Language 101 '" on Writing a Weather (or Other) Story '" My Top 13 Tips (As of Today, 11/14/10)

I am writing this article to help out the high school forecasting team at Foot's Forecast, a growing national student-based forecast program.

They may not have a service in your area yet, but they just may have one there shortly.

I interact with them on several levels, including serving as an advisor and linking with them for nationwide summer weather camps. As it turns out, some members of their forecast team can benefit from coming to our camps and many of our campers can benefit from continued forecasting experience after camp ends. I am very into symbiotic relationships!

For what it matters, I didn't used to be a credible writer (bad language intentional). My SAT language score was an unimpressive 480 (although my math score was a stellar 740). That's because "back then" boys got shunted into math and science and girls got the language training. Today, it's better, but guys typically don't get the same grooming in language (nor do they have the same interest) as girls do! But this is a topic is for another article!

Now, I write books about weather and post lots online here and also at examiner.com.

With this background, I'm now sharing some ideas so others can develop their unique weather writing styles within good writing practices. And, while the message is focused for a specific target audience, I hope that anyone can benefit from it!

So, what does it take to write a good forecast/weather story?

(1) The information must be relevant to readers. If one is writing a local forecast, then talking about the weather on the other side of the Nation, no matter how interesting, is not going to provide a service or bring in readers. Conversely, when writing a national story, one can't dwell on local weather.

(2) The information must be useable to readers. How is it going to affect me? Will I need to carry an umbrella or can I leave it at home? Will my flight be delayed? Will roadways be hazardous for driving? Will I need to water my lawn? It's good to think outside the box here!

(3) Incorporate interesting anecdotes, records and other details to make things more interesting. If appropriate include images, charts, graphs and other visuals to explain and/or highlight key points.

(4) If you do use images, be sure to credit the source. Even more importantly, be sure you can use the image. If you can't actually post the image (due to copyright issues), you might be able to link to it. But, be careful. Some images are routinely replaced (especially those involving weather maps and data). If you use such a linkage, the reference you intended may disappear very quickly.

(5) The information you present must be easy to read. This can take many forms. It must be presented in short, focused sentences. Nothing is worse than a sentence than lasts for two lines or more, regardless of the number of commas or parenthetical expressions it contains. The best rule of thumb is that you can use "and" as a place to break up the sentence.

(6) Use Microsoft Word's many tools to improve your writing. Spell-checking is the easiest. This will enable you to catch many errors that would otherwise detract from the weather message you are sending. I caution, however, that not every spelling message from Word is correct. Some words (especially those that may or may not be hyphenated) seem to have "fuzzy" rules in how they are checked.

(7) Following this function, you'll be provided a "readability statistics" box. This provides useful information about the reading level of what you've written, average number of words in a sentence and the amount of passivity in your writing. It is best to significantly reduce the use of passive voice by replacing "to be" verbs with "action" verbs. I've gone out of my way to do this is in my examiner.com article on November 14, 2010. Check it out and you'll see what I mean.

(8) Then re-read what you have written several times. You'll be amazed at how easy it is to mentally insert missing text words or to see the correct spelling even when a word is misspelled. In writing the Examiner.com story noted above, I found the word "area" instead of the intended "are a." But, spell-check didn't pick up the error because "area" was still a word! Also, look for words with the same letters but different forms. My worst pair is "from" and "form."

(9) I routinely use Word Count to help me shorten articles or meet specific writing size targets.

(10) Solicit, assess and then incorporate suggestions from readers and mentors. You don't have to blindly accept these, but at least consider and/or try them.

(11) Vary your writing style a bit from day to day. "Stuck in a rut" writing will get old fast!

(12) Don't give up! It may take weeks or even months to evolve into a credible writer.

(13) Finally, it is okay to use acronyms. Just be sure you define the acronym with first use, IMHO (In my humble opinion).

These are just my top 13 as of today. I will be updating this listing, based, in part, on feedback I receive from others (item #10 on the list above).

I hope this helps.