How does one define the bottom line?

Webster’s Dictionary defines it as, the line at the bottom of a financial report that shows the net profit or loss. Now is the time for businesses to take stock, sort out, and prepare to report that bottom line to our friends at the IRS. It’s a time for antithetical thinking: wanting to look as low on profit and high on loss as possible.

Webster’s also defines the term as, the primary or most important consideration

In 2009 my husband and I embarked on what would become a two-year journey to adopt two teenage sisters from Latvia. The bottom line was redefined for me when in 2011 our daughters finally came home and became our primary and most important consideration. The process had been long, grueling, and arduous, but against all odds we are now a family of four. Profit in my house this holiday season is skyrocketing.

I couldn’t agree more. Copyeditors who spend hours fine-tuning business copy see an ever-increasing glut of business jargon, or “corporatese”, in the documents we’re paid to work with: “bleeding edge technology” (as in, risky new stuff), to “talk around something” (how about just talking about it?) “interface” (a fancy way to suggest interaction), and a personal favorite: “blue-sky solutioneering.” Would it be so uncool to simply invite your team to brainstorm new ideas to solve problem X? What’s the job description for the person who does this poetic blue-sky solutioneering—a solutioneer?

Here’s another gem of corporatese that makes my brain want to explode: “accelerated emergence of high maturity behaviors”, which for you mere mortals, means “faster results.” Yes, actual people otherwise clothed and in their right minds foist this linguistic loopiness on others on a daily basis. “We surveyed members of the legal community”, they like to say. As for me and my house, we’ll simply “talk to some lawyers”, thank you very much.

The pseudo-adjective “actionable” is another one that regularly rears its head in copy. Who do these people think they are, William Shakespeare? Mr. Shakespeare stuffed his plays and sonnets with words and word forms he’d made up: eyeball, so-so, laughable, outbreak, vulnerable, and obscene are just a few of his linguistic miracles, as relevant today as they were when playfully penned four hundred years ago. In contrast, we’re reminded of the well-worn cliché “think outside the box” and the fantasy verb “to synergize” which have long since lost their luster in modern usage, sort of like the jewel colors and cowl-neck sweaters of the 80’s.

Good business writing is like writing in any other genre: above par in concision, clarity, and simplicity. Good writing knows its place in the world. It doesn’t have to show off, isn’t lazy, and doesn’t exclude anyone: Who wants to be the only kid in a cubicle who doesn’t know what an “anticipointment”* is? Uncluttered, straightforward copy that uses standard English to communicate its message creates a comfort zone for readers and is an added step in getting everyone on board with those all-important business goals that are, after all, the goal.

In conclusion, a few tips for business writing:

1. Say it simply. Really.
2. Leave the word morphing to your poetry journal.
3. Enjoy being a mere mortal.

*Any ideas?

Here’s why who’s purple cabbage is this? doesn’t work: who’s is the contraction for who is. So under this rule, the sentence could alternately read, who is purple cabbage is this? Only terrible Chinese translators talk like this, the same savvy folks who bring us actual menu items like Magical Soil Bean in Asian restaurants from Beijing to Baltimore.

But I digress. Bad Chinese translations to English aside, why are twenty-first century Americans (and Brits, for that matter) so enamored of the apostrophe? Signs everywhere are rife with them, mostly when they aren’t needed. Record’s and CDs. Ice Cream: Try Our’s! And one that drives me personally insane every time I stop by the neighborhood convenience store: Gas ‘n’ Grocerie’s.

Folks, mini-lesson in apostrophes: the word grocery is singular; groceries is the plural form of that word. Among other uses, an apostrophe suggests ownership or possession. So, the groceries here own something? What— the store? Our sanity? It’s the sign makers, I tell you. They paint the word groceries and muse to themselves, “Aw heck, groceries looks kind of lonely by itself; I’ll just throw in one of those little flying commas to keep it company.” And what about Jay’s Auto’s? Most people are going to correctly assume that it’s Jay who owns the autos. Yet who can say what Jay, or the sign maker he hired, may have been thinking: perhaps a simple desire to be inclusive, giving the autos in the car lot the impression that Jay and they mutually own each other, so nobody’s feelings are hurt.

One more mini-lesson, since misuse of the apostrophe dies hard: these are Bonnie’s sawed-off shotguns. The guns belong to Bonnie; the apostrophe between her name and the s tells us so. But what if both Bonnie and Clyde, as a unit, own the guns? Here the second half of the unit takes the apostrophe, and the sentence looks like this: these are Bonnie and Clyde’s sawed-off shotguns.

Ah, but neither Bonnie nor Clyde’s names end with an s. Nouns that end in s are where the punctuation rubber truly meets the road. Let’s take the family they call Jones, the people with whom so many people try to keep up. The Jones family owns, say, five BMWs. If we wish to communicate that the Jones family owns the cars, we’re obliged to add an es and an apostrophe to the end of Jones: these are the Joneses’ five BMWs. And don’t even think about inserting an apostrophe between BMW and s, just because Jay does it. BMWs is simply the plural of BMW; I guarantee you that the BMWs own or possess nothing in this case; the Joneses do!

There’s no stopping the abuse of flying commas, so I suggest we go with it and create a sign makers’ “credo of apostrophe” to be part of every sign painting job application. Applicants would explain, in three hundred words or less, they’re personal’ philosophie’s of apostrophe,s’.

So maybe hell doesn’t deserve to be capitalized, being what it is. But how about heaven, or nirvana? According to rumor these are fabulous places, worthy of having some attention paid them. Yet in that second sentence of this paragraph they are symbolized by mere lowercased words, helpless in the clutches of current language conventions as though they were ordinary nouns, as though they were no more important than words like sludge or gusset. Am I to understand that in the estimation of the good editors at Chicago, abstract yet worthy religious locales we can’t pinpoint with a GPS device don’t weigh in with the heft of earthly establishments like the aforementioned Applebee’s, just because Applebee’s happens to feature a wide selection of sizzling entrees? The answer is yes; the current rules that govern our language must be followed. And don’t go thinking you can break them without consequences. Just try putting out one measly sentence like: Dawn broke brightly over Hell that morning. I guarantee that within minutes, the word will be out all over Facebook that you are a dundermuffin.

In the same way that customs have changed over the centuries regarding the utilization of public spittoons or the appropriateness of sporting a purple mohawk in a board meeting, language conventions are pertinent only to people in the time and place in which they are used. And language has changed greatly since the time of, say, Shakespeare, when people were likely to spit out, “Fie thou scurvy knave”, and think nothing of leaving out the exclamation point after fie. Later, in the children’s story Peter Rabbit, author Beatrix Potter had the audacity to end a sentence with a colon (you know, the two crazy little dots: :), and no one blinks an eye. For crying out loud, any fifth grader is smart enough to know that a colon is used to introduce elements illustrating what precedes it, not to end sentences. Apparently not in Bea’s day.

And pick up any novel by Jane Austen (you know, Pride and Prejudice, etc.) to discover entire paragraphs that consist of one long and winding road, striking fresh life into the term “run-on sentence”. These marathon word groupings are full of Austen’s polite Regency characters possessed of a disposable income that allows them to spend their lives taking tea or strolling in the shrubbery, often in the throes of ruminating over important matters like “overthrown schemes” and “premeditated contempt”. These are concepts we dullards of the twenty-first century, working eight hours a day, or slack-jawed in front of Dancing with the Stars week after week, are unable to comprehend.

The average Austen sentence is also heavily larded with copious commas, acres of em dashes (one of these long things that signals an abrupt break in the flow of the sentence: —), labyrinths of semicolons (the period that can’t make up its mind: ;) and so many italicized words that on faith alone we must assume they resonated with the language sensibilities of early nineteenth century Brits. And oh, my personal favorite: Austen loves to mix her pause punctuation. When was the last time you saw a semicolon in a contemporary sentence followed by an em dash before the next clause leaps into action? Such as: Like dude;—whatup? We cringe at such a combination, yet Austen did this all the time and is commemorated in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey for her trouble.

We have to assume Austen knew her English. The question is, do we? Here’s one to ponder for next time: should the question read, Whose purple cabbage is this? or Who’s purple cabbage is this? Fie! Only scurvy knaves will get it wrong.

Nationally acclaimed online marketing expert Joan Holman states:
“According to a 2006 survey by the National Association of Realtors, over 80 percent of home buyers now use the Internet to search for a home. Realtors will tell you that people don’t even ask to see a property until they’ve seen it online first. They want to see a lot of photographs, and also a virtual tour… Most buyers are doing all their preliminary looking online.”

At J&J Copywriters we know it follows that if the typical homebuyer is going online to shop for images of a home, a realtor’s newsletter has a better chance of being read by prospects if it is in e-newsletter form rather than hard copy.

In 2010 lots of people open their mail over the recycling bin, searching only for bills, checks, and information the prospect deems important enough to spend time on.

A well-written e-newsletter with useful homeowner tips and eye- catching headings has a better chance of intriguing the prospect. An e-newsletter also affords the realtor a chance to link to his or her website and/or a home currently being promoted.

As a realtor have you had better response from e-newsletters than a hard copy newsletter or have you found the opposite to be true?

Do you see value in a newsletter or do you consider it a waste of precious time?

You have only to boil a potato for each dining participant and distribute them among the dinner plates. An austere sprinkling of salt completes the Spartan presentation. The simplicity of this repast will so overwhelm family members that words will fail them. Instead, there will be wide-eyed wonder regarding the startlingly small dimensions of the meal, and cries of joy that parsley has been included. This will naturally bring all diners into a greater awareness of the need to simplify one’s life during the Lenten spring. It will also prompt a voracious search, once the potatoes have been eaten, for another source of calories.

It is the muted white morning of Bright Monday, a pearl after yesterday’s sparkling Paschal jewel. In the yard, curls of cottony fog tangle the branches, clutching their soft pastel smudges of spring buds. Wet black limbs blend to a borderless cocoon of sky, tucking us in with our groggy, early morning musings. Yesterday’s uprising of sunshine and delights gave the illusion summer would burst upon us any moment. Now I am startled to remember we are in the throes of a still-fragile springtime, struggling to emerge.

Pascha has come and gone, leaving us in the dust. We are children at the side of the road, hands still stuffed with confetti after the parade has passed by. I wonder how I can bear this pale, motionless day after yesterday’s riotous color and noise. The memory is already precious, the odes of the canon of the midnight office pouring over us in the chill of pre-dawn, harmonies stretching us Godward, their shimmering strains threatening to break our hearts…

© 2007 Jean Hoefling

IT’S TEAM WORK (“Say, Hey I Love You” by Michael Franti)

We say hey goin’ strong today

Prob’ly doesn’t always feel that way

Seems like everywhere you go

The more things change

The less you know

But you know one thing

It takes teamwork

It’s teamwork

It’s teamwork

It’s teamwork

There’ve been a lot of changes all around the way

Changes to the HELOC, CBU and FHA

But you speak a common language yes indeed,

APR, HOA, PMI, LTV

An ARM is not a limb but an adjustable rate

GFE is a thing that is done in good faith

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not a girl and a boy

As of 2008 they’re a government toy

CHORUS

Now I’m not a highly “acronymical” man

But when you’re into lending you must do what you can

HECM (pronounced Heckem) is a mortgage that you do in reverse

2010 (twenty ten) GFE made everything worse

Working as a team is the best thing you can do

Making all the changes move in step with you

Drink a cup of coffee to relax

Not the Cost of Funds Index

We say hey goin’ strong today

Prob’ly doesn’t always feel that way

Seems like everywhere you go

The more things change

The less you know

But you know one thing

It takes teamwork

It’s teamwork

It’s teamwork

It’s teamwork

When I know there is nothing left, I stop inching toward the summit in the garish morning. There is no summit, no ascent or descent. There is only the endless mountain against a nightmare of blue-black sky. The narrow fades to gray.

Through the shroud I hear my father bark an order to Billy, to dig the stove out and make tea. My brother makes and pours the tea out, fire in a Sierra cup. I drink it under the nightmare sky pressing down against the mountain, down against a girl drugged with cold and exhaustion in a chartreuse parka.

There is sudden comfort; Dad and Billy have unzipped their own jackets to press their warmth to mine, in the offer of their blood-life to my revival. The heat of sick, sweet tea scalds and spreads. I want only to succumb.

But I do not succumb. Not to the blue-black sky, the inferno of sunburn or the panic that washes in torrents through my chest. Something within is stronger. Out of a core of single desire, my will pushes through. It comes from a strong place; too strong even for Tahoma, the mountain of legend, to resist.

At the summit I bask at the crater’s warm lip, only mildly delirious from altitude in that haloed world above the clouds, where tendrils of steam rise out of the snow…

© 2009 Jean Hoefling