The M Factor

Writing for people who don't read

2011-04-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

One of the challenges in writing today is that most of us are bombarded by so much stuff that we don’t read much of it carefully. If we’re reading online, information needs to be easy to find and digest or we move on. I am as guilty as the next person. The only time I really savour words is when I am reading a novel or an article that has captured my attention. The boring stuff I scan or chuck in the recycling bin.

This topic has come to my attention for two reasons. I was told off this week for not confirming an appointment. This instruction was given in a little piece of paper attached to the top of a letter. I hadn’t read it because the appointment was in my diary and I planned to read the letter just before the appointment. Why waste time reading something boring twice?

The second reason is that I am trying to think of the ‘right’ word to encourage people to use the online writing programs I’m developing. I want people to read and act on this word!

Researching online, the choices seem to be Get started, Enrol, Register and Sign up. I wonder if there are generational differences in word choices. What’s your preference? Would you enrol, register, get started or sign up for a grammar program? Email mary@themfactor.com.au

Sentences - main message at beginning or end?

2010-09-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

Should you put the main message in a sentence at the beginning or the end?

I think it depends on your purpose. Stunk and White (Elements of Style) say, ‘The proper place in the sentence for the word or group of words that the writer desires to make the most prominent is usually the end.’

I think this is mostly the case:
• for persuasive writing
‘But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.’ (Martin Luther King)

• when you modify your initial statement
Although long sentences sometimes work, short sentences are easier to read.

• for emphasis
There is one way to describe his behaviour: abominable.

But it is less the case for business and technical writing.

An SVC (subject, verb, complement) structure is often stronger at conveying information succinctly. (‘Complement’ just means the rest of the sentence.)

Read some before-and-after examples at: http://tinyurl.com/27rde8n

Storytelling in your marketing

2009-11-01T19:54:00.000-08:00

We all love a good story, so how can we use stories in our marketing material? It’s easier to tell stories when face-to-face with a prospect, but we can also use some storytelling concepts in our written marketing material.

How to use a storytelling structure
A storytelling structure is easy to follow as we are all familiar with how stories work. Ros Jay, author of How to Write Proposals and Reports that get Results says writing using a storytelling structure has four components: position, problem, possibilities and proposal. Take Hansel and Gretel, for instance.

Position
Hansel and Gretel were left in the woods by their parents (woodcutter and stepmother), who couldn’t afford to look after them any longer.

Problem
They found a house made of gingerbread, but unfortunately it belonged to a wicked witch who imprisoned them.

Possibilities
They could try to escape or they could trick the witch. Otherwise they would be cooked and eaten by her.

Proposal
In the end the best option was to trick the witch by pushing her into her own oven so she burnt to death. Then Hansel and Gretel escaped and ran home.

Using this structure, if are writing a brochure or proposal, you first set the scene and make your potential clients feel you understand their situation. Often this means stating what both you and the reader already know, but you are establishing common ground.

Once you have demonstrated you understand their situation, you can discuss their problems (you would probably choose a word other than ‘problem’) and how you can help. You may not write about possibilities, but considering your client’s options helps you state the benefits, rather than just the features, of your products or services.

In my view, this structure doesn’t work as well with web copy where your writing has to be more direct. You don’t have time in web writing to do much scene setting. The exception is the US style of long-copy marketing pages (e.g. www.mequoda.com/free-reports/master-landing-page-templates).

Telling stories in your case studies
Case studies allow you to demonstrate how your products and services work in practice or how other clients have benefitted from them. In other words, they are stories, and are powerful on the web as well as in your print material.

In a blog posting, Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow and All Marketers are Liars, itemises some of the ingredients of great stories that you can use to make your case studies powerful.

•Great stories are true and trusted.
•Great stories make a promise. They promise fun, safety or a shortcut.
•Great stories are subtle. The fewer details a marketer spells out, the more powerful the story.
•Great stories happen fast.
•Great stories appeal to our senses.
•Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone. The most effective stories match the world view of a tiny audience that spreads the story.

You can read the full blog post on Seth Godin's website.http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/04/ode_how_to_tell.html

This article first appeared on Flying Solo's website: http://www.flyingsolo.com.au

Writing to change behaviour

2009-09-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

Communicators have a large role to play in changing our behaviour. For example, we would not be nearly as aware of the dangers of sunbathing or speeding without regular campaigns. Issues such as climate change and obesity have become difficult ones to tackle. How can you write in such a way as to make people want to change their behaviour, particularly if there is a financial cost to changing?

A website worth looking at is http://www.cbsm.com

Dr Doug McKenzie-Mohr is a pioneer in community-based social marketing and his work draws on social psychology at the community level.

On his website, you can download his free e-book, browse a number of case studies and read articles on how to target specific behavioural changes (e.g. encouraging people to install low-flow shower heads). Each article looks at:
* why the behavioural change is important (e.g. low-flow shower heads reduce water consumption, enhance energy efficiency and lower CO2 emissions)
* what is known about the perceived barriers to change
* the most effective programs to date that foster the behavioural change.

The colleague, who told me about this website, attended a workshop where Dr McKenzie-Mohr told the following anecdote. Forest vegetation in a park was being damaged by people wandering off the pathway. Signs asking people to stay off the vegetation made no difference. Research identified that people were trampling the vegetation to take photos, so the sign was replaced with a new one stating that the best place to take photos in the park was a short way ahead. Problem solved.

If only all change were so easy!

You can download Dr McKenzie-Mohr’s free book at http://www.cbsm.com/public/images/FosteringSustainableBehavior.pdf

Writing your own marketing material

2009-08-05T16:02:00.000-07:00

Many of us have to write our own marketing material whether or not we enjoy writing. Often we’re so busy thinking about what we want to say that we lose sight of our audience. Even experienced writers can fall into this trap.

The problem with writing marketing material for ourselves is that we tend to waffle before we get to the point. Sam Leader, director and editor of Flying Solo, says that having edited some 600 articles for Flying Solo, she has “to get rid of an average of two or three warm-up paras time and time again”.

So how can we avoid this? I suggest you clarify your thoughts before you start writing by asking yourselves questions using PACKO: purpose, audience, context, key messages and outcome.

Purpose
Why are you writing this document? What do you want to achieve?

You may want to provide information, make a recommendation to solve a problem or persuade your readers to buy your products or services. Sometimes you may have more than one purpose.

Understanding your purpose helps determine the structure of your writing. For example, if you’re writing an informative piece, you can often get straight to the point without much preamble. You simply record your information in order of importance to the reader.

If you want to persuade your readers, you may need to spend more time setting the scene to demonstrate that you understand their situation. The challenge is to write from their point of view, not yours.

Audience/s
Having established what you want to achieve, think about your audience/s. What do you know about them? Are your writing for single or multiple audiences?

The more you tailor your writing to suit your readers, the more powerful it will be. As Cicero said:

If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words.

Context
I never used to think about context, but I have become increasingly aware that many writers make assumptions about their readers’ knowledge when writing marketing material. Explaining the context or background may not always be relevant, but if you think about it, you’ll know whether or not you need to explain your terms or include some background information.

For example, at the end of 2008, the media covered how Bernard Madoff lost his clients a lot of money through a Ponzi scheme. Many newspapers did not explain what a Ponzi scheme is, leaving readers to guess or look up the information. (According to Wikipedia: “It’s a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors out of the money paid by subsequent investors rather than from profit.”)

Key messages
What are your key messages?

You must be able to articulate your key messages in clear statements that even a 12-year-old can understand.

This sounds common sense, but it’s amazing how many highly intelligent writers don’t make their key messages clear. I think it’s sometimes because they think they’re obvious. Professor Chip Heath of Stanford University calls this the “curse of knowledge”.

Outcome/s
How do you want your readers to respond? This question relates back to purpose, but thinking about it separately reminds you to check your details.

For example, a friend of mine, who owns a restaurant, sends a wonderful chatty email to customers. A recent email was as interesting as usual, but she’d forgotten to include the restaurant’s phone number. Had she thought: “bookings, bookings, bookings”, the phone number would have been prominently displayed.

So before you start writing marketing material next time, just pause for a moment and ask yourself the PACKO questions.

This article first appeared on www.flyingsolo.com.au

The art of storytelling in business

2009-07-26T19:26:00.000-07:00

A colleague was lamenting the lack of storytelling training in the business world. Thinking there must be some experts in this field, I googled and came up with Australian-born Steve Denning, author of several books including The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling.

Steve believes storytelling in business can be used for a variety of purposes, such as igniting organisational change, innovation and building community.

Storytelling is often a one-way process, with a storyteller and a listener. In the business world, Steve says business leaders need to see storytelling as a two-way process: as well as telling a good story, they must anticipate how the audience will respond, and interact with them. He defines this as ‘narrative intelligence’.

Steve describes different types of stories, such as ‘springboard’ stories that enable an audience to understand how an organisation or community may change; anti-stories, which undermine original stories, such as office gossip; and accounts, such as the reckoning of a financial matter.

In the first chapter of his latest book, which you can download online, he says the three key steps in the language of leadership are getting the audience’s attention, eliciting desire for a different future, and reinforcing with reasons.

www.stevedenning.com

Storytelling in marketing

In a blog posting, Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow and All Marketers are Liars, itemises some of the ingredients of great stories:
• Great stories are true and trusted.
• Great stories make a promise. They promise fun, safety or a shortcut.
• Great stories are subtle. The fewer details a marketer spells out, the more powerful the story.
• Great stories happen fast.
• Great stories appeal to our senses.
• Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone. The most effective stories match the world view of a tiny audience that spreads the story.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/04/ode_how_to_tell.html

A story

All this theory needs a story, so here’s a little story about testing assumptions.
The creators of Sesame Street assumed you couldn’t mix fantasy with reality, so originally there were no Muppets in the street scenes.

When they tested the show with children just before it went live, they found the children were bored with the street scenes. That’s when Big Bird, Oscar, the Grouch and Snuffleupagus were born.

Source: Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point

Colourful metaphors

2008-11-20T15:32:00.000-08:00

A Factorial reader sent me some metaphors from NSW Year 12 essays. I thought you might enjoy them.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature prime beef.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

McBride fell 12 storeys, hitting the pavement like a supermarket bag filled with vegetable soup.

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

You can read more of these metaphors at http://www.esau.com.au/forums/thread/245763

Review and edit your work

2008-10-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

We all make grammatical mistakes and typos. Often readers are forgiving; but not always. Unfortunately, when a reader sees a mistake, they don't think 'that person has probably worked on this document so long they can't see it clearly any more'. No, they think 'careless, sloppy writing'.

And sometimes they even judge the writer's integrity based on grammatical errors. When I was facilitating a business writing course once, a woman came back after a break and said: 'I’ve just received an email from a barrister. I didn’t feel comfortable about his advice and this email confirmed it. He used a wrong apostrophe! I’ll never trust him again.'

Ouch. It was just an apostrophe!

So how can we make our copy ‘as good as it’s going to get’? Here are my self-editing tips.

1. Take a break. If you edit your work straight after you’ve finished writing, you don’t see it clearly. Any break is helpful, but overnight is best as then you approach your work with fresh eyes.

2. Use Spell Check — and please set the default to Australian spelling if you live in Australia. I think it’s worth using Microsoft’s grammar check, even though it’s hopeless, as it will occasionally pick up something basic, such as a subject-verb agreement that you’ve missed.

3. Read your work through five times for a Rolls Royce edit:
* once for meaning (Is it clear?)
* twice to change grammar, words etc. (Is there a better way of saying this?)
* once for layout, headings, hyperlinks, tables etc.
* one last time for anything you’ve missed.

I realise this is a bit over-the-top, but I want to stress that one quick read-through is not enough and you edit more thoroughly if you look for different things on separate readings.

4. When editing the second and third times, concentrate on:
* sentences — are they too long?
* words — are any unnecessary?
* grammar
* consistency
* unnecessary repetitions
* typos
* layout.

5. If you’re editing on screen, proofread on a hard copy as well. Unfortunately, we don’t see things as clearly on the screen.

6. Some people find it helpful to read:
* word-by-word
* with a ruler underneath each line
* aloud
* with another person — one person reads and the other follows the text
* in reverse order, i.e. they either read point 7 before point 6 or literally read sentences in reverse order.

7. Ask a friend or colleague to read your work for you. But choose someone with an eye for detail — not all people have that skill.

With self-editing, you may pick up that rogue apostrophe.

These tips first appeared in Flying Solo (http://www.flyingsolo.com.au)

Phrases you love to hate

2008-09-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

In an entertaining article 'Are you going forward? Then stop now' (BBC Magazine), Lucy Kellaway looks at the epidemic use of the phrase 'going forward' and makes fun of some of our other pet hates.

Two of the most amusing examples of the use of 'going forward' are:

'When asked if he was going to be the England captain again after his triumph with Trinidad and Tobago, David Beckham came out with the gnomic reply "Going forward, who knows." It seems that the less one has to say, the more likely one is to reach for a going forward as a crutch. Politicians find it comforting for this reason. "We are going forward" poor Hillary Clinton said just before the last, fatal primary . . . when it became indisputable that she was going nowhere of the kind.'

For nearly a decade, Lucy Kellaway wrote a fictional column in the Financial Times about a senior manager who spoke in business cliches.

She says: 'Martin Lukes talked the talk. Or rather, he added value by reaching out and sharing his blue sky thinking. At the end of the day he stepped up to the plate and delivered world class jargon that really pushed the envelope. After eight years of being him I came to accept the nouns pretending to be verbs. To task and to impact. Even the new verb to architect I almost took in my stride. I didn't even really mind the impenetrable sentences full of leveraging value and paradigm shifts. But what still rankled after so long were the little things: that he said myself instead of me and that he would never talk about a problem, when he could dialogue around an issue instead.'

It is often the little things, isn't it? I cringe when I see 'myself' used wrongly, but I think it's here to stay.

As I read on, I smiled even more broadly when Lucy Kellaway dealt with the word 'passion'.

'Passion, says the dictionary, means a strong sexual desire or the suffering of Christ at the crucifixion. In other words it doesn't really have an awful lot to do with a typical day in the office — unless things have gone very wrong indeed. And yet passion is something that every employee must attest to in order to get through any selection process.'

If you enjoy being a pedant and want to smile at our crankiness about words, visit http://news.bbc.co.uk:80/1/hi/magazine/7453584.stm

You can also click through to 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7457287.stm

Look and feel of Web 2.0 websites

2008-08-10T18:13:00.000-07:00

Design and layout are an increasing part of a writer's role. The way our words look on a page influences whether or not someone wants to read what we've written. Sometimes, as with websites, most of us need the help of a designer. But as with our financial affairs, even though design may not be our area of expertise, we need to keep up with the latest trends.

I was shocked into thinking about the latest look and feel of websites when my online programmer told me my website looked old. "About three years old," he added. After a bit of spluttering, I had to admit that in web terms, three years is old. So I started to research what gives a website a Web 2.0 look and feel. (Web 2.0 websites make greater use of interactive tools such as wikis and blogs.)

During my research, one of the things that stood out most was the way colours in modern websites have much more depth.

I came across an excellent article on Web 2.0 websites at http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-2.0-design-style-guide.cfm

This article, which I highly recommend, states that some of the qualities of Web 2.0 websites are:

simplicity
central layout
fewer columns
separate top section
solid areas of screen real estate (e.g. navigation, main content area)
simple navigation
bold logos
bigger text
bold text introductions
strong colours
rich surfaces
gradients
reflections
cute icons
star flashes (star-shaped labels alerting you to something important).

If you want to see some of these principles in action, go to Barack Obama's site at http://www.barackobama.com/

Euro English

2008-07-29T22:17:00.001-07:00

A reader of my e-newsletter, sent me this joke (old, but still funny) about a five-year plan to phase in EuroEnglish.

In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. Also, the hard 'c' will be dropped in favor of the 'k'. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter. The 'C' kan have two lines drawn through it and be used for the new EURO kurrensy symbol.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome 'ph' will be replaced with the 'f'. This will make words like 'fotograf' 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful, and they should go away.

By the 4th yer, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v'. During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!

Sticky ideas are concrete, simple and use stories

2008-07-29T21:46:00.000-07:00

In an excellent interview in The McKinsey Quarterly, Professor Chip Heath states that sticky ideas must be simple, concrete and use stories.

Chip Heath says simplicity is the hardest concept to grasp. He gives the example of a non-profit organisation having eight core values when research has shown that even a few good choices can paralyse people and prevent them from making a decision. He says Bill Clinton had only one guiding message in his presidential campaign: 'It's the economy, stupid'.

As well as being simple, messages have to be concrete. He says: 'Take an abstract message like "Maximise stakeholder value". What should one of your employees do tomorrow to make that happen?'

Far better to use a story. Chip Heath gives the example of a FedEx employee who couldn't open a pickup box on his route as he'd left the key behind in the office. His deadline was tight and so he unbolted the whole box with a wrench — he knew he could open the box back in the office.

Chip Heath goes on to say messages are often abstract because of the 'curse of knowledge'. When we know a lot, it's hard for us to imagine what it's like not to have that knowledge.

So if you want your message to stick, make sure your ideas share the properties of sticky ideas — simplicity, concreteness and stories.

I recommend that you read the whole interview at http://tinyurl.com/29ycr2 and subscribe to The McKinsey Quarterly at www.mckinseyquarterly.com.

Good use of bullet points

2008-07-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

Many bulleted lists could be improved by:

turning the bullet points into a paragraph
writing a more comprehensive introductory statement
breaking items into groups
using fewer bullet points
using consistent styles — structure and punctuation.

Turning the bullet points into a paragraph
An example I gave in my previous blog entry would be more effective as prose.

Original version
After surgery:

sit on the side of the bed initially
transfer to the bedside chair
walk to the bathroom
walk freely around the ward
progress should be gradual, no exertion.Original version

Rewrite
You need to move gradually after surgery to regain your strength. Start by sitting on the side of the bed and then move to the bedside chair. When you feel ready, you can walk to the bathroom and then walk around the ward.

Writing a more comprehensive introductory statement
A long list in my previous blog had a stem statement 'Following surgery', followed by jumbled instructions on bathing, sport, lifting etc. A possible rewrite conveying one of the main messages is:

Recovery from major surgery varies from person to person and may take four weeks to several months.

Breaking items into groups
The items in the 'recovery from surgery' list could easily have been grouped into categories, such as bathing, lifting, sport. Then each group could have been a separate list with a stem statement. If something needed particular emphasis, for example, not removing Steristrips, it could have come first.

Using fewer bullet points
Our eyes glaze over when we see a whole page of bullet points. We have no idea what is most important so we 'skim read' them, often reading only the first and last few bullet points. My rule of thumb is no more than seven bullet points in a list although I break this rule if eight bullet points makes more sense.

Using consistent styles — structure and punctuation
Structure: If your list is a run-on sentence (i.e. every point relates back to the stem statement), each bullet point should relate grammatically to the stem statement.
Punctuation: Styles have changed and semi-colons are not used very often in lists today.

Some guidelines are:

If each bullet point is a separate statement, as in this list, use normal sentence punctuation.
If the list is a run-on sentence, start each bullet with an initial lower case letter and just have a final full stop at the end of the last bullet point. You don't need a comma at the end of each point. (Unfortunately, Microsoft Word always wants to default to an initial capital.)
If your list consists of single words or short phrases, you can use initial capitals and no end punctuation, i.e. no commas, semi-colons or full stops.

Misuse of bullet points

2008-07-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

Bullet points are useful for lists, but I have three gripes about the way they are misused.

1. They are often used when a paragraph would be more effective. Take this following example from a hospital information sheet:

After surgery:

sit on the side of the bed initially
transfer to the bedside chair
walk to the bathroom
walk freely around the ward
progress should be gradual, no exertion.

The main idea here is that the patient should move gently at first, but it's buried at the end of the list. And isn't 'transfer' an odd word choice?

2. Another common mistake is long bulleted lists with no introductory paragraph. This causes two problems — you don't know what's most important and as the information isn't grouped, you have to mentally sort it as you read. You can easily overlook key information in such lists.
An example from the same hospital information sheet dumps sport, sex and bathing in the same list.

Following surgery:

Short baths can be taken (10–15 minutes).
Showers may be taken as soon as you are able to walk around.
Wounds may get wet but should be dried thoroughly. Use a hairdryer if necessary and leave Steristrips on wounds for 5 days.
Sport: start gradually and build up (walking, swimming, jogging), no exertion, avoid high-impact exercises for 6 weeks (3 months for pelvic floor surgery) and stop if it hurts.
Sexual intercourse can resume after 4–6 weeks.
After major surgery avoid heavy lifting for 3 months (i.e. no more than 10kg/2 telephone books).
Avoid standing for long periods.
Recommence driving when pain medication is no longer required (check with your insurance company regarding cover following surgery).
Recovery from major surgery is dependant (sic) on the individual and may take from 4 weeks to several months.

3. My third gripe is inconsistency of style. When all bullet points relate back to the same stem statement, you should be able to read them as if they were separate statements. Look at the structure of the above list and you can see that several of the bullet points do not relate to the stem statement (Following surgery recovery from major surgery is dependant on the individual ... ).

Is PowerPoint an effective learning tool?

2008-07-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

An article in The Sydney Morning Herald (4 April, 2007) quotes Professor John Sweller, University of NSW, as saying PowerPoint has been a disaster as a learning tool and should be ditched.

John Sweller, who has developed a 'cognitive load theory' about how much information we can handle at once in our working memory, is reported as saying:

"It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented."

Are Microsoft's templates the best?
I am not a great fan of PowerPoint as it is so often badly used (too much information on each slide, poorly proofread etc.). In my opinion, the best presentations are largely visual.
Researcher Michael Alley maintains PowerPoint's default design (short headings followed by a bulleted list) is partly to blame for poor presentations.

He advocates a design which features a sentence heading supported by visual evidence and minimal words. You can view his preferred design at http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/speaking/rethinking_psu.pdf

Gettysburg speech as a PowerPoint presentation
And if, like me, you missed the Gettysburg speech in PowerPoint when it did its viral rounds a few years ago, you can still be entertained at http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm

The future of the English language

2008-07-29T20:54:00.000-07:00

In 2010, language researcher David Graddol predicts there will be 2 billion people on the planet speaking English, of whom only 350 million will be native speakers. So how the English language develops over the next 100 years will largely depend on what non-native speakers do with the language.

When Latin colonised the world centuries ago, it dissolved over time into a number of different languages. Thanks to written texts and the global media, that is unlikely to happen today. But English as we know it is changing.

Already, non-native speakers are stripping out parts of English that cause misunderstandings. In the process, they are making the language more consistent. Some of the changes that are already occurring or seem likely to occur are:

The past tense of irregular verbs — apart from ones we use all the time such as to have and to be — will become more regular (e.g. wed is changing to wedded).
Some mass nouns may become count nouns (informations, furnitures, staffs).
The third person singular is the only verb form to take an –s so this may drop off (she runs will become she run).

Listening and watching the language, I see changes such as:

Brevity is a fading word — young people don't understand what it means.
Less is often used instead of fewer.
Myself is frequently used when me would be more correct (e.g. Please contact myself).
More than and over are used interchangeably.
Whom seems to be vanishing.

Some of these changes I care about and others I think aren't worth worrying about. What do you think? And what changes are you observing? Email mary@themfactor.com.au

Source: Michael Erard, ‘English as she will be spoke’, New Scientist, 29 March 2008 (http://michaelerard.com)

Building a relationship with your readers

2008-07-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

Writing is often described as building a bridge between you and your readers.

In The Craft of Argument, Joseph M. Williams and Gregory G. Colomb state that we develop an argument by understanding our relationship with our readers. Business writing is often based on providing answers to conceptual or pragmatic problems.

With conceptual problems, our role as writers is to help our readers understand something better; with pragmatic problems, we aim to solve the problem by asking our readers to do something or support our recommended action.

Both kinds of writing have the same structure: problem + destabilising condition + cost/consequence.

For pragmatic problems, the destabilising condition can be anything that has a cost and for conceptual problems, the destabilising condition is always a gap in knowledge or a lack of understanding.

You can develop your argument for both kinds of problems by asking yourself five types of questions:

What's your point?
Why should the reader agree? (reasons)
What evidence do you have?
What's your logic? (what assumptions have you made?)
But have you considered . . . ?

So next time you're having difficulty structuring your writing, think about your relationship with your reader and it may help you ask and answer the right questions.

Source: Williams, Joseph M., Colomb, Gregory G., The Craft of Argument, Longman, New York, 2003.

Text messaging is not destroying language

2008-07-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

I often hear managers complain about young people using text message language inappropriately in business writing. There's a concern that texting will debase the English language.

According to a study by Sali Tagliamonte and Derek Denis from the University of Toronto, Canada, this fear is unfounded. They argue that far from ruining the language, text messaging allows teenagers to show off what they can do with the language and is creating 'an expansive new linguistic renaissance'.

The researchers say that text language, which I think of as SMS language, but the researchers called IM (instant messaging), is a 'robust mix' of colloquial and formal language.

They compared more than a million words of IM communication with a quarter of a million spoken words produced by 72 people aged 15–20 and found that while IM shared some of the patterns of speech, the vocab and grammar were quite conservative.

Nor do teenagers use abbreviations such as LOL (laugh out loud) as much as expected. Abbreviations only made up 2.4% of conversations and 'you' was used, not 'u', 9 out of 10 times.

Source: New Scientist, 17 May 2008.

Oft-confused words

2008-07-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

I am constantly amazed at how intelligent people confuse familiar words, such as 'their', 'they're' and 'there'. But then I remind myself that I can never work out whether 'bimonthly' means twice a month or every two months and I am never sure whether a note accompanying a document should be a 'compliment' slip or a 'complement' slip? Or even a 'compliments/complements' slip?

So here's a list of a few commonly confused words.

compliment = to praise, a formal expression of civility or respect (e.g. compliments of the season) complement = to complete, go with (e.g. pepper and salt complement each other)

Both 'compliment/s' and 'complement/s' slips exist in Google, but I think, using the second meaning of 'compliment', I'll choose 'compliments' slip in future.

there = in that place
they're = short for 'they are'their = belonging to them

flammable = able to be set aflame
inflammable = able to be set aflame, easily excited or disturbed

According to the Macquarie Dictionary traditionally 'inflammable' meant likely to burn easily, but to avoid a false analogy with other words such as 'inactive' in which the 'in' means 'not', 'flammable' was adopted as the standard warning in labelling goods. The opposite is 'nonflammable'.

affect = influence (verb)
effect = result (noun); occasionally used as a verb meaning 'to bring about a result'.

dependent = relying on
dependant = someone who is reliant on financial or other support (e.g. a child)

bimonthly = occurring every two months or occurring twice a month. How confusing! I suggest you use clearer terms, such as 'fortnightly', 'every two months' or 'twice a month'.

For a fuller, though not complete, list go to: http://www.mailer.com.au/rd?http://www.confusingwords.com/

Writing recommendations

2008-06-08T23:16:00.001-07:00

It sounds basic to ask for what you want when you're writing a recommendation, but a common complaint I hear is that many recommendations are too vague.
I think the problem is twofold.

First, I think we often get so immersed in the detail we fail to stand back and see the bigger picture. This happens to all of us at times and it often helps to talk to someone not involved in your project or else try writing a summary paragraph and then a summary sentence.

The second problem is the wording of the recommendation and knowing how much detail to include. In my opinion, a recommendation should be sufficiently detailed to stand alone, i.e. make sense without the accompanying text. For example, a recommendation to lease office premises in Brisbane should propose a lease at X site for three years for $y with a maximum fitout cost of $z.

Such recommendations can then be copied and pasted into the minutes as resolutions and everyone will have the same understanding of their meaning. The person who has the responsibility to follow up understands their responsibilities, and the resolution is also a historical and legal record.

So next time you write a recommendation ask yourself:

Is it clear what I am asking for?
Is it sufficiently detailed (but not too detailed)?
Does it make sense without the accompanying text?
Will it stand the test of time if taken out of context?
Is it clearly and concisely written?

The power of words

2008-06-08T23:15:00.001-07:00

Reading a book on hypnotic writing recently (Hypnotic Writing by Joe Vitale) I was reminded of the power of words. This book would not have caught my attention in the bookshop if it had been called 'Persuasive Writing'.

As I was reading this book, I realised that Joe Vitale features in The Secret, the book and movie by a Melbourne producer, Rhonda Byrne, popular at the moment. They are about the 'power of attraction' (you get what you focus on), but that title would not have the same impact.

I used to be a bit sceptical about using books such as Richard Bayan's Words that Sell to help me choose words, thinking my writing should be original. I am changing my thinking (slightly). I still think you need to find your own writing voice and write in your own style, but when you rewrite, why not pause and think about the words you're using?

Joe Vitale says that when he's rewriting he has his 'swipe file' handy and adds words such as 'imagine', 'breakthrough' and 'announcing'. I'd never heard of a swipe file before so I googled the term and found many writers create their own swipe file: a place where they store words and phrases that appeal to them (e.g. internet marketing tutor Chris Yates at http://www.internet-marketing-tutor.com/swipe-file.html). Swipe files are meant to give you inspiration, not be a source to copy from.

By the way, what do you think of the word 'swipe' in the term 'swipe file'? Is it stronger than, say, 'good examples' or 'my likes' file?

Creating flow between paragraphs

2008-06-08T23:13:00.000-07:00

One way of creating flow between paragraphs is by telling your readers something ‘old’ before you tell them something ‘new’. By telling your readers what they already know (as long as you’re not too long and boring about it), you engage their interest. They agree with what you’ve written and so are receptive to what you have to say next.

Great speech makers use this technique of ‘old before new’ to great effect. Martin Luther King began his ‘I have a dream’ speech by talking about the indisputable past before moving to talk about the present.

‘Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

‘But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of the American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.’

I got this idea from a new Australian book on business writing — Writing at Work by Neil James. It's an excellent book.

Applying the ‘old before new’ technique to a work situation, a writer was seeking approval to trial a new waste management technology. Before talking about the proposed trials, which would cost a considerable amount of money, the writer described preliminary trials that indicated the technology had great potential.

Write effective paragraphs

2008-06-08T23:12:00.000-07:00

Paragraphs break our writing into manageable pieces. These days we've become used to short paragraphs and most are only four to six lines. We even occasionally use a one-sentence paragraph; in fact, press releases mainly consist of one-sentence paragraphs.

In business writing, your main idea must go in the first sentence. In fiction writing, you have more leeway. A common mistake is treating paragraphs as mini-essays with the conclusion at the end. One way of checking whether your main idea is at the beginning of each paragraph is to re-read your first sentences, either as you're writing or at the end.

After your topic sentence, the rest of your paragraph then explains and expands on your main idea and links to your next paragraph. A useful acronym is TEEL (topic sentence, expand, explain, link).

Many writers struggle linking paragraphs together and fall back on connecting words such as however, therefore, accordingly. These words are useful, but in my opinion are often overused. If your writing is well structured you can often delete several uses of however or therefore without any loss of meaning or flow. Try it and see. Or you could use simpler words, such as also, and, so.

Another way of linking is to use pronouns such as they and it to refer back to the noun in the previous sentence. This works as long as it's obvious what they or it refer to.

Visual aspects of paragraphs

2008-06-08T23:08:00.000-07:00

We all make instant decisions about how easy a document will be to read based on visual cues. Paragraph length is one of the most important cues. Long, dense paragraphs scream 'difficult to read'.

Short plus variety
Most of your paragraphs in business and government writing should be fairly short, but you also need variety because if all your paragraphs are the same length they look monotonous. Varying the length of your paragraphs gives them greater rhythm.You can occasionally have a one-sentence paragraph for emphasis.

Word stacks
We sometimes get a particular word or phrase on our mind or maybe we have a term we have to repeat for clarity. Whichever is the case, you need to make sure that the words or phrases don't land on top of each other in sentences that are close to each other.

You also need to vary the words you use to start new paragraphs. For example, if every paragraph starts with I, your eyes are drawn to that word. You have to change your word order to avoid this.

Widows and orphans
If you split a paragraph after the first line at the bottom of a page or column, this single line is known as an 'orphan'. When the last line of a paragraph is at the top of a new page, it is called a 'widow'. Orphans and widows disrupt the flow of a document. Sometimes the flow is also disrupted by a single word on the last line of a paragraph.

Use specific language for clarity

2008-06-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

Specific words are precise and clear. On the other hand, generic words, sometimes known as ‘fat’ or ‘fuzzy’ words, can be vague and ambiguous. At best, they are meaningless, at worst, they are misleading.

Some examples of fuzzy words are:

communication (what type of communication?)
deal with, handle (how?)
profound, significant, deep, extensive, intensive (by what measure?)
in a timely manner, recently (when?)
experts say (what experts?)
research shows (what research?)

In ?owerful Questions, Christo Norden-Powers urges writers to be very critical and wary of fuzzy words. One example he gives is two sentences from an internal National Australia Bank (NAB) market risk report in November 2003. This report to an executive committee was written several months before the bank’s Forex trading losses of $360 million were made public. The NAB’s losses were associated with rogue trading, where trades were made outside the bank’s guidelines over a period of time.

"At the time of writing, [Global Markets Division] trading operations continue to manage risk responsibly in changing market conditions. Adherence to risk discipline is good."

Christo Norden-Powers takes these sentences apart and questions what words and phrases mean. For example, he asks questions such as: What trading operations specifically are you referring to? Which market conditions are changing? How specifically are they changing? What specifically are you doing to manage those changing conditions responsibly?

Everyday words aren't always the best

2008-06-08T22:58:00.000-07:00

Familiar everyday words aren't always the best choice. In most cases they are, but sometimes an unfamiliar word is more precise or has more impact.

Precise unfamiliar words may be more concise'Albedo' is an unfamiliar word, but if you were writing about climate change or the landscape it could be a very useful term as it means the amount of sunlight reflected back by a portion of the earth.
Unfamiliar words may have more impact'Woolly' thinking is a more common phrase than 'flocculent' thinking yet Winston Churchill, who was a great fan of simple words, used the expression 'flocculent thinking'.

According to Sir Ernest Gowers, author of The Complete Plain Words, 'flocculent' conveys an extra ounce of contempt "perhaps because the combination of 'f' and 'l' so often expresses an invertebrate state, as in flop, flap, flaccid, flimsy, flabby and filleted".

New words creep into our language all the timeThe above examples both come from an interesting article by James Meek. But I started thinking about this topic when someone in a writing course suggested that we're dumbing down our language by using familiar words.

I'm not sure I agree as we're so inventive with our language. New words in the Macquarie Dictionary this year include: credit card tart, tanorexia, salad dodger, floordrobe, silent disco, Chindia and carbon footprint.

I bet you don't know them all!

Their meanings: credit card tart = someone who transfers a loan from one account to another; tanorexia = skin tan obsession; salad dodger = an obese person; floordrobe = my son's bedroom floor; silent disco = dancers wearing headphones to eliminate noise pollution; Chindia = India and China; carbon footprint = our carbon dioxide emission impact on the environment.

New phrases include 'the green shoe brigade' (groups who cash in on environmental concerns in a dubious way), 'arse antlers' (tattoo just above the bum) and 'man flu' (man with a minor cold who exaggerates the symptoms).

ReferencesJames Meek, 'From albedo to zugunruhe', Guardian newspaper, Dec 07, http://tinyurl.com/2g3zsaErnest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words, http://tinyurl.com/26ackhTony Stephens, 'Linguists put the shine on Strine', SMH, http://tinyurl.com/26wy7j

2007-12-16T19:19:00.000-08:00

Sticky ideas are concrete, simple and use stories

In an excellent interview in The McKinsey Quarterly, Professor Chip Heath states that sticky ideas must be simple, concrete and use stories.

Chip Heath says simplicity is the hardest concept to grasp. He gives the example of a non-profit organisation having eight core values when research has shown that even a few good choices can paralyse people and prevent them from making a decision. He says Bill Clinton had only one guiding message in his presidential campaign: 'It's the economy, stupid'.

As well as being simple, messages have to be concrete. He says: 'Take an abstract message like "Maximise stakeholder value". What should one of your employees do tomorrow to make that happen?'

Far better to use a story. Chip Heath gives the example of a FedEx employee who couldn't open a pickup box on his route as he'd left the key behind in the office. His deadline was tight and so he unbolted the whole box with a wrench — he knew he could open the box back in the office.

Chip Heath goes on to say messages are often abstract because of the 'curse of knowledge'. When we know a lot, it's hard for us to imagine what it's like not to have that knowledge.

So if you want your message to stick, make sure your ideas share the properties of sticky ideas — simplicity, concreteness and stories.

I recommend that you read the whole interview at http://tinyurl.com/29ycr2 and subscribe to The McKinsey Quarterly at www.mckinseyquarterly.com.