As a keen watcher of golf, I am relishing four days glued to my TV to watch sportsmen at the top of their game exhibit their prowess (and see how they fare against the legendary Scottish deep rough, which is sure to yield plenty of shankers), as well as beautiful scenery of Turnberry with its coastal views, especially of Ailsa Craig.

I checked out the official Open Golf website and was bowled over by the video content available portraying The Open Championship; and the tournament hasn’t even started yet!

They’ve got online videos of press conferences with the golfers, the organisers, helpers such as the Met Office, the course and its environment. Now that’s what I call not just a service to golf fans, but to the web.

Of, course, I’m aware of the phrase “too much information”, but if the information’s available, it’s open to people to provide it, then for individuals to find what is useful to them whilst filtering through the junk. That’s the beauty of the internet, and also the human mind.

Unbeknownst to most web surfers, the world’s most powerful search engine, Google, has the ability to search audio content embedded within online videos. When you search for current events topics on Google, Youtube almost always appears on the first page of search results. Ever wondered why? Well, now you know why: Google not only indexes Youtube’s (and most online video providers’) video’s titles, they search through their audio content to identify keywords and phrases and match them to their users search terms. The most popular and relevant search words and search terms appear higher in the search rankings. So, whoever is responsible for the Open Golf’s website has set the site up well for search engines to recognise and rank highly key golfing terms, either within text content or video content.

I like Tiger Woods and wood (sorry!) love to see him smash some records, but I also love it when a rank outsider bags the most prestigious of golf tournaments in spite of the bookie’s odds. Golf’s an awesome pursuit and like a true neutral I’d always say that golf’s the winner. But…

…Go Padraig Harrington! 3 in a row. It’s never done before!

Having been to the Scottish Open at Loch Lomond a few tmes I know how exciting (and sometimes relaxing) attending live golf tournamant can be. However, I’ll be glued to my TV or watch the highlights online. Even though it’s only 60 miles down the road from me, I can’t face the traffic or the parking.

“See it all, till tomorrow”

A colleague of mine once uttered these words. I don’t believe he intended them to become legendary, but within my circle of friends they most certainly are and, I think, rightly so.

What is a word anyway?

Words are abstract constructs. Their substance has no relevance to their meaning. By that I mean that a sound, letter, phoneme, morpheme or word has no intrinsic meaning attached to it save that which the human mind attributes to it. “Walk” could mean the same as “run”, but why doesn’t it? It’s because we have created a different meaning for each. As we grow up from childhood, we learn that different sounds have different meanings, and so we accept these sound-meaning relationships without question. When we learn a language, we are conditioned to associate certain sounds with certain meanings.

Some words are spelled and pronounced the same but can have many different meanings, for example, the word “bank”. How we differentiate contextual meanings with multi-meaning words is an on-going hot topic amongst linguists and lexicographers, but that’s for another post…

Although words are abstract constructs, the association between the sound of a letter or mixture of letters (words), has become entrenched in our understanding of words and how they are used in conjunction with each other to form meaningful sentences, which in turn help us to convey ideas and concepts, although the extent of how much we can convey meaning is extremely limited. This process forms the basis of all our written and oral communication.

Certain words, regardless of language, are similar in different languages.

How can this be? All languages are categorised into families and hence, have hereditary traits. For millennia, people have migrated from country to country, continent to continent. During this, cultures mingled and languages merged. There is no such thing as a pure race. We are all of each other.

Because of this migration, neighbouring cultures share similar language traits. The scale of this is huge. For example, some members of Siberian tribes crossed over the ancient land bridge between far Eastern Russia and Alaska and migrated to South America, and now some South American cultures share some language traits with those still spoken in Russia.

However, this epic fact doesn’t negate the fact that words are dodgy things. What does dodgy mean? Well, it can mean “deceiving”. We may not mean to deceive when we use words, but it is often an un-meant and un-desired side-effect, even when we think we have chosen our words with care. Like it or not, this is inevitable, so it means we have to take special care in choosing the words we use.

As I see it, every human being likes and deserves to be treated with decency. Isn’t this a basic human right? The words we use go a long way, and their impact is vastly underestimated by many people. We shouldn’t think just of how we think we would like to be spoken to, but, more importantly, how we think someone else would like to be spoken to. To achieve this demands supreme concentration and dedication. This one of the reasons why Gautama Buddha rated Right Speech as one of the most important things a human being must pay special attention to and try to master. Try it for just one day and you’ll soon see how difficult it is. You will feel a sense of achievement even in trying. But, persevere: you and those around you will benefit enormously. For my partial take on Right Speech see Part 2 of my article The Unfolding Script of Speech and Language.

One problem with words is that once we crystallise our thoughts into words, the subtleties of meaning become lost or distorted very easily. When we speak or write, how often are we happy that what we have communicated is what we were really thinking? Once we communicate via words, we are, to a degree, at the mercy of the listener or reader’s understanding and perception.

From my point of view, this goes right to the heart of the problem of language: language, written or spoken, plays second fiddle to thought. Thoughts are far superior in accuracy, potency and meaning compared to written or spoken language.

So how is all this relevant in our daily lives?

For most of us, not a day passes when we don’t use either the written word or spoken word. Imagine you had only 100 words (it may seem a lot, but it really isn’t) to use, either written or spoken, each day.

You’d soon learn to choose them pretty carefully.

“See it all, till tomorrow”

His reply: “a writer writes.”

That, to me, is pure genius. Genius most often lies in taking a complex idea and making it simple. It’s all about attitude, in my opinion. If you want to write, start writing. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering stuff. Above all, be yourself and just put something down. If you’re not happy with it, change it. If you think your story, article or blog is going nowhere, just take a break and revisit it when you’re in the mood. Don’t force it. Do it when you want to, you’ll enjoy it more, and the result will be more pleasing to you and your readers.

“See it all, till tomorrow”

Writer’s block is something all writers face at some time. Your mind goes blank and your brain just doesn’t work, just like trying to run in a dream. Your mind wills your body to move at the speed you want it to, but you just don’t move fast enough. If writing is your job, this can be not only frustrating, but you have to get that piece written, edited and published, or your boss will give you a good spanking.

Just saying to your boss, I’ve got “writer’s block” probably won’t get you out of that pot of boiling water. Anyone who’s ever written anything knows that writer’s block comes unannounced and that it is crippling. But we’ll deal with writer’s block in another post…

On to the dreaded blank page…

Whenever you start a new writing project, one thing is inevitable: a blank first page.

If your mind is brimming with ideas, it’s no problem to bang words out. Sometimes we all have these days, but sometimes we don’t.

So…here’s a short but effective checklist to add to your writing arsenal:

One of my Writing Commandments (no “Ten Commandments” here; we’ll just see how it goes…) of writing is: It’s easier to work with something than nothing. So, even if it’s the biggest load of crap you’ve ever written, write it anyway. It does no harm, you can always delete it, but it’s something to work with, edit, mould, and more often than not, yields ideas you never even suspected. Never forget, you can’t edit a blank page. Also, no-one wants to reads a blank page. So write SOMETHING!

Write down in 2-3 sentences EXACTLY what you want to accomplish.

Pick key headings and write them down.

Do a bit of light research on the subject and put your notes and any good referential urls under  the headings.

Don’t work from top to bottom. If you find any good info, put it into your own words and save your work. But if you find something relevant to another sub-heading, go ahead and add it in to the appropriate place. You’ll thank yourself later.

Just work your way through your headings, adding content little by little.

Once you’ve got a good amount of content, review your work. You’ll be amazed at what you’ve  actually accomplished.

Start your first edit, trimming away any irrelevant content.

Re-read.

If you feel you need more detailed content, do more research and add accordingly (this is sounding more like a cooking recipe!)

Re-read again (the best chefs ALWAYS taste as they go).

Edit again.

If you’re happy, run a spell check. However, DO NOT rely on it. Read it through after you do a spellcheck because spell checker’s aren’t as intelligent as you are. Better still, get a friend or colleague to read it. Any good, professional writer will take constructive criticism onboard and make appropriate changes to the piece. You may want to say something with a particular slant, but the spellchecker might have wanted to change it.

So, now you should have a written piece that you should be happy with. It’s hard work writing, but the rewards are immense, not only for you, but, hopefully also for your readership.

Good luck.

“See it all, till tomorrow”