Archive for the ‘Writing Tips’ Category

I’m going out on a limb here by sharing a parenting story that’s a bit personal. I’m risking it because I learned an important lesson about communicating with my teenage son and I realize the kernel of what I learned can benefit many others.

To know my son Ben is to know he’s a great kid—respectful, bright and funny. Not to mention handsome. Since I’m his mom, I get to see other qualities too, and sometimes these other qualities can get a rise out of me. A few months ago, Ben did something that upset me deeply. Even though I knew rationally that he didn’t intend to hurt me, I still felt hurt and that hurt wanted to turn into anger. We all know anger in this kind of situation can only inflame it. So Instead of acting on that anger, I tried something different. I described to him how I felt—hurt, disappointed—and I explained that that although his rejection FELT personal I knew it wasn’t. Then I suppressed my anger and carried on as if nothing had happened. Sounds easy when I write these words, but not acting on my anger was counter to every impulse I had.

The outcome delighted me. There was no heaviness at home. Ben treated me with consideration and respect. I learned this basic truth of effective communication—you can only get the big, important return when you ignore the smaller, more immediate return. I hadn’t been getting the results I wanted with Ben because I was too caught up in my immediate need to assuage my pain and express my anger. As soon as I put my immediate needs aside and expressed my feelings to him, I got what I really wanted all along: a better, stronger relationship with a happier teenage son.

So what does this have to do with day-to-day business communication? In the same way I learned to suppress my immediate need to get the real prize, business writers have to suppress their immediate needs—to impress, to vent, to get through their to do list—to achieve  their real purpose. Communication falls flat because the reader’s immediate need is louder than the real message and gets in the way of communication. It seems counter-intuitive, but the best way to get what you want is to focus fully on your purpose and audience and put aside your own needs.

Consider the following scenarios and ask yourself if you fit any of these profiles:

Writers who need to impress. These writers feel compelled to show their professionalism and intelligence by using big words and complex sentence structure. They are at their worst when they are writing up in the organization, believing (wrongly) that just because their bosses are well educated they need to write to a higher grade level. These writers need to forget about their insecurities and remember that their reader doesn’t care that much about them. They have to learn that to be truly impressive, they should try to be clear and make their documents easy to read and act on. The more important the reader, they more they want you to just get to the point—plainly and clearly.

Writers who need to vent. Your feelings might be justified. But it’s more likely that you are taking something personally that wasn’t meant personally. Try to separate the emotions from the facts. Cool off before you respond to an inflammatory situation. If you must express yourself, save to draft before sending. Remember that feelings fade with time but the written word doesn’t. It lasts forever and words written in the heat of anger can come back to haunt you. Remember my story and keep your eye on your real goal. A happy customer? A better working relationship? An improved process or product?

Writers who need to hurry. This is a common problem. I have too much to do and everything is due yesterday. As for your report, I only have time to do the bare minimum, which means I’ll just dump all the relevant information and give it to you in a raw state. It’s all there and you can just figure it out for yourself. I don’t have time to plan it, structure it for clarity, revise or edit it. Sure, you’re saving your time in the short term, but you are hurting yourself in the long run. This kind of writing makes you look bad and wastes your reader’s time. And you’ll have to deal with a frustrated reader, misunderstandings and mistakes. Remember that it’s the responsibility of every writer to be respectful of their readers’ time. Do your job properly and everyone benefits. The easiest fix for frazzled writers is counter intuitive: take the time to use the writing process. Start earlier and it won’t take as long as you expect. Plus you’ll save time in the long run as there will be fewer misunderstandings and rewrites.

Writers who need to show their work. These are those infuriating people who think they’re writing fiction and withhold the punch line. They’re saying, “I’ve done a ton of work for you and I want you to appreciate me. So I will lay it all out before you and show you exactly what I found, what I learned, what I think and finally, at the end, what I think you should do.” Please understand that your reader needs to know the conclusion FIRST. They don’t CARE how you got there or how much work did to get there. I’m not saying don’t show your work—you need to. But I am saying structure your writing hierarchically so your reader can scan it.

Do you recognize yourself or anyone you know in any of these profiles?

You don’t have to prove yourself if your reader knows you and is happy with your work. But if you are strangers, you’ll need to establish that you’re trustworthy and that you have a good track record. Here are three ways to do this:

Provide testimonials

What other people say about you is more important than what you say about yourself. Good testimonials tell a story—they identify and alleviate a concern or fear the reader might have. Testimonials give readers social proof. Use names and companies—with permission of course.

“The course leader is very clear in explaining different topics. She was friendly and made each topic simple by breaking it down in the simplest form…not only did I learn a lot but I also had fun”

“This has been a very informative course. I will be able to take the things I learned and apply them to my every day routine…I really enjoyed the Jeopardy game. We were able to use what we learned over the two days and have fun at the same time.”

“I learned a lot and it wasn’t boring.”

“The facilitator puts us at ease up front and throughout the whole course.”

“I was happy to see that Christine was easy to work with and made a “very” dry topic fun to learn. Thanks.”

Use Case Studies

These can be a compelling way to reinforce social proof. Make sure they tell your client’s story and avoid tooting your own horn. Tell stories your prospects can relate to, about clients who have challenges similar to their own.

Example: Can you imagine reading more than 40 reports every month? That’s what York Region Councilors need to do. To make these reports more readable, the CAO’s office asked us to customize a Report Writing course for them. We started by presenting an executive session for the Commissioners and the CAO. Then we rolled out two-day courses for all senior managers—over 400 people! We hear that the Councilors appreciate the talking headers, which allow them to read the reports more quickly. Improving their productivity allows them more time to do their jobs, look after their constituents and concentrate on the local projects that really matter to them in their communities.

About you

It’s difficult to talk about ourselves, but clients need to trust you. They want to know how your experience and credentials can help them solve their problems. Three strategies for telling your story:

With the “Why I created this product” approach, you weave your own story into your sales material by explaining how your experience and credentials helped you see an opportunity.

A second strategy is telling the story of the “unintentional product.” You become the reluctant hero of your story. This works by setting up a back story where you gain a reputation for doing something well and getting results, and about how other people begin clamoring to know how to make it happen for them.

A third strategy is to make successful customers the focus of your credibility-building story. It’s compelling for customers to know the results you have helped your clients achieved. Put the focus on the results and your clients’ success, not on yourself.

Interested in learning more? You can check out some of my sources and keep yourself busy with lots more reading.

Read more on this topic:

Know Your Audience
How to Get Your Reader’s Attention Upfront
Marketing Tip: Be Conversational and Concrete
Make Your Content Reader-Centred
Speak of Benefits NOT Features

In a few weeks I’m presenting a session at the CSTD conference on the topic of marketing skills for trainers, with an emphasis on writing skills. Only problem, is I can’t seem to get started. Over the past few months, I’ve been collecting blogs on the topic of persuasive writing, and I thought summarizing them here for you might help us both. So here’s what I’ve got:

Here’s a great article called Want People to Read Your Sales Page? Make it Scannable by Dave Navarro at Copyblogger who shares tips for making your sales writing easy to scan by writing benefit-packed subheads. It’s a great example of what it teaches and it’s full of other good writing advice. In fact Copyblogger has  whole series of great articles about writing magnetic headlines. (I used one of their tips to write the title for this blog–do you like it?) And here’s one from Problogger: 15 Ways to Rework your Next Blog Post Title

From Brian Clark, also from Copyblogger, some good tips for writing engaging case studies that shine the light on your clients’ successes.

This is a good one by Johnny B Truant on using storytelling to sell: How to Use Storyselling to Boost Sales

Read Lynn Gaertner-Johnson’s Essentials of Emails That Sell for a good summary of email writing tips. I see this as a checklist more than in-depth strategies.

It’s not easy to write about yourself, and yet your clients need to know you’re credible. Again from Copyblogger, here are some good ideas for how build personal credibility.

Do you have a company blog? You should. Here are some great ideas to help you get it right by Matthew Stibbe of Bad Language: Writing a company blog people will actually read. My favourite line from this blog is “Where possible, write for (or to) your readers rather than about your company.” Also check out 9 Common Corporate Blog Writing Errors from Brad Shorr. And here from Problogger:  How to find readers for a business blog.

From goodcopybadcopy, a great blog called Who do you think you’re talking to? A vivid illustration of how flat your writing can be if you don’t think hard about who you’re writing to and what they care about.

Yet another Copyblogger article, this time by Sonia Simone: The Complete Newbie’s Guide to Marketing.

Lots to read! Lots of inspiration.

While I was working on my Master’s degree, I had the opportunity to complete an in-depth study of advertising copy writing. I wanted to examine the process, so I followed two copy writers as they developed different documents.

Although they were writing advertising copy, some of their techniques apply to just about any kind of writing. Here are three that I’ve used often in my life as a writer. Try them out on your next document.

Boiler-plating
When they’re stuck and don’t know how to start, the writers I studied used old ads as “boilerplates.” They’d change the name of the product in the old ad to the one they were working on, change a few key words, and have a first draft of copy in front of them. Although these drafts never made it to print (and the final draft rarely resembled this first draft), it gave the copy writers a place to start when they were otherwise stuck.

Asking “So what?”
My favourite technique was two little words the writers used as they developed ad copy. They’d write a line or two, read them over, and ask themselves, “So what?” Doing this kind of rigorous self-questioning helped the writers develop an intimate acquaintance with their audience because it made them become their audience, if only for a moment. If the line of copy couldn’t pass the “So what?” test, they cut it from the ad.

Collaborating
From idea-generation to revision, advertising copy writers collaborated with one another and with their clients. They’d brainstorm together at the beginning of a project and send out their copy to their client and a colleague or two when they’d finished drafting. Their willingness to relinquish a little control over the document, they said, always resulted in better copy. Two (or more) heads are better than one.

I love dancing and would never decline this invitation, especially if you ask like Yul Brynner. It wouldn’t hurt if you come with your own ballroom either.

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But under any other circumstances, shall makes me wince. It’s a word that makes you sound either foreign (not necessarily a bad thing) or pretentious and archaic (not a good thing). Shall is used in England and in law.

English use

In England, shall can express the simple future for first person I and we, as in “Shall we have dinner together tonight?” Will is used in the simple future for all other persons. Using will in the first person expresses a bit more determination on the part of the speaker, as in “We will finish this project by tonight, by golly!” Using shall in second and third persons would indicate some kind of promise about the subject, as in “This shall be revealed to you in good time.”

If you use shall this way in Canada or the US, you write with an accent. It’s not a word we use. On this continent, we use will for the future simple tense.

Legal use

Lawyers love to use shall, but the plain language community recommends avoiding it. According to Prof. Joe Kimble of the Thomas Cooley Law School, lawyers regularly misuse it to mean something other than “has a duty to.” It has become so corrupted by misuse that it has no firm meaning.

Also, it’s not plain. Nobody uses shall in common speech. It’s one more example of unnecessary lawyer talk. You’d never hear, “You shall finish the project in a week.”

And from Plain Language, the US government site: The word “must” is the clearest way to convey to your readers that they have to do something. Shall is one of those officious and obsolete words that has encumbered legal style writing for many years. The message that shall sends to the reader is, “this is deadly material.” Shall is also obsolete–when was the last time you heard it used in everyday speech?

Besides being outdated, shall is imprecise. It can indicate either an obligation or a prediction. Dropping shall is a major step in making your document more reader-friendly. Don’t be intimidated by the argument that using must will lead to a lawsuit. Many agencies already use the word must to convey obligations. The US Courts are eliminating shall in favor of must in their Rules of Procedure.  And in Canada, British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba have amended their Interpretation Acts to say that must is to be interpreted as imperative.

The way I see it, dancing is imperative, and shall is not. Shall we dance?

Our participants sometimes ask if they should create different versions of a document for their different readers. We say that one document, if it’s thoughtfully structured, can accommodate the needs of all your readers.
Your finished document should have a triangular structure, flat on the bottom and a point on the top. At the very top of the triangle satisfy the needs of the most important readers—the decision makers. Remember they won’t likely have time to read the whole document. They just want to know the gist. Specifically, decision makers want to know

• What it will cost
• The key benefit (think ROI)
• How you arrived at your recommendation—a summary of the supporting evidence

The body of the document is meant for the broader public. These readers will want to know.

• The details of your analysis
• How your recommendations will affect them, their departments, their responsibilities

The flat, wide bottom of the triangle is for your appendices. This highly technical and often raw data is most interesting to your technical readers. There are only a few of these readers, and they will want to know

• The quality of the data you used to support your analysis and recommendations
• The accuracy of your analysis

The secret to achieving this kind of structure is writing from the bottom up, that is, starting with the data, analyzing it, then arriving at your conclusions. Once you know your conclusions, revise from the top down, and organize your structure by answering the questions you anticipate each group of readers will have.

If you liked 10 Ways to Improve Your Writing, here are 10 more ways:

11. Don’t be a perfectionist, at least not every time. It’s great to know how to create a perfect document, but doing it every time is a lot of work. Not everything you write NEEDS to be perfect. The main thing is to make sure it’s good enough to achieve your purpose and meet the needs of your reader. Of course, it’s also important to know you CAN make it perfect for the times when you need to.

12. Show the bones of your writing. Your writing is clear when readers can see the shape of your message. There are many ways to reveal this shape—getting to the point, creating a hierarchical structure, writing talking headers, using layout to show how sections relate to each other, and using transitional markers to connect ideas. The more you use these tools to reveal the bones of your message, the easier it is for the reader to grasp your message quickly and easily.

13. Show the muscle of your writing. If bringing the bones to the surface clarifies your message, bringing the muscles to the surface improves the style and readability. Muscular writing is concise, uses strong verbs, is positive, conversational and active. Muscular writing energizes readers and propels them to act.

14. Be transparent. Try not to let anything distract your reader from your message. Distractions can be big things, such as a rambling structure or an offensive tone. It can be little things, such as an ill-chosen font, too many big words, sloppy spacing, and bad grammar or spelling. Transparent writing doesn’t draw attention to itself and lets the reader absorb your message effortlessly.

15. Be precise and concrete. The details make your writing memorable and vivid. Here’s one of my favourite examples from Strunk and White. First, the vague version: “In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulations of its penal code will be severe.” And the vivid example: “In proportion as men delight in battles, bullfights and combats of gladiators, will they punish by hanging, burning and the rack.”

16. Use a conversational tone, but don’t be conversational. A conversational tone is warm and personal. It captures the sound of your voice. You don’t want to replicate your actual conversation, because that would capture all the ums, ahs, redundancies and hesitations. The best way to create the warmth of your voice is by reading your writing out loud. If you know you’d never say the words in speech, you shouldn’t write them either. Worried you’ll be too chatty? Remember who you are writing to and use the degree of formality you’d use if you were speaking to that person. You’ll find that way you can easily balance warmth, formality and respect.

17. Assume ignorance but not stupidity. Many writers assume too much prior knowledge on the part of the reader. And when they write to a large group of readers, they alienate readers who are unfamiliar with the subject matter. It’s best to assume your readers are ignorant, but not stupid. The readers who are knowledgeable aren’t likely as close to the content as you are, and they appreciate a quick refresher. Readers who know nothing are not alienated and can get up to speed quickly.

18. Make sure important information stands out. Decide what’s most important and help the reader see it by using boldface, isolating it in white space, or using headings, visuals, lists or colour. Just don’t use all these devices at once. Remember that if you try to emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.

19. Use a style guide. In a pinch, make it up, but be consistent. Readers love consistency. Style guides are a great way to be consistent, because they define usage. If your company has, or recommends, a style guide, great! Use it. If you don’t have one, or don’t have time to consult one, make it up. Just be consistent. Not sure if you should spell out numbers from 1 to 10 or 1 to 20? Make an executive decision, be consistent. You’ll fool 90% of your readers. (Okay, I made up that statistic, but it feels right.)

20. Keep your layout simple and elegant. Less is more. Only use as many text elements as you need. If you’re writing a complex document, like technical documentation, start by considering what kinds of information you need. Assign a look to each element and be consistent in how you treat it. For example, the title of every visual should be the same. Every bulleted list should look the same, and every Level 3 Heading should look the same. This gives the reader confidence that text that looks alike functions alike.

Any suggestions to add?

This is from the Merriam Webster site, where there are lots of fun top 10 lists. I only knew one word on this particular list: muntin. And that’s only because I once bought windows with muntin bars. I only remember the word because it’s fun to say.

Philtrum: the vertical groove on the median line of the upper lip

Example Sentence: His chiseled features even included a well-defined philtrum.

Ferrule: the protective point or knob on the far end of an umbrella

Example Sentence: He used his umbrella as a cane, and with every step planted its ferrule in the ground.

Origin: Ferrule comes from the Latin viriola, meaning “small bracelet.” This makes more sense when you consider that ferrule is also the term for the metal band at the end of a table leg (or similar object) that strengthens it or prevents it from splitting.

Aglet: the tag covering the ends of a lace or point – e.g., the reinforcement at the end of a shoelace

Example Sentence: A missing aglet can make lacing one’s shoes a challenge.

Origin: Aglet indirectly comes from the Latin acus, “needle” – as does the word acute.

Punt: an indentation at the bottom of a molded glass bottle

Example Sentence: Pouring the champagne, she held the bottle with her thumb in its punt.

Note: Although it remains a matter of debate, explanations for the function of the punt include strengthening the bottle and also reducing its holding capacity. The alternative name for the punt is kick.

Lunule: a crescent-shaped body part or marking (such as the whitish mark at the base of a fingernail)

Example Sentence: He folded his hands together to give an impression of calm, but the ragged skin below his lunules told another story.

Origin: This mark got its name because of its shape: lunule comes from the Latin luna, meaning “moon.”

Tittle: the dot over i or j

Example Sentence: In a handwritten business note, it’s best to avoid smiley-face tittles.

Origin: Tittle comes from the Latin titulus, which originally meant “title.” Titulus came to refer to marks such as the abbreviated form of n written over a vowel (like the Spanish tilde, which indirectly got its name from titulus), and then to any mark above a letter.

Glabella: the smooth prominence of the forehead between the eyebrows

Example Sentence: If you don’t wish to look people in the eyes, you can make a similar impression by focusing on their glabellae.

Origin: Glabella derives from the Latin glaber, “bald” or “smooth.

Muntin: a strip separating panes of glass in a window sash

Example Sentence: I thought the ball would smash a window, but fortunately it hit a muntin.

Origin: Named for the way it sticks up from the window, muntin comes from the French monter, “to rise.”

Lemniscate: the infinity symbol (or more precisely, “a figure-eight shaped curve whose equation in polar coordinates is ρ²=a² cos 2θ or ρ²=a² sin 2θ“)

Example Sentence: Not surprisingly, a certain brand of automobile uses a modified lemniscate in its logo.

Origin: Lemniscate comes from a Latin word that means “with hanging ribbons” – an origin that’s reflected in the symbol’s graceful shape.

Fourchette: the strip or shaped piece used for the sides of the fingers of a glove

Example Sentence: A fine pair of gloves includes well-fitted fourchettes.

Origin: The French word fourchette (pronounced “foor-SHET”) means “fork.” It was applied to this item presumably because of the forking pattern of the fingers.

My sort of sister-in-law Jane speaks English as a foreign language. She’s just finished a course that taught her business skills—she learned how to interview for a job, write a resume, give a presentation and speak better English. (Really, there’s nothing wrong with her English.) She told me her instructor advised the class to, “NEVER use the word can. Instead,” she said, “use may.”

Hmmm. Never is an awfully long time and to me always (also a long time!) raises a red flag. The instructor appears to be like one of those annoying grade school teachers we’ve all had, who, when you asked “Can I please go to the washroom?” would say condescendingly, “I don’t know if you can, but you may.” We learned quickly that the fastest way to get permission to go without being humiliated was to say “May I please go to the washroom?”

Traditionally, may is used to ask permission. Can is used to express ability.

May I have a cookie? Yes, you may.

Can you do a push up? Yes! I can do 20 push ups! (We wouldn’t say May you do a push up?)

But in everyday speech, we use can to make a request. We are understood when we say, “Can I have a cookie?” In fact, the meanings of these words do overlap. We use can to indicate ability, possibility, permission and a request. May indicates permission, probability and a request.

According to the Merriam Webster site, “Can and may are most frequently interchangeable in senses denoting possibility; because the possibility of one’s doing something may depend on another’s acquiescence, they have also become interchangeable in the sense denoting permission. The use of can to ask or grant permission has been common since the 19th century and is well established, although some commentators feel may is more appropriate in formal contexts. May is relatively rare in negative constructions (mayn’t is not common); cannot and can’t are usual in such contexts.”

Okay okay, if you’re writing to a stickler prescriptivist, use may when asking permission. After all, if you want something from them it’s best not to annoy them, even if they annoy you. And if I’m in a super formal situation, I might be inclined to prefer may to can when asking permission. But unless I find myself talking to the queen, it’s hard to imagine a situation that formal.

If you’re even a little interested in language, you’ll love The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of “Proper English” from Shakespeare to South Park by Jack Lynch. Here’s an excerpt.

Lynch asks “What is proper English?” and “Who gets to define it?” Turns out the earliest grammar guides coincide with the rise of the middle class in the early 18th century. They weren’t written by aristocrats, but by “middle class writers who wanted to sound like their social superiors….” And it’s not that upper class speech is better—then or now—but that the upper classes hold social and economic power—then and now. If you want to share or influence that power, you need to use the language properly.

His story describes the rise of standard English, and the push and pull between the prescriptivists and the descriptivists. Prescriptivists tout rules. They are the grammar police who pounce on grammar, spelling and pronunciation mistakes. But the thing is, as Lynch points out, these so-called rules are not carved in stone, but are more like “rules of etiquette, made by fallible people, useful only in certain situations, and subject to change.”

Descriptivists are more interested in how language is used and how it changes. And change it does. Consider the influences of technology and globalization on English. Descriptivists remind us that many of the standard rules are not rules at all, but matters of taste and indicators of class. Rules change with time, usage and fashion.

Two things are inevitable: first, that language is a living, breathing thing. Like it or not, it will change. Second, the world that controls social and economic power uses standard English and if you want to have influence in that world, learn to use the rules, whether you agree with them or not.

The best position to be in is to know the rules of standard English and decide whether or not to use them, to be able to fit the language to the purpose and audience. I wouldn’t break a rule, even if I know it’s bunk, when my reader believes it to be true. For example, if I work for Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board and I’m writing a letter to a retired teacher, I’m not going to risk splitting any infinitives or beginning sentences with and or but, even though I KNOW these aren’t valid rules. I’d only risk alienating my reader and I’d come out the loser. Similarly, it would be goofy to use perfect spelling and standard usage in an IM conversation or spell every word out in an SMS message.

This book made me think about how stuck people can get about the rules. Often, when people learn what I do, they bemoan the state of the language—Kids today don’t know how to spell any more—all they do is text message. Isn’t it terrible? Nobody knows how to write! And everyone seems to have grammatical pet peeves. People are always confessing their intolerances. I just smile and nod. I know most of the time these pet peeves are matters of taste—we object to what seems tasteless to us.

I confess that I like change in language—I’m a descriptivist by nature. I’m fascinated by ingenuity, and by how technology and globalization refresh and enrich English. I’m always amazed by how flexible language is. Still, I have an inner prescriptivist, and I have my pet peeves:

Should You Have Any Questions
Why I Hate the Semicolon
What’s Wrong With Comic Sans?

What about you? What are the things that drive you crazy about language?