Here are six rules of thumb that will help you write a sales message that actually helps you move an opportunity forward. I’ve got a few examples below, too, so you can see how to turn a bad message into a better one.
1. Write like you talk.
Sales messages are meant to be spoken. Even when somebody reads the message, you want readers to feel like you’re talking to them personally. Therefore, whenever you write a sales message, ask yourself: “Does this sound like something I’d actually say to a real person?” If not, your message won’t work well.
Before: “Engineers efficiently evaluate and improve their designs using our software tools. We are dedicated to building the most advanced vehicle system simulation tools.”
After: “Engines designed with our simulation software are more fuel-efficient than those that aren’t.”
2. Use common words rather than biz-blab.
Unfortunately, when most business folks sit down to write something, they turn into Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss and start writing in gibberish, stuffing sentences full of important-sounding terminology that means little or nothing. The cure is to use simple nouns and verbs that have a precise meaning.
Before: “We provide ‘one stop shopping’ for all of your HR needs. Through a single relationship, you have access to HR services for the continuum of the employment life cycle.”
After: “We help our clients with hiring, compensation, compliance, and training, so that they can spend more time running their business and less time and hassle dealing with HR details.”
3. State facts rather than promises.
Promises are only meaningful to people who already trust you, and that list probably doesn’t include prospects who aren’t yet customers. In fact, most people view a promise from a stranger with skepticism if not outright suspicion.
It’s more effective to provide a quantitative, verifiable fact that creates credibility.
Before: “You’ll love our dedicated account managers, comprehensive inventory, reliable delivery and competitive pricing.”
After: “Our customers save as much as $100,000 a year when they purchase directly from our account managers.”
When you think of social media marketing, you may only consider the potential for introducing new customers to your products and services through social interaction. However, social media marketing is an effective way to keep your existing customers happy – and happy customers drive repeat sales that can significantly impact your bottom line.
Here are five easy tips to help you increase your revenue stream from existing customers with social media.
1. Reward frequent purchases
Since it costs more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, why not increase revenue by encouraging your customers to make purchases more frequently? If you sell products, you can entice customers to come back more often, and if you sell services, you can promote add-on services and upgrades.
Offer exclusive deals and specials to your social media community, basing the discount on the customer level or frequency of purchase. For example, you could offer a coupon to your Facebook community, providing them with a discount off their fourth purchase.
2. Encourage more spending per purchase
Another way to increase revenue from existing customers is to encourage them to spend more at each purchase. You may set a goal to increase each transaction by 25%, for example. Once again, create exclusive deals for your social media community. For example, offer a coupon for $40 off a $150 purchase to increase product purchases.
For service industries, consider bundling your offerings together, providing a discount for multiple services that will entice your customers to spend more. You could use Twitter to drive awareness of the deal with a call to action.
3. Continue engaging customers to keep your communities strong
No one wants to see an endless stream of deals and promotions with very little customer interaction or information sharing. Be sure to continue with your engagement strategy as you add deals and promotions to your tweets and postings.
The rule of thumb for an effective content mix is 20% company-related content and 80% relevant third-party content and direct engagement with your fans. So mix in the promotions carefully, and you will continue to have a thriving community.
Joe Pulizzi over at the Content Marketing Institute recently shared a fascinating video presentation from Coca-Cola about their upcoming marketing strategy.
The short version?
Content marketing has arrived.
For more than 100 years, Coca-Cola has been one of the world’s foremost practitioners of what they call “one-way storytelling.”
(You and I call that an advertisement.)
But Coke — in the form of their brilliant VP of global advertising strategy, Jonathan Mildenhall — is looking around and realizing that the 30-second television ad won’t take them where they want to go next.
To do that, they’re turning to the tool that’s quickly becoming the most important strategy for smaller businesses — content marketing.
For anyone who still thinks that content marketing is some kind of fad, take a look at the thinking (and dollars) going into Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy, aimed at doubling worldwide consumption of Coke by the year 2020.
The videos are compelling, but they’re also packed with advertising jargon that can be about as intelligible as Klingon.
And yet, this is a peek into a great marketing and advertising mind — and there are some juicy strategies we can carry off and implement in the real world.
Here are a few of my favorite ideas from Mildenhall’s presentation
The term “content marketing” sounds like a hip buzzword to describe the latest marketing craze, but in reality, the concept has been around since the first newsletters came rolling off the presses.
And if there’s one single reason why companies around the world continue to incorporate “content marketing strategies” into their yearly plans – it’s because it has been working for hundreds, if not thousands of years!
Let’s go over a short recap as to why content marketing is a good marketing strategy to employ for today’s online audience:
- Show You’re an Authority on a Subject – When you offer unbiased and valuable information on a given subject matter, you earn trust with people who visit your blog or website. And as well all know, increasing the trustworthiness of your brand, tends to increase business.
- Search Engine Traffic – Ten years ago, piling on content was a surefire way to grow traffic, but thanks to content farming and Google catching on to other SEO trickery, it’s not that easy anymore. However, the more content you create, the more search engine traffic you will accumulate simply because you will be increasing your longtail search visibility. But more importantly, well written content gets linked to – and backlinks are vital for climbing search engine rankings.
- Build Your Marketing List and Readership – And as you commit to writing great content day in and day out, hopefully you are building up a list of readers whether it’s through Twitter Followers, Facebook Fans or email and RSS subscribers. As your marketing list grows, the more flexibility you have to promote and share offers to your subscribers.
The following resources below will help anyone learn about why content marketing is important to any business and how to get the most of it.
For Beginners
For beginners to people looking for primers on content marketing, these links will get you on the right track.
1. What is Content Marketing – Copyblogger’s introduction to the world of content marketing. If you don’t know what content marketing is, then this is the perfect place to start.
2. The Beginner’s Guide To Blogging & Content Marketing – Learn how to source freelance writers, promote your content, and more with this free e-book.
3. Creating Consistent Content: A Content Marketing Plan – This post will help you create a content marketing schedule and (hopefully) stick to it.
4. Why You Need To Be Doing Content Marketing – This post outlines 10 content marketing goals worth pursuing.
5. The Time For Content Marketing Is Now – A call to arms post on why you need to be jumping on content marketing now. Post also includes stellar examples of content creation done right.
6. The Periodic Table of Content – Types of content broken down into ‘elements’ on a periodic table. An easy way to look at what types of content there are and approximately how long each type of content should be.
7. 7 Content Marketing Myths: Selling the C-Level – It’s not easy to get executives to buy in to new marketing initiatives – use some of the tips in this post to learn how to sell the c-level on content strategy.
8. The Content Marketer’s Guide To Web Content – This is an introductory post to the different types of content on the web with some examples of where + how you can use them. If you ever need a primer on content, this is the post to refer to.
“The On-Demand Brand: 10 Rules for Digital Marketing Success in an Anytime, Everywhere World” characterizes the challenge of demanding attention from a new generation of consumers who want what they want, when they want it, and where they want it. Here are the new marketing rules I support:
- Insight comes before inspiration. Innovative marketing starts with customer insights culled from painstaking research into who your customers are, and how they use digital media. Then it’s time to innovate through the channels or platforms that are relevant.
- Don’t repurpose, re-imagine. Digital quite simply is not for repurposing content that exists in other channels. It’s about re-imagining content to create blockbuster experiences that cannot be attained through any other medium.
- Don’t just join the conversation, spark it. Create new online communities of interest, rather than joining existing ones. Ask why it should be, and why customers should care. Then give them a reason to keep coming back. Keep it real, social, and events-based.
- There’s no business without show business. Remember Hollywood secrets. Your brand is a story; tell it. Accentuate the personalizable, own-able, and sharable. Viral is an outcome, not a strategy. Make people laugh and they will buy.
- Want control? Give it away. Several companies, including Mastercard, Coca-Cola, and Doritos have let customers build commercials and design contests, with big rewards for the customer and for the company. That’s giving up control, with some risk, to get control.
- It’s good to play games with your customers. Games are immersive, but shouldn’t be just a diversion. They need to drive home the value proposition. Don’t forget to include a call to action, like leading people to the next step of the buying process.
Video has become an essential marketing tool. It’s a great way to tell your story, show the human side of your business and communicate highly complex ideas in an easy to digest manner. But while video has the power to deeply engage, it also has the power to bore the viewer to tears—and creating compelling video is different than writing, say, a compelling blog post.
Starting a camera and spouting out a thousand words of brilliant prose does not make a compelling video. There are proven techniques and tools that can help make your videos engage, hold attention and wow the viewer. Here are 10 tools that can help you get started.
1. Prezi. This is a interesting take on the slide presentation as it allows you to create one giant and more easily connected idea and then use the tool to zoom, pan and fly all around the presentation to create a really dynamic feel. It’s not the easiest tool to master, but check out some of the incredible examples on the site to get inspiration.
2. YouTube Editor. I like this tool because it’s free, and because you’re using YouTube to host and stream your videos anyway, it gives you some nice editing capability right in YouTube. You can also add annotations and transcripts to your videos making them more SEO friendly.
3. Camtasia. This PC and Mac desktop software is the market leader in the screencapture video world. Screencast videos are a great way to demonstrate how something online works. Camtasia has some nice features that allow you to add focus to areas on your screen as well as annotations and URLs.
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
Every once in a while consultants are challenged to put their ideas into practice. Such was my experience this week. Colleague Shel Holtz, ABC and a co-host Neville Hobson, ABC, host a podcast “For Immediate Release” twice a week. This week, Shel invited me to join another measurement guru, Angela Sinickas, ABC as the featured guests on their regular podcast.
For the past year, I have been advocating that communication and management leaders need to include blogs, wikis and podcasts in their arsenal of communication channels. Blogs have been a relatively easy sell. They have increased in visibility, value and usage. Wikis are still a bit of a mystery but there is a small awakening there. Podcasts, on the other hand, are still in the incubator. The innovators and the early adopters of new ideas are just beginning to warm up to the concept.
Podcasting evolved with the birth of Apple’s iPod and the ability to publish audio files on the internet. A podcast is simply and audio blog. The audio files can be accessed on the internet and aspiring broadcasters can self-publish or ‘broadcast’ radio style programming using the internet as the distribution channel. Unlike regular radio, the podcasts can be accessed, downloaded and played by anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Podcasting began in the fall of 2003 and really became a growth phenomenon in late 2004. Shel and Neville launched “For Immediate Release”(FIR) in January 2005. Their listening audience has been growing in leaps and bounds. Their focus is on issues and innovations in communication and public relations. Shel brings a North American perspective from California and Neville from Amsterdam.
Each podcast is accompanied by a detailed guide to the content of the podcast – about one hour in length. Each topic has a time code so that you can select pieces of the broadcast rather than listening to it all in one sitting. Every person, topic and organization mentioned in the podcast is listed in the notes with links to relevant web sites. “For Immediate Release” is a model for others considering getting into the field.
It will only be a short time before enlightened organizations start using this new channel for communicating with customers, suppliers and employees. It has huge potential with its advantages of immediacy, convenience and consumability. It is the ultimate commuter’s communication channel as you sit in the bus, train or traffic jam listening to a podcast that you have downloaded in to your iPod before leaving home or the office.
So how did Angela and I do on our podcast? Well hear for yourself. The podcast was published in the June 22, 2005 edition of “For Immediate Release”. You can find the podcast at http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz with the detailed podcast notes. So you can listen to it all, select the parts that interest you or just see what this new communication channel is all about.
There is a link for comments at the end of the notes just like a blog. Give us your feedback and let us know what you thought of the issues we discussed.
Tudor Williams
It’s that time of year when us pundits make bold predictions about upcoming trends in 2011. I had considered putting on my Nostradamus cap and making some reputation management predictions, but then I discovered my fellow reputationista Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross had already staked-out that turf!
Oh well, I’ve never been one for predictions, anyway. So, how about some certainties instead? Some solid, often unwritten, rules of reputation management that will pervade 2011–and beyond?
OK, here goes!
Law #1 – Everyone has an online reputation
We all have an online reputation to maintain. Don’t believe me, go ahead and “Google Yourself”–I promise you won’t go blind! Even if you don’t find anything written about you, then that’s still your reputation–or lack thereof. In 2011, you should make sure that what’s found in Google, Facebook, Twitter et al is something you’d be equally comfortable showing your mom or your boss!
Law #2 – Your reputation is an extension of your character
It doesn’t matter how hard you work on managing your reputation, it will only ever be as solid as your actual character. Tiger Woods had a reputation of being the greatest golfer–and a family man. His character revealed otherwise. As Abraham Lincoln once said,
“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
Law #3 – Every reputation has an achilles heel
While Toyota may have spent years telling us that its cars are the most reliable in the world, sticking gas pedals told a different story. In fact, even though Toyota tried to deny the increasing incidents of sticking accelerators, its customers were the ones steering the car manufacturer’s reputation in another direction. Instead of denying the issue, Toyota should have been the first to recognize it! When you recognize and acknowledge your weaknesses, before your customers, you have the opportunity to craft a response before the public outcry. Do you know your reputation’s weakness?
Law #4 – Listen twice, act once
OK, so I’ve plagiarized this from the saying “measure twice, cut once,” but it’s appropriate, when it comes to listening to your customers. I tell our customers at Trackur that they should spend twice as much effort on listening as they do responding. It’s too easy to simply jump in and reply to that tweet or Facebook post–without fixing the underlying problem. Instead, you should spend time actively listening to the feedback you’re collecting about your reputation. Listen for trends. Listen for opportunities. Listen, listen, listen–ok, that was three listens, but you get my point. When you actually take onboard what your stakeholders are saying about your reputation, you do more than just fix a problem, you make sure you fix the underlying issue that created the problem in the first place! GAP’s customers weren’t so much angry that the company’s logo was changed, they were mad that the company hadn’t initially thought to listen to their feedback–a decision the apparel company quickly reversed!
Web writing is all about emotional impact. We’ve already said web writing is a direct selling environment. (WWUP #1) To attract and retain readers, we must get to the point quickly. But the point we get to cannot be intellectual. It must be emotional. When I use the word emotional, I don’t mean the writing should be cheesy or sentimental. I mean it should be emotionally authentic. It should build trust, not violate it.
For example, consider this web copy: “When you buy from Company XYZ, you receive personalized service.” That is obviously an empty promise—dead and wooden. It doesn’t build trust. What if we approached it from the point of view of the customer: “Our service representatives have fans. One customer calls her rep, ‘Mr. Trustworthy’ because he always shows up when she calls. Once, he returned her call while he was getting ready to attend his son’s wedding. Mr. Trustworthy returned her call and made sure her problem was handled.’” Do you see the difference? In just a few words we create emotional impact by relating a success story.
So, how do you create emotional impact? Particularize. Tell a story about satisfied customers. Get real about how you create delighted customers. Deliver that impact.
What if you’re a new business and you don’t have any success stories you can call on? What if you company business process isn’t there yet, generating quality success stories.
Just use business language instead of abstracted, intellectual sales talk.
An example: “Smaller grocery chains are being inadequately serviced by large food marketing organizations. Company XYZ solves that problem.”
Improved: “As far as the large food marketing organizations are concerned, your grocery chain is not even on their radar screen.”
You could argue using “radar screen” is a cliché. Perhaps you don’t like it. My larger point is to suggest you should use language that delivers the emotional impact without beating around the bush. That kind of language creates trust, keeps people reading your web site and ultimately contributes to making a sale.
The most important words on your web site are not the ones you wrote. Here’s my thinking on this and tell me if you don’t agree: The most important reason people do business with an organization after looking at their web site has to do with trust. They believe the organization is presenting itself truthfully. And, of course, they want what the organization is offering. As you may know, the whole issue of trusted relationships on the web is very current, being discussed by security and work collaboration experts. How do you create trust on the web? There are many ways, but in my opinion, the most effective way to create trust is to include customer/client testimonials throughout the web site. They don’t have to be lengthy—just a few sentences will do. Many organizations will have a page devoted to client testimonials. That’s good, but what I’m suggesting is that you sprinkle those testimonials throughout the web site. The welcome page can have rotating testimonials. Every page thereafter should have at least one testimonial towards the bottom of the page. The point is this: You can’t go on any page of that web site without reading at least one testimonial—people who paid you a compliment and are willing to let you use their name on your web site. They’re going to bat for you. And that communicates trust. So think about it: The most important words on your web site are not the ones you wrote. They are the words your clients or customers wrote about you. Do you agree?
Here’s a universal principle that frames the experience of writing for the web: “Form ever follows function.” Those words were first written by Louis Sullivan early in the 20th Century. What does designing a department store or any large public building have to do with writing for the web? And what could an architect who lived so long ago have to say to us about writing web content? Or designing web sites? Everything.
Just as no building architect today would design a building without taking into account how people are going to use it, likewise, no web site architect should ever consider designing a web site without thinking about how visitors are going to use it.
We talk about usability—a word that would have seemed strange to Mr. Sullivan—but aren’t we talking about the form of the web site reflecting the way people use it? And when it comes to writing content, aren’t we likewise trying to make the content as readily available, as comprehensible and effortless to read as possible? I think so. That thought frames everything I know about writing for the web.
So, based on “Form ever follows function,” and the way people use web sites today, let me suggest three thoughts as a guide to web writing: chunk, light, tuna.
Chunk. People don’t read on the web, they scan. Break your story into bite-sized chunks. Make your writing compact and succinct. A few short paragraphs on one page and you’re done. Bullets and subheads improve readability. Keep it simple.
Light. Keep the writing light. Avoid self-serious or ponderous prose. Focus on benefits. Tell how a product or service improves peoples’ lives or adds value. Tackle serious subjects and be real, but do it in a highly readable way.
One example from a white paper I wrote: “Digital asset management systems can generate a healthy ROI, yet few do. Why? Three important reasons: Planning. Planning. Planning.”
Keep it light, but avoid humor which can easily backfire on the web.
Tuna. This is not a reference to a losing Cowboy coach. By tuna, I mean give people substance. Tell people what they want to know: What you’re going to do for them. Give them benefits. Tell how they’re going to feel after they’ve used your service or product. Most importantly, prove it with testimonials from real customers•statements that carry emotional impact.
Write “chunk light tuna,” and you’ll be writing the way people use the web today.If Louis Sullivan were alive, I bet he would agree.
If this is indeed the year of reading more and writing better, we’ve been right on course with David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, and various invaluable advice from other great writers. Now comes John Steinbeck — Pulitzer Prize winner, Nobel laureate, love guru — with six tips on writing, culled from his altogether excellent interview it the Fall 1975 issue of The Paris Review.
- Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
- Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
- Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
Read full article via brainpickings.org
Are you a deluded writer? Stop! Before you answer that question, let me tell you about Brian Wansink and the bottomless bowl of tomato soup.
Wansink is a scientist who holds the John S. Dyson Endowed Chair at Cornell University where he is Director of the Food and Brand Lab. He’s also the author of the 2006 book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More.
In one of his most famous studies, he rigged up “bottomless” bowls of tomato soup. (Researchers kept the bowls filled by hidden tubes that imperceptibly kept adding more soup while the subjects ate). Wansink then compared the eating habits of people faced with a normal bowl, versus those given a “bottomless” bowl. The results were astonishing.
People who had a normal bowl ate, on average, nine ounces of soup. But people who ate from the rigged bowls averaged 15 ounces — 73 percent more! And most amazingly, the subjects at the self-filling bowls did not rate themselves as any more full than the subjects at the normal bowls.
All of which goes to show, we are terrible judges of ourselves.
This principle applies to our writing, too. Are our carefully thought-out words lucid, moving, and compelling? Or are they boring, self-indulgent, and banal? Who knows? The problem is, we’re not very skilled at analyzing ourselves.
I won’t lie to you. The verb “to lie,” meaning “to recline,” is not the easiest verb in the English language. For that matter, neither is the verb “to lie” meaning “to tell a falsehood.” I sometimes see the present participle of both verbs spelled “lieing.”
Now either you were horrified by the title of this piece and thought Ranly has finally lost it completely, or you have come to accept the misuse of the verb. Is it really so bad? Doesn’t the language change? Shouldn’t we just accept that few people will use the verb correctly?
For more than three decades I have been trying to teach writing and editing, and even though I sometimes doubt that I can teach writing other than to encourage good writing when I see it (“Hey, that’s good. Do some more of that!”), I have thought that I could teach editing. And all I have tried to teach is what some call Standard American Written English.
People speak colorfully and certainly in ways that we would not find acceptable in accepted print publications. I was listening to a local talk show the other day, and an officer of a bank, I think he was the president, was discussing how quickly the new bank had been completed. “If you had drove past here just two weeks ago, you would have saw a lot of work still to do.” Now that’s just great. He may be a helluva banker, but should he speak in public?
Standard American Written English. I’ve been stewing about this “lie” verb for some time now, and then this past week I started reading a packet of articles sent to me by an absolutely outstanding young writer by the name of Justin Heckert. Justin was hired right out of undergraduate J-school here at Mizzou by ESPN The Magazine. Well, he just couldn’t stand it there because they wouldn’t really let him write. So he went to a magazine that would, an outstanding city magazine, Atlanta.
Now I’m reading this wonderful personal story of his, and I come upon this sentence: “The first day of tests I had to lay flat on my back while the doctors drew a sufficient amount of blood to test.” My student wrote that! (His mother is an English teacher.) And the editors, good editors, did not change it. Damn. Well, maybe the battle’s over.
But then I read another piece by Justin, and I came upon this sentence: “… Skip (Caray, the Atlanta Braves announcer) had just been sitting there, at the table, transfixed by all that lay outside the window….” Damn again. They do know the verb! The least they can do is be consistent!
The hospital scene reminds me of a story about a former professor here that is so good it just might be true. He was a fanatic about “lie, lay, lain,” and being around doctors and nurses who regularly told him to “lay back” nearly drove him out of his mind. Well, the story I tell is that he was literally on his deathbed when a nurse told him to “lay back.” He bolted straight up and shouted at the top of his voice, “Lie back!” and he lay back and died.
Another story that’s almost true that I love to tell my students is about my dog, Rosie, who will just look at you if you tell her to “lay down,” but she will recline immediately if you tell her to “lie down.”
My granddaughter was 4 when I asked her what she did with the TV remote. She told me, “I lied it over there.” Seemingly she had heard me lecture enough about the use of “lie” not to ever use the word “lay” in any of its forms. But how do you tell a 4-year-old that “to lie” is intransitive; it cannot have an object. You meant, sweetheart, to say that you “laid” it over there because that’s the past tense of “to lay,” a transitive verb that requires an object. You see transitive verbs do things to things. Intransitive verbs cannot do things to things. You cannot “lie” something.
But neither is the remote “laying” over there. It’s not doing anything to anything. It’s just “lying” there. Is that really so difficult?
If you are a reader who always uses these verbs correctly, I salute you. If you want more explanation, read on.
The past tense of “to lie,” meaning “to recline,” is “lay.” The past participle (we use past participles along with the helping verb “to have” to form the present perfect, past perfect and future perfect tenses) is “lain.” So here’s how it works:
“At midnight I thought I would lie down. I lay there an hour before I turned off the TV. I had lain there another hour before I finally fell asleep. I don’t know how long my puppy was lying beside me.”
Now the past tense of “to lay,” meaning “to place down,” is “laid.” The past participle is also “laid.”
“I always lay the remote next to me on the bed. I’d swear I laid it there last night, but I couldn’t find it. I thought I remembered laying it there. Perhaps I had laid it on the stand by my bed.”
Remember. After I “lay” something down, it’s just “lying” there. It’s not doing anything to anything.
Is the battle worth fighting? Shall we let sleeping dogs lay — or lie?
Or would you rather just email me?
A couple of readers have asked me about making “email” a verb. I’m a little surprised they didn’t ask about taking out the hyphen in email.
Well, as I wrote in my piece about verbyfying nouns, some of our strongest verbs were once nouns. Linguists like to trace when nouns first became used as verbs, and I suppose some words were used as nouns and verbs almost from the beginning.
Take the word “work,” for example. I have no idea. Was it first a noun or a verb?
It certainly didn’t take long for “email” to be used as a verb. At least the form of the word remained the same, and we did not “ize” it. Wouldn’t it be awful if we “emailized” people?
All I know is, one day I made a momentous decision. I decided on the same day that I would never again put a hyphen in “email” and that I would lower-case (notice that verb!) “internet.”
So, OK, “email” me. But for heaven’s sake, don’t “copy” me!
Refined Wisdom: Here’s what I think about making verbs into nouns. Usually, there are so many better, simple words that we can use.
It seems months ago by now (and it is) that, strangely enough, I found myself listening to Condoleezza Rice testifying before the special committee investigating the events surrounding 9/11. Not once, but several times Rice said various people “were tasked” to do something, and I’m quite sure she also said “we were tasking” that at a certain point in time.
Then I read this quote from Richard A. Clarke in The New York Times: “All 56 F.B.I. federal offices were also tasked in late June to go on increased surveillance.”
So, there was a lot of “tasking” going on. So also was there a lot of “verbyfying” nouns, to use the word Edwin Newman coined for the phenomenon. Well, it might have been William Safire.
I looked up the word in Webster’s Third, quite confident “task” was never a verb, but I was wrong again. The first meaning listed is “to tax,” but it says that usage is obsolete. “To impose a task upon,” it says in the second meaning, and then it quotes John Dryden using it that way. The third meaning, also obsolete, is “to reprimand.” And the fourth meaning is “to oppress with great labor.” I was just with a staff of a software company in North Carolina, and a sharp copy editor there defended the use of the word in the passive — “was tasked.” Sounds like cruelty to me.
Well, it does bring up the whole question of turning nouns into verbs. There’s no disputing that many verbs we now use were once nouns (was “progress” first a noun or a verb?), and some would say, what’s the big deal anyway? We have verbs such as “maximize” and “minimize,” so what’s wrong with “parameterizing”?
(I once had a phone conversation with the father of a student whom I had failed in a magazine-editing class. The father assured me that he and his daughter “now had matters parameterized.” I almost told him that I would never have failed her had I known she had been paramaterized.)
Here’s what I think about making verbs into nouns. Usually, there are so many better, simple words that we can use. Even if it takes a few more words to say something, it’s better than appearing pompous or pretentious with overblown, made-up words. In the end, it comes down to clarity.
Why would we want to “utilize” something when we can just “use” it? I like to say that if we don’t stop “utilizing” the English language, we’re going to “finalize” it. I don’t really believe that, but if you or your boss is verbyfying nouns, stop it already.
Let’s rein in reign!
Have you noticed how often you see these two words confused?
Here’s a sentence from Dan Brown’s best-selling The Da Vinci Code: “Chartrand rushed forward, trying to reign in the camerlengo.”
From a sports-page headline: “Walsh might seize reigns as president.” That’s former 49ers coach Bill Walsh, rumored to become president of the 49ers.
From the National Catholic Reporter in a story about Deal Hudson, publisher of Crisis magazine: “While Hudson was taking over the reigns at Crisis, Cara Poppas consulted an attorney.”
In scholar John Merrill’s wonderful book, Existential Journalism, in which he describes the existential journalism professor: “He will insist on personalism, not impersonalism; he will encourage diversity in his students, not conformity; he will try to give free reign to creativity, not imitation.”
And in a column in the Columbia Missourian in which Merrill is condemning the “No child left behind” program, he writes: “What we need is an emphasis on ‘No child held back,’ or ‘Give free reigns to the gifted child.’”
I think we should not only rein in “reign,” but we should also rein in “rein.” It’s used so often and so needlessly. Besides, I wonder how many people really understand its roots. Once when a graduate student of mine used “reign” in place of “rein,” he asked me what in the world a rein was.
As a former farm boy whose father still had a team of horses, I think I can describe reins without looking the word up in the dictionary. I can still see those long strips of leather that dad held in his hands to get the horses moving or to get them to turn right or left (“gee” – right, and “haw” – left, he used to shout) and to get them to stop. If the horses were going too fast, he would pull on the reins that went right to the harness over their heads and to the bits in their mouths. He would tighten the reins. If he wanted them to trot, he would loosen the reins (give them free rein?). And if he wanted them to stop, he would pull hard and rein them in.
Granted, the word has also come to mean “a restraining influence, a curb or a check.” But again, it’s so overused, and it’s so often replaced incorrectly with “reigns.”
At least think twice before you use “rein” or “reins” again!
This is a bibliography of writing books I recommend in my seminars:
Remember when Robert Novak (surprise, surprise) became upset with something James Carville said, blurted out the word “bullshit,” and stormed off the set?
Well, I’m no friend of Novak’s, but I was amused at what reporters were saying he said on that occasion. Few dared to use the actual word, “bullshit.” My, how inappropriate for our sensitive readers. One writer got it pretty close. He said Novak used a barnyard term. Not bad.
But others said he cursed. Swore. Used obscenities. Even used profanities. I don’t know whether anyone wrote that he used vulgarities.
Now as a person who has taught general-semantics for a couple of decades, I know perfectly well that words can mean whatever you want them to mean. Nevertheless, normally we do expect people to use words in their generally accepted meanings.
For eight editions of News Reporting and Writing by the Missouri Group (I’m a co-author), I’ve struggled to make some distinctions in the following words in a chapter on using quotations and attributions:
* When people curse, doesn’t that mean that they want someone to go to hell, usually by damning them? I admit, most of the time people just “damn it,” whatever “it” is.
* Swearing involves taking an oath or calling upon the deity or at least someone regarded as sacred to witness to the truth of what we’re saying. We’re expected to swear in court though I’m not sure why, other than if we lie in court, we can be convicted for perjury.
* An obscenity is a word or a phrase that usually refers to sexual parts or functions in an offensive way. Most people can’t imagine, for example, using the “f” word in an inoffensive way.
* A large number of people are always offended by profanity. There’s a commandment about that – taking the name of the lord in vain. Using a word or phrase referring to the deity or to beings regarded as divine, even if only done carelessly and thoughtlessly, is regarded as sacrilegious.
* And then there are vulgarities. I like to call them “bathroom” words. We’re talking about excretory words or phrases used in a less-than-polite way.
Does all of this make sense? There are some words that I don’t know how to classify. “Hell” is one of them. I once asked a person, “What the hell does that mean?” And she said, “Well, you don’t have to start cursing.”
So often we use words in all of the classifications above because we can’t think of anything else to say. So often they demonstrate our real dearth of vocabulary. You know, it’s cold as hell; it’s hot as hell. What the hell do those statements mean?
But who can deny that sometimes a good “damn” just feels right. And so does a good “bullshit.”
So, all you writer and readers, get off Novak’s case. You’ve all said much worse in similar circumstances. And if you want to attack Novak, there are much better reasons.
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.