Update

Hello! As you might notice, I’ve taken an extended hiatus from this website. If you’d like to see the stories I write as a business reporter for The Birmingham News, check out my profile.

You can also follow me on Twitter: @martyswant

Thanks!

Marty

Sseko Designs feature story

The Columbia Missourian published my feature story today about Sseko Designs as its front page centerpiece. I’m really happy with the final result.

Indeed, it’s a bit lengthy, which some might see as a hindrance. But hopefully the sub-heads and my efforts to make each piece stand by itself in a way as a story-within-a-story will make it easy to navigate. I hope you enjoy this long-form story, and welcome any comments you might have.

Liz Forkin Bohannon stands with the Sseko Designs class of 2010 outside the Sseko workshop in Kampala, Uganda.

The Elements of Style

This week I started reading The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.  I bought it at the MU bookstore “just-for-fun” a while ago to gain a better knowledge of grammar and sentence structure. Most students probably would read this kind of book only if required.  But as a journalist, I understand the power of the written word, and that a mastery of the English language gives further force to a story. It’s a small book–only about the size of my hand –with a neutral gray cover and fewer than 100 pages, but over the past 50 years it’s been praised.

“Buy it, study it, enjoy it,” says a review for by the New York Times. “It’s as timeless as a book can be in our age of volubility.”

As I prepare for working on the copy desk at the Columbia Missourian next semester, I want to  know as I can,  so I can enhance each writer’s story rather than hinder it. I’ll know to “keep related words together” (rule 20) and to “place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end” (rule 22). I did pretty well last spring in my copy editing class, but there is always more to learn.

Knowing the inner workings of language won’t just help me as a copy editor, but as a writer, which is ultimately toward what I aspire. I want to write in a way that makes “every word tell.”

Other grammar books on my list for the upcoming semester:

-The Elephants of Style, by Bill Walsh

-Lapsing into a Comma, by Bill Walsh

-Sin and Syntax, by Constance Hale

Chalk can’t quell the quill

I have a horrible habit of getting in trouble for being too inquisitive. When I was in the fifth grade, my teacher became so fed up with my thirst for extra knowledge that he decided to give me a quota every day. He would mark a white chalked tally in the upper left hand of the blackboard, and when I hit my limit of ten I should be quiet. It never quelled my curiosity.

That anecdote disappeared from my memory until about a year ago, when I was looking back on why I wanted to be a journalist. One thing is certain: the drive is still present a decade later.

But it’s not just the pursuit of knowledge in itself, but a quest to share the voices of humanity through the written word.