THE ANNOYING NINE (9) WRITING HABITS TO AVOID!!!

What, on a typical day, annoys us? Is it the 30 early-morning emails from organizations we’ve never heard of? The “Out of Service” sign on the office coffee maker? Or the guy sitting in the aisle seat of the bus who acts put out when we want to sit in the empty window seat? These examples, and dozens more, aren’t uncommon, and they aren’t big deals. They’re just … annoying.

And then there are the annoying writing habits people have. For example, several colleagues of mine have told me how reading “very unique” drives them nuts: “Things are either unique or not unique. One thing can’t be more unique than another!” Again, not worth getting too worked up over, just … annoying.

But what if we have annoying writing habits of our own? What if our letters, articles, proposals, and emails are driving our readers—our clients, consultants, and colleagues, not to mention people on LinkedIn—nuts with their annoying little quirks?

Chances are, we don’t know unless someone points them out, and few of our readers will do so. I know some—but certainly not all—of my annoying writing habits [1], but I obviously can’t know yours. However, certain habits are so common that they’re worth talking about. Therefore, in the tradition of The Fantastic Four, The Ridiculous 6, The Magnificent Seven—along with countless Magnificent Seven remakes and sequels—and The Hateful Eight, I present “The Annoying Nine” common writing habits that are guaranteed to irritate at least some of our readers.

1.    Intensified absolutes: Let’s start with the one my colleagues hate. Most adjectives can be intensified by adding the endings –er and –est (e.g., grumpier and grumpiest) or by adding words such as more, most, or very (e.g., more annoying, most annoying, very annoying). However, a small group of words, including unique, perfect, impossible, final, equal, medium, round, and absolute, are considered “absolute,” meaning they can’t be intensified to be more of what they are. When George Orwell wrote, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” he was deliberately playing with this concept. In writers’ defense, when they write “more unique,” what they likely mean is that something has more unusual features than something else. Even so, writing “very unique” or “absolutely perfect” will probably annoy someone.

2.    Multiple exclamation marks!!!: Imagine that when we were taught to write, we were granted an unlimited number of periods, commas, and other punctuation marks to use throughout our lives, but only a certain number of exclamation marks, and we’re never told how many. In that imaginary scenario, where we can’t be sure that each exclamation mark we use isn’t our last, we would use exclamation marks frugally, and never more than one at a time. Of course, in the real world, we don’t have such a limit, but we should nevertheless use exclamation marks as though we do. Multiple exclamation marks in anything but a text message makes a writer sound like an overexcited 13-year-old. Exclamation marks should be rare in professional business writing, including emails. [2]

3.    UPPER CASE OVERUSE: Of the many ways to emphasize words, the best and least intrusive is italics, which usually give words just enough oomph to call attention to them. However, with email, which is often read on small smartphone screens, italicized words may too subtle to stand out. We may then want to escalate to bold text, or still higher to underlined text. Anything beyond, such as underlined italicized bold or a screaming ALL UPPER CASE or the eardrum-bursting UPPER-CASE, UNDERLINED, ITALICIZED BOLD TEXT WITH A BUNCH OF EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!, is verbally abusing our readers. We should respect our readers, and assume they can recognize the importance of italicized, bold, or underlined words.  

4.    Numbers as text and numerals: A common feature of legal documents is having numbers written two ways: as text and, in parentheses, as numerals (for example, The Architect will respond to RFIs in five (5) working days.) According to Bryan Garner, a lawyer who has written books on legal writing [3], the practice began a long time ago when legal scribes wanted to make it hard to alter contracts. However, the practice makes no sense in today’s professional writing; Garner goes further to say that “[e]ven in modern legal documents it is largely uncalled for.” In general, we should write out the numbers one through nine, and use numerals only for numbers 10 and higher [4].

5.    Symbols (+, @, =) in text: In some contexts, symbols are useful shorthand for text. In short-form writing, such as texts, tweets, and casual emails, most readers will accept our using + for and, @ for at, or = for is. Those same readers, however, might be annoyed seeing such symbols in serious professional text. For example, to see a + in professional writing for anything other than a mathematical formula (It’s as simple as 1+1=2) or a firm or department name (Perkins+Will, Research + Development) can be confusing. Is the reader to read “+” as “and” or “plus”? That momentary but annoying confusion may be enough to color the reader’s opinion of what we are saying.

6.    Quotation marks for feet and inches: When writing dimensions in feet and inches, it’s tempting to use quotation marks: 4’-7”. After all, every keyboard has a key for single and double quotation marks, so why not use it? But a single quotation mark doesn’t mean “feet” and a double doesn’t mean “inches.” What we need instead are the prime (') for feet and double prime (") for inches. You can find those symbols in the Insert/Symbol menu in MS Word, or by typing “alt 39” (for ') and “alt 34” (for ") [5].

7.    Using ± to mean “approximately”: While “zero tolerance” may be desirable in some aspects of life [6], those of us involved with construction know it’s an unachievable goal. Everything having to do with construction involves having to accept tolerances. How much tolerance depends on the material. For poured-in-place concrete, for example, the acceptable tolerances can range from plus one inch to minus one inch, usually written as +/- 1", or ±1". Extruded aluminum, on the other hand, can be manufactured with tighter tolerances of ±1/16" or even ±1/32". But what happens when we write, “The sidewalk is ±5'-0" wide”? While we may mean, “The sidewalk is approximately 5'-0" wide,” what we’re literally saying is, “The sidewalk is either plus 5'-0" wide or minus 5'-0" wide,” with the latter being nonsense. Is “±5'-0" wide” a mistake? Strictly speaking, yes, but a zero-tolerance mistake? Of course not; it’s just annoying.

8.    Redundant stock phrases: As a matter of safety, we design redundancy into our buildings. Backup power, emergency water supplies, and multiple means of egress are all prudent design redundancies. Where we don’t need redundancy is in our writing, especially in the form of stock phrases we see every day. Here are a few examples: 

• The two parties mutually agreed on contract terms. (If two parties agree on something, they by definition do it mutually. If only one party agrees, then it’s not an agreement.)
• Let’s meet for lunch at 12:00 noon. (Noon alone is enough, or just 12:00, since we would not likely meet for lunch at midnight.)
• Bring all your essential camping supplies, including but not limited to tent, extra water, smart phone, and several backup phone chargers. (Including doesn’t mean “all-inclusive,” so the but not limited to part is redundant. If you mean all-inclusive, use consisting of or comprising.)
• The campus is surrounded by parks on all sides. (Since surrounded means “on all sides,” this could be shortened to The campus is surrounded by parks.)
• Notify the architect when the equipment is fully functional. (Anything that isn’t fully functional isn’t functional.)

9.    The Etc. Guessing Game: Et cetera (abbreviated etc.) is Latin for “and the rest,” and is used to avoid writing out long lists of things. Nothing wrong with that, as long as our readers can reasonably complete the list. For example, most readers know what the etc. means in this sentence: I’ve visited all the states whose names start with “M”: Missouri, Maine, Massachusetts, etc. Since there is a finite number of such states, readers know that the list also includes Minnesota, Michigan, and Montana, even though they weren’t named. However, what are readers to make of this sentence: I’ve visited the most significant places in each of the 50 states: the Gateway Arch in Missouri, Acadia National Park in Maine, Cape Cod in Massachusetts, etc. What might the other 47 significant places be? The items themselves are inconsistent (a monument, a national park, and a geographic region), and the list is subjective, so only the author could possibly finish it. This casual use of etc. is beyond annoying in contract documents, where a sentence such as The Contractor shall provide all necessary fittings, fasteners, accessories, etc. to complete the Work raises the questions: What exactly does this etc. mean? And how can the contractor or the architect know what compliance looks like?

How bad are the Annoying Nine? Unlike the “Seven Not-So-Deadly Sins of Punctuation” [7], they aren’t quite wrong; they’re just … annoying. Mildly irritating. Pet peeves. While one or two instances of the Nine aren’t serious enough to make our readers harrumph in disgust and trash what we’ve written, their frequent use might. Finally, keep this in mind: Even if none of the Nine applies to us, we may have other writing habits that are equally, if not more equally, annoying to our readers.

Follow the author on Twitter @bill_schmwil.

Footnotes:

[1] Here are a few I try to purge from my drafts: (1) I often insert questions into my text. Why? Because it can make the text more lively. (2) I use a lot of footnotes, but how else can I provide extraneous information and maybe a few jokes? (Believe it or not, this article’s draft had even more footnotes.) (3) And I start too many sentences with conjunctions. But I’m trying to cut down.

[2] Unfortunately, in our adrenaline-charged, short-attention-span culture, not overusing exclamation marks can make us seem to lack enthusiasm or emotions. Nonetheless, exclamation marks have no business in contracts and specifications, and their scarcity in letters, proposals, and business emails will reinforce their importance.

[3] As well as the excellent Modern English Usage, among the best general writing style guides.

[4] This guideline oversimplifies the tricky business of when to write out numbers and when to use numerals. The topic is so complicated, I bet I could write an entire book chapter about it. In fact, I already have. For more on this, check out my own writing guide, The Architect’s Guide to Writing, or either The Chicago Manual of Style or Garner’s Modern English Usage.

[5] Daily Double! A double footnote: (1) The latter method may not work on some laptops. For instance, I can’t make it work on my Lenova ThinkPad. (2) Single and double quotation marks have two forms: “curly” (or “smart”) marks, which look like commas and automatically curl in the right direction (thus the “smart” designation); and "straight" marks, which are invariably vertical no matter if they start or end a quotation, and are indistinguishable from primes and double primes. Curly quotation marks look more professional and are the default for Microsoft Word.

[6] Although some people carry things too far. For example, Lynne Truss added to her popular (and generally excellent) book Eats, Shoots & Leaves the subtitle A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. If she had her way, people would be imprisoned for bad punctuation. Including, I presume, Ms. Truss herself, as she erroneously omits a hyphen in the subtitle (it should be A Zero-Tolerance Approach).

[7] See https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/seven-not-so-deadly-sins-punctuation-william-schmalz-faia/