{"id":1650,"date":"2015-11-23T22:14:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T22:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/wp\/2015\/11\/23\/preconference-seminar-review-teach-your-text-to-strip-with-marcia-johnston\/"},"modified":"2017-03-13T18:36:52","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T18:36:52","slug":"preconference-seminar-review-teach-your-text-to-strip-with-marcia-johnston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/2015\/11\/23\/preconference-seminar-review-teach-your-text-to-strip-with-marcia-johnston\/","title":{"rendered":"Preconference seminar review: Teach Your Text to Strip with Marcia Johnston"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\" style=\"text-align: center;\">Review by Jesse Tomlinson<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><o:p><br \/><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\" style=\"text-align: center;\">Marcia Johnston: \u201cTight, readable, concise. But what does concise mean?\u201d<o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div>\n<div style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-Cs1tQmv3DBc\/VlOQITbcXoI\/AAAAAAAAAxg\/1IxZEUZkPdc\/s1600\/Marcia%2BReview%2BPhoto.JPG\" data-rel=\"penci-gallery-image-content\"  style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"212\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-Cs1tQmv3DBc\/VlOQITbcXoI\/AAAAAAAAAxg\/1IxZEUZkPdc\/s400\/Marcia%2BReview%2BPhoto.JPG\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><\/div>\n<p>We\u2019re at ATA56 in the preconference seminar with Marcia and we\u2019re talking about English writing. In lieu of \u201cMs. Johnston,\u201d I feel comfortable calling her Marcia, not just because the title of our seminar is \u201cTeach Your Text to Strip\u201d, and it isn\u2019t because she\u2019s in a lounge singer\u2019s dress and red feather boa with lovely black gloves snaking up to her armpits. It\u2019s because she\u2019s an accessible, friendly online personality who plays a game called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/writing.rocks\/blog\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tighten This!<\/a>\u201d involving sentences that need to be stripped down. This game is a neat way to think differently about our words, our words in translation, and just exactly how much every little extra one counts.<\/p>\n<div><o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>We start the seminar by discussing what \u2018concise\u2019 means. It doesn\u2019t mean short, because \u2018short\u2019 isn\u2019t connected with meaning. If a sentence is short, it doesn\u2019t necessarily mean it\u2019s clear, or concise. It doesn\u2019t mean \u2018shorter\u2019 because that\u2019s just like a woman\u2019s skirt. Do we really want a skirt as short as possible? No, we want a functional skirt, one perhaps that is minimal, but that is still covering all the places we want it to. So concise is minimal, but that \u2018minimal\u2019 still has to be effective.<o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>So what should we strip off then? How can we write more concisely? Marcia gave us an excellent list and I\u2019ll show a little knee here \u2013 get rid of:<o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;\"><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>weak \u2018be\u2019 verbs<\/li>\n<li>the word \u2018different\u2019<\/li>\n<li>\u2018of\u2019 in general<\/li>\n<li>not, no<\/li>\n<li>just<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;\"><o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;\"><o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;\"><o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;\"><o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div>But!<\/div>\n<div><o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Marcia was clear in letting us know that you can\u2019t just strip it all off and be happy with a word-less party. \u2018That\u2019 is probably useful after a verb; but we can often take it out after a noun.<o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>You can read more on&nbsp;<span style=\"font-family: &quot;cambria&quot; , serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/writing.rocks\/that-doesnt-go-without-saying\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u2018that\u2019<\/a> on her blog.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"font-family: &quot;cambria&quot; , serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div>We never want \u2018in order to\u2019 at our word burlesque event; her advice is to slash and burn this little threesome at all times. Bottom line: \u201cDon\u2019t cut words that we need for meaning, like \u2018the\u2019, \u2018that\u2019 or even \u2018is\u2019\u201d.<o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But how to tell when and how to strip? The decision comes from context. Marcia just wants you to sit up and take notice of the words. Many words slide into texts without us thinking about them. \u201cLet the context be your guide.\u201d<o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I came away from this seminar not only loving the strip tease Marcia performed for us at the end, but loving her message. It\u2019s not about a quick-fix answer like, \u201cMake your texts as short as possible.\u201d When is it ever? But we still inevitably find ourselves looking for that kind of easy answer.<o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>So Marcia played up on what we all want. She gave us a bit of stripping (text and accessories!) but emphasized that it\u2019s more about <i>what<\/i> you\u2019re taking off than the fact that you\u2019re taking it off.<o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>What is the short answer after all then? We need to use our brains in a way that we might not have been using them so far. We need to look at the words we use every day in our writing, and to consider them in a different way. We need to think about words that before we were taking for granted.<o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>And whatever does stripping and \u2018taking it off\u2019 have to do with direct writing, except for snipping some of those extra words? It has to do with <i>skin<\/i>, the universal language. And I really loved that tie in. Words convey things. So does flesh. But more or less flesh is not necessarily better. What is better is the way you present the flesh, the way you flesh out your text, or the way you dress it up or down.<o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>And now if only I could find a pair of those long black gloves . . .&nbsp;<o:p><\/o:p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Review by Jesse Tomlinson Marcia Johnston: \u201cTight, readable, concise. But what does concise mean?\u201d We\u2019re at ATA56 in the preconference seminar with Marcia and we\u2019re talking about English writing. In lieu of \u201cMs. Johnston,\u201d I feel comfortable calling her Marcia, not just because the title of our seminar is \u201cTeach Your Text to Strip\u201d, and it isn\u2019t because she\u2019s in a lounge singer\u2019s dress and red feather boa with lovely black gloves snaking up to her armpits. It\u2019s because she\u2019s an accessible, friendly online personality who plays a game called \u201cTighten This!\u201d involving sentences that need to be stripped down.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[77,82,74,85,87,86,255],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-2015-annual-conference","tag-ata-56th-annual-conference","tag-ata56","tag-ata56-ata-science-and-technology-division-distinguished-speaker","tag-jesse-tomlinson","tag-marcia-riefer-johnson","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1812,"href":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions\/1812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ata-divisions.org\/S_TD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}