Pay attention to plural marriages

Experienced wordsmiths know that, in a sentence, a singular subject requires the singular version of the verb. Or do they? Even professional writers sometimes trip on this rule. For example, here’s the lead from a news item published on the Des Moines Register website:

To Tom and Irene Frantzen, the mountain of corn cobs sitting in their hoop building are a valuable commodity.

Here, the subject is “the mountain of corn cobs,” and because only one “mountain” is mentioned, the subject is singular. Ignoring the misspelling of "corncob," the sentence should read:

To Tom and Irene Frantzen, the mountain of corn cobs sitting in their hoop building is a valuable commodity.

Thoughts on Thought Leaders

Today I’m going to talk about the marketing bandwagon called “thought leadership marketing.”

A thought leader is a preferred information resource, the top-of-mind authority on a particular topic. Think IMDb (for movies), Trip Advisor (for travel advice) and Wikipedia (for almost everything else). 

When you are a thought leader, near-term success is measured by Google search results and long-term success is measured by increased sales, growing margins and customer satisfaction.

How to become a thought leader

The perfect gift for copy nerds

If you care about great writing on the Internet, you ought to support it -- with your money. Subscribe to an online newspaper like The New York Times. Or put a few bucks in the tip jar to reward someone who entertains you on a daily basis.

Or, for that special copy nerd who rocks your world: a subscription to the AP Style Book Online. A subscription costs $25 a year, but discounts are available.

How many spaces can dance on the end of a sentence?

One of typography's most-often violated rules is this: Type one space between sentences. Surprised? 

Check out Space Invaders at Slate.com

The four-letter word that undermines your writing

One of the easiest ways to improve the power of your communication is to search for (and eliminate) the word “very” in everything you write. Very is a crutch that lets you believe you are writing with precision when, in most cases, you are simply playing it safe:

The new Miss U.S.A. is very pretty.

(yawn)

I’m sure the comely lass is easy on the eyes, but adding “very” doesn’t improve on “pretty,” which is a fine word, though bland. There are much more specific (and thus powerful) words for expressing her attractiveness:

cute | winsome | adorable | lovely | gorgeous | exquisite | glamorous | dazzling | luscious | voluptuous | sexy | hot |

Now you have a range of precision adjectives for describing Miss U.S.A., each of which paints a slightly different picture in the reader’s mind.

Here are a few more examples of how “very” can be overcome:

7 Ways to Get Better Proofreading

Recently, one of my proofreading clients asked me, “What can editors and writers do to improve the work of freelance proofreaders (except offer more money and time)?”

Here are seven suggestions I offered:

1. For each assignment, include a detailed, up-to-date style guide specific to the publication or company. If any of the guidelines have changed or are not enforced, tell the proofer.

2. Describe the level of proofreading you need. You might offer more leeway for changes at first page proof stage and much more limited proofing of bluelines.

3. Organize multiple-page jobs into the correct order, and note any pages that are missing or copy that is not final.

What’s the SECOND worst way to start? -- (Part 2)

If you’re like me, you are always looking for better ways to entice readers into your copy.

Look at the sentence above and you’ll see the second worst way to begin any written communication: with the word “if.” (For the worst beginning, check out this earlier post.)

Why is the if-lead so weak?

One basic human need is the desire to feel special or unique. When you begin a conversation with your readers with “If you are like …” you are taking away that sense of specialness. This blunder is compounded by one of the most common types of if-leads:

“If you’re like millions of Americans, you’ve never considered owning a ferret.”

Now your reader is not only less than unique, he or she is a member of some huge, random collection of people. Though the desire for membership is also a human need, we all want to believe that we are part of a special group, not one of millions.

What’s the worst way to start? -- (Part 1)

If I told you that I was going to reveal the worst technique for starting an article, memo, report or press release, would you believe me?

Look at the sentence above and you’ll see the worst way to begin any written communication: with a question. Why is leading with a question so bad? Here are five reasons:

1. You are forcing the reader to express an opinion before you’ve earned the right to ask. Wouldn’t you bristle if someone you just met started the conversation with a difficult or personal question?

Purge Your Unnecessary Redundancies!

We’ve all had the experience of driving home from work, but not remembering the trip. We jokingly say we were “driving on auto-pilot."

I often have a similar experience while writing. I get lost in thought as I pound out the paragraphs, and am a little astonished when I’m done, not sure how I got there. These first drafts are often filled with cliches, which are usually easy to spot.. A much subtler problem is redundant phrases.

Consider this typical paragraph, written on autopilot:

My personal opinion is that advance planning is absolutely essential for companies who can’t afford to lag behind their competitors. Past experience has shown that the basic fundamentals of planning ahead include developing a general consensus of opinion among staff and carefully scrutinizing all ideas.

That’s 45 words and an average sentence length of 22.5 words. Can reduce those numbers? Yes, if we weed out the words that don’t add to the meaning to the text. Here’s the same graf with the redundant words highlighted:

5 Ways to Improve Your Website’s Readability

In this excellent (and anonymous) blog posting, the writer offers 10 tips for creating effective web copy. The advice is spot-on, though you may have already heard much of it. For instance, the writer notes that marketing copy for the web should stick to the facts and avoid the fluff and squishy claims that work so well in brochures and other print marketing materials.

But there was one tip that really intrigued me: Write for a low literacy audience. Citing a Pfizer study, the author asserts that “43% of web users are ‘low literacy’ users who cannot understand a page written above a Grade 6 level.” I found this claim on several web sites, but was unable to find the original source, so you can take it with a grain of salt. Even so, this strikes me as a sound practice.

I’ve always been a proponent of writing below the reading level of your audience. I can read and (eventually) understand most college-level textbooks. But that doesn’t mean I enjoy curling up with a scholarly passage. Frankly, I’m much happier reading the back of a cereal box.

But 6th grade? That seems like a low bar for the typical website visitor. And although the claim may be true, I can think of several explanations beyond poor reading skills.

Temps in the low single digits forecast for hell

Hopefully, this news won’t irritate you as much as it will the grammar police. Associated Press, publisher of the widely used AP Stylebook, has decreed hopefully that writers and editors will accept its new policy on “hopefully.”  The bottom line: It is now perfectly acceptable to use the word in the sense of “I am hopeful that . . . .”

Hopefully, you won’t count me among those outraged by this change. Although I try to avoid this usage in my own writing – it’s a bit of a cliche -- I’ve long since stopped trying to wean writers off it. The biggest issue I have with the usage is that the reader can’t quite be sure who is expressing this “hope.” In many cases, it is simply the writer voicing his or her own opinion on the matter.

Hopefully, you’ll be judicious in your use of hopefully in its new approved sense. It works best when part of a direct quote. “Hopefully, we’ll have lower food prices next fall,” said Joe Schmo. Now you know who is being hopeful.

Do you have a “but, wait, there’s more!” problem?

Not only am I going to alert you to a common mistake in writing, I’m also going to give you a strategy for correcting the problem.

Did you enjoy reading that sentence? If not, you can blame what I call the “but, wait, there’s more!” syndrome. Here’s another example:

Not only does Whisk laundry detergent get your clothes sparkling clean and stain-free, it also makes them smell like springtime.

Sentences like these are hard on the reader. They say, “remember what I’m saying now, but save some room in your memory for another important thing I’m going to tell you later.” In short, it isn’t nice to leave your reader’s hanging.

5 Rules for Better PowerPoint Presentations

The Web is awash with guides for creating PowerPoint presentations, most of which would make awful PowerPoint presentations. Having just finished editing a 125-slide presentation, I have few suggestions that you might not find elsewhere.

1. Never build a 125-slide presentation. Audiences have a limited attention span. Any presentation that takes longer than 15-20 minutes is a losing proposition. The biggest benefit of a short show is that you can open floor for questions, which allows your audience to tell you what they really want to know.

Acronym Snafus

Less is not always more. That’s especially true with acronyms. These shorthand expressions save typing time -- its so much quicker to tap out CDC instead of  “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”  But when writers use acronyms without thinking, the results can be hard to read and, sometimes, impossible to understand. Here are three rules for the effective use of acronyms.

1. Regardless of your audience, stick to acronyms that are widely used by the general public. No one would be confused by NASA, DNA, DVD or BYOB.

Beware false ranges

“The new BMW 500 arrives loaded with cutting edge technology, everything from in-dash GPS to electronic stability control.”

Did you spot the problem with this sentence? It suffers from a common communication fault called a false range. These sentences usually take the form of “everything from ‘A’ to ‘B’.” The problem arises when the reader has no way of knowing what comes between A and B.

In our example, the reader can guess which technologies are in the new BMW, but it’s unlikely that the car really has every automotive technology available.

Power Structure: Slide Shows

When I worked for a major consumer website back in the 90s and early 2000s, I found that slide shows were one of the most effective tools for boosting page views per visitor. In fact, I quickly discovered that there was virtually no limit to the number of slides our visitors would click through. Because the site was associated with a monthly magazine, I had access to thousands of high quality photos. Our slide shows soon went from 15 to 20 slides to 30, 40 or 50 or more images. Most of our shows centered on recipes, but topics like decorating, gardening and home improvement also worked well.

Now imagine that you’ve just been put in charge of your company’s website, and your first order of business is to update the “Our Team” section of the “About Us” section. You could stick to the typical approach: a long scrolling page of postage-stamp size images accompanied by meaty chunks of biographical information.  If you’re very lucky, your average visitor will make it as far as the Chief Financial Officer before heading off in search of a stock quote or the latest annual report.

But what if you put much of that same information into a slide show? Now your visitors are greeted with a large photo of your CEO and a brief but compelling bio. Click. Another slide, another key member of your management team. Click, click, click. The Assistant Vice President for the Eastern U.S. Click, click ... click. Hey, that’s the intern that changes the toner in the copy machine.  Your visitor has reached the last slide, number 32, and  she’s still looking for the button to choose the next slide!

Not only have you added 31 page views to your website’s tally, you’ve suddenly become a hero in the eye’s of every team member who’s given his or her star turn on the pages of your site.

How to Proofread

A friend of mine, a lover of all things French, posted this simple yet eloquent snippet of prose in her garden. To experience its maximum poetic effect, please read the sign ALOUD now:

Did you just say “Paris in the Spring”? Or, did you say “Paris in the the Spring”? If not, take a closer look at the sign.

Why do so many of us miss that second “the”? Because we know what the sign should say. And that leads us to the first of three simple rules that can ensure your proofreading catches the sort of little (and big) errors that diminish your credibility and tarnish your brand.

The Easiest Tool for Better Search Engine Results

Getting visitors to your website depends on several factors. In the long run, the very best way to boost your visitors is simply to create lots of good content that your target audience will want to read.

That said, a well-written page title, meta description, and keyword list are all helpful in raising your web page's search engine ranking. So how do you find the right words to create these key elements? For years, I used Google's Adsense keyword tool to guide me.

Today, I tend to use a much simpler approach: I enter my topic (stated fairly specifically) into the Google search box, then scroll down to the bottom of the search results page. That's where I'll see a collection of words and phrases that people are using right now to search my topic. The benefit of this approach is that you are getting search terms that people are actually using. Often, you'll be surprised and even inspired.

Work the most appropriate of these search terms into your web page and meta-data and you'll give yourself a real-time leg up on the search engine scene.

A Quick Secret to Better Photos

If your digital camera has an optical zoom, here's a professional quick tip that will immediately improve all of your photos:

• Set your camera's optical zoom to its widest setting and leave it there -- permanently

Three reasons this works

1. The wider your lens setting, the closer you must get to your subject. This lends a sense of what photographers call "immediacy." In other words, you are drawing the viewer into the scene. (Just don't try to get 6 inches from your subject's nose, or you'll wind up with a very unflattering portrait.)

Seven easy rules for beginning writers

I have heard of V.S. Naipaul. I haven't read anything by him..He is a big deal. He won the Nobel prize for literature and the Booker Prize. A very big deal. But his approach to writing is quiet, almost Zen-like. Here's the advice he gave to new writers at Tehelka, an Indian news organization:

1. Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than ten or twelve words.

2. Each sentence should make a clear statement. It should add to the statement that went before. A good paragraph is a series of clear, linked statements.

3. Do not use big words. If your computer tells you that your average word is more than five letters long, there is something wrong. The use of small words compels you to think about what you are writing. Even difficult ideas can be broken down into small words

More of Naipaul's advice ...