Writing

Emails are key to communication in the office. Yet, as a rule, they are badly written. So by consistently sending sharp, well-composed electronic messages, you will make yourself stand out from the crowd. Take careful note of the following:

1. Hone your subject line
Try to be more specific. Instead of giving your email the name ‘Byrne project’, call it ‘Byrne project: new deadline for phase 2’. Your email is already more interesting than most.

2. Don’t bury the lead
If you want to annoy people, make them read three paragraphs before you get to the point. If you want to rise in the company, state your purpose in the first sentence or two and then get to the why and how of the matter.

3. Request further action
End emails with a suggestion or a request for action. An example would be: ‘I will call you on Monday at 10am to discuss this’ or ‘When can we get this done?’. Otherwise, nothing is likely to happen.

PLUS: 10 Best One-Liners

4. Be human
People who would never dream of being cold and abrupt in person, often come across that way in their emails. Being businesslike doesn’t mean being impersonal. Try to remember that the recipient, like you, is a human being.

5. Proof your email
Just one misspelling, grammatical error or typo can make a sender look careless and disrespectful. Sending ‘clean’ emails lifts you above the sloppy crowd.

Face it every writer has days when they sit down to write and the words just don’t flow onto the page. You write one sentence and check how many words you just added in hopes it will miraculously be sufficient. The problem writers have is, when their heart isn’t in their writing, it shows. (Here’s how to overcome your writing demons).

To help you get your writing on track, here are twenty-one tips to prevent you from getting to the point where you have what I affectionately call blank-screen-syndrome.

1. Create a list of articles you want to write but don’t have the time. I find that it’s easy to get inspired to write pieces about other topics when the pressure’s on to write a specific topic. There’s nothing like a deadline to make anything else seem exciting.
2. Feed your mind. Read a book and/or other sources of insight such as blogs and news sites to get ideas. This isn’t an excuse to get a snack or other indulgence.
3. Develop a story around a trending topic, even if it’s not in your area of focus. The objective is to stretch yourself to find a way to write about the hot topics. This can be useful for bloggers and company content where you need to keep your content relevant.
4. Keep a swipe file. Sign up for a wide range of newsletters focused on your main topics to see what other writers and bloggers are covering. Save those articles that provide new insights or a different format for inspiration. This doesn’t mean you should simply copy someone else’s ideas or articles.
5. Collect relevant questions you and others have on your main subject area.Think like you’re writing an endless FAQ. A list of questions gives you a hook to build your content around. This is particularly useful for blogs and company content.
6. Get a jump before you quit. Before you quit a writing session, write down the ideas you have for the next session; form them into an outline added to the current document to make it easy to pick up where you left off.
7. Close your digital door to remove distractions. This means close your social media sites, chat and email. To this end, it’s useful to have a dedicated space for writing.
8. Make an appointment to write. Set your timer or alarm for a specific time and that’s when you have to start writing.
9. Change writing environments. If you always write at your kitchen table, and you’re now stuck for new ideas, try writing at a coffee shop or local library.
10. Seek inspiration. Do something that provides you with a muse. Go to a play, or museum.

First, you need to identify your audience. There are several methods to identify your audience, such as determining keywords that are bringing users to your website, creating user personae and more. Once you’ve identified your audience, you should create content that speaks to each user persona. Do not stray from this concept, because you will lose readers or followers. Readers are finicky at the beginning of any article or post. If you don’t capture their attention with the title, the remainder of the content might as well be in a language they don’t understand.

For example, let’s say you operate a blog about the exam for certified public accounts. Who is your audience? There are a few user personae we can identify without doing much detailed analysis. You can easily create personae for your audience in the same manner.

• Students: those in their early 20s who are working on an accounting bachelor’s or master’s degree, with the intent of taking the CPA exam eventually.
• Entry-level professionals: early- to mid-20s professionals working full time at a public accounting firm, after attaining a bachelor’s or master’s degree. This group is most likely to be actively involved in accounting practices or preparing to become a CPA.
• Career changers: adults looking to change careers or re-enter the workforce.
• Educators: accounting professors who might need to discuss CPA exam content with their students.
• Professionals: licensed CPAs who are concerned about the future of the profession.

Let’s say we want to target entry-level professionals, because this is likely the largest of the five personae we have identified. Many of these individuals have probably taken entry-level jobs as an accountant but have not yet sat for the CPA exam. One of the greater stresses about this exam is finding out one’s score for each section. Though the exam is largely computerized, it can take a few months for scores to be reported to the appropriate governing body. So “CPA exam score release” is a hot topic and sure to draw attention from entry-level professionals because this demographic would be interested in knowing exam scores.

This would be a perfect theme or title to create your content around. When reading this blog for the first time, readers will immediately be locked in because the content pertains to their situation — not their past, not their future, but what they are actively involved in at the moment. Most readers and discussion groups talk about what’s happening now. What’s buzzing? By focusing your title and content on “the now” of your target audience, you have a much better chance of each reader reading your article or post from beginning to end, which is the goal of any writer.

When selecting a topic, there are a few tips to keep in mind.

• Pick one that relates to at least one of your user personae. This drives at least one group of users to your content and is sure to relate to them.
• Topics should be useful or answer a question. This encourages social sharing, allowing your content to reach beyond its page.
• Pick a controversial or trendy topic. Readers usually show initial interest in current topics and trends compared with those of the past. That is, unless you are comparing a “now” topic with a past topic.
• Limit the sales and marketing aspect of your content. If you’re only trying to sell a product or service, you will probably fail. No one likes to feel as though he or she has been sold, but everyone likes to buy.

Corporate communicators would do well to read and heed this advice from a Jan. 11, 2013 article in the Wall Street Journal titled The Best Beginning: Clarity:

“Meek or bold, a good beginning achieves clarity. A sensible line threads through the prose; things follow one another with literal logic or with the logic of feeling. Clarity isn’t an exciting virtue, but it’s a virtue always, and especially at the beginning of a piece of prose. Some writers seem to resist clarity, even to write confusingly on purpose. Not many would admit to this.

One who did was the wonderful-though-not-to-be-imitated Gertrude Stein: “My writing is clear as mud, but mud settles and clear streams run on and disappear.” Oddly, it’s one of the clearest sentences she ever wrote.

For many other writers, clarity simply falls victim to a desire to achieve other things, to dazzle with style or to bombard with information. It’s one thing for the reader to take pleasure in the writer’s achievements, another when the writer’s own pleasure is apparent. Skill, talent, inventiveness, all can become overbearing and intrusive. The image that calls attention to itself is often the image you can do without.The writer works in service of story and idea and always in service of the reader. Sometimes the writer who overloads an opening passage is simply afraid of boring the reader. A respectable anxiety, but nothing is more boring than confusion.

You can’t tell it all at once. A lot of the art of beginnings is deciding what to withhold until later, or never to say at all. Take one thing at a time. Prepare your readers, tell everything they need to know in order to read on, and tell no more.

Journalists are instructed not to “bury the lead”—instructed, that is, to make sure they tell the most important facts of the story first. This translates poorly to longer forms of writing. The heart of the story is usually a place to arrive at, not a place to begin. Of course the reader needs a reason to continue, but the best reason is simply confidence that the writer is going some place interesting.”

—Adapted from Messrs. Kidder and Todd’s “Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction.” 

Here are five suggestions to help you build your writing habit. (And, for even more help, here are seven ideas on how to seven ideas on how to ensure writing inspiration strikes.)

When you get right down to the nitty-gritty, only two things really count when striving for the perfect tweet:

1. Maximum readability
2. Maximum retweetability

These are both vital, but neither should be tailored at the expense of the other. For maximum benefit, each needs to be perfect every single time.

1. Think Like Your Readers

This is a bit of a no-brainer, but it’s easily overlooked. For your tweet to be perfect, it needs to appeal most to your readers, to the majority of your network, and not to you.

Unless you’re a world-famous celebrity or brand with millions of devoted followers, adopting an attitude of ‘they’ll know what I mean’ or ‘everybody likes this!’ will almost always backfire.

You have to take the time to craft your tweet accurately and pleasingly, thus ensuring that it will be appeal to the highest number of readers.

2. Use Consistent Excellence To Stand Out From The Crowd

Take a moment to peruse your Twitter feed. Refresh the page. Who stands out? Why?

Through prolonged Twitter use we all become tuned into paying attention to certain things in our timelines, notably the avatars and usernames of our favourite profiles. But a friend or valued associate sharing new content isn’t always enough to make us click on that link. We trust their judgement, and we have liked some of the things they’ve shared in the past, but this hasn’t turned us into a robot, automatically clicking on everything they tweet.

Real full article via AllTwitter – The Unofficial Twitter Resource

One of the dangers of writing is that we can fall in love with our words. Even the wrong words. And like a bad boyfriend, these ill-suited words are clung to even though they do us no good and our friends can’t figure out what the heck we’re doing with them.

I know I am guilty. Some of my drafts have included phrases that made me beam with pride at how clever I could be. That pride stayed even as I was editing and could see that said cleverness actually stood out like a big, fat salmon in the lettuce crisper. I knew it was stinking up the place and making the greens inedible. Oh, but how can you not love salmon?

The harsh reality is that sometimes, even the good, clever ,Omega-3 laden stuff needs to get cut from our work. If we want to write well, we can’t be too precious about our words.

I was thinking about this while listening to Bernie Taupin’s audio blogs on songwriting. He has written the lyrics to some of the most iconic and enduring songs of the last 30 years. If his name doesn’t ring a bell, perhaps you are familiar with his main songwriting partner, Elton John?

While discussing how he co-wrote “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” he admits he has a “really bad memory of my own work.”  He proves this by telling the story of watching a game show on TV where one of the categories was his own lyrics. “I believe there were five questions,” Bernie says, “and I got four of them wrong.”

Now that is the epitome of not being too precious about your words!

Be like Bernie. Don’t get too invested in your every word, especially the ones you suspect (or know but don’t want to admit) don’t really belong. The delete key is your friend. If that seems too painful, create a separate file where all the bits you’ve edited out can live and commiserate with one another about how they were unceremoniously cast out of the final draft.

Of course, I might be reading too much into Bernie’s comments.  He’s terribly prolific, so maybe there are just far too many words for him to keep track of. Well, that’s a good goal, too.

You can hear Bernie for yourself at his website.

Barbara Govednik launched 423 Communication in 2001 to helps its clients tell their stories through freelance writing services, coaching and editing services, and employee communication consulting and implementation. Read Barbara’s Being Well Said Blog.

Today is March 4 and you know what that means. It’s National Grammar Day! Here are ten ways to celebrate.

1. Send someone you love a Grammar Day e-card from the Grammar Girl site.
2. Peruse the online Chicago Manual of Style.
3. Challenge your skills by taking the Newsroom 101 writing tests.
4. Buy yourself a grammar t-shirt.
5. Set up an RSS feed for the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar blog.
6. Ridicule people who put their bad grammar on display.
7. Have fun with number six and continue ridiculing people who put their bad grammar on display.
8. Read about what drives real grammar and spelling snobs.
9. Join the Facebook Group Knowing the Difference Between “Their”, “There” and “They’re”.
10. Leave a comment chastising me for all the grammar mistakes I’ve made in my life.

Barbara Govednik launched 423 Communication in 2001 to helps its clients tell their stories through freelance writing services, coaching and editing services, and employee communication consulting and implementation. Read Barbara’s Being Well Said Blog.

One of my writing coaching clients sent me a link to a blog post about exclamation points. I was fond of striking them from her text as I edited her website content. And it does seem that they pop up with more frequency these days. (Insert your own comment here about how social media destroys all, if you’re not too busy yelling at the neighbor kids to get off your lawn.)

The essential questions in the Authentic Organizations blog post were this: are exclamation points unprofessional, do they corrode the credibility of women and did the writer really care or not?  You can read it here.

I don’t have a problem with exclamation points in general. They serve a purpose and give writers the ability to use their authentic voice when writing, which I always advocate for myself and all the writers I work with.

However, I do have an issue with exclamation points used in bulk (and I believe that ending three out of four sentences that way as the blogger did is the very definition of “bulk.”) Whether you are a man or woman, use that many exclamation points and you make your writing start to sound breathless and vaguely like an infomercial. Act now! Limited time offer! Operators are waiting! The blanket that has sleeves!

So go ahead and use an exclamation point now and then.  Moderation is the key here, just as it annoyingly is in all good things. Just don’t use multiples. There is no excuse for ending any sentence with !!!! unless you are a fourteen-year-old girl trying to convey just how cute that boy in your homeroom is and you agree to dotting all your I’s with hearts.

Barbara Govednik launched 423 Communication in 2001 to helps its clients tell their stories through freelance writing services, coaching and editing services, and employee communication consulting and implementation. Read Barbara’s Being Well Said Blog.

When you try to be persuasive in writing or speaking, you probably spend a lot of time crafting the message, but you might be overlooking something that is more important than your content.

An audience often decides how it will respond to a persuasive appeal based not on the message itself but on whether the communicator is credible. Credibility, according to psychologist Dan O’Keefe, is the audience’s assessment of whether you are believable. If your audience does not view you as credible, strengthen your image by working on three things people usually consider in judging credibility.

1) Expertise – Be an expert in your field, because people are persuaded to do things when they view the communicator as an authority in the field. And it doesn’t only apply to people. Consumer Reports magazine is the leading source of trusted information when people want to buy a product. Why? Because they view it as credible.

2) Trustworthiness – Be fair, be honest, be a good listener, and be respectful of your audience. A major reason people are not persuaded to do something or to believe something is because the communicator was rude, sarcastic, condescending, or, in some other way, disrespectful.

3) Confidence. Carrying yourself with confidence is reflected in the way you dress (be a sharp dresser) and in the way you speak. Don’t use hedging language because when you hem, haw, and ramble, you don’t sound like you have control of the message (in writing or speaking), and you do not come across as being confident.

By Ken O’Quinn, Writing With Clarity

Reading from a screen isn’t the same as reading from a piece of paper. I say this at the risk of a) telling you something you already know and b) sounding like a curmudgeonly Luddite who can’t cope with new-fangled technology.

Many of us intrinsically know this is true. There is more scanning, and in many instances, more distraction to skip to someplace else. Turns out that science backs up the hunch.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education (which I read online), an article was published in the Journal of Research in Reading (which I didn’t read at all) that highlighted the research of Anne Mangen. She gets all metaphysical and says that “digital texts are ontologically intangible,” so we have a different physical relationship to them, it influences our immersion into the material and other outcomes.

The best bit is this line from the Chronicle quoting Mangen: “One effect, Mangen maintains, is that the digital text makes us read ‘in a shallower, less focused way.'”

We accepted this truth about our shallow, scanning and skipping audiences long ago. And we’ve worked to adjust for it as writers. But I had to wonder if I was fully embracing it as an editor.

In the name of efficiency and environmentalism, I generally edit electronically using any of the available markup tools Microsoft Word offers. This puts me squarely in the audience’s skipping and scanning shoes. It lets me make sure that the text accommodates this arms’ length relationship and that the main points can be plucked here, there or anywhere.

But I also have a responsibility to make the work correct and complete. The writer’s little mistakes and near-misses need to be ferreted out and corrected. I can’t do this well if I am skipping and scanning on screen. That requires immersion.

Which means I either need to let go of my resistance to killing trees and marking up a hardcopy with the old red pen or learn to buck nature and immerse myself in my laptop. Although the latter sounds kind of scary and Tron-like. (E-mail me if you are less ancient than I and don’t understand that reference.)

When editing a piece meant to be read on screen, editors play a dual role. We have to experience the content as the reader will, and we have to bring a critical, detail-oriented eye. What do you do to accommodate both?

Barbara Govednik launched 423 Communication in 2001 to helps its clients tell their stories through freelance writing services, coaching and editing services, and employee communication consulting and implementation. Read Barbara’s Being Well Said Blog.

• Trick #1: Know your audience. If you’re communicating with another wordie, go ahead and use challenging language. This person will appreciate it. (Honestly: I just wrote a memo with “purview” in it because I knew the CEO would like it!) If not, forget it. Most people read for content and not for style, and if you’re choosing words that scream “pay attention to me,” then they’re shouting over your content.

• Trick #2: Watch for jargon. This falls into the same category as $64,000 words for me. Those who don’t know them feel excluded, stupid and angry. When jargon is appropriate, define your term the first time it appears. Those who know it will congratulate themselves, and you’ll avoid negativity from everyone else.

• Trick #3: Kill the Latinate words. These are the long ones that sound like legal terms, and have their origins in Latin. (For my money, there’s a reason they call it a “dead language.”) This includes terms such as “therefore” (try “so”), “pursuant” (try “after”), “heretofore” (try “until now”), and “notwithstanding” (try “although”). When given the option of a complex versus a simple word, go for the latter—don’t let your words get in the way of your meaning.

• Trick #4: Use the thesaurus sparingly. Most people pick one up because they’re using the same word a lot and want to give their readers some variety. This is a noble gesture. But a thesaurus can also be a crutch. Instead of trying to find new ways to express yourself, you just want to change one word. And often you end up going several words deep among the synonyms to find one that will work—and the further you go on the list, the more obscure the term becomes. Remember: it’s not just about word choice—it’s about thoughtful writing.

• Trick #1: What am I trying to do? It’s Communications 101: what’s the purpose of all this? Am I trying to educate someone on a topic? Am I looking to get their agreement? Am I trying to get them to take action (and what would that be, by the way)? Am I looking to get more information from them?

You’d be surprised by the number of people who don’t consider why they’re speaking or writing before they start. Don’t be one of them. If you know what you want, you’ve exponentially increased the chances you’ll actually get it.

• Trick #2: Who am I trying to reach? Let’s face it: your family and friends will cut you a lot more slack on your latest love than anyone else. But not your boss, when you’re trying to convince her that you have a great idea for a new project. But not your client, when you’re trying to convince him to spend more money with you when he’s already feeling budget constrained. But not the reporter on the phone, when you’re trying to convince him that this is a great story his readers can hardly wait to know more about.

So when you’re spending that extra few seconds deciding what you want to accomplish before the communication, take a few more to think about the people on the other end of it. Here’s your checklist.

1. Why would they want to hear from you?
2. When would they want to hear from you?
3. How would they want to hear from you?
4. What’s in it for them?
5. What objections could they raise to your idea—and how could you address these up front so they don’t get the chance to use them to end the communication?

And the all-important—and often overlooked—What do I do if they actually agree with me and want to move forward? That’s another downside of passion: sometimes we’re so busy waxing eloquent about our subject that we don’t know when to stop! Then we can run the risk of talking people out of something they initially agreed to.

Let’s talk links. That’s right, web links. Because most of the links we see on intranets and employee portals just stink. That’s right, stink.

Recent client usability testing efforts resulted in some classic examples of how not to do it.

1. Avoid using software package titles as links: One client uses “Rosetta Stone” as the link to the language learning modules they offer employees. Problem is, most employees don’t know what Rosetta Stone is. They’d like to find the language learning options, but when asked to, can’t.
2. Don’t separate what goes together. Notice how employees group and label a topic. For example, one group of employees is inclined to put compensation stuff together with benefits stuff. They can group the compensation stuff together, but they don’t know how to label it and they don’t really think of it as its own separate group. When put with “benefits” it all makes sense to them. So, the link becomes “Benefits & Compensation.”
3. Don’t use acronyms for navigation. When faced with a bunch of HR navigation such as FMLA, L&D and SPD, most employees just ignored them and hit the search. Heavy use of search means your navigation is failing you.
4. Don’t use terms that aren’t easily understood in every country. One term may not mean the same thing to employees in different countries. Some terms are far more recognizable to employees in the U.S. than in other parts of the world.
   

Obviously, links also must be prioritized and well organized. Here is some recent insight from Jakob Nielsen on the use of mega drop-down menus. We think this is a really cool approach for dealing with a lot of descriptive navigation.

But, it still has to be descriptive. Even a great mega drop-down menu won’t work if the link language is vague, unfamiliar and laden with acronyms.

Stacy Wilson, ABC, is president of Eloquor Consulting, Inc., in Lakewood, Colorado

• Trick #1: Whose purpose does it serve? Does our deathless prose actually help readers understand the point we’re making—or is its point to make us look good?

Let’s be honest: anyone who writes something for others must have a bit of an ego—otherwise she wouldn’t be able to write. But let’s keep the emphasis on “bit of” rather than “an ego.” It’s quaint to read Victorian novels that address us as “dear reader,” reminding us that the author has an active role in what we’re reading. However, it’s death to a communication or piece that’s meant to persuade when our writerly fingerprints smear the important points.

• Trick #2: Do others’ suggestions improve what we’ve written? This is perhaps the best test of the amount of ego in your writing. Spend that extra second asking, “What will my readers better understand: my presentation or the new one?” And if it’s the new one, make the change. (Then find a way to work your beloved phrase into a conversation with friends who will appreciate it.) When your purpose is to communicate with others, their needs trump yours.  

Sometimes the suggestion doesn’t improve the text, and your approach is the better solution—then keep it. Some people don’t believe they’ve done their job unless they change something they’re reviewing, so know when this is happening to you. (We’ll get to “The All the World’s a Frustrated Author Theory” next time …)

• Trick #3: Don’t argue about it. If you are (inwardly) jutting out your jaw as you explain to someone why your words are better than theirs, then you’ve already lost the battle. There’s no way you can come off as anything but defensive or egotistical—calling your credibility into question. It’s just not worth it. Over your career, you’ll create many wonderful communications—if you don’t antagonize the people who pay you to do this. Live to write another day.

• Trick #1: Is this communication really necessary? We’re communicators: we default to wanting to share information. But we need to take that extra second to consider what the people we’re trying to reach really want from us. If it’s that analytical guy mentioned earlier: he can hardly wait until you send more data, so go ahead! But what if it’s someone who already received hundreds of emails a day—and is unhappy about it?

Do we need to send the email with a bit of information this morning, another with some more this afternoon, and a third tidbit tomorrow morning? Sometimes it’s better to wait until you have it all and can send just one. Why risk annoying the person you’re trying to reach?

• Trick #2: Is this the best way to communicate? Back to that endless email—like those mythical fruitcakes at the holidays that circle the globe. One of the main reasons this happens is no one picks up the phone and has a five-minute conversation—or even worse, people won’t walk down the hall and poke their heads into someone’s office for a quick decision. Ask what’s the most efficient way to get something done—rather than what’s the easiest way for you—and take that approach.

•  Trick #3: Am I really adding value? This is my beef about e-newsletters and e-zines. I understand the theory: provide some good information to showcase the value my company offers, which encourages potential customers to contact me. But most of the ones I see seem to scream “me, Me, ME!”

They may begin with a chit-chatty tidbit about what the author has been up to lately. They may follow up with a project they just completed, which they thought was interesting (so you should, too). They may give you platitudes about your industry to show they know it (aren’t you tired of reading about “what you can do in a difficult economy”—which begins with hiring their firm?). The best ones—and the only ones anyone really reads—are the e-newsletters that give us ideas we can use to make improvements right away. So when you’re doing this, put the value up front—and save the happy talk about your latest holiday for a Twitter or Facebook posting.

• Trick #1: Laugh. The article I wrote was about a diabetes management program. My laugh was that it went out thin and came back overweight—the opposite of what the company intended for the program I was writing about. My greatest chuckle came from reading a 63-word sentence, with the end repeating words from the beginning—because it was so long that even the re-writer forgot where it started.

• Trick #2: Don’t look for imagined slights. Don’t begin with thinking, “People don’t like my ideas (or me) and took them out,” or “They don’t think I covered everything adequately so had to add something.” People make changes for all kinds of reasons—and many have nothing to do with you. It could be someone had a bad day and is taking it out on your copy. It could be that someone hates a particular turn of phrase and will remove it whenever it appears. It could be that one reviewer doesn’t like another, so feels compelled to alter that person’s suggestions. You can only guess, so don’t begin by feeling inadequate.

• Trick #3: Ask for amplification. If someone makes a change you don’t understand—or don’t agree with—ask about it. Most people are happy to explain their suggestions. This situation presents two opportunities for you: 1) to learn something you might not otherwise know (ask me about the subjunctive tense …), and 2) to show you cared enough about what a commenter said to inquire further. Who knows: by discussing something, you might even convince the person that your approach is better.

• Trick #4: Ask “Does the change make the copy better?” Did it take too long to say something, and now it’s more concise? Did I need to include a longer explanation so the ultimate audience for this piece has a better sense of what is meant? Did I get sloppy and use incorrect grammar and punctuation, which someone has corrected to my shame? Remember, you want to have the final piece meet your goal: to persuade, to educate, to whatever. If someone’s comment moves you closer to your goal, that person has actually helped you.