that).

The Century

This current year is Twenty Eleven, not Two Thousand Eleven. Many of us got into the habit, in the last decade, of saying Two thousand ……, rather than Twenty Oh Four, Twenty Oh Eight, Twenty Ten. But that decade is (thank heaven!) behind us, so let’s return to the common English practice of pronouncing a year without mentioning its thousand-ness.

After all, we don’t consider the Declaration of Independence to have been signed in Seventeen hundred and seventy six. And we don’t say that Columbus sailed the Ocean blue in One thousand four hundred and ninety two.

Good news: Next year is Twenty Twelve. How euphonious! The years coming up will roll trippingly off the tongue.

Talking with a colleague the other day, I was startled to learn that he does not write down the project details when he takes on a new client project. No written contract.

Yikes.

“Spell it out” is my advice, and I guarantee it will save you time, money and headaches.

I have written Agreements with all my customers to spell out at the least what I will do for them, how long it will take, and what it will cost.

My Agreements evolve out of my proposal to the client. Having discussed the essentials with a client, I put together a proposal using my calendar, my calculator, and my review of similar work I’ve done. I fine-tune the proposal by walking myself step-by-step through the project (which also helps me find questions, such as Who’s doing the research; them or me? or Am I delivering Word files, or also PDFs?). From that, I can calculate how many hours the work will take, which determines how much it will cost as well as when I can send it to my client for review.

I then submit the Proposal with my client, which might launch discussion and negotiation. In the end, we have our Agreement.

Types of Agreements

I’ve created written agreements from the virtually instant (5 minutes for me to compose followed by client’s immediate acceptance) to the seemingly unending (an eight page agreement that went through four iterations and six weeks of negotiation). But they boil down to two types:

As an email. Some of my agreements are as simple as an email outlining the specific work I will do (edit web content, prepare training guide, write article, whatever). I include that it will take x hours, include y drafts and revisions, and cost $xx/hour. I’ll also give the schedule:  I’ll send them the first draft on [date], expect their feedback in X days, and send final version by [date]. My clients need only email me back an “OK, go ahead.” Everyone knows what’s expected (and, thus, what’s not expected), and I have the email thread to back it up.

As a Signed Document. I prepare a more formal Agreement for any job that is large, long, complex or all of the above. My formal Agreement is a separate document requiring both of our signatures. Consider formal written Agreements if you are working on something:

• Particularly complex, meaning you’re providing several types of services or an especial expertise.
• For which you require a deposit.
• For a company that has rules they “must” follow (which is usually true of large US firms or any firm based outside the US).

How Agreements Have Saved My Bacon

…and have they ever!

Check, please: At the end of a month, I invoiced to a client, who wrote back to say they’d pay me at the end of the project in six months. First, I fell out of my chair, then I grabbed the Agreement we’d both signed. There it was, in comforting, incontestable black and white: BRW will invoice monthly for work completed the previous month, to be paid within 30 days of invoice. Whew! (This was a large firm that had, probably, assumed that the project would follow their usual payment pattern. But they’d signed the Agreement.)

Saved before started: I sat down with a prospective client to review my Proposal for editing the content of her eight-page web site. She balked at my terms of three rounds of drafts. She wanted no limitations on drafts, so that she could have me change a sentence here, a sub-topic there. Updating text at the whim of her Muse is not my approach to Web content. (I believe you should know what your business is about and describe it clearly from the get-go.) We didn’t reach terms. Whew! again. My Proposal helped spare us from getting involved in what would have been a confusing, time-consuming and uncomfortable experience.

Outside of Scope: The dreaded scope creep! My rules, when a client asks for more than we agreed to, are:

1. Always say Yes.
2. Point out that the request is outside of scope.
3. Provide the cost and timing to do the extra work.

True, sometimes I don’t charge for the request. It depends on how easy it is to do and how easy the client has been to work with. (I give all my clients top value for every dollar, but of course I know which ones are difficult and which are agreeable.)  The point is, if you spell out the precise scope of the project, you can then justifiably decline to do work for which you haven’t set aside time or included in your price.

I write about writing, meaning I write about words. Today, I’m going to write about words we speak. Specifically, words we shouldn’t speak. No, I don’t mean profanity. I mean useless filler words.

Ya know what I mean?

We all know which of our friends, family or co-workers cannot utter a sentence without inserting some useless phrase. Yet most of us are unaware when verbal bad habits creep into our own conversation.

For most, it’s an unconscious habit. When the filler phrase doesn’t make sense, the speaker is probably unaware they even uttered it. Consider the common verbal tics ya know and, worse, ya know what I mean?

Let’s get a burger, ya know what I mean?

I was watching TV last night, ya know what I mean?

Read those over again. They don’t make the speaker sound too intelligent, do they? If you’re trying to make a good impression, socially or professional, verbal tics such as these will not help your cause.

I know a woman who peppers her sentences with and stuff — but not in ways that make sense. I had to fill up on gas and stuff. We had lunch and stuff. I filled out the form and stuff. It’s a habit that could have people thinking she can’t think clearly, she isn’t paying attention to what she’s saying, or her vocabulary is too limited to provide details.

Current Catch Phrases

Eons ago, during Jon Lovitz’s run on Saturday Night Live, I worked in cubicle-ville much too near a co-worker who said “Yeah! That’s the ticket!” dozens of times a day, nay, dozens of time an hour. It might  have been funny (or at least tolerable) if he used it twice a week, and when it was pertinent. Nope, he just used it constantly and in a fake, oily Jon Lovitz voice.

If you’re making this mistake, you are doing it consciously. My advice: Stop it now! Use catch phrases in inverse proportion to how current they are. Today, saying “That’s the ticket!” would probably get you a laugh from SNL fans (although not from me; it still makes me slightly queasy).

So….

My bad habit is ending sentences with so… such as Yeah, I think they serve the best burgers, so…. I have no “so” piece of information to add, my sentence just trails off. It makes me sound befuddled, as if I can’t complete the thought. I can complete a thought, I just have no particular thought in mind when I say so…. ” which makes me seem even more befuddled.

Fortunately, I know I do it, which will make it easier for me to kill the habit. When I’m meeting with current clients, potential clients, friends and family, I want to speak in ways that speak well of me.

Each morning I walk Archee McLeash passed JFK University’s lovely creekside campus. Recently, they installed new No Smoking signs. The signs look like this:

Please

That’s the sign: The word please with a no smoking graphic.

Why did they include please on the sign? Please implies a request, that a person can make a choice to comply, or not.  However, here in California, it’s against the law to smoke within 20 feet of a public building. There’s no choice. I’d rather see a sign that says, flat out, Don’t smoke here.

(Frankly, given the number of cigarette butts within 20 feet of this building, they not only need to remove the Please, they need to add Don’t Litter.)

There’s a pretty landscaped pond along the front of the JFK building. The signs along the gurgling creek that feeds the pond says:

DANGER

Do not cross the creek

I like this sign! They didn’t obscure the message with any fluffy “magic” words. Do not cross the creek, we mean it. Sure, you could argue that the word DANGER allows the reader to make a choice based on her own best interest, I’ll choose to abide by the sign because I don’t want break an ankle, rather than just obey the sign because the property owners said so.

But there isn’t anything impolite about this sign. There isn’t any ambiguity either.

Before you use please in your communications, consider if it is truly needed. Being “polite” can undermine your message.