With my editor's cap on, it's Grammar Time!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/upsidaisium/

And we're off! Beginning with an "And". We will joyously split our infinitives with healthy gusto. Leave your prepositions where you found them because this is where the rubber hits the road.

This is to be the first in a series of brief tips on English writing: style tips, grammar, usage, spelling traps and generally how to write well. This introductory one is not so brief, though.

I'm inspired by work I did recently for a client - the effervescent Camielle of Follow Me Media asked me to edit a blog post. She knew what she wanted to say and had written the post already. The question was, did it read well? Were there any mistakes? Plus, could I improve some of the wording and give more punch to the ending?

These are all questions of editing. A well written and edited post makes you look competent and professional. It will read better and communicate more effectively. That means it's more likely to be understood and the message passed on. Which all lends weight to your professional reputation. Good stuff. Everyone should have all their professional work edited, professionally. Even me. This is a "do as I say" moment.

Camielle followed up my work by asking me for advice on how to write better in the future (her writing is very good already, don't get me wrong, but like many people whose main job is not writing, there is always room for improvement. Hell, my work has plenty of room too. Nobody's perfect!)

I was happy to give advice. There's no danger of revealing state secrets or somehow giving the game away and finding myself destitute. English is English. I did not make the rules - they're out there for everyone. However, there's a bit of "art" to editing that is hard to explain.

Concise is good, but it's not the last word. 

Let's start with my first piece of advice to Camielle, taken directly from that steadfast tome of mavens the world over (even outside its US home, believe it or not), "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk Jnr. and EB White:

"Omit needless words."

Ah. Simple. Just make it short!

NO.

That's not how this rule works.

It means you should make sure all the words in a sentence are pulling their weight; "that every word tell."

So, how can you use this advice in the real world?

A major enemy of concise writing is repetition. In their insecurity-fueled attempts to include every single thought they want to convey, many writers repeat themselves. Say it twice, three times! Once more with feeling!

Take a paragraph that contains an idea. Carefully read the sentences and look at their meaning. Do they say the same thing as each other? Does one say it better? Be brutal: delete the repetitious sentences.

I mean brutal. Even if they're only close, try the paragraph without one of those sentences. I almost guarantee it won't suffer - your reader will still understand you.

Now that you have that one good sentence, feel free to add more detail back into that sentence. That sentence is now carrying the big idea - there's no harm in a bit of necessary detail - after all, Strunk and White are happy with your extra detail, as long as it is doing work, as long as it is needed.

Whoa. That last para needs work.

Here:

Now that you have that one good sentence, feel free to add more detail back into that sentence  if you like.  That sentence is It's now carrying the big idea - there's no harm in a bit of necessary detail. After all, Strunk and White are happy with your extra detail, as long as it is doing work does work; as long as it is needed.

Now you have one good sentence, add detail if you like. It's carrying the big idea. After all, Strunk and White are happy with extra detail, as long as it is needed.

60 words down to 32. I could go further, but I'm happy there.

Dangerous Constructions.

There are some sentence constructions that are hazardous to concise writing. Watch out for "thats" and "hads".

"I remember I had been in grade school and we had had a great time mucking up in the classroom that had been our home room and that had been where we learned English. Our teacher had been most upset."

Yuck. All those hads and thats.

"I remember grade school shenanigans fondly. We were always mucking around in English class. Our teacher nearly cried one day."

Sure, I made some word choice changes there too, but you can see what's going on. Each sentence does its work and we move on. I made a late addition of "one day" to "Our teacher nearly cried" because, to me, that seems like something someone would say. It is honest.

Sentences are like picnic baskets - they hold the whole feast.

A common mistake is to take a series of ideas and give each of them its own sentence. Instead, try adding a few ideas into one sentence. Make each sentence do more work.

Taking the above example again:

"I remember grade school shenanigans fondly. We were always mucking around in English class. Our teacher nearly cried one day."

Could be rewritten as:

"One hilarious day we nearly made our English teacher cry."

There's a bit of detail gone, but this new sentence almost begs for us to read on to find out exactly what made the teacher nearly cry. That's better writing.

Study each word. Take it out if you can. But stop before you destroy the sentence's power and beauty. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway had very different styles. Faulkner of the Baroque, Rococo, Byzantine bent, Hemingway more agricultural. Both brilliant.

People do not associate Faulkner with brevity, quite the opposite, and yet, would you be so brave as to start slicing and dicing his prose? Probably not. Why? Because despite his incredible flourish with words, they all add up to something brilliant. I suspect even Strunk and White would be happy to leave Faulkner alone.

So, like all writing advice, try it out and practice. You'll find that even just having a go will make it read better.

Until next time...

You need to tell your customers WHY.

Your “About” or “Meet the Team” page is the most important page of your website.

Read that again. THE MOST IMPORTANT PAGE IS YOUR “ABOUT” PAGE.

How could that possibly be? Surely it’s the wonderful products and services you supply, or the amazing places that you have been, or the cool photos you have showing you looking young and vibrant and hip? Surely?

NO!

IT’S THE “ABOUT” PAGE.

Why?

Because business is competitive and these days there are very few truly unique offerings. But even the unique stuff is rarely unique because it looks or functions differently.

You know those amazing Kickstarter projects? Things like amazing backpacks with a GAZILLION POCKETS THAT WILL REORGANIZE YOUR LIFE? Yes. Those. Well, they all start with the reasons why the guys started in the first place. They have a little story to tell.

The strong impression created is that they do not care if no one at all buys their backpack. It’s like they just want to share their hard-wrung solution to a very personal problem they had at some point while travelling in eastern Europe while, actually what where they doing, spying? I mean who needs that many gadgets anyway? I digress…

The point is, at some point, you’re hooked on their story and if that resonates with you, they’re half way to signing you up.

So, their reason WHY, becomes YOUR reason WHY!

You buy the why, not the how and certainly not the what. It’s a backpack for crying out loud.

Back to About pages. If you run a business and especially if you’re in an established field, like real estate or gold mining, then I know as well as you do that the core of your business is the same as everyone else’s.

Hard truth right there.

Your business is, essentially, on an even keel, product- or service-wise, with your competitors' business.

I know you’re stressing now. Something in your brain is saying, “BUT I GOT INTO BUSINESS TO CHANGE ALL THAT!”

And you’d be absolutely right. But it’s still gold bars or suburban homes, right?

Look again at that question: “Why did you go into business?”

Forget money or income (that’s merely an outcome). Forget “being your own boss” – that’s a platitude. And everyone works to provide for their families – that’s universal.

What part of your life’s mission was served by going into business. Why are you doing it? What gets you excited about going to work in the morning?

I’m not going to answer that for you, because we all have different answers. It’s emotional.

It’s personal, and that’s the point. Our personal drives shape our lives. Your next customer very well might choose you because your reasons why resonate with hers or his.

How are they ever going to connect with you without knowing ABOUT you?

Hence the ABOUT page. It really is that important.

In many ways, my ABOUT page is all about YOURS – telling that side of you is hard, because translating the emotional side into words is hard. But doing that is one of the things I like to do. It’s why I’m here writing this…

Get in touch!

Which Books Changed You?

Inspired by a link provided by my friend George Aranda of Science Book a Day and the World Book Day, I thought I'd catch up, in the spirit of their 10 books that influenced your life project.

How to pick your most influential books? Do you go by life events? Or by ideas that shaped who you were, who you are, and who you would become?

Or, is a book influential by virtue of how much you enjoyed it?

I tend to think that at any given point in your life (perhaps this is the cynic in me) you will have different “most influential” books. For two reasons – one, as life gets longer, new things happen, and this throws a different perspective on what has come before. Two, our memories are fallible, so, who knows what really triggered that change and created that inspiration at the time? Time is the ineffable destroyer and creator, with only Entropy as its final guide.

I am a writer by trade these days (you must forgive the fusillade of commas in the previous paragraph). This is both personal and professional. Equally, almost none of these have writing as a subject. Yes, I have read many books on writing and the English language—it is a passion of mine—but rarely have they changed me.

I have gone for a short list of books where I can honestly say they influenced my life. This is an introductory 6.

Without further ado, here goes, in no particular order:

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Little need be said by way of introduction. I was introduced in high school to this masterpiece, and despite being taught it as a compulsory text, I fell in love. It was probably the first book where I appreciated the actual language. Fitzgerald’s prose is sublime, and it stands out, for me, as an example of beautiful writing to which anyone may rightfully aspire. Further readings have emphasized that he not only mastered language, but story structure as well. In fact, key beats of the story happen at precise points in the story that can be measured by their page number. None of that matters, though, because his words carry us gracefully, languidly, like words in a current…

The Abyss of Time: Changing Conceptions of the Earth’s Antiquity After the Sixteenth Century

Claude C. Albritton Jnr.

If you’ve never heard of this, I forgive you. It’s not on the bestseller’s list, anywhere, as far as I know. Yet, it captures our historical obsession with time and its measurement so well. The Earth has been around for about four and a half billion years. That’s mind boggling enough, but then just think what we had to do to come to know that! If you’ve ever wondered about weirdo conceptions like the Creation Research Society and ideas like biblical time, then take a look at the strange route by which scientific time has taken to evolve. Fascinating and something that took me to honours-level research in geology and geochronology.

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins

I struggled mightily with my library of Dawkins’s books here. Which is most significant? I will state here that I regard “The Selfish Gene” as one of the most important scientific literary works of the 20^th century and of modern science generally. Its follow up, “The Extended Phenotype” is equally remarkable and it’s extremely difficult, in the face of such might, to push them out of the top 10 for me. However, they have been, for one simple reason. I did not come to Dawkins’s ideas through school or any other means. I read these works after reading The God Delusion. So, if I am to be honest, The God Delusion must take precedence.

I was already an atheist when I read it, so there’s nothing in that, and, I am a geologist by scientific training, so deep time and scientific thought was no stranger to me, but biology had not been in my background. Dawkins’s book started me on a wild ride through evolutionary thought, in his multitude of fabulous science books and into the general real of evolutionary science and philosophy through such amazing writers as Daniel C Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. It started me on an intellectual journey that is still in the making.

Many criticize Dawkins for an inflammatory style, but for me, that criticism has always been political correctness of the bad kind, the kind that seeks to stamp out merely opposing views, as opposed to political correctness of the good kind, the one that stamps out cruel and harmful opinions. Dawkins became somewhat of a hero to me, if a slightly tinged one!

What is this thing called Science?

A.F. Chalmers

Later, I discovered the serious business of the Philosophy of Science. And it was in large part due to this wonderful book by Chalmers, that stands as the best introduction and discussion of what science is all about that I have ever read. It started me out on Popper and Feyerabend and Kuhn: icons of the philosophy of science. It also has a lovely grinning (smirking) cat on the cover. Hard to argue with that.

Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them

John Yorke

So many books have been written about “STORY”. Storytelling, narrative, these are like awful buzzwords that swarm about you and create hives of “creatives” and queen bees that bite you. No, that’s off-metaphor. Anyway, Yorke’s book came out of the blue to me, and started me really putting down complete ideas in narratives, even after years of writing in various forms. Yorke sent me down this creative path and he deserves credit therefore. It is a stunning book. Worth reading if you haven’t yet read the other three thousand six hundred and eighty-seven books on the subject (ok that might not be an exact number).

Three Dollars

Elliot Perlman

As Penguin (publisher) says, this is about “an honest, compassionate man who finds himself, at the age of 38, with a wife, a child and three dollars. How did he get that way? And who is Amanda?”

I was about 20 years old when I read this and the protagonist’s views on the world, the environment, his love of science and the reasons he became a scientist/engineer were the reasons I went back to university and studied geology. The notion of living life without doing what is important to you was horrifying - and that impulse made me reassess my life. I should probably read it again!

I can say that with some certainty – I had this book in mind when I applied for and enrolled in my geology degree. I don’t know, now, if that was sensible in any way, shape or form, but I can put my hand on my heart and say this is probably one of the most influential books in my life, even if the book may, on face value, be a little prosaic. It’s just beautiful. It’s so powerful that I sometimes actually wonder what I would have done with my life had I not read it. That’s a pretty powerful test, if you ask me.

There are more, books that don't come to mind right now, and I will share when they do... for now, how about yours? Tell me...

This is why you need me.

Why?

It's the crucial question, isn't it?

If I can make you believe that my services will make your life better, then I'm at least half way there, right? Then it's just "how does it work?" and "what will it cost?" and other minor questions.

Professional writers produce professional writing. Obviously.

You can expect that if you use a professional writer like me (letter writer, copywriter, ghost writer, editorial/advertorial writer etc.) you will get professional text at a high level of competency - good spelling, grammar, structure, and a little pizzazz that makes the copy sing (and makes you look great and sells your product/service).

So, great writing skill is not really a selling point, it's a given.

Do better things with your time.

As I am sure you are aware, writing takes time. Researching, planning, crafting and drafting a piece of writing requires care and time. It is also something you probably don't do regularly because you are busy with your core business (or your life – you know, enjoying it!)

There are a lot of writing tasks that are secondary to your immediate business, but which are critical to your image/marketing and therefore your future business. These all take time.

Some examples

- Writing a column in a newsletter or magazine – makes you stand out as an expert.

- Posting regular blog posts gathers followers and improves your profile.

- Writing copy for your website that actually works for your business.

- Writing brochures and reports.

- Simply writing a well-worded and persuasive letter.

A major benefit.

What is the major benefit for my clients? You guessed it: time saving.

Just brief me and you'll get well-written copy promptly, rather than have to slave all day over it yourself.

I'm available to work through it with you to ensure it meets your needs precisely.

What is your time worth? 

(Most people in business can estimate this fairly well and it can be shocking to realize how much you have “spent” by trying to write a blog post for 6 hours).

So, the why is straightforward – make writing an easy part of your business. Stand out as a great communicator without cutting into the time you need to run your core business. And, of course, save a whole lot of time and stress.

It’s a no-brainer really. Except that it isn’t: getting me to write for you is a really smart move.

Get in touch today!

The Holy Trinity of Service, or is it?

Sometimes it's known as the Iron Triangle. Which to me sounds like a cross between a Tory Prime Minister and a Caribbean vacation.

When you're deciding how to run your business you, supposedly, have to decide which two of these three goals you're going to focus on as "your product". 

Will you be Cheap and Fast? This is great because it gives you high turnover which is pretty important to running a successful business. But quality will suffer and, depending on your field, that could hurt you in the long run.

Will you be Fast and Great? This is close to nirvana, but also very hard to maintain. It requires hard grind, a toll on your employees if you have them, and likely sleepless nights. To do this you have to charge your clients more to justify the effort and/or put on more staff (or end up in an asylum).

How about Great and Cheap? Well, ok. This is probably only your side-hustle, right? I mean, you don't actually earn a living from this do you? No, didn't think so. Clients can expect great work, but you know, when it's finished and stuff. 

Which brings me to a more nuanced look at this. For me, rather than speed, I value reliability. What this means is I do what I say I'll do and deliver it when I say I will.

Or, to put it another way: I deliver on my promises.

So, instead of breakneck speed, I use schedules and calendars and make damned sure I'm not making spurious promises to clients. 

Maybe I'm cynical, but to me, that is a kickass proposition: I would hire a service that offered reliability as a central goal. Perhaps because it seems so rare these days, it is such a pleasure when someone delivers on their promise. 

What it means is that I can focus on Quality, without having to make my prices "premium", because I am not chasing my tail constantly. (I am busy though, don't get me wrong!)

In the end, services with a creative bent, like writing and editing, simply cannot compromise on quality: the quality of our work is our brand. It's our calling card. Do bad work and people simply wont be interested. So really we only have price and speed to work with. Instead, I focus on reliability, which allows me to be realistic with price.

How does this, for instance, translate to my business? 

I'm not cheap; I'm not the most expensive, either. I do high quality work, that people recommend, which is great! I do work quite fast, but I won't rush it if that compromises quality - I will consider each job on its merits, estimate the time it will take, and tell you. Then I'll stick to that timeline to the utmost of my ability (barring major illness, I never miss deadlines). Together this makes for an upper-middle road that I think clients can actually believe in. No unicorns here.

How do you manage this wobbly triangle?

We need to talk about your adjectives.

Hello. Were you writing something? Describing something recently?

Was it a product or a service? Was it, perhaps, real estate?

Yes; it was a house, wasn’t it?

I saw what you did. No squirming out of this one. You used superlatives and intensifiers like confetti. We need to discuss this. Now. Consider this your intervention.

Adjectives, adverbs and superlative nonsense

As you learnt in primary school, adjectives are “describing words” (while nouns are “names and things” and verbs are “doing words”).

Adjectives add to nouns only (the big house; the large tree). Adverbs are words that describe (or modify) any word including nouns, verbs and adjectives. Adverbs commonly end in “ly” (just like the word commonly, which here was an adverb to “end”).

Not really a describing word

Instead, think of adjectives (or adverbs) as “flavour words”. They are the spice that makes the noun go down.

It’s not a living room, it’s a “spacious living room”. He didn’t just walk, he walked slowly.

Some adjectives are useful—an adjective—because they add an attribute to the noun. Things like colour, pattern, design, size etc. These descriptions are essential to a complete understanding of the thing.

Likewise, some adverbs are useful because they qualify what’s going on. Adverbs should be used sparingly (see! Sparingly describes the way to use adverbs like sparingly!)

Terms of abuse

Here’s the problem: Adjectives and adverbs are used too often and frequently incorrectly.

This is not just a nit-picky, grammar-nazi thing. Words have meanings and because there are many different words to describe things, the English language gives us immense variety and nuance.

I know what you’re thinking though: “But I want my [house/car/product] to really stand out!”

Truth is, the pictures of your thing, its location (and its price) will make it stand out (if it’s ever going to stand out) to the kind of buyers who are looking for that type of thing anyway.

Words won’t change the fundamental attributes of your thing, no matter how hard you try.

And, wow, do people try!

Consider a living room in a house. How can it be described? Let’s start with size. No need to be technical, is it a big room compared with living rooms in general? Bigger than your own living room? Yes? OK, lets call it a “spacious living room”.

What does spacious mean here, though? I would argue that it means absolutely nothing at all, because spacious simply means large, which is a comparative adjective (it must be compared to something) and therefore what it means to you is completely dependent on what sized living rooms you grew up with. 

Same goes with large, and very large. Very is an intensifier, like extremely. Use them with caution -- they're likely adding to your problems.

If you grew up in palatial mansions (lucky you!) then a spacious living room would be fit for a King’s banquet. Nothing smaller would suffice. So just how big is this suburban house of yours?

The solution to the comparative problem

VERBS! Doing words! What can you do with this cavernous room of epic proportions? (Now that’s how to make it sound big!) How about fitting a 6-seat lounge setting AND a 10-seat dining arrangement, plus a few scattered occasional tables, and don’t forget the pool table?

“Room to swing a cat” is colloquial and not recommended in professional contexts.

“Room for your lounge suite and a big dining table, with plenty of space left to party!”

This kind of language not only gets the size across, but it paints a picture of how you could use the space.

Sometimes though, it really is big. Vast! I’m thinking of rooms that are 10+ meters long/wide. That’s when you can trot out the big guns like vast; enormous.

These are the extreme adjectives, the superlatives.

Don’t get hooked!

Superlatives are like heroin for writing. The first few times they feel great and seem to add punch to your description. Soon, however, you’re needing more and more of them to get the same hit.

In real estate for instance, the drug-words are the ones that emphasise “goodness”. Words like “exquisite”, “timeless”, “stunning”, “sensational”, “magnificent”.

Really, these are matters of opinion and some potential buyers would argue the point – most modern renovations are done with care, diligence and attention to detail. They use on-trend materials and looks. But to call them all “exquisite” is to dilute the meaning of the word to insignificance.

I won’t provide dictionary meanings here, they’re easily found via Google search, but it’s worth looking up a word before you use it. Is it a true description?

Instead, describe the amenity, the details, how it will feel to use it. A lighter touch on the adjectives will make them more powerful.

An approach worth trying

Try this - pick the stand-out feature, give it one of these superlatives, and leave the rest alone. Well, at least make sure the other adjectives are of a lesser degree than the superlative.

For instance, if the kitchen is marble dressed, with fine cabinetry details and attractive tap ware, call the kitchen exquisite. But not the rest of the house, stick to straight forward descriptions and words that describe what you can do/how you can live there.

A word like exquisite demands justification – it requires details that are themselves fine.

So, here goes (adjectives in bold, verbs in italics to show that we’re doing things, not just describing them):

“An exquisite, modern kitchen showcasing Italian marble, fine cabinetry, attractive tap ware and stainless-steel appliances leads to an open-plan living area featuring room for over-sized lounge and dining settings, leaving ample space to party.”

Could you live in that? I could! And what’s more, it provides information that is unavailable from photographs and floor plans alone. In other words, the copy is doing its job.

A lot more could be said on the myriad nuances of words. Some words might be very descriptive, but also awkward; “moist” anyone?

The point is this: simply thinking it through, taking care with your word choices and, notably, leaving out needless words will improve your writing no end.

Clear, concise language is powerful.

Yours in exquisite, timeless attention to detail…

Giving you a reason to buy

A while ago, I wrote a piece on narrative; on storytelling in marketing and advertising. Blah, blah, blah. Buzzwords blah blah.

You probably didn't read it then and probably wont now, which is disappointing, but there's only so much time in the day, right?

It's been fashionable for a while to talk about storytelling, but clearly it's gotten way off track. Like one of those awful subplots that leads you down a garden path to nowhere (final seasons of Dexter, anyone?)

We're not really "storytelling" in the Hans Christian Anderson way, and not every piece of advertising is about this. Sometimes it's just branding, pure and simple.

The thrust of this storytelling bizzo is that we're simply trying to give people a reason to buy. In my earlier piece, I called these 'little stories'.

Example:
Why did I buy a donut with my morning coffee this morning when I am clearly on a diet? Because I was in a hurry and didn't want to be on a sugar low for that important meeting.
How to use that story: Target rushed people with an easy value-add of a donut with their coffee... position it near the transport hub, make it visible.

That's too easy, right? Well, sure, but it is an example of a product and advertising that fits in with a narrative.

At the higher end, Apple creates an entire image and lifestyle for which its products are custom made. If you aspire to that image, then its products become part of your life story.

Mark Wnek wrote a piece on the importance of story tellers, noting that many companies are so data and tech driven these days, you'd swear they were selling to robots.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs, and I tend to agree, this Big Data thing is out of hand - it creates so much information that it is actually beyond the capabilities of marketers and advertisers to use it. Sure, it's nice to be able to discretely target a particular audience, but you still have to know what to do with them...