If you don’t have (or aren’t using) a style guide, start. This indispensible corporate bible is a must-have for lending consistency to all your communications — both print and online.
Unlike questions of grammar, questions of style often do not have a right or wrong answer. So it’s up to you to provide a “preferred” style and to suggest a default style guide, such as the AP Stylebook.
Questions about style guides? Leave a comment or email me.
No CommentsMy guest blogger and colleague Jennifer Hodroge has some sage advice to share. Check back often as I plan to post more blog entries from Jennifer.
We always assume that we’ll be here to correct any mistakes we make, in every aspect of our lives. But what about the writing that you do? What if the piece you’re working on today is the last one you’ll ever write? You’ll want it to be free of errors, at the very least. But what about the message? You want your writing to say something to your audience — something meaningful.
No matter what you’re writing about, if you’re passionate about the message for your audience or for the audience themselves, you can find the real meaning. If your message is financial services, your product or service will change someone’s life in a good way. Maybe the customer will get a new home, pay for college for their children, or gain peace of mind. If you’re writing about pharmaceutical products, maybe you’ll alleviate pain or keep someone out of the hospital. If you’re writing about retail products, maybe the clothing you’re selling today might mean a new job or a new relationship for someone; heck, if it’s shoes — we all know what our day is like when our shoes don’t fit well. If you’re writing about technical products or services, think of how much better we all feel when the technology we use works and makes our lives easier.
Writing is all about the audience. You are writing to inspire someone to do something. If you think that this could be your last sentence, what are you inspiring? What will your audience believe as a result?
Jennifer Hodroge
Freelance Writer, Columbus Ohio
http://www.jhcomm.net/
In writing some scripts for a client’s training project yesterday, I used an age-old but nonetheless effective technique for polishing them to perfection — reading aloud.
Reading the scripts in a real voice in real time so I could hear how they sounded helped me catch potential stumbling blocks and even a typo before sending it off to the client for review.
In your own copy, take a minute to read it outloud or, better yet, ask someone else to read it while you listen.
No CommentsI just read this piece in the October issue of Columbus C.E.O. and had to share. It’s well-crafted by the magazine’s managing editor, Julanne Hohbach, and based upon a well-conceived press release from Pet Butler. This is one for the swipe file.
We’re No. 1! (For No. 2)
PR tip: If you send a press release with “poop” in the headline, BizBuzz will at least read it. That’s how we learned that Pet Butler, the self-proclaimed “nation’s leading pet waste cleanup service,” reached a milestone in early August, when its Fecal Matter Technicians (yes, we tittered) picked up their 40 millionth pile of dog poo.
Pet Butler, which has nearly 80 franchises in 20 states, will clean up after Central Ohio pooches for as little as $6.50 per visit, according to www.petbutler.com.
“It’s kind of a disturbing mental image to think how large a single, 5,000-ton pile of dog poop would be,” said Matt “Red” Boswell, CEO (Chief Excrement Officer) of Pet Butler.
Yes, Red, it is disturbing. And so, by the way, is your title.
What’s the answer to the age-old question: “How do you know you’re in love?” The answer, of course, is: “You’ll know.”
And so it is with good writing.
Good writing is good writing. You know it when you see it. Like being in love, good writing has a seemingly magical quality to it. But since I have 20+ years of experience writing professionally, and a happy, 18-year marriage to my credit, I’ll try to demystify them both.
1. It means something. Like being in love, good writing is personal. To the lover, care and meaning are what drive him or her to act lovingly toward his or her partner. To the reader, meaning is what propels the reader to read on. Good writing conveys a message, a point, a thought, something. If you read a sentence or a paragraph or a page and can’t tell the main point (especially after reading it multiple times), it’s simply not good writing.
2. It evokes something. Like being in love, good writing involves depth of feeling. Indifference is the enemy. Good writing causes a reaction of some kind. Amusement. Laughter. Desire. Agreement. Disagreement. Vehement disagreement. Like a lover, good writing will engage, delight, disgust, surprise and a whole host of other things. (See. I told you I’d been married awhile.)
3. It leaves something. Like being in love, good writing leaves a lasting impression. A lover cannot stop thinking of or dreaming about his or her beloved for too long. Good writing does the same by indelibly impressing a thought, an image, a desire to act, or a feeling upon the reader.
No Comments“It has often been said there’s so much to be read, you never can cram all those words in your head. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads. That’s why my belief is the briefer the brief is, the greater the sigh of the reader’s relief is.” — Dr. Seuss, aka Theodor “Ted” Seuss Geisel, American writer and cartoonist best known for his classic children’s books
Enough said.
No CommentsIn working on rewriting a client’s web site, I was reminded that sometimes even corporate communicators can’t see the forest for the trees. I wrote a single sentence that said what my client’s in-house writer was trying to say in eight lines of text.
Instead of trying to keep the paragraph intact (as often happens during rewrites and corporate mandates), I stepped back and looked at the meaning behind the verbiage.
Then that single sentence became simple to write and easy for the reader to understand.
No Comments