On the QT | The Official Newsletter of GWA June-July 2016 | Page 9

#6. WORD CHOICE
The easiest way to get inside a style?
Study the verbs. Go through and highlight
or underline every verb you can find. Verbs
characterize a piece. Are there lots of “to
be” verbs—is, are or were—which give
a leveled tone to the writing? How many
syllables appear in the verbs says much
about the presentation. Does the writing
have one-syllable examples—grab, throw,
tweak, raid, sweep? Or three- or more syllable verbs like rectify, attenuate, elucidate,
incentivize, incapacitate or anthropomorphize? Or perhaps you’ll see jargon verbs
used only among serious hort-heads. Copy
what you find.
Be aware of how plant names are
handled. Publications vary on their style
sheets. Some italicize the Latin, some
don’t. Some put the punctuation outside
the single quotes of plant names—in my
opinion the correct way, since the single
quote is part of the name—and others
don’t. This isn’t about right or wrong, it’s
about copying.
#7. THE ENDING
In your example, how does the piece
end? Is there is some kind of narrative
completed or a directive given? Is there
a summation or a reference to the whole
theme? Or does the writing go down
to the nuts-and-bolts information and
simply stop? You get to do the same.
These deconstruction steps can give
you the specific road map you need to
go forward. You’ll be able to apply your
good garden ideas to any venue you’d
like to tackle.

This article is based on an excerpt from GWA
member Mary-Kate Mackey’s forthcoming book,
Write Better Right Now—The Reluctant Writer’s
Guide to Confident Communication and Self-assured Style, due out late 2016 from Career Press.
Find out more at marykatemackey.com.

National Garden Clubs honor
George Weigel for PAR work
B Y A S H L E Y H O D A K S U L L I VA N
George Weigel, longtime GWA member and the founder
of Plant a Row Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s program, has been
honored by the National Garden Clubs as a 2016 recipient
of its highest honor, the Award of Excellence.
Weigel is author of Pennsylvania Getting Started Garden
Guide: Grow the Best Flowers, Shrubs, Trees, Vines and
Groundcovers and Pennsylvania Month-by-Month Gardening:
What to Do Each Month to Have a Beautiful Garden Each
Year, as well as Over the Garden Fence, a popular, weekly gardening column in The Patriot-News that he has written since
1993. Besides founding Harrisburg’s PAR program, Weigel is active in his community,
providing garden education to community gardeners and local children.
Weigel was nominated for the award by the local Penn-Cumberland Garden
Club and the Garden Club Federation of Pennsylvania, the state’s umbrella organization of garden clubs.
“Each year, NGC’s Award of Excellence recognizes exceptional individuals,
organizations or institutions that have made significant contributions to their
communities in such areas as environmental and civic responsibility, conservation,
community beautification and promoting the love of gardening,” said Sandra
Robinson, president, National Garden Clubs, Inc. “By recognizing these deserving
award recipients from different parts of the nation, NGC hopes to educate and
inspire others in communities coast-to-coast.”
The GWA Foundation congratulates Weigel on this prestigious honor. He is just
one example of the amazing network of volunteers and leaders who make Plant a
Row such a special program.
Ashley Hodak Sullivan is executive director of the Garden Writers Association Foundation.

Twenty pieces
of Chihuly
glass sculpture
will be on display
at the Atlanta
Botanical Garden
during the
2016 GWA
Convention &
Expo.

PHOTO COUR TESY ATLANTA B OTANI CAL G ARDE N

#5. SIGNPOST SENTENCES
Study the first sentence of each paragraph. I like to think of these sentences
as signposts. Do the sentences function
like that in your example? You should be
able to skim through a piece, reading only
the signposts, and understand where the
writing is headed. The signpost sentences
you create can do the same.

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