Make the Words Count

We’ve all heard the adage: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” A well-framed, high-resolution, carefully-lit photograph can indeed tell a story all on its own. A quick snapshot of a bygone era brings a flood of memories cascading into day.

We live in an era of visual communication with stories told via YouTube and Instagram supplemented with GIFs and memes. The web has done what USA Today did for the news business, Writers slash word counts, use shorter sentences and bullets to break up the long columns of gray text.

But even in this era of visual communications, words matter – how they’re arranged on the page or screen, how we hear them in our heads and the meaning they convey.

They’re the echo of your mother’s voice as she bellows out all three of your names, a sure sign that you were in trouble.

They’re in the husky voice that whispers, “I love you,” breathed into your hair or the tender skin of your neck.

They’re the sting of pain from an insult, or the shock of an obscenity spit in anger.

They’re that swell of pride when someone praises your work.

For every picture I treasure of family members who are gone from my life, I value the cards, notes and letters from them even more.

• The treasured note on a bottle of wine from my late grandparents
• The cards from people I no longer see
• The journal entries from my much younger self

The challenge for writers in this era of visual communication isn’t to compete with the visual images, but to explain them and give them context. They give names to a feeling, a color, an emotion, a flash of intuition.

So rather than count your words to fit an ever shrinking space, make the words count.

Image from Flickr Creative Commons: LMRitchie’s Photostream

That “Little Lady” Tone

I call it “the-little-lady” tone. We’ve all heard it:

• From the mechanic when we explain the vibration in the steering wheel at 70 mph.
• From the plumber when we show him the leaking faucet due to a gasket.
• From the salesman at the auto dealership.

It’s that tone of voice that implies women don’t understand mechanical things, that we just need to leave the diagnostics and repairs to the big strong man. All women need to do is pull out the checkbook and write in enough zeroes and he’ll fix everything for us.

He’s got it, my dear. You needn’t worry your pretty little head. Go apply another coat of lipstick, honey.

It’s nothing more than a pile of foul smelling, steaming feces from the anus of a male bovine. And the next chauvinistic pig who gives me that demeaning, disgusting voice is going to find his teeth in his stomach, right next to his gonads. (I won’t demean the entire male population by calling him a man.)

Since I’ve been on my own, I’ve had to deal with some fun plumbing issues in my apartment. I’ve had to handle my own auto maintenance, and I’ve arranged financing for a new house.

I’m the first to admit that I’m not a plumber, not a mechanic and not a loan officer, but I do know what an unbalanced tire feels like and what a decaying gasket leak looks like in a faucet and what it means when both the shower AND the toilet back up at the same time.

My credit score is the direct result of using credit cards wisely, keeping my bank accounts in the black and contributing to my retirement funds. I know how to budget for my loan payments, taxes, insurance and association dues. I also know enough to budget for routine repairs and how to calculate what the property taxes will be after the sales price is reported to the county assessor.

When I look at a house, I push those fancy window treatments aside and ask who manufactured the windows and what the fenestration rating is. I don’t give rat’s behind about your pretty window treatments. I want to know how much heating and cooling is being lost through those cheap windows you installed.

Yes, I have breasts – and a brain. The men who can remember that long enough to treat this woman with a decent amount of respect are going to get my money. They will answer my questions because I want to learn. They will explain what they’re doing and why and offer suggestions to help prevent the problem from occurring again. They will show me the corroded parts when recommending a complete faucet replacement instead of a cheaper gasket replacement.

No man needs to be threatened by a woman who will take the time to understand how things work and why they don’t. No man needs to fear women who stand up for themselves and insist on accountability.

So why are so many of them so anxious to treat women like they’re imbeciles?

Image from Flickr Creative Commons: Jere-me’s Photostream