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.

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.

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.

William Lee and Rick Patrick are the co-creators of “Talkingstick,” a performance series that is part of the increasingly popular storytelling movement where people stand up before a live audience and tell stories. I know Master Lee (his stage name) and Mr. Patrick because we play poker together, and I’ve noticed something interesting about them: As experienced storytellers, they are so familiar with spotting exaggeration and lies that they can quickly identify a bluff in a poker game.

It is well established that being a good storyteller is a useful skill in careers (and not just for journalists and poker players). We need to tell stories all the time — to position ourselves in the job market, to pitch a new business idea to investors, to explain why a failure was actually a success, and so on.

I recently attended a “Talkingstick” show and sat down with Master Lee and Mr. Patrick to learn some of the techniques they use to tell good stories. Here’s what I learned:

1. Keep it simple. The brain gets overwhelmed when trying to process too much information.

2. Openings and closings are very important. When Master Lee and Mr. Patrick organize their shows, they make sure to begin and end the evenings with their strongest material since this is often what stays with the listener. That is the same reason skilled public speakers often memorize the beginning and ending of a speech but allow themselves to improvise more in the middle.

3. Be mindful of your story’s spine. If your story has six parts, all six parts must be essential. Beware of tangents: if something goes too far astray, you will probably lose your audience’s attention.

Read full article in New York Times

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.

The value of this Business Plan process is the thinking that it forces you to do about your business, your products and services, your goals and the actions you’ll take to achieve your goals. Even if no one but you ever sees the plan, you will have given purposeful and logical thought to the purpose and direction of your business. This process helps ensure that the many activities you squeeze into your limited hours are time well spent – focused on moving your business forward in an aggressive yet realistic way.

Part 1: Analysis

Core Services

• List the core services (or products) you offer
• Be as specific as possible, but put similar items in a group (e.g., “Editorial Services” includes writing, editing, etc.)

Target Markets

• List the market segments you serve
• Be realistic; if you realistically cannot serve large corporations, for example, then don’t include them
• Be as specific as possible, but put similar items in a group unless there is a compelling reason to list them separately (e.g., “School Groups” could include secondary schools and colleges, but these segments might have different needs)

Competition Analysis

• List your competitors and a brief description of them
• Unless a specific competitor presents unique challenges to your business, it is OK to list them in groups (e.g., “Independent Practitioners” or “Small Agencies”)
• The purpose is to provide yourself a picture of what your business is up against as you market your core service

Vision and Mission Statements

• It is useful to have Vision and Mission statements that keep you focused on what is important to you
• Vision Statement should describe the “ideal state” of your business; it should be achievable, but also something to strive for
• Mission Statement succinctly states what your business is about, its purpose, the role it plays in the market

Part 2: Assumptions

Business Principles

• It is useful to develop a set of Business Principles that guide how you will conduct your business
• These principles have a direct bearing on your relationships with customers and clients
• The reason to include it under “Assumptions” is because your Business Principles are conditions under which your business operates; as you will see further in this section, you will list other conditions under which your business operates as well

Economic Assumptions

• List things you know about the economy (local, state, regional, national, international – whatever you believe affects your business)
• Include relevant historical facts (e.g., “the U.S. economy fell into recession in 2001”) and how they affect your ability to do business
• Note the impact of past, current, or anticipated economic conditions on your business and the products/services you provide

Financial Assumptions

• List things you know about your personal and/or business financial situation that affect your ability to do business and to grow your business
• Include things like cash flow issues, savings programs, the financial picture as a result of actions or conditions (a recession, recent investments, loan approvals, etc.)
• Reflect financial “realities” about your business (e.g., the need to control expenses, taxes owed, upcoming capital expenditures, expanding payroll, etc.)

Technological Assumptions

• Since so many businesses – large and small – depend on technology (web, e-mail, phone, etc.) today, it is useful to think about how these issues affect your business’s ability to succeed
• Think about upgrades of hardware and software, the impact of growth and expansion on your technological needs, training that will be necessary, etc.

Part 3: Strategic Summary

SWOT Analysis

• List all the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats about your business
• Be honest with yourself; don’t hold anything back or ignore realities

Key Success Factors

• Out of your SWOT Analysis, what are the key factors that will affect the ability of your business to succeed?
• Examples: strong reputation, broad client base, repeat business, unique provider, etc.

Competitive Advantages / Disadvantages

• Create lists of your competitive advantages and disadvantages based on your analysis of everything else up to this point
• What unique advantages does your business have in the marketplace?
• What distinct disadvantages does your business have?
• Be honest and don’t hold back because you will develop strategies based largely on this informatio

Strategic Goals

• Develop two or three broad Strategic Goals for your business in the next year or the next 3-5 years, depending on the scope of your plan
• Strategic Goals should be “big picture” goals, but they should also be specific enough that you can measure them
• Under each goal, list one to three specific, measurable components
• Example of a Strategic Goal: “Grow Client Base”
• Example of specific, measurable component: “Add at least X new clients by X date”
• Make your goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-driven

Tactical Actions

• Out of your Strategic Goals, list specific actions you will take that will help you achieve them
• Examples: Meet with two new prospective clients per month; Join a professional association to expand my network
• Create a calendar that plots when each tactical activity will occur so you don’t forget to do them

Robert Holland

The other day, I found myself thinking about all the ways we use words. Scratch “all!” Let me start over: The other day, I found myself thinking about the ways we use words.

Is the word “all” necessary?

Consider:
How do I love thee? Let me count all the ways.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Would we find Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem as memorable with “all” in the first line?

Consider these:
Arrest all people who break laws.
Arrest people who break laws.

Color in all the blank squares below.
Color in the blank squares below.

All people have their good and bad sides.
People have their good and bad sides.

The above sentences without “all” are stronger and more respectful of the reader. Their attitude is calmer, less preachy and more appealing because they’re missing one little word. Notice I chose not to write “all because.”

Look: There may be a place for “all,” for example, when you’re giving instructions and you want to make certain the person understands: Color in all the blank squares below. However, if I wanted to be emphatic, I would write, Color in the blank squares below. Check your work and make sure you don’t miss any. I think it’s far more respectful when you use a separate sentence to express that thought.

Getting even with “even.”

Even you have faults.
You have faults.

Everyone is trying harder. Even he is.
He is trying harder, just like everyone else.

He collects everything, even pennies.
He collects everything, including pennies.

Even when Jim applied himself, his output was average.
When Jim applied himself, his output was average.

Even if you’re extremely lucky, your chances are not very good.
If you’re extremely lucky, your chances are not very good.

My point? “Even” is another one of those words that act as the moral equivalent of a blinking neon sign. Yes, it can be used to express surprise about an unlikely event; however, invariably, I prefer alternative sentences that avoid using the word.

Delete “just”

I want just the facts!
I want the facts!

Just because you’re intelligent doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try hard.
You’re intelligent. Does that mean you shouldn’t try hard?

We got there just in time.
We got there in time.

You get the point.

Write without “that”

I think that you’re intelligent.
I think you’re intelligent.

I say that a person is only human.
I say a person is only human.

I believe that all men are created equal.
I believe all men are created equal.

This is the gift that we give each other, the gift of love.
This is the gift we give each other, the gift of love.

Some sentences require the word “that;” however, it is often unnecessary. When it is, leave it out!

“All,” “even,” “just” and “that:” I am not suggesting you never use those words. I am suggesting that each time you want to use them, you see if you like the sentence better after you rewrite it without that word. Give it a try!

It’s just better writing.
Scratch that. It’s better writing!

By Chuck Lustig – ExcitingWriting

As communicators, we’re responsible for writing clear, simple & memorable messages. But every now & then, we’re guilty of sharing lengthy, complex messages that’ll never be remembered? Consider this bad example of a key message by the Central Manchester & Manchester Children’s University Hospitals NHS Trust (Agenda for Change communication):

‘Where the combined value of the above payments before actual assimilation remains greater than the combined value of the payments after assimilation, the former level of pay will be protected. These protection arrangements apply to the combined value of payments before and after assimilation, not to individual pay components, excepting the provision relating to retention of existing on-call arrangements.’

While this example is extreme, the point is we must constantly remind ourselves to write in easy to understand terms that our audiences can relate to, allowing them to easily remember what it is we are trying to convey. A great, quick read that helps me stay on track with key message development is “Made to Stick” by Chip Heath & Dan Heath. 

The basis of “Made to Stick” is why some ideas survive and others die. Using a framework of “succes” (simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, stories), the authors use examples that make the importance of key message development “STICK.”

Before you start reading, share examples of good and bad key messaging that you have run into or have created.

Julie Baron, COMMUNICATION WORKS

Dick Weiss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch does some neat stuff on writing  in his Weiss on Writing at STLtoday.com.  His address is weisswrite@marketvolt.com.  Recently he did a nice paragraph about punctuation and then took off about the exclamation point.  His title was “Ban the exclamation point — period.”  It’s a bit overstated, but that’s OK.  I feel even stronger about banning MOST dashes.  I say beware the dasher who when it doubt dashes.  If you see a dash in the first paragraph, start counting them.  Dashers are even worse when they have another point to make in a sentence and can think of no way to add it except after a dash.  Another sentence usually works just fine.  I had a teaching assistant once who said her high-school teacher told her class that they were allowed one dash per essay.  I like that.  Save the dash for dramatic contrast or emphasis.

Some members of our magazine faculty here at the Missouri School of Journalism got stirred up over something the person who is teaching Magazine Editing this semester wrote.   He questioned the use of the semicolon, especially in direct quotations.  He doesn’t mind the semicolon to break up lists that have commas inside them, but he wonders why and how we can determine whether two complete sentences or independent clauses are closely related enough to skip the coordinating conjunction and use  the semicolon instead.  I think that careful writers often do want to show a close relationship between two complete thoughts.  For example, “He enjoyed writing; he wrote every chance he had.”  Certainly we don’t want to join two complete sentences with simply a comma.  A comma alone joining two independent clauses is a comma fault or a comma splice.  I don’t allow them — ever.  I do allow three or more short sentences to be joined with commas.

The professor questioned how we ever know a speaker means to have two thoughts closely related.  Isn’t that interpreting what the speaker is trying to say?  My answer is, first of all, that if the speaker does not use a conjunction, we shouldn’t insert one.  Second, we always interpret what a speaker is saying or trying to say.  People don’t speak using punctuation marks, except perhaps for Victor Borge.  We insert punctuation marks such as commas, question marks, and even sometimes, exclamation points.

He emailed me that he thought semicolons in direct quotations looked funny.  I emailed him back that he had a strange sense of humor.  Of course, I don’t think we should overdo the semicolon between sentences, especially in direct quotations.

See how journalism professors spend their time?

Don Ranly

Writing good is a big deal these days. A bigger deal then math, according to my friends and I, but I’m not hear to represent there views. But, I thank it’s important to know the English language and all it’s rules.

Did you catch all the errors in that first paragraph? The spell-check on my laptop didn’t.

The College Board – those friendly scholars who bring us the SATs and other fun tests – recently released the results of a survey by its National Commission on Writing. The news is not good. A majority of U.S. employers say about one-third of workers do not meet the writing requirements of their positions. “Businesses are really crying out,” College Board President Gaston Caperton told the Associated Press. “They need to have people who write better.”

The employers who say people need to write better are in some surprising industries: mining; construction; manufacturing; transportation and utilities; services; and finance, insurance and real estate. It seems companies want everyone to be able to communicate effectively, not just the executives, lawyers and public relations people.

This might come as a surprise not only to people in the working world, but also to people who are preparing to enter it. Students who believe the informal shorthand of e-mail and instant messages is acceptable in corporate America might be in for a shock when they lose the jobs of their dreams because of misspelled words on their resumés. I recently read a self-promotion posted by a recent graduate on a job-seekers discussion board for the public relations industry. The misspelled words, poor sentence construction and grammatical errors were enough to make E.B. White turn over in his grave. It’s bad enough that the job seeker embarrassed herself in front of thousands of professional peers (she even proudly announced the college from which she graduated). I only hope no one committed the greater sin of actually hiring her.

I have a friend who recently left the practice of business communication so he could teach it to the next generation of professionals. In just a few weeks in the classroom he has experienced something akin to culture shock. “It is disturbing how little these students know about the English language and its proper usage,” he lamented recently.

A lot of people ask why it’s important to use correct grammar, spelling and punctuation in their jobs. I have two answers:

1. Standards are necessary for society to function. Imagine if a construction company decided it was no longer important to follow standards of measurement. One foot might be 13 inches or 12 inches. Who cares? Just as chaos would reign in that scenario, the same would be true if we didn’t follow standards of language. Clear communication would be impossible.

2. Credibility is at stake. I would not trust a computer programmer who doesn’t know code, a chef who doesn’t know how to measure ingredients, or a doctor who doesn’t know the human anatomy. Just as these people must know how to use the tools of their trade, so anyone who uses English to communicate must know how to use it correctly.

Fixing the problem that the College Board survey exposes is not easy. Teachers will have to stop misspelling words on the communications they send home to parents. (Yes, I’m the parent who keeps sending those notes back with proofreading marks all over them.) Students will have to take Language Arts more seriously, like it’s a ticket to a decent job. Most difficult of all, employers will have to insist that the people who work for them – no matter what their jobs or salaries – begin using correct grammar, learn how to write well and spell words correctly. Annual bonuses should depend upon it.

By the way, my laptop’s spell check caught only one out of at least seven mistakes in the first paragraph. “It’s” should be “its.” (I believe the second sentence is a fragment, which would be an eighth error, although the laptop doesn’t think so.) 

Robert Holland

Refined Wisdom: Sometimes editors get bad design because they keep asking for something different,  something “creative.”  One designer told me, the editors bring it on themselves and should share the blame.  But the fact remains, editors are too often intimidated by designers. 

 It must be a decade ago, and I don’t know where, but I was addressing a large group of writers and editors.  Somewhere in the middle of my address, I said:  “We editors must get control of our publications again.”

There was a roar from the crowd as if a winning, last-second touchdown had been scored.  My, how they wanted to hear that.

No, I was not talking about getting more control from the publisher or corporation.  No, I wasn’t talking about escaping pressure from advertising.  I was talking about regaining control away from designers who use design for the sake of design, who obscure text by reversing it or printing red over black, and who do little if anything to enhance the message of the text.

I know that I should be talking about writing, but what is the point of writing if people insist on making the text illegible?  There are really only two reasons to kill trees for print – legibility and portability.  Most people still prefer reading words on paper over words on the screen.  I’ve read that one can read print on paper 25 percent faster than words on the screen.  And it’s certainly easier to carry paper around than a laptop.

Regardless of how many studies show that readers turn away from reversed type, many publications I see have pages and pages of it.  Why?  Black on white is easy to read, and so is black on yellow.  But why put dark colors behind print?  Or worse, why put images behind print?

When I get mean, I say that I once met a designer who could read.  And – that I once met a designer who actually did read the copy.  I once said that to a group of writers, editors and designers at the Meredith Corporation, and after I finished, the head of design there came up to me and said, “Here at Meredith, we insist that designers read the copy.”  Well!

Perhaps the problem is the words “design” and “designer.”   Jan White, the best there is in graphic presentation, told me that once a young woman came up to him and said, “Mr. White, I, too, am a designer.”  “That’s OK,” Jan told her, “Some day you will grow up to be a journalist.” 

I do not do design, nor do I do design workshops.  But I know this:  Whenever a design calls attention to itself rather than to the message of the text, it is bad design.  A photography professor at Missouri said it nicely some years ago:  “Suppose you had a lovely painting in your home.  A guest looks and it and says, ‘Oh, what a nice frame.’”  Would you be pleased?

I prefer the word “presentation.”  Everyone — writers, editors, photographers and designers —  (I confess, I don’t know what other word to use here), must be concerned with the presentation of the ideas.   And by far the best time to begin doing that is before the article is written.  If designers and photographers are brought into the editorial process from the beginning, there is much less change for bizarre and disintegrated pages.

I wish I could count the times that editors have told me that they try to tame the designers, but the designers tell them editors know nothing about design, and they should tend to what they know.  Besides, designers win prizes – awarded to them by other designers.  I think we should stop awarding prizes for design and instead award them for presentation.

Well, it doesn’t take a genius to look at a page to see whether all of the type is easily legible.  It doesn’t take years of training to see when artwork on the page has nothing to do with the text except to distract the reader.

Sometimes editors get bad design because they keep asking for something different,  something “creative.”  One designer told me, the editors bring it on themselves and should share the blame.  But the fact remains, editors are too often intimidated by designers.

Isn’t it time editors got control of their publications again?

(Everyone should read “Editing By Design,” by Jan V. White, New York: Allworth Press, 2003.)

Don Ranly

True confession: I am a bit of word geek. My husband and I love a good game of Scrabble. I check the “Word of the Day” on http://www.merriam-webster.com more often than I check the weather.  Really.  A favorite from last week was “blurge” a verb used largely in Australia and New Zealand to mean slacking off. Genius!  Second confession: I like to travel and New Zealand is one of my favorite places on earth. 

Which means I am dying to use “blurge” as much as possible to prove what a worldly smarty pants I am. However, being a worldly smarty pants isn’t conducive to being an effective communicator. 

An extensive vocabulary scores big points with language arts teachers and the folks who create the SAT.  But in real-life, it can be off-putting and confounding.  It can muddle your point and prevent you from actually communicating something.   

Am I advocating that you dumb down your words?  No. You should sound like you, but an understandable you.  Treat the fancy words the way you’d treat chili peppers in a recipe. A little can go a long way, although there may be audiences that can handle a great deal of the hot stuff.

I’ve taught myself to tame my inner word geek when writing for and talking with clients and other real people, and let it loose when I am playing Scrabble or doing writing practice.  And you better believe I’ll be blurging all over the place this Memorial Day Weekend!

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.

Sorry, Emerson, being consistent is not the hobgoblin of small minds.

Of course, if I have it right, Emerson said, “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”

Being consistent is one of my Seven C’s for good writing that I have lectured about for decades.  Actually, I developed the Seven C’s for my editing class, and for years I tried to teach students that they need to have a reason to change a writer’s copy.  Editors should not change copy out of some whim or because they like their words better than the author’s. 

My first class in editing I always wrote in big letters on the board “Editor is God.”  (My daughter made me a large and beautiful stained class window with those words in it that hangs here in my study.)   I wanted to impress upon the students that they were the final arbiter, the final judge of how copy would appear forever.  Writers are a dime a dozen, I would tell them; editors are rare.  Writers win prizes; editors remain anonymous.  Editors create writers, make them look good, save their butts regularly — and get none of the credit and lots of abuse.

Nevertheless, editors should be able to explain WHY they changed the copy.  And that’s why I gave my students seven reasons to change it:  To make copy correct, consistent, clear, concise, coherent, complete and creative. 

I probably should start in the beginning, but I want to start with the need to be consistent.  You need to be consistent for one simple reason:  If you aren’t, you look incorrect.  You need to be consistent as a writer (and if you aren’t, an editor must see to it that you are) on two levels.

The first level might be called technical. You must be consistent in:

*spelling.  How obvious you say.  But I regularly find editorial offices in which there are three or four different dictionaries lying around.  That’s not a good idea.  You should choose one, and that’s for the simple reason that dictionaries sometimes differ in their spelling of words — at least in the preferred spelling of words.  And for the sake of being consistent, why not have your staff agree to choose the first spelling of a word.  Webster’s III International is a solid final appeal, but a excellent dictionary for most to have is Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th edition, the official dictionary of the Associated Press.  And by the way, most of us don’t even know what dictionary is in the spell-check in our computers, and I think it’s true that spell-checks allow more than one spelling.  What good is that? 

*grammar.  Again, how obvious.  It is surprising again how few editorial offices have standard books they can refer to for grammatical questions.  An excellent, most practical choice is “Working With Words,” by Brooks, Pinson and Gaddy Wilson, published by Bedford/St. Martin’s.

*style.  You must be consistent in what you capitalize, what you abbreviate, in how you use numbers, in how you punctuate, and in whole lot of other matters.  To do this, you need a stylebook.  Most newspapers, magazines and newsletters use the Associated Press style; some use the Chicago Manual of Style; others have their own stylebooks.  I’m regularly told by staffs that they use several stylebooks.  What nonsense!  Having more than one stylebook defeats the purpose of having one. Choose one!  That’s difficult enough.  And make sure that everyone has a copy within arm’s length.

Of course, your publication may have its own particular set of rules in addition to the stylebook that you adopt.  Additional rules, yes, but it’s probably foolish for you to attempt to compile an entire stylebook of your own.  Leave that to large publications such as  “The New York Times” and “The New Yorker.”

If you are a writer, you need to know the stylebook of the publication for which you are writing.  Some formal journals do have some particular rules that they wish to have followed.

The second level of consistency concerns our writing style in a nontechnical sense.  Now, please, I don’t want to throttle your creativity.  You can do wonderfully bright writing with similes, metaphors, analogies, examples, change of pace, establishing a mood, using voice, etc., and still be consistent in some basic things.

For example, you must in the beginning decide on your approach to a piece.  Will you write in the first person “I” or the second person “you” or in the third person?  Don’t start writing in the third person, and then half way through or toward the end suddenly insert yourself or suddenly address the reader directly.  There’s nothing wrong with a first-person piece — if you can’t easily stay out of the piece.  I would avoid, however, the use of “we” because  readers don’t know who that “we” is.  Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said, “Save ‘we’ for God, kings and people with tape worms”?

By the way, I like leads, even news leads, that have the word “you” in it.  Using “you” forces the writer to get to the WIIFM

(What’s In It For Me?) quickly.  Once you begin with “you,” you can stay with it.  You’d be surprised how much easier it is to avoid the passive voice of the verb when you do that.

You should be consistent in the use of your verbs.  Especially watch the tense of the verb, and, of course, keep those verbs in the active voice.  Make your verbs do things to things.  Make them transitive; avoid the verb “to be” as much as you can.

Try to establish a tone, a mood, a flavor, and then try to maintain it.  Often a piece starts out with a flash and then just peters out.  Some happy stories have a somber mood, and worse, some sad stores seem to have a snappy, happy pace and tone. If you are friendly and personal in your opening, stay that way.

So — if you’re a writer, try to be consistent.  If you’re an editor, your job is to make the copy consistent both inside the piece itself and with the publication in which it will appear.  And more than that, if you are an editor of a publication, you probably want the whole publication to have a consistent look and feel and tone about it.  I rather like the word “attitude.”  Establish an attitude, and for the most part, stick with it.

Don Ranly

One of the most debated questions in all of journalism is how to handle direct quotations. Journalists “claim” (what a nasty way to attribute something) that they put inside quotations marks only what a person says. That’s what I urge in a chapter on quotations and attribution in the Missouri Group’s “News Reporting and Writing” (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press). But I could prove on any given day in any given newspaper that that rule is broken as much as it is followed.

Nevertheless, it’s a whole different story in corporate communications and news releases. I have been amused in seminars to corporate communicators how shocked they are when I tell them to change direct quotations however so slightly. For example, people use “very” very often in their everyday speech. I’d knock it out in direct quotations. Shocking. These same people often have little trouble making up whole quotations. Often the direct quotes are long, wooden and pretentious. I often ask, “Does he really talk like that?” Sometimes the answer is , “Yes, you betcha.” If he does, should you let him in print?

Do you have a policy on direct quotations? What is it? Join the discussion.

Don Ranly

This is a bibliography of writing books I recommend in my seminars:

This is a bibliography of writing books I recommend in my seminars. You may order most of these books by clicking the links below.

Bonime, Andrew, and Pohlmann, Ken C. Writing for New Media,

     New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998.

Brooks, Brian, George Kennedy, Daryl Moen and Don Ranly. News

     Reporting and Writing, 8th ed. New York:

     Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2005.

Brooks, Brian, George Kennedy, Daryl Moen and Don Ranly.

      Telling The Story: The Convergence of Print, Television

      and Online Media. 2^nd ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2004.

Brooks, Brian and James Pinson. Working With Words, 6^th ed.  New       

      York.  Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2006.

Caples, John, How to Make Your Advertising Make Money. Englewood   Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1983.

Flesch, Rudolf. The Art of Readable Writing. New York: Harper &    Row, 1977.

Kennedy, George, Daryl Moen and Don Ranly. Beyond the Inverted

      Pyramid. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.

Kilpatrick, James. The Writer’s Art. Kansas City: Andrews,

      McMell & Parker, 1984.

Ogilvy, David. Olgilvy on Advertising. Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, Canada Limited, 1985.

Osborn, Patricia. How Grammar Works: A Self-Teaching Guide. New    York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1989.

Ranly, Don. Publication Editing. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt

      Publishing, 1999.

Strunk, William and White, E.B. Elements of Style. 3rd ed. New

      York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1999.

The Associated Press Stylebook And Briefing on Media Law.   

      Perseus Publishing, 2004. 

Zinsser, William.  On Writing Well.  2^nd ed,, New York: Harper &

      Row, 1980.