Is Succinct Extinct?

You can argue for long-form content 'til you're blue in the face.

You're still wrong.

In 1647, the Jesuit Baltazar Gracián explained why:

Don't be a bore.

The man of one business or of one topic is apt to be heavy. Brevity flatters and does better business; it gains by courtesy what it loses by curtness. Good things, when short, are twice as good. The quintessence of the matter is more effective than a whole farrago of details. It is a well-known truth that talkative folk rarely have much sense whether in dealing with the matter itself or its formal treatment. There are that serve more for stumbling-stones than centerpieces, useless lumber in everyone's way. The wise avoid being bores, especially to the great, who are fully occupied: it is worse to disturb one of them than all the rest. Well said is soon said.

Write for readers, not Google.

Covfefe

Blogger Josh Bernoff has discovered the meaning of the word "covfefe" in the president's famous and now-deleted Tweet.

"Here’s what the word 'covfefe' means: It means 'I am a crazy person,'" Bernoff says.

"This president is not a master manipulator of media. He is a wacko with little grasp of reality that says the first thing that comes into his mind. That is the meaning of 'covfefe.' It’s a variant of 'crazy.'"

Many critics of the president have reached a similar conclusion.

But do typos imply the writer is dotty? Or are they, as sociologists argue, joyful centerpieces of digital writing?

"Digital writing is inherently playful, first of all, because the medium, the computer, invites participants to 'fiddle,' and to invoke the frame of 'make-believe,'” says Brenda Danet. 

"When this frame is operating, participants understand and accept the meta-message 'this is play.'”

Digital writing's hallmarks, Danet says, are four: haste, ephemerality, interactivity, and freedom from the "tyranny" of paper. In essence, digital writing is just like kibitzing, a stream-of-conscious game people play. There, like lots of nonsense, typos are the rule.

So do typos ever matter?

They do, in my book, when they riddle public-facing communications, because they open you to ridicule.

Ridiculous people (and brands) aren't merely hacks: they're clowns. 

And clowns aren't trustworthy. 

Clowns can even be scary. 

Or covfefe, if you prefer.

Content Creators: What's Fair and What's Foul?

Bill’s Daily Briefing on Bill O'Reilly's website comprises "a daily assortment of copyright violations," according to The Washington Post.

O'Reilly's spokesman says lawyers okayed the daily cut-and-paste job because "this usage falls squarely within the fair use doctrine—the same doctrine that has allowed an untold number of news aggregation sites to exist online.”

Every content creator should grasp the basics of fair use—or quit creating content.

Fair use (part of the Copyright Act) protects you from a lawsuit when you use copyrighted material while creating a new work.

You can use copyrighted material, according to the law, for "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research;" but your use must not undermine "the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

Courts have traditionally ruled in favor of critics, commentators and reporters defending themselves against copyright infringement when their work wasn't simple piracy; i.e., when they added to and altered the original material.

They have also ruled in defendants' favor when the copyrighted material reused was "newsworthy," "factual" and "unpublished." In contrast, courts have protected the copyright owners of fictional works, and of works not published to protect trade secrets. They have also protected copyright owners who showed defendants' excerpts lowered the market value of their material.

In a nutshell, fair use protects content creators who:

• Use others' work for the clear purpose of criticism, commentary or news reporting
• Don't simply repost others' work, but transform or improve it
• Use others' work for non-profit purposes
• Use only brief excerpts of others' work
• Respect others' requests for attribution, and
• Use out-of-print sources with little to no market value

When Robbing You Blind, Priceline Perfers Passive

When I arrived at the airport yesterday, the airline's agent informed me my ticket had been cancelled and no seats were available on the flight.

I called Priceline, which sold me the ticket. Two agents spoke to me (after putting me on hold for 40 minutes) and told me the ticket had been cancelled and no refund would be issued.

They relied throughout the conversations on the passive voice, never admitting Priceline cancelled my ticket and Priceline is keeping my money.

It's ironic the two people have the title "agent."

Writing coach Sherry Roberts could well have had Priceline in mind when she described the passive voice:

"A sentence written in the active voice is the straight-shooting sheriff who faces the gunslinger proudly and fearlessly. It is honest, straightforward; you know where you stand.

"A sentence written in passive voice is the shifty desperado who tries to win the gunfight by shooting the sheriff in the back, stealing his horse, and sneaking out of town."

Comma Sutra

When and where should you insert your comma for maximum satisfaction? The style manuals don't advocate one position.

Those used by book publishers endorse the serial ("Oxford") comma, claiming you need it to clarify any list.

Those used by newspaper publishers eschew it, claiming economy should rule your writing.

Even though advocates can now cite a Maine court's decision, the serial comma is far from the law of the land.

What's your verdict?

The Yeahs

Book publishers insist the serial comma assures clarity. 

For example, because I inserted a serial comma before the coordinating conjunction "and" in the following list, you won't conclude both my followers are dead guys:

This blog is dedicated to my followers, William Strunk, and E.B. White.

The Chicago Manual of Style, for example, endorses the serial comma. You're clear that four, not two, people posed for this White House guest:

She took a photograph of her parents, 
the president, and the vice president.

Modern American Usage also endorses the serial comma, on grounds that it's harmless.

The Nays

Newspaper publishers insist the serial comma, being far from harmless, clutters writing. 

The serial comma here feels like poke in the eye:

I can't resist watching The Three Stooges, Moe, Larry, and Curly.

And The Style Book of The New York Herald Tribune shows how the serial comma here not only clutters the sentence, but misleads you to think Smith donated the racing cup:

Those at the ceremony were the commodore, the fleet captain, 

the donor of the cup, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Jones.

The Comma Sutra

Serial comma or not, some lists are best reordered.

The Times of London once summarized a BBC travel show with this list:

The highlights of his global tour include encounters with 

Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.

Yes, a serial comma would prevent you from thinking Nelson Mandela collected dildos; but he'd remain an 800-year-old demigod. The simple fix would be:

The highlights of his global tour include encounters with 

a dildo collector, an 800-year-old demigod and Nelson Mandela.

POSTSCRIPT: My rule for using the serial comma: easy does it. For in the words of the Kama Sutra:

The mind of the man being fickle, how can it be known what any 
person will do at any particular time and for any particular purpose.

Milk and Serial

As reported by The New York Times, a Maine appeals court has ruled a group of dairy workers deserve back pay because a state overtime law lacks a serial comma.

Five delivery drivers sued Oakhurst Dairy, claiming the company denied them overtime pay.

The judge hearing the case determined Maine's overtime law doesn't exempt the dairy from paying its drivers.

The law states workers need not receive overtime pay for "the canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: (1) Agricultural produce;(2) Meat and fish products; and (3) Perishable foods."

The judge ruled, because there's no comma after "shipment," the drivers deserve overtime pay. Why? The drivers don't pack perishable foods for shipment; they only distribute them.

The comma missing in Maine's overtime law is the "serial comma" (also known as the "Oxford comma").  

When used, the serial comma precedes the last in a series of things, reducing ambiguity. For example:

Before the secret meeting, Putin invited the hackers, Sushchin, and Dokuchaev.

Without the serial comma, the sentence could be understood to mean Sushchin and Dokuchaev were a team of hackers (they're actually spies):

Before the secret meeting, Putin invited the hackers, Sushchin and Dokuchaev.

Got it?

PS: Everything you ever wanted to know about the serial comma will be covered in my forthcoming manual, Comma Sutra. Among other things, it will explain when and where to insert it to achieve total satisfaction. Look for it wherever adult books are sold.

Adventures in Autocorrect

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

— Raymond Chandler

In a previous life, I must have committed some atrocity. 

Autocorrect is my karmic curse.

Autocorrect constantly replaces my words.

Yes, I know I can customize it (or at least turn it off). 

But why am I required to do so in the first place? And why does it default to the linguistic ability of a moron?

The word moron, by the way, also has an atrocious past.

It was coined in 1910 by psychologist Henry Goddard to designate someone with a learning disability. 

Goddard believed the learning disabled posed a threat to "American stock" and took steps to purge them from the gene pool.

He first convinced legislators in half the states to pass laws requiring their forced sterilization. Over 60,000 involuntary operations resulted.

He also dispatched assistants to Ellis Island, to look for morons trying to enter the country. When one was spotted, he was given an IQ test (developed by Goddard). The results weren't often favorable. Over 80% of immigrants tested were deported.

To his credit, late in life, Goddard disavowed his work.

Always Be Closing

Close your emails with an expression of gratitude and you'll boost the chance of response by 36%, according to a study by Boomerang.

While there are lots of ways to say "thanks," the software company sampled the closings in 350,000 emails and concluded these three expressions are the top performers:

• Thanks in advance garners a 65.7% response
• Thanks garners a 63% response
• Thank you garners a 57.9% response

There must be 50 ways to leave your reader (Forbes says so, anyway).

But the above three work best.




HAT TIP: Thanks in advance to Mike Hatch for suggesting this post.

Check Your Sources

Bubbie: The National Institutes of Health has never studied the attention spans of goldfish.

This is one of those "alternative facts" cited almost hourly by lazy writers.

Take your pick: You can blame perpetuation of the factoid on the marketer who fabricated the statement; or on Microsoft, which once cited it in an e-book; or on all the thousands of writers who have since recirculated it.

Enough with the attention-starved goldfish, already.

"Strong research is the backbone of strong copy," says copywriter Tom Wall. Strong copy requires writers to stop sourcing:

• Personal blogs and Tweets (particularly the president's)
• Unregulated contributor websites
• Wikipedia
• Unauthorized biographies

Without strong research, Wall says, "there is nothing anchoring your words to the truth."



NOTE: While truth isn't, opinions are my own.

Hope for the Reluctant Writer

Reluctance haunts writers.

Blogging proponents—celebrating only the competitive advantages you gain through this form of content marketing—rarely admit blogging is torturous.

It's much easier to sift though emails, sit in a meeting, or make a third cup of coffee.

Unless you're the president, self-doubt is inescapable.

What's the answer?

In What is Literature?, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre asks the reluctant writer to imagine, "what would happen if everybody read what I wrote."

Stuff would happen. Stuff would happen even for the mediocre writer, if he aims for a target audience, Sartre says.

"The function of the writer is to act in such a way that nobody can be ignorant of the world and that nobody may say that he is innocent of what it’s all about."

And in one of his most-quoted lines, Sartre says, "Words are loaded pistols."

If you're a reluctant writer, begin to think of your task differently.

Think of your blog less like a magazine and more like a bulletin board.

Think of your target audience.

Think of your words as loaded pistols, and writing as putting the "bullet" in bulletin.

Ready.

Aim.

Fire.

The Department of Redundancy Department

As an extra bonus, she presented me with the free gift of a tuna fish.

— George Carlin

Comedian George Carlin once wrote an essay that challenged readers to "Count the Superfluous Redundant Pleonastic Tautologies."

As his title suggests, Carlin was spoofing the use of redundant phrases, or pleonasm (from the Greek for "too much").

Pleonasm is fine, if you're Shakespeare (who called Caesar's stabbing by Brutus, "The most unkindest cut of all").

It's not, if you're not.

A micro moment sounds silly, not brilliant. So does a digital app.

We don't see it as such, because pleonasm is so common in English.

Every day we encounter it in phrases like armed gunman, convicted felon, famous celebrity, head honcho, unsolved mystery, foreign import, backup copy, safe haven, ATM machine, PIN number, complete satisfaction, totally sure, exact same, overly paranoid and 100% right.

Silly as they are, we don't give those phrases a second thought.

What Can You Learn from a UX Writer?

With all the talk about UX strategy, it's timely to ask, "What can you learn from a UX writer?

A lot, it turns out. 

UX writers are wordsmiths who, in the words of Google's HR department, "advocate for design and help shape product experiences by crafting copy that helps users complete the task at hand."

In simpler terms, they write product instructions.

UX writers preach a 5-point gospel:

• Say it simply. "The words you use need to be as easy to understand as a green light," says UX writer Ben Barone-Nugent. Users won't pause to ponder complex sentences. You need to let them barrel through.
  
  
• Say it economically. Brevity is simplicity's kissing cousin, and comes from omitting the obvious. "I happen to know that it's an actual fact that Procurement orders extra accessories the department doesn't need at least on a weekly basis" simply means "Procurement orders unneeded accessories every week."
  
  
• Use graphics. "You want your users to be able to wield your product without even thinking," Barone-Nugent says. "This means you need to help them move beyond the words you write." The right graphics will do the trick.
  
  
• Focus on impact. "Content doesn’t exist, only experiences do," Barone-Nugent says. Words and sentences aren't important. Instead of calling attention to themselves, they should "meld with your product and go unnoticed."
  
  
• Test. Don't roll out writing without an advance review. Ask others to read your writing before you send it to the intended audience.

The Mighty Copywriter's New Rule for Gender Marking

Among the "lessons" recited at church on Christmas Eve was the annunciation to the shepherds.

My wife complained on the sidewalk outside about the lesson's loss in euphony.

"Glory to God in the highest," the angel proclaimed, "and on earth peace, good will toward all people."

King James had been neutered.

The inclusive "good will toward all people" sounds wrong for a reason: it's too stately. "Good will toward men"—like a shepherd—is plain and unadorned.

"Prose is architecture, " Hemingway said, "and the Baroque is over."

The King James editorial crew should have let it stand, as the US Navy has sagely done, for example, with "messman," letting it stand over the gender-neutral "culinary specialist."

And so here is The Mighty Copywriter's new rule for gender marking:

If it ain't baroque, don't fix it.

Crap Content Portends Crap Customer Care

A friend once told me he paid a call on a prospect while battling a sudden-onset flu. My friend was ushered into the executive's office and promptly threw up on the man's desk. Not surprisingly, he didn't close the sale.

When you publish crap content—ungrammatical, tortuous and jargon-heavy—you kill sales, just as surely as my friend did.

Crap content portends crap customer care.

Need proof? Then consider the following, courtesy of the crap-content creators behind United Airlines' blog, Hub:

Top 5 things to know about the United Polaris experience

We're very excited about our brand new international premium cabin service—United Polaris first and business class—which offers comfort and relaxation for restful sleep in the sky. To make sure you know what to expect with United Polaris travel, see below for a few key reminders. You can learn more at united.com/Polaris.

1. Service


2. Lounge


3. Seat


4. Amenities


5. Cabin names


What makes this crap content?

• Prolixity. Why does the blogger use superlatives to excess? He's not "excited," but "very excited." The service isn't "new," but "brand new." It doesn't provide "comfort," but "comfort and relaxation." The blogger doesn't offer "reminders," but "key reminders."
  
  
• Jargon. The blogger packs the 180-word post with jargon like "long haul," "roll out" and "soft-launched."
  
  
• Nonsense. Planes fly, but since when do "seats take flight?" What the hell are "sleep-focused amenities?" And who really cares that United has renamed its first-class cabins?

Crap-content creators like United's will say: Who cares? It's only marketing content: here today, gone tomorrow. Their indifference reflects the brand's values to a T.

They'd be well served to take the advice of critic Alexander Woolcott:

I count it a high honor to belong to a profession in which the good men write every paragraph, every sentence, every line, as lovingly as any Addison or Steele, and do so in full regard that by tomorrow it will have been burned, or used, if at all, to line a shelf.

In Praise of the Short Sentence

Want to release a powerful idea?

Use a short sentence.

The short sentence gains its power from its adjacency to long ones, which comprise the bulk of most any piece of writing.

Long sentences, says writing teacher Roy Peter Clark, "bring clarity, create suspense or magnify emotion."

Short ones pack punch. They're pithy, truthful, Tweetable.

Consider how our world is the better for these bantams:

• Hunger is the best sauce.
• Good is the enemy of the great.
• A little learning is a dangerous thing.
• No man is great if he thinks he is.
• Be sincere, be brief, be seated.
• You can’t always get what you want.
• Eighty percent of success is showing up.
• Easy does it.
• To finish is to win.
• Do, or do not; there is no try.

Good Things

Good things, when short, are twice as good.

                                                           

— Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

The Jesuits taught me, if you use a lot of words to express a thought, you're not thinking very hard.

Or you're covering your ass.

As Polonius said, "Brevity is the soul of wit."

As Dorothy Parker said, "Brevity is the soul of lingerie."

That Old Black Magic

Whoever Americans elect as president next week, I hope she has a witch as her top aide, as does South Korea's president. We're going to need that old black magic to get well.

Writers need black magic, too; and editors are its source.

In his new memoir, The Accidental Life, Terry McDonell quotes Norman Cousins, the longtime editor of Saturday Review, on the art of editing:

Nothing is more ephemeral than words. Moving them from the mind of a writer to the mind of a reader is one of the most elusive and difficult undertakings ever to challenge the human intelligence. This is what being an editor is all about.

Editors are advisers, coaches, cheerleaders, therapists, parents, midwives and—as Cousins implies—sorcerers.

They're also missionaries, as Robin Lloyd, contributing editor for Scientific American, says:

My motivation as an editor is clear, compelling communication for the reader. Delivering that is my first job. Readers are looking at every word for an excuse to bail out—to stop reading a story. My job is to prevent that and to keep them reading this story by focusing on clarity, pacing, logic, arc, and sparkling prose.

Above all, editors are match-makers, pairing willing writers with willing audiences.

That means an editor must be conversant in many fields; sense which topics are ripe for coverage; and know which ideas, words and phrases will keep readers reading.

No mean feat.

Soup Up Your Writing

There is but one art—to omit!

Robert Louis Stevenson

Many thinkers, including, Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Pound and Koestler, have noted the German verb dichten—"to write"—also means "to condense."

The word stems from the Latin dictare, "to dictate." Ancient Roman poets used to dictate their verses to slaves, who wrote them down (hence, "condensed" them) on wax tablets.

The most persuasive writing is condensed.

Its strength comes from conciseness, what Hemingway called "leaving out*"—omitting everything that's irrelevant or obvious.

When you edit your writing, think of Darwin.

When only the fittest survive, what's left is stronger and better.

"Like passengers in a lifeboat, all the words in a concise text must pull their own weight," says journalist Danny Heitman.

Your goal in writing shouldn't be to inform, but to suggest—to help readers reach understandings of their own.

And your goal should be speed—speed that comes only from condensing.

"Modern prose had to accelerate its pace, not because trains run faster than mailcoaches, but because the trains of thought run faster than a century ago," Koestler said.

Here's an example of persuasive writing (85 words) from a white paper:

The resounding message surrounding Millennials is clear: Money means less, culture means more. But that’s not to say money doesn’t matter at all. As the generation with the highest rates of unemployment, lowest earnings and record student loan debt, Millennials certainly care about their financial health. A recent study from Gallup found that 48 percent of Millennials find overall compensation “extremely important” when seeking new job opportunities, and one in two would consider taking a new job for a raise of 20 percent or less.

Here's the same paragraph souped up (condensed by 35%):

Millennials are loud and clear: Money means less; culture, more. But it's not that money means nothing: Millennials suffer high unemployment, low earnings and crippling student loan debt. In fact, 48 percent say compensation is “extremely important,” and 50 percent would change jobs for a raise of 20 percent or less, as Gallup recently found.

Employers Want People Who Can Write

This just in: Employers want people who can write.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a survey of 180 companies by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found 4 of the top 5 skills valued by employers are "hallmarks of a traditional liberal-arts education."

Clear-writing skill was ranked Number 3 (following leadership and teamwork).

“It’s easier to hire people who can write—and teach them how to read financial statements—rather than hire accountants in hopes of teaching them to be strong writers,” head recruiter for the investment firm Morningstar told The Wall Street Journal.

One Morningstar employee—the firm's expert on more than a dozen well-known equity-strategy funds—was a philosophy and classics major who earned a PhD in theology.

Want to improve your job or promotion prospects?

Go back to school and study philosophy (expensive), or read Writing Tools and The Art and Craft of Feature Writing (cheap).

HAT TIP: Thanks to Kevin Daum for informing me of NACE's survey.

4 Writing Defects You Should Eliminate

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

― Louise Brooks

Your boss demands you do more with less.

Start with your writing.

Slow down and try to write more concisely; in particular, eliminate these four common defects:

Roadblocks. Cut needless words and phrases like "very," "actually," "I think" and "in my opinion." And replace modified verbs with strong verbs; for example, replace "consider thoroughly" with "evaluate."

Jerks. Smooth the breaks between sentences by using transitional words and phrases like "because," "for example," and “in contrast.” Use short introductory questions like "Seem reasonable?" to ease the transition into new paragraphs. Use phrases like "Let me explain why" to end paragraphs.

Clichés. Replace clichés with vivid descriptions. Instead of saying "we raised the bar in customer support," say "our Help Desk is hyperfocused."

Monotony. Give your writing some rhythm. Alter the cadence with a mix of long and short sentences. And don't forget those sentence fragments. Yes, fragments.

Believe it or not, elimination adds. It adds spark to your prose readers will notice.

Here's an example:

Before

In my opinion, we substantially raised the bar for responsiveness in customer support last quarter. I think the team was very careful to consider thoroughly the numerous challenges customers routinely experience whenever they called our Help Desk seeking assistance. I would like therefore to offer a big thumbs up to the Sales Operations team for the can-do attitude they demonstrated in tackling this really difficult issue.

After 

Sales Operations streamlined a number of critical Help Desk procedures last quarter, improving the customer experience. Without exception, my kudos to team members. You tackled one tough job―and succeeded!