{"id":1117,"date":"2015-11-23T07:50:19","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T15:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/?p=1117"},"modified":"2015-11-23T07:50:19","modified_gmt":"2015-11-23T15:50:19","slug":"writing-and-editing-for-the-computer-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/2015\/11\/23\/writing-and-editing-for-the-computer-screen\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing and editing for the computer screen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lawyer and language genius Bryan Garner over at <a href=\"http:\/\/lawprose.org\">LawProse.org<\/a> spells out, in typically lucid fashion, how to compose documents when you know they will be read on a computer screen rather than on paper.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div><b>1.<\/b><b>Summarize.<\/b> It\u2019s important to learn the art of summarizing concretely. Avoid airy generalizations and instead make pithy, practical, vivid summaries. These should always appear at the fore. (By the way, a LawProse survey has demonstrated that 87% of headings that say \u201cExecutive Summary\u201d are highly misleading: what follows is a true summary only 13% of the time.)<\/div>\n<div><b>2.<\/b><b>Give bearings.<\/b> The architecture of your writing must be overt: you must use highly informative headings, preferably full sentences that amount to succinct propositions.<\/div>\n<div><b>3.<\/b><b>Cut the clutter.<\/b> Clutter is more anathema than ever. With on-screen reading, it\u2019s even easier to flick over pages with just a scan. Readers can skim page after page with just a swipe of the finger. So anything extraneous must be eliminated altogether or radically subordinated. Anything that sets the reader to skimming or skipping must go.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>And as for editing:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div>You must <i>always<\/i> edit any serious document by hand, after printing it out. Sending an important document without that step is a serious mistake.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>This is from Garner&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lawprose.org\/lawprose-lesson-237-more-than-50-of-judges-and-lawyers\/\">LawProse Lesson #237<\/a>.&#8221; The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lawprose.org\/lawprose-blog\/\">preceding 236 lessons<\/a> are all worth perusing if you write or edit in a professional environment.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lawyer and language genius Bryan Garner over at LawProse.org spells out, in typically lucid fashion, how to compose documents when you know they will be read on a computer screen rather than on paper. 1.Summarize. It\u2019s important to learn the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/2015\/11\/23\/writing-and-editing-for-the-computer-screen\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,32],"class_list":["post-1117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roberts-posts","tag-audience","tag-editing-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}