Write, Write, Write

            I recently wrote that thinking is what I did for a living.  Of course, that's only half of it.  If you have acquired the habit of clear and logical thinking, you then have to develop the skill to apply it.  More than likely, this will involve communications.  My career was mostly in Marketing, a field in which good communications skills are absolutely essential.

            The best advice I could give kids today to improve their ability to communicate is to learn how to write.  And like any other facility, this one depends on practice.  Lots of it.  I'm not talking about texting your friends every minute of the day.  I'm suggesting a daily practice of putting your ideas down on paper.  You did it in school, so continue to do it even when your formal education is over.  Keep a diary.  Write letters.  Start a blog.  Anytime you get an idea, write it down.
            Learn how to write, but also learn how to write better.  Start with simple instruction books like E.B. White's Elements of Style and perhaps a book on editing.  Better still, find a mentor, an accomplished writer who is willing to look at your scribbles and suggest improvements.  I did it for my son Marc and I'm proud to say that his excellent writing skills have been a key to his success in business.
            My first mentor was my father.  He happened to be a linguist, perfectly bilingual in French and English, but also conversant in Spanish and Italian, with a smattering of Vietnamese and Arabic he picked up while working overseas for the State Department.  His best advice to me when I was in high school was how to expand my vocabulary.  He said, "Always have a dictionary at hand.  When you see a word you don't know, look it up immediately.  Write it down.  Then use it in three different sentences.  Do that, and this new word will be yours forever."
            Just as an aside, a couple of weeks ago I stopped at a used-book store and picked up a copy of Winston Churchill's "History of the English-Speaking Peoples."  I hadn't read two chapters when I ran into three words I didn't know, all three oddly beginning with the letter "e": exiguous, effulgence,  and ebullition.  I looked them up and wrote them down, along with their definition.  I doubt I'll ever use any of these words in a letter to the editor, but at least I'll know what they mean if I ever run into them again.  I won't give you the definitions here...you'll have to look them up them up yourself.