How to Avoid Gobbledygook in Your Writing
January 30, 2010 by Rita Marshall
Confusing language has always been a pet peeve of mine. When I write, I picture people drinking in the information as if they were having a cool glass of water — the info is enjoyable, goes down easy and satisfies their needs.
Gobbledygook is the sludge in that glass of water, but unless you’re very disciplined in your materials, it can happen.
What kind of gobbledygook have you read, or even worse, inflicted on others?
- Buzzwords? (”leverage”, “value-added”)
- Cliches? (”110 percent”, “high performance”)
- The “professional” clunky phrases that businesses can’t seem to give up? (”pleased to”, “in terms of”)
Dow Jones and marketing strategist David Meerman Scott compiled a list of the Top 25 Gobbledygook words and phrases used in North American press releases in 2008. (Are they optimizing the value-added metrics to leverage their synergy before they are pleased to announce the 2009 list?)
Scott has come up with the Gobbledygook Grader, which lets you cut and paste your copy for the Grader to analyze. The results will give you a score out of 100, along with a list of the gobbledygook the Grader found in your materials. It won’t re-write the material, but it’s a good start to pouring your customers a new glass of water.
Did You Use Any of the Words of 2009?
January 9, 2010 by Rita Marshall
If you used Twitter or Facebook at all last year, you’re probably familiar with the newest additions to the Oxford Dictionary.
“Unfriend” was the word of the year, while “Tweetup” was a runner-up.
They weren’t all techie terms, though. My non-social media favourites include:
- zombie bank: a bank that only continues to operate because of a bailout
- phantonym: a noun that looks like it means one thing, but actually means another. As in, “fulsome” sounds like it should mean “really full”, when it actually means “excessive to the point of insincerity”.
The threat of phantonyms to the English language is of small concern, however, when PC World makes this observation about two other 2009 additions to the language:
The disappearance of free Internet access should give rise to some colourful new additions to the Oxford Dictionary in 2010.
Writing or Re-writing Business Website Content: What to Know Before Contacting a Web Copywriter
December 3, 2009 by Rita Marshall
Over the last few months, I’ve worked on a few business websites. The clients have been from a variety of different industries, but I’ve found two things are always the most important, no matter the industry: the insights of the business owner and the ability of the web copywriter.
What Does a Business Owner Bring to the Website?
You bring insight and experience to explain what makes you the best. Before you even sit down with a web copywriter, think about your business, your customers and what makes you special. If you sat down with me, I’d ask you the following questions (among others):
1) What does your business do?
2) What makes you special?
3) Who are your customers?
4) Who are your competitors and why are you different?
5) What do your customers like about you and why?
Maybe you noticed that questions 2, 4 and 5 are different ways of asking the same thing. I REALLY want to find out what makes you different from everyone else! Every business can claim good quality or good customer service. But how is it unique in your case?
One multi-service company I wrote about only expanded their services because their customers asked them to provide more and more services that no other company was providing. One company’s competitors shipped in all of their products, while my client’s company grew most of their products almost from scratch.
This goes back to my business biography post; you need to tell a story on your website, preferably one that ends with a happy customer buying your product and riding off into the sunset. Your unique insights into your business, as well as your experience, gives you a great information base. Now all you need is a writer to flesh it out, and yes, you do need a web copywriter.
What Does a Web Copywriter Bring to the Website?
So if you have the insight, why do you need a web copywriter to write the content for your business website? Because web copy needs to be highly targeted and short. It usually takes me more time to write a 400 word article than an 800 word article. Sound strange? Consider this: crafting a 400 word article out of a mountain of information means sifting through to find and polish the absolute best and ruthlessly discarding the rest.
A good web page will be limited to maybe 250 – 350 words per page and should include good SEO; you can imagine how much work goes into picking the absolute best 350 words!
I also use the information a client gives me on his or her company’s history, strengths and goals to draft an outline of what pages they should have on their website; or what pages should be kept and dropped from their current website.
So don’t just throw up any block of copy on different pages on your website and figure it’s okay: search engines don’t like that, and if they don’t like it, your customers will never find you.
Are You Writing This Down? How to Take Notes
August 24, 2009 by Rita Marshall
If I’m interviewing you, you may be taken aback when I look and talk to you while my hands scribble a shorthand version of what you’re saying. “Can you read that?” a lot of people ask me.
Yes! And while you probably don’t need to master the art of maintaining eye contact while recording a person’s verbatim words, knowing how to take notes is a great skill to have.
Why Learn How to Take Notes?
Taking notes gives you a written record of what happened during a conversation or meeting, and it’s also an important communication tool. We miss a lot of things other people tell us because we’re distracted — by a noise, by something we see, or just because we’re thinking of what we’re going to say next.
When you take notes, you concentrate on the speaker’s ideas and show the speaker that you value what they have to say. You should take notes if:
- You have a meeting about an important project
- You are meeting someone for the first time
- You are at an important speech or presentation and want to get the most out of it.
- You are in charge of taking notes / minutes for a meeting
In my experience, it’s always better to have notes that you end up not needing instead of wishing you had a written record of an important statement, conversation or meeting.
How Do I Take Notes?
- Use a computer or handwrite, depending on what’s available and what feels most comfortable.
- Make sure you have enough writing material. Your laptop should have enough power. Writing by hand? Have a few pens with you and use a notepad with plenty of paper.
- Make sure you can hear the speaker! Sit as close as you can. Make sure you also have enough room to take your notes comfortably.
- Write down everything; you never know what you’ll end up needing. Agendas are helpful, but I’ve found in my time reporting that the important things are also usually surprises.
How Do I Take Notes Quickly?
You need to use shorthand. If you’re coming up with your own system, make sure you’ll remember what your symbols mean.
Text talk (U = You, 2 = To) is pretty easy to remember and so will industry acronyms you’re familiar with. After my time in health care, I began substituting “Q” for “every” in my shorthand.
What Do I Do with These Scribbles Now?
As soon as you stop taking notes, look them over from the beginning and write in as many whole words as possible, especially illegible ones. Cold notes are difficult to work with.
From Note-Taking to Networking
If you find yourself missing names or information, ask the speaker while you’re both still in the same room. A speaker usually won’t just fill in the gaps — they’ll share more information with you as well. Whether it’s a one-on-one or a large meeting, note-taking can be a great communication tool when you use it as a springboard to a conversation.
What do you think? Share your thoughts here!
How Do I Say That? Pronunciation Guides for a Better Business Image
August 9, 2009 by Rita Marshall
Saying “warsh” instead of “wash” or “ofen” instead of “of-ten” can be a charming expression of a local dialect. But mispronouncing a word like segue or butchering the name of a person or city can be embarrassing, especially if you make it during a presentation or introductions.
Fortunately, the Internet is here to help, and will do it for free.
Preparing for a meeting? Practicing a speech? Need to settle an argument with someone who calls it “War-chest-er sauce”? (That would’ve been me ten years ago). Turn up your computer speakers and check out these websites.
- Dictionary.com uses more than 16 dictionaries to compile its database of English words. Beside each word you’ll see a speaker icon. Click on it and you’ll hear the correct pronunciation of the word.
- Inogolo.com specializes in the proper pronunciation of people and places. Your friend will learn that it’s actually pronounced “Worster sauce”. When you want to compliment a new business acquaintance on his TAG Heure watch, you’ll know to say, “Tag HOY-yur”.
- If you run Firefox, you can download the Pronounce Firefox extension. Right click on any word on a web page, and “pronounce” will appear in a menu. Click and you will hear the Merriam-Webster dictionary pronunciation of the word.
If the name or word you’re searching for doesn’t appear in any of the above three options, you might have to go about it the old-fashioned way. Ask someone who knows how to pronounce the name or word. Once you’ve heard it, repeat it and record yourself saying it correctly. Take another listen and practice again before heading off to your meeting or speech. Vwah-la!
Have a comment? Tell me what you think here!