Finding Musicality in Your Writing

Finding Musicality in Your Writing Every time you put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard, you are delivering an image to the world. Its an image of who you are and, more importantly, how you communicate. If you want to stand out in written communication, you need to take another important step. You need to add musicality to your writing.What is musicality in writing anyway? Is it special words or phrasing? Is it rhythm or a particular beat? Is it a special combination of sentences? Is it the varied patterns of your words? Its all of these and more. Musicality is your communication brand- who you are as a writer. Musicality is your unique image, but its an image that appears in print instead of as a picture or an item you buy. So, how do you find it?Producing musicality in writing is similar in many ways to what a composer, a painter, a software programmer, or a designer does. It is seeking out and recognizing the unique sound patterns that you alone can produce on paper. That pattern is based on the words you cho ose and how you combine them to create your personal writing melody.Every piece of writing has a rhythm and its own particular beat. If youve ever read a passage in a letter or a research paper, a proposal or brochure, or a novel that you found really stayed with you, youve probably experienced musicality. To explain what happens a bit more precisely, think of attitude. Everything we write has its own special attitude. That attitude is the soul of the writing. A writer wants to communicate some part of himself or herself to an audience. Most writers spend a lot of time seeking the right attitude for a piece of writing. There are different attitudes of course for different audiences and different genres of writing, but the goal is always to express that one best attitude in every piece you write, Musicality must have attitude.To understand attitude better, think of the following scenario. Think of yourself as being in a crowded room and wanting to be heard over the noise. You want pe ople to hear what you will say because what you have to say is important. You climb on a chair and start to speak, but you dont yell. You whisper. Everyone looks at you high on that chair and becomes silent. You have them. If as a writer, you create an attitude that works, the readers in the back of your creative room will hear you just as clearly. You will drop a pin in that crowded room, and your readers will be suddenly silent because your pin is a huge diamond. Thats the kind of silence you want in writing. Attitude comes from musicality.To use another analogy, think about the theme of your favorite movie, and then think what that movie would be like if the movie theme were missing and there was only silence as the action scenes raced across the screen. Can you imagine Superman, Star Wars, or Jurassic Park without their musical scores, without their repeating themes? Musicality in writing produces a similar background for your writing. Musicality offers the same flow of scene, emotionality, and direct focus that great movies themes give to great films. Musicality is the rhythm of syllables becoming words, the flow of phrasing that becomes fascinating, and memorable repetitive patterns, or even jolting change that stops you cold. Its that unique sound that comes from hearing just the right word combined in just the right turn of phrase to communicate just the right idea at the right moment.Musicality in writing is a bit like a lyrical song or the repetitive beat in great jazz. It is a pattern you create to communicate an idea. It grabs your attention, holds you in its grasp, and replays in your memory long after the song is ended or the music stops. All of us can remember a special line from a song we loved or a bar of music we hummed. It replays in our heads over and over for hours as we go on with our daily lives. Musicality in writing is the same special combination of sound. Word juxtaposition, phrasing rhythm, and tonal sounds all produce a totality t hat becomes magical. If you can find such magic in your writing, whatever the goal for your piece, youll have in hand a unique communication that creates an unbroken bond with your reader. That bond can be to a sales letter, a brochure, a statement of purpose, a recommendation letter, a technical explanation, or a scientific abstract – it doesnt matter the purpose or the genre or the length. The concept is the same. Once you place your personal style of musicality on a piece of writing, that piece will engage your reader, excite the senses, and be remembered. It will also influence, and its ideas will be handed on to others.Rhythm is a pattern like those you hear in jazz as in Dave Brubecks famous Take Five. That piece has a wonderful precise theme that keeps repeating and reappearing in different arrangements. You remember it. Ive always wanted to write as well as George Gershwin wrote music. Listen to Rhapsody in Blue or An American in Paris sometime, and youll understand m usicality. Gershwin delivered an emotion in those pieces that we still can feel today, and he did it with tone and rhythm and musical themes.Musicality is a chosen pattern of words you consciously place in your writing. It lets words move in concert across the page. It can be syllables, or alliteration or use of metaphor or a simile, or a pattern of sounds that you determine is a crazy pattern for your piece. It is a pattern that continues on and joins with itself and is only interrupted when you want it to do so for a specific purpose. When you read aloud a piece that has musicality, it moves easily with highs and lows, and the sounds of the syllables blending naturally to communicate a precise sound you can physically hear, a sound that hopefully matches the theme.As you write, listen carefully to the words and phrases, and sentences you create. Listen for the unique meter or rhythm of your words as your ideas develop and become sentences and then paragraphs. Listen for natural so und breaks too. They will tell you where the idea breaks occur. Listen to your introductory words and notice where you placed them and how the musicality and meaning changed when you changed the placement of certain words. Notice where the rhythm and the flow changes, and ask yourself, Is this what I want right now?You might call musicality the heartbeat of a piece of writing. The heart has its own beat that we all can hear when were quiet – ba- dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. Poems have their own heartbeat too. Its called meter. It can be iambic pentameter or singsong, or one of many combinations with different weights for different syllables. Everyday speech has its own rhythm and sound. Listen to people talk when youre at the mall or in a restaurant. That is musicality. Different languages have their own musicality, and all cultures have their own.If you listen to your thoughts as you write them and then listen to the actual sound they make as you edit and revise, youll develop your own brand of musicality. You will conduct an orchestra of ideas. Eventually, youll learn to recognize when your writing is off-key and learn how to rearrange the sounds and rhythms and louds and softs to bring your writing back in tune again. Youll really hear your writing. If you listen well, you will write well and better.

How to Write a Patent Claim

How to Write a Patent Claim Claims are the parts of a patent which define the boundaries of patent protection. Patent claims are the legal basis for your patent protection. They form a protective boundary line around your patent that lets others know when they are infringing on your rights. The limits of this line are defined by the words and phrasing of your claims. As the claims are key to receiving complete protection for your invention, you may wish to seek professional help to ensure that they are properly drafted. When writing this section you should consider the scope, characteristics, and structure of the claims. Scope Each claim should have only one meaning which can be either broad or narrow, but not both at the same time. In general, a narrow claim specifies more details than a broader claim. Having many claims, where each one is a different scope allows you to have legal title to several aspects of your invention. Here is an example of a broad claim (claim 1) found in a patent for a collapsible tent frame. Claim 8 of the same patent is narrower in scope and focuses on a specific aspect of one element of the invention. Try reading through the claims for this patent and notice how the section begins with broad claims and develops towards claims that are narrower in scope.​ Important Characteristics Three criteria to take note of when drafting your claims are that they should clear, complete, and supported. Every claim must be one sentence, as long or as short a sentence as required to be complete. Be Clear Your claim must be clear so that you do not cause the reader to speculate about the claim. If you find yourself using words such as thin, strong, a major part, such as, when required, then you are probably not being clear enough. These words force the reader to make a subjective judgment, not an objective observation. Be Complete Each claim should be complete so that it covers the inventive feature and enough elements around it to put the invention in the proper context. Be Supported The claims have to be supported by the description. This means that all the characteristics of your invention that form part of the claims must be fully explained in the description. In addition, any terms you use in the claims must be either found in the description or clearly inferred from the description. Structure A claim is a single sentence composed of three parts: the introductory phrase, the body of the claim, and the link that joins the two. The introductory phrase identifies the category of the invention and sometimes the purpose, for example, a machine for waxing paper, or a composition for fertilizing soil. The body of the claim is the specific legal description of the exact invention which is being protected. The linking consists of words and phrases such as: which comprisesincludingconsisting ofconsisting essentially of Note that the linking word or phrase describes how the body of the claim relates to the introductory phrase. The linking words are also important in assessing the scope of the claim as they can be restrictive or permissive in nature. In the following example, A data input device is the introductory phrase, comprising is the linking word, and the rest of the claim is the body. Example of a Patent Claim A data input device comprising: an input surface adapted to be locally exposed to a pressure or pressure force, a sensor means disposed below the input surface for detecting the position of the pressure or pressure force on the input surface and for outputting an output signal representing said position and, an evaluating means for evaluating the output signal of the sensor means. Keep in Mind Just because one of your claims is objected to does not mean that the rest of your claims are invalid. Each claim is evaluated on its own merit. This is why it is important to make claims on all aspects of your invention to ensure that you receive the most protection possible. Here are some tips on writing your claims. Decide which are the essential elements of your invention that you want to claim exclusive rights to. These elements should be the ones that distinguish your invention from known technology.Begin with your broadest claims and then progress to narrower claims.Start claims on a new page (separate from the description) and number each claim using Arabic numbers starting with 1.Precede your claims with a short statement such as I claim:. In some patents, this reads as The embodiments of the invention in which an exclusive property or privilege is claimed are defined as follows:Check to see that each claim consists of an introduction, linking word, and body. One way of ensuring that specific inventive features are included in several or all claims is to write an initial claim and refer to it in claims of narrower scope. This means that all the features in the first claim are also included in the subsequent claims. As more features are added the claims become narrower in scope.