Claire and I love Strictly Come Dancing. The professional dancer Katya Jones often says that practice makes progress. She doesn’t say that practice makes perfect, although that is the more common saying. I doubt that her celebrity partner this year, the footballer Tony Adams, is ever going to be a perfect dancer, but he is making progress. Is there such a thing as a perfect dancer? I suspect that even the professionals feel that they come close to perfection, however there is always scope for improvement.
When I write a post for my website, the WordPress platform gives me feedback on SEO (search engine optimization) and readability. Although it normally awards me a green smiling face for SEO, it gives me a red, or orange, unhappy face for readability. It accuses me of using the passive voice in too many sentences. I think the problem is my education. The way you write laboratory reports is passive. It’s not intended to be thrilling.
My editor, Debz, says the same thing. She always picks up on where I write in the passive voice. I’m not going to give you an example of passive voice, because I’m trying to wean myself off it. You can click on the link. It’s working! I have tried really hard to write in an active voice. The readability has been smiley green for my last two posts. Practice is making progress. Perfection is a very elusive thing, but progress isn’t. If I keep working hard on my writing, and avoiding the passive voice, that’s one less thing for Debz to correct. Hopefully that will free her to fine tune other aspects of my writing. Posting is my practice, and practice makes progress.
Tyler West, or cousin Tyler as I call him, doesn’t seem to be making as much progress. He achieved the first perfect ten scores of this series. Unfortunately he was in the bottom half of the scoreboard this week. I’m sure Diane is working him hard, so lets hope that practice makes progress for Tyler too.