Vintage Verbs: Perstringe

Part 2 of a 5-part series on forgotten verbs

Perstringe means to put down or rebuke.

You might say, "Chad was fired after he perstringed his employer on Facebook."

The verb derives from the Latin word perstringo, to reprimand.

Vintage Verbs: Attinge

Part 1 of a 5-part series on forgotten verbs

English comprises more than half a million words. 

Many are undeservedly forgotten.

Attinge means to touch or influence.

You might say, "Chad's post about great customer service attinged thousands of users."

We preserve the verb's Latin root whenever we use the word tangent.

Viral Content Cookbook

In Contagious, Wharton School marketing professor Jonah Berger offers a science-based sequel to Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, the 2000 book that put the word "viral" in everyone's vocabulary.

In 200 pages, Berger examines the "six principles of contagiousness."

He asks readers to visualize the principles as the six "ingredients" baked into every piece of viral content.

1. Berger claims viral content is spread because it makes carriers "look smart," a facet of that content he calls "social currency."
2. Viral content also contains "triggers," cues to some outside world; when people enter that world, they're spurred to talk about the content (for example, during breakfast-hours, Tweets mentioning "Cheerios" spike because the cereal is inextricably linked to that time of day).
3. Viral content pulls the heartstrings. Content that evokes strong "emotion" (the threat of a tax increase, for example) is apt to spread.
4. Viral content always has a "public" aspect; people witness others engaged and follow the herd.
5. Viral content has "practical value," which encourages people to pass it on.
6. Viral content tells "stories," prompting people, like the poet Homer, to recite that content.

For readability, Contagious doesn't compare to The Tipping Point; and whether you master Berger's "recipe" will depend on your culinary skills. 

But, as chefs like to say, "Great food begins with great ingredients."

End Sloppy Emails

When I first entered the workforce, no one would dare send a written communication (we called it a "memo") without prior review by the boss.

Business ran according to military rules (in fact, many of the bosses were former military officers). 

Those days are long over.

"A new status symbol in today's generally more egalitarian business environment has arisen: sloppy e-mails," says consultant Keith Ferazzi.

Writing for Harvard Business Review, Ferazzi recommends these four tips for ending sloppy emails:

Empathize with readers. Too many writers lack empathy for their readers. When writing an email, "use respect, positive affirmations, and gratitude to set the right tone and proper context." Your writing will display more empathy if you "visualize that individual in his office as you send him an e-mail."

Appreciate different styles. "We all tend to prefer a certain 'language' for communications at work," Ferazzi says. Some people prefer numbers; some, pictures; and others, stories. Appreciating others' styles improves your ability to communicate and reduces the likelihood of misinterpretation.

Spell things out. "We often communicate less information than we think we are, a syndrome psychologists call signal amplification bias," Ferazzi writes. Make descriptions and instructions clear and complete.

Respond promptly. Readers care not only about content, but about the promptness of your replies to their emails, Ferazzi says. "When your reply is tardy, the other party is left wondering whether you value that relationship or not."

In Defense of the Plain Style

Itinerant writer Robert Louis Stevenson, battling TB, wandered into a merchant’s stall in San Francisco one day in 1879. 

He bought a used copy of Some Fruits of Solitude, a collection of maxims published 176 years earlier by the American Quaker William Penn.

Stevenson later told a friend that he had “carried the book in my pocket all about the San Francisco streets, read it in streetcars and ferryboats when I was sick unto death, and found in all times and places a peaceful and sweet companion.”

Among the things Stevenson admired was Penn's defense of the “plain style” of writing.

The plain style was characterized by clarity and simplicity.

Plain-stylists like Penn believed affected writing was the product of vanity and served only to confuse people.

He hated especially the “laboring of slight matter with flourished turns of expression,” calling it “worse than the modern imitation of tapestry.”

Imagine how Penn would respond today to this crazy-quilt (quoted in full from the Home page of an IT firm):

_______ is an industry leader in the development of both Hosted and On Premise based call center solutions and predictive dialers for industry-specific applications ranging from financial services to home remodeling and other related companies that utilize the services of Predictive Dialing and Contact Center Management & Customer Interaction. We offer both premise based and hosted solutions to small to medium-sized inside sales organizations to larger call centers. Our goal is to provide a seamless cost- effective call center solution which involves the cohesive blend of computer telephony integration (CTI) applications, Web-centric applications, customer relationship management (CRM), agent interaction and other channels of communications such as Web call back, Web chat, email, fax and Web collaboration.

Huh?