At this point, I would settle for people not randomly capitalizing words

If you're someone who writes for a living or as a hobby, people often assume you're a stickler for grammar, punctuation and all the things your English teachers tried to get across to you.

I'm a writer (of sorts), but that isn't true of me. I don't go around judging people's spelling or word usage, mostly because I don't much care anymore.

While I understand the value of good grammar for clarity of communication, I am well past the days when I would carry around a virtual red pen and mentally edit every bit of writing I came across.

Part of the reason is the natural mellowing that often occurs with age. There are more important things to worry about, I find.

There's also the constant battle I wage against becoming a cranky old man. It's easy to find reasons to be angry and annoyed if you go around looking for them. I simply choose not to.

Then there's this question I often ask myself: How much does it really matter?

Again, yes, we have rules of usage and syntax and so forth for a reason. It's not about wanting to appear smart or trying to turn everyone in Shakespeare. It's about making sure we, as English speakers, are able to get our point across clearly and effectively whenever we speak or write.

Can I do that while still ending my sentence with a preposition? Yes, I can.

Can I do that while not understanding what a subordinate clause is and its role within a sentence? Yes, I can.

Can I do that without getting into a heated debate with a British person over whether collective nouns should be treated as singular or plural ("And the crowd are loving it!") ? Oh yes, I most certainly can.

The book pictured above sits on my desk at work, but I'll be the first to admit it's more decorative than anything else. As you might expect, "Warriner's Handbook of English" goes into great detail about parts of speech, sentence elements, phrases and clauses, pronoun cases, verb usage, modifiers, composition, spelling, and every aspect of punctuation you can think of, including the proper use of that pesky semicolon.

It was published in 1948. The preface to the book suggests it can be used as a teaching tool for 9th or 10th graders.

Maybe in 1948, sure. Nowadays, I don't think most adults could work their way through it.

Is that a bad thing? I'm not so sure it is. The way we communicate inevitably changes over time, regardless of what you and I think.

Here is the one thing I will ask of my contemporaries, though: Let's agree, collectively, to stop randomly capitalizing nouns. We are not German. Unless it's a proper noun (a specific name for a particular person, place or thing), and unless it's the first word in the sentence, it doesn't need to start with a capital letter.

Yes, there are exceptions in formal legal or business writing, but for the most part, keep 'em lower case.

If we can do that, I promise to scroll past your dangling modifier without saying a word.

A man's STILL got to know his limitations

(NOTE: This post was published five years ago today on September 5, 2016. I went back to it to see if it all still holds true. The answer is yes, except that, as recently pointed out, I don't do long tedious car rides as well as I used to. Other than that, these are still a few of the items on my long list of weaknesses and flaws...though to my credit, I fully embrace them all.)

Harry Callahan was right. Here are mine:

• If you're giving me directions, do not refer to points on the compass unless I'm traveling on a well-marked interstate. Otherwise, you're better off telling me something like, "Now when you get to the Dairy Queen that kind of looks like the Mos Eisley spaceport in 'Star Wars,' you're gonna want to take a left. You'll know you've gone too far if you come to the billboard for Swanson TV dinners." Those reference points I can relate to much better than north, south, east or west.

• Does the job involve hammering and/or basic operation of a screwdriver? Fine, I can do it. Are power tools and/or measuring in the mix? In that case, please see my wife.

• Cutting the grass? Yes, I'm a virtuoso. Landscaping of any sort? Yeahhhh, let's call a professional.

• I can sing the melody. I cannot sing harmony. I long ago accepted this fact.

• Athletically speaking, I'm all about running and jumping. Once you start throwing hand-eye coordination into the mix, you're going to want to pick someone else for your team...unless we're talking about hitting a slow-pitched softball, in which case I'm probably still your guy.

• Writing? Yes. Editing? Absolutely. Grammar question? Most likely. Drawing and/or general design? Next, please.

• Would you like me to dance? Fine, but the music must be limited to an 80s power ballad for which homecoming-type, rock-back-and-forth slow dancing is acceptable. There is no foxtrotting and/or Lambada-ing coming from this guy, let me tell you.

• I'm very good at tedious, long-distance car trips. I can be in that driver's seat for 12 hours and still be raring to go. But if at the end of the trip you ask me to parallel park on a busy street, I will melt right before your eyes. Really, my body will turn to liquid and I will enter another state of being that prevents me from even attempting to wedge the vehicle into that tiny space. A similar phenomenon occurs if you ask me to drive a stick-shift.

• I will sit spellbound for an hour listening to Mahler. I will not do the same for Merle Haggard. I'm also ready on a moment's notice for an all-day session of M*A*S*H* binge-watching, but I cannot abide more than seven consecutive minutes of almost any CBS sitcom, "The Big Bang Theory" excepted.

• Roller coaster? Sure, I'll come along if you'd like. Spinny ride? Sure, I'll puke on you if that's what you're looking for.

• I max out at roughly one beer or one glass of wine. Beyond that there's trouble. As for hard liquor, my preferred maximum there would be zero.

I've carried these nine books with me from job to job for the last 20 years

It can sound pretentious to call your job a "craft," but I do consider the writing portion of my vocation to be just that.

Whatever your personal craft may be, you should never stop trying to get better at it. I plan to be working toward clearer, more concise writing up until the day I die (well, maybe I'll take that day off...but not the day before).

There was a time when it was imperative for writers to keep a set of reference books at their desk. A dictionary and thesaurus were de rigueur, of course, but depending on the focus of your writing, there were others on the required reading list.

One was a stylebook, such as the Associated Press Stylebook pictured here. Stylebooks tell you everything from whether to hyphenate certain words to how you abbreviate the states to which nouns are capitalized and which are not. And everything in between.

You'll also find a book of quotations on my shelf, as well as Plotnik's "The Elements of Editing" and the densely populated "Macmillan Handbook of English," 1960 edition.

Here's the thing: These books, or at least most of the information they contain, can be found online -- in most cases quite easily. Technically, I don't need the physical books whenever I have easy access to Google.

But I keep them for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I still love the feeling of cracking open a book to get to whatever I'm looking for (just as I still love reading an actual newspaper). They have traveled with me from workplace to workplace over the past two decades, starting at the Cleveland Clinic and moving on to Dix & Eaton, The Cleveland Foundation, OneCommunity, Vitamix, and now Goodyear.

There are memories wrapped up in these books. A few I associate with particular work projects, maybe a script or press release of which I was proud. Others take me back to my newspaper days, when the whole idea of writing for money was new and exciting, and I wanted so badly to be good at it.

There's also this: As much as I love and embrace technology, I also believe books hearken back to a time when the written word was more revered and the library card catalog meant something. They represent a pathway to knowledge and experiences otherwise unattainable for most of us, even online.

Books are, in my mind, the genteel medium. And at age 51, I'm just old enough to appreciate that.

(By the way, the slim brown volume tucked between the AP Stylebook and the Macmillan Handbook is "The Word: An Associated Press Guide to Good News Writing." So good. Oh man, so good.)

A man's got to know his limitations

Harry Callahan was right. Here are mine:

• If you're giving me directions, do not refer to points on the compass unless I'm traveling on a well-marked interstate. Otherwise, you're better off telling me something like, "Now when you get to the Dairy Queen that kind of looks like the Mos Eisley spaceport in 'Star Wars,' you're gonna want to take a left. You'll know you've gone too far if you come to the billboard for Swanson TV dinners." Those reference points I can relate to much better than north, south, east or west.
  
• Does the job involve hammering and/or basic operation of a screwdriver? Fine, I can do it. Are power tools and/or measuring in the mix? In that case, please see my wife.
  
• Cutting the grass? Yes, I'm a virtuoso. Landscaping of any sort? Yeahhhh, let's call a professional.
  
• I can sing the melody. I cannot sing harmony. I long ago accepted this fact.
  
• Athletically speaking, I'm all about running and jumping. Once you start throwing hand-eye coordination into the mix, you're going to want to pick someone else for your team...unless we're talking about hitting a slow-pitched softball, in which case I'm probably your guy.
  
• Writing? Yes. Editing? Absolutely. Grammar question? Most likely. Drawing and/or general design? Next, please.
  
• Would you like me to dance? Fine, but the music must be limited to an 80s power ballad for which homecoming-type, rock-back-and-forth slow dancing is acceptable. There is no foxtrotting and/or Lambada-ing coming from this guy, let me tell you.
  
• I'm very good at tedious, long-distance car trips. I can be in that driver's seat for 12 hours and still be raring to go. But if at the end of the trip you ask me to parallel park on a busy street, I will melt right before your eyes. Really, my body will turn to liquid and I will enter another state of being that prevents me from even attempting to wedge the vehicle into that tiny space. A similar phenomenon occurs if you ask me to drive a stick-shift.
  
• I will sit spellbound for an hour listening to Mahler. I will not do the same for Merle Haggard. I'm also ready on a moment's notice for an all-day session of M*A*S*H* binge-watching, but I cannot abide more than seven consecutive minutes of almost any CBS sitcom, "The Big Bang Theory" excepted.
  
• Roller coaster? Sure, I'll come along if you'd like. Spinny ride? Sure, I'll puke on you if that's what you're looking for.
  
• I max out at roughly one beer or one glass of wine. Beyond that there's trouble. As for hard liquor, my preferred maximum there would be zero.

Four relatively easy things you can do to improve your writing

I don't claim to be Ernest Hemingway (or Ernest Borgnine, for that matter), but I can do a passable imitation of a competent writer.

Writing comes fairly easily to me. Many, many people are better at it than I am, while many others are worse. I'm not sure if that's enough to convince you that I'm an authority, but I'm hoping it's enough to convince you at least to stick around for a few hundred more words.

Looking to become a better writer? There are lots of things you can do. Some are difficult to learn, others are not. The following four items fall into the "not" category:

Write Like You Talk

You may have heard this before, and that's because it works. If you're confident in your ability to express thoughts and ideas orally, then your writing should merely be an extension of that. Writing in your own "voice" is generally more effective and certainly more authentic than trying to sound like someone you're not. 

For what it's worth, this tip reminds me of the excellent "Writes Like She Talks" blog maintained by Jill Miller Zimon. The blog itself and the associated blogroll of links to other blogs are both worth your time.

Try Not to Repeat a Word Right After You've Used It

Like I said, these are "relatively easy things." Nothing complex here. If you use a certain word in, say, the first sentence of a paragraph, you probably don't want to use it again in the second. Especially if it's an adjective or another distinctive word, the use of which will stand out in the reader's mind and quite possibly distract him/her. You want the reader focusing on your thoughts, not on your word usage.

Grey Blocks of Text Are Your Enemy

One of the greatest writing tips I ever received came from Joe Magill, a guy who served as one of my track coaches in high school and later was a colleague in The News-Herald sports department.

One time after I had written what I thought was a particularly engaging feature story, Joe called me over to his computer screen. First he showed me my article, then he showed me one he had just written. He asked what the difference was between the two, visually speaking. I immediately noticed that his story had lots of short paragraphs, while mine had relatively few and noticeably longer paragraphs.

Readers are subconsciously turned off by paragraphs that look like they require work to get through. Online writing, in particular, demands a short, punchy style. No long, plodding sentences or paragraphs. Make them short, and hit the "enter" key often.

Don't Worry, You Can Go Back and Edit It Later

A lot of people don't like writing because their first drafts aren't pristine and perfect. Here's a hint: Nobody's first drafts are pristine and perfect.

The important thing when you're writing something is first to get your thoughts down on paper (or computer screen), and then to worry about structure, sentence flow and the like. Unless you're writing a front-page story for tomorrow's New York Times, in which case you certainly wouldn't need me telling you how to write, you'll have time to revise your masterpiece.

So don't let your quest for immediate Pulitzer Prize-winning copy keep you from finishing. Plow through that first draft and then go back and see where things stand. It will be OK, trust me.