The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication, Second Edition by kenneth w. davis

Author:kenneth w. davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-06T16:00:00+00:00

THE TWO HATS

The second part of this chapter’s title is “Change Hats.” That’s because we businesspeople wear two hats when we write. And trying to wear both at the same time keeps us from writing as powerfully as we could.

You see, two different mental activities are involved in the writing process. (I’ll sometimes refer to them as two different parts of the brain, although that’s not exactly true.)

One of these activities—occupying a big part of the brain—is the unbelievably complex job of converting ideas into hand movements. Think for a moment about what a complicated activity that is. You’re at your computer, writing up your travel expenses and remembering the blue sedan you rented at O’Hare Airport to get you around town. Your brain moves some muscles in the middle finger of your left hand, then the little finger, and then the index finger. The word car appears on the screen.

I think of that part of my brain as a tough-guy big-city reporter from black-and-white B movies of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, able to pound out an article at a moment’s notice—the hard-boiled newsman who says, “Give me the story, chief, and I’ll do it.” I call that part of my brain my Internal Writer—and imagine him in a rumpled fedora with a press card in the hatband.

But psychologists tell us that another mental activity is also involved. It occupies the part of your brain that remembers the sedan and knows where you put the charge slip. It’s the part that knows how expense reports look and what you can include in them. It’s the part that also knows all those grammar and punctuation rules.

I think of that part of my brain as a crusty old newspaper editor from those same movies, yelling out assignments to his staff and grabbing the pencil from behind his ear to slash up the stories they submit. I call that part of my brain my Internal Editor—and picture him in a green eyeshade.

Now imagine that you’re a newspaper reporter on your first day at work. Your boss gives you a wire story from the Associated Press and asks you to rewrite it. You sit down at your keyboard and start writing your first sentence. Suddenly you hear your boss’s voice over your shoulder: “What a lousy way to start a story,” he says.

“How do you want me to start it?” you ask him.

“That’s your job,” he replies. “But you sure haven’t done it well so far.”

You backspace over the three or four words you’ve written and start again. This time you get to the sixth or seventh word before your boss interrupts you again. “Don’t they teach you people to spell anymore?” he says. “It’s i before e except after c.”

“Oh, that’s right,” you reply, and fix the error.

And so on. This bozo stands behind you as you write the entire story, sometimes correcting your grammar, sometimes criticizing your word choice, and sometimes fixing your punctuation.

Who could work under such conditions?

But that’s what we all do to ourselves, at least some of the time.

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