Writers’ Cramp and Baseball Camp

by Elle Ray | Apr 10, 2016 | Writing

Sports Medicine Heals Ballplayers and Writers

What do writing and baseball have in common? For one thing, they are two of Mark’s favorite things in the world. For another, they can both lead to devastating hand injuries. And finally, both writers and baseball players can find relief through the burgeoning field of sports medicine.

You read that right: sports medicine specialists don’t treat just athletes. The team doctor for the Detroit Tigers treats the front office manager with the same therapeutic techniques typically reserved for sports medicine. The more you do any one kind of activity, the more likely you are to incur an injury that’s best treated by a professional who sees those kinds of repetitive motion problems on a daily basis in the sports medicine field.

The Sport of Writing

As you sit in front of your computer screen, writing your latest blog, creating your daily social media post or composing an important press release or industry piece, you may begin to feel a cramp in your hand. Your wrist may feel tight and you suddenly realize that it’s painful to straighten your fingers.

You may remember hearing on the news that morning that your favorite baseball player will have to sit out the first week of spring training because he’s having difficulty straightening his fingers. He’s been sidelined at baseball camp because of the cramping he’s experiencing from gripping the ball or bat too tight for too many practice hours. Could your malady and his be related?

Curse of the Metatarsal

Pain and cramping in your hands is a common work-related injury that sports medicine professionals see on a regular basis. Some of the symptoms sports medicine specialists find are shared by both desk jockeys and sports athletes, including:

• General feeling of weariness and weakness
• Knuckle pain and swelling
• Tingling sensations or pins and needles
• Slight numbness
• Stiffness in fingers and wrist
• Sharp or dull ache
• Pain in the joints or muscles
• Cramping

Symptoms usually occur from repetitive motions involving your hands. It’s those fine motor skills — such as playing a musical instrument, keyboarding, holding a pen or throwing a baseball for hours — that can lead to the painful hand symptoms. And while you may never run the bases or even venture to a ball field except to sit in the stands, you can find relief at the same sports medicine clinic as the players.

Common Sports Medicine Treatments

You receive the same kind of treatment as your favorite ballplayer, such as:

• Physical therapy
• TENS
• R.I.C.E. (rest, ice, compression, elevation)
• Immobilization
• Anti-inflammatory medications
• Splints

Writers’ cramp and injuries incurred at baseball camp usually don’t require surgical intervention, but you can’t rule it out completely, especially if the repetitive use has resulted in a torn ligament or fracture. The best advice at this point is to do everything you can to prevent writers’ cramp. You’ll feel so much better writing about the opening season game in your next blog if you practice a little foresight and:

• Invest in ergonomic desk equipment
• Take regular breaks, like 15 minutes every hour
• Relax when you’re typing
• Hold a pen lightly when you’re handwriting or taking notes
• Maintain proper posture when writing
• Remember your posture even when you’re on a mobile device
• Visit a sports medicine specialist at the first signs of strain
• Reduce stress by meditating, giving yourself sufficient time to meet deadlines or calling on experts (like Ray Access) to do your writing for you

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.

When Is a Cliché Not a Cliché?

by Elle Ray | Jan 29, 2016 | Writing

When to Avoid Clichés and When to Use Them

We were hoping this blog could make the “Blog Super Bowl” or at least “hit a home run” for me. But then again, “if it works, don’t fix it.” We really try our best to stay away from clichés — because that’s the way we were trained. One of our editors crossed out every phrase that even remotely resembled a cliché.

While we admit that clichés can be fun, they get overused, which is what made them clichés to begin with. Unless you use them for effect, and use them well, you’re evoking trite images that everyone’s seen a million times before. Clichés are much too often the province of lazy writers who can’t come up with anything original to write.

Making Headlines

Some of the best word-players, however, are headline writers who love to turn a common cliché into an eye-popping headline. And they get away with it. When a tired old cliché finds its way into a headline, it seems to draw readers’ attention and maybe even generate a guffaw or two. If it’s really good, it’ll make the rounds on social media. You’ve all seen examples, like: “Everything you wanted to know about XYZ, but were afraid to ask,” or “Taking XYZ to the next level.”

Not many readers can pass up a headline like: “Kraft: Who Cut the Cheese?” But please save us from “thinking outside the box” or any other type of container. While I give headline writers a little more leeway when it comes to creatively including a cliché in their copy, they need to keep it cool and clever to keep me from groaning. Remember: the goal of a headline is to entice people to read the article, not send them screaming in the other direction.

What Is a Cliché?

A cliché is nothing more than an expression that was unusual at one time, but has since turned into an annoying irritation. A statement loses its verve and vigor when it’s overused to the point of nausea. Can you even stand to hear one more “Where’s the beef?” even though it’s been more than 40 years since the little old lady coined the phrase for Wendy’s? And does that new car really cost an “arm and a leg?” Or is a buyer just a “fish out of water” or following the “fickle finger of fate?”

The use of clichés was so common in the early days of the printing press that printers saved sets of regularly used phrases, already prepared to drop in whenever needed (which was often). These sets were called “stereotype blocks.” A cliché is not a stereotype, but the two are so closely related that you could often use them interchangeably.

Pray for This Writer’s Soul

You could make the argument that some clichés are so old and overused that they actually can make a comeback. For example, you have: “a face that would scare a bulldog out of a butcher shop,” which may be hilarious in the right company —mainly, those who can appreciate old, antiquated humor. Then again, they might just accuse you of “flogging a dead horse” and ask you to refrain from spewing any more clichés.

But the aim of good writing is to provide a good reading experience while you learn. To further that goal, the writers at Ray Access make a pledge for 2016 to refrain from relying on clichés and overused marketing copy. Even though we recognize that “content is king,” we promise not to use clichés anymore (except in a blog about clichés). But if we must resort to clichés, we’ll try our very best to “knock it out of the park.” Find our other areas of expertise.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.