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(U) Learning to Love English
FROM: Chief Warrant Officer John F. Berry
Run Date: 04/30/2010

(U//FOUO) Editor's note: Here are more thoughts on
writing from John Berry (pictured), an annual
contributor to SID today . The entire article is
UNCLASSIFIED. 
One of my best experiences in journalism occurred
unexpectedly in 1992 when my editor at the Fort
Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel told me to follow him
outside during his hourly smoke break. I was then an intern trying
to break into the newspaper business. My editor, always looking
for an excuse to light up, took a deep drag and told me I was doing
"okay" as a reporter but needed to grow up as a writer. 
Two decades later, after nearly 20 years in newspaper reporting, I
consider his advice the moment when I removed my training
wheels as a writer and started jumping curbs with English. 
I am Chief Warrant Officer John Berry, an Army Reservist who
trains once each year in the Meade Operations Center. After a
civilian career in newspapers, I am now a technical writer from
Redlands, California. This is my fourth year writing articles about
grammar and writing for SID today . I am still floored at the
interest and feedback those articles generated. 
At the Sun-Sentinel , I was stunned by my editor's comment. I was
getting my name into a top-notch newspaper and angling for a job
there after graduation (I didn't get it). I was also getting some
positive feedback from fellow reporters about my performance, so I
was dumbstruck by the suggestion. 
My editor's point was this: I was just functioning in the language
and I needed to learn an appreciation for it to get ahead in the
newspaper world. He suggested several possibilities to clue me in,
including reading "On Language,"* a New York Times column then
written by wordsmith William Safire. I have pretty much read it
ever since. 
I later took a course at the University of Florida called "History of
the English Language." One requirement was reading "The Mother
Tongue," a book by Bill Bryson that instilled pride by knowing that I
had a fluent grasp on one of the most difficult languages among
the estimated 600 now used around the world. 
That book was my shiny-penny-in-the-pool moment when my
editor's comments came into focus. Too bad I waited until my mid20s to figure it out. I wish I had read Bryson's book in high school.
What makes English stand apart from all other languages is the
richness of its vocabulary. To be successful, we need to use a

 SERIES: 
Berry on Writing
1.  Tips on Writing, for
Members of the
Military
2.  A Sequel Worthy of
'The Godfather'?:
Writing Tips from a
Professional
Journalist
3.  Rice Cakes for
Writers
4.  Learning to Love
English

 thesaurus, a book that doesn't even exist for other languages.
English abounds in synonyms, which is why we can attach a special
nuance to "house" to make it a "home." (Take that, French
speakers!) 
The next factor that makes English such an expressive language is
its flexibility. We can make an almost endless list of words pull
double duty as both nouns and verbs. That list includes "drink,
fight, fire, sleep, run, look, act, view..." 
As a technical writer in civilian life, I appreciate the exactness of
the language. I first learned how much other languages had
problems with clarity while learning Arabic at the Defense
Language Institute. In 1998, one of my Jordanian professors told
me how much he appreciated how precise he could be in English
(he quickly reminded me that Arabic was the language of the
poets). 
Bryson didn't mention this in his book, but I derive unlimited
amounts of gloating from knowing that English, once among a
doggerel backwater of languages centuries ago, is consuming the
world at Internet-fast speeds. I love that English absorbed the
languages of England's invaders and produced a language that
outlived its attackers. (Take that, Germanic tribes!) 
The respect and appreciation for English I learned in college
continued throughout nearly two decades of newspaper reporting.
As a crime and courts beat reporter, I acquired the confidence to
explore new ways of writing stories instead of just relying on the
predictable, routine and often boring "formula writing" of how such
stories typically appear in the newspaper. 
But breaking out of the "comfort zone" of predictable writing didn't
start well. I still remember one editor at my first newspaper, The
News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida, belly laughing at some of my
attempts (he meant well). I remember an editor at my second
paper, The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California, wondering
whether I even understood basic newspaper writing (I think he was
kidding). 
I don't recall my journalism professors telling me that creativity
required a thick skin and perseverance; I guess that that was
something I just had to learn the hard way. 
In time, my attempts to be creative and different were mimicked
by reporters at competing papers (although they would never
admit it). Eventually, my stories sailed through the editing process
and appeared in the paper almost exactly as they had left my
fingers hours before. And all that may never have happened if a
chain-smoking editor (he's still alive) hadn't hauled me out onto a
sidewalk and told me to evolve. 
To this day, I'm still looking for new and interesting ways to
improve. My latest acquisition is "Grammar Girl," a smarmy audio
book helping writers with numerous mnemonic devices, such as
one explaining how to correctly use "that" and "which" in a
sentence. I also like Merriam-Webster's "Word of the Day," which
sends me an e-mail with a challenging or mystifying word, often
taken from the news. 
I've coached several newbie writers in journalism. I can eventually
get a sense when they are just functioning in a language and when

 they are showing some spark. My advice to them was to accept,
embrace and love English for what it is instead of fighting all of its
confusion and oddities. 
* Since I've got your attention, I want to use this opportunity to
cure a grammatical illness at NSA: misplaced punctuation with
closing quotations. In American English, periods and commas
always come before the closing quotation. Colons and semicolons,
although rarely used in these situations, always come after the
closing quotation. All other punctuation marks could go either way
-- inside the final quotation if it's part of the quoted material or
outside if it belongs to the entire sentence. 

"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid comms)."

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