As an important tradition, we dined together every evening engaging in family conversation. Even when I worked late, my dear spouse would feed a holdover snack to our children until we could convene for the evening meal.

Every dinner conversation included a round table question: “What did you do today?” In that simple way, every family member took part in keeping the others abreast of current events, and in resolving any issues that may have arisen. I looked forward to those dinner conversations, so when each my children moved away to attend college, I felt an indescribable loss. To compensate, I wrote bi-weekly letters from home; mostly, in a conversational tone, mindful of our evening meal conversations. Their content mostly addressed humorous household and town events, with an occasional clipping to keep them informed. To be sure, I rarely received replies, except for a periodic telephone call; but that did not matter, because those letters met my perceived need to communicate with a loved one living afar.

My first-born relished my letters, but experienced difficulty in reading them. My once impeccable penmanship had deteriorated into a corrupted cursive handwriting.  Citing copious examples, she demonstrated that my handwriting used only twelve English alphabet characters, thus accounting for less than half of those available. For example, one character depicted the “a” and “o;” and another, the “e” “i” and “u.” The consonants fared no better, with one character serving as the “b” and “l”, the “h” and “k”, and the “r” and ‘v.” Still others approached a hieroglyphic, bearing little resemblance to any existing alphabet character.

With the persuasion of an advocate, she convinced me to purchase a personal computer, an uncommon household item at the time, to improve the readability of my well intended letters. Indeed, at her behest, I purchased my first computer, which not only enhanced readability, but also added two additional benefits: (1) spell check and (2) one-page letters.

My children looked forward to reading those letters, and surprisingly retained most of them. Now that they are grown and launched into their own families, I write my grandchildren short notes, untyped but in large block letters.  Few schools today teach cursive handwriting.

Once upon a career, my first professional mentor performed his mission well. He defined what he expected of me, and held fast to the development criteria. My first lesson focused on writing a legal memorandum, framed within a reasonable five point layout:

(1) a short statement of fact;
(2) the issue or issues arising from the facts;
(3) the available alternatives, if any;
(4) a recommendation; and lastly,
(5) a rationale for the recommendation.

This framework provided excellent parameters for my work. The mandate that followed, however, turned reasonableness on its head, or so I thought. With an extended forefinger in the air, he forebode: “I will read only the first page!” The sad truth: some of my legal memoranda bloviated over multiple pages. Indeed, even a short fact statement could run beyond one page. When I questioned his one page mandate, he never wavered; but softened slightly: “I didn’t say the memorandum must be one page, I said that I would only read the first page. You can add all the riders, addendums, citations you wish, but I will only review them as the need arises”

My first effort involved a simple question, but my first draft extended several pages. As Plato opined: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” I commenced to edit, to prune, to tighten. In the end, I suceeded in molding the five points onto one page. My job depended on it! The revision time easily matched my initial research and writing effort, but the finished result confered a pleasing sense of accomplishment, for which I received an unexpected, but welcome, “good job.”

In that editting experience, a strange phenomonon happened. Not only did I attain the one page summary, but also I shortened its initial length by half in a better organized presentation. The one page memorandum became the cornerstone of my legal memorandum writing. Later, upon joining a corporation, my lesson learned permitted an easy expansion to the ubiquitous Executive Summary.

In grade school, the good nuns built a solid foundation for good writing through two important benchmarks: (1) Parts of Speech; and (2) Sentence Diagraming. They identified the bones of the sentence and interaction of words, within a graphic setting to learn them.

The eight Parts of Speech comprise: Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Prepositions, Conjunction and Interjection. I accepted the first seven without question, but never understood why grammarians included the Interjection, as it only expresses emotion, usually followed by an exclamation point, and has no grammatical relation to the rest of the sentence. Nevertheless, an Interjection remained a Part of Speech, while the erudite grammarians omitted an essential Part of Speech; namely, the Articles: “a” and “the”, also known as Determiners, which comprise the most often used sentence words, particularly by children.

Sentence Diagrams started as an early exercise to identify and place the Parts of Speech. At first, it was easy because early childhood sentences contained few words, mostly nouns and verbs. I recall liking the process, which seemed more like solving a puzzle than doing work. The initial diagram comprised a horizontal line divided by a vertical line. The student wrote the sentence subject, always a noun or pronoun, on the left; the predicate, always a verb on the right.  As sentence length expanded, the diagram added a second vertical line, to the right of the predicate, to accommodate the direct object or a predicate adjective., completing the main skeleton of the sentence.

In addition to identifying the Parts of Speech, diagramming taught us where to fit the modifiers. Every other Part of Speech, except for the vagabond, Interjection, modified the subject, predicate or direct object. Adjectives always modified a noun; adverbs usually modified the verb, but could also modify another adverb or an adjective. Though an Adjective only modifies a noun or pronoun, an adverb may modify another adjective, a common source of mis-identification. Nevertheless, with five of the Parts of Speech placed, only Prepositions, Conjunctions, and the lowly Articles remained.

As in all things, the sentence diagraming process became more complicated with the addition of words and the introduction to Passive Voice, which moved sentence action in the opposite direction.  Nevertheless, sentence diagraming fostered clear, concise writing.  No one wished to diagram a wordy line.