Том Садовски рассказывает о своем пути от пригорода Детройта до журналистики и делится секретами эффективного письма

I am not from Missouri. I was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. I think of how I got from there to here as a chain with many links, some of which may appear in later columns. Today's link is Dennis Foster, a classmate and good friend at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Dennis is the second most critical link because of a chat we had that I remember like it was yesterday. I can still picture it. We were sitting in a classroom talking about where we were going to college. I thought the University of Florida because my oldest brother, Chet, went there. Dennis said he was looking at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, established in 1956, just 14 years prior. Dennis ended up going elsewhere, but since Chet lived nearby in Clearwater, having family close would be nice. I applied and was admitted. USF is the No.1 link in my chain, but that's a story for a future column. Doing my first column took some effort, but it was fun deciding what to talk about then writing it. Want your kids to be good writers? Help them find something they like to read. It doesn't even need to be a book, just as long as they're reading. I read every Tom Swift and Hardy Boys. I went to San Pablo Catholic grade school in Marathon, Florida. I had great teachers. English was one of my favorite classes. I loved grammar, diagramming sentences and spelling. I was always a good speller. I won a spelling contest held between seventh- and eighth-graders of San Pablo and the Key West Catholic school. As I write this, I'm looking at the newspaper story about it. My dad kept a file for each of us with things like this, report cards, etc. I even have a receipt from a surgery when I was six months. I enjoy editing so I can refine what I want to say and how to say it. I love the expression I could have said it in fewer words but I didn't have the time. Taking the time is essential to say what you want to say. You may remember WordPerfect which preceded Word. I found a program, RightWriter, that worked with it and was designed to help you write concisely and effectively. My version of it: Active voice. Passive voice hides the culprit. John was killed versus the butler did it. No words of three syllables or more, which happens when you turn a noun into a verb -- explain it to me versus give me an explanation. Short paragraphs of 3-4 sentences. Bullet points which make things easy to read. Imagine this list as a paragraph. Words that disappear when you edit because you don't need them. They're word clutter. They're here when I write like people who show up uninvited. Editing politely tells them to leave. Tom Sadowski, a certified government financial manager, is a regular contributor to the News Tribune. He earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of South Florida and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Missouri.