Bill Bennett
After Twitter
There are plenty of post-Twitter alternatives to choose from. Each of the active ones has its own charm, its own potential and its own source or sources of friction.
Yet, none solve the problem I face: my main website’s readership remains on Twitter. Web traffic has plummeted since I’ve wound down my Twitter activity.
It wasn’t too bad at first when I could relay messages from Micro.Blog or Mastodon to Twitter. Now those avenues have shut.
The next stage is going to be difficult.
The four most dangerous words in investing are: It’s different this time.
- Sir John Templeton, quoted in The Asian Age.
Not only are there no new economic paradigms, the moment anyone mentions the word paradigm in connection with your money, I suggest you run for the door.
So glad I didn’t sign the non-disclosure form and agree to the media embargo on a boring yet ridiculous new Dyson vacuum cleaner that costs the thick end of two grand.
Structure your writing like a journalist
Newspapers teach journalists to write using the inverted pyramid.
It isn’t always the best approach, but it is reliable. the inverted pyramid has worked for news writing since the days reporters telegraphed dispatches to editors. Today it works for online writing.
The structure echoes the classic essay structure you were taught — or should have been taught — at school.
The basic format:
Introduction — say what the piece is about; answer questions like who, what, where and when. You can also explain why at this point, although that can wait until later.
Then — expand, amplify;
Keep doing this until you’ve told the whole story. Make the most important points first then add more and more detail in each additional paragraph.
How did this develop? Printed newspaper had limited space for news. Traditional newspaper subeditors would cut a story from the bottom if it needs to fill a specific space on a printed page.
The inverted pyramid structure, with each paragraph being progressively less important, means editors remove the least important information first.
A news story written using the inverted pyramid structure can be cut at the end of any paragraph, even the first paragraph, and still be a self-contained story.
Online this means search engines pay more attention to the most important words – which helps people find your writing. Those opening paragraphs also make neat summaries for listings and similar online uses.
The most important information goes in the first paragraph and each extra paragraph carries progressively less weight. That’s where the inverted pyramid name comes from: the foundation sits at the top, the less important details are at the bottom.
Use be verbs sparingly
If you want to make your writing clearer and more interesting, use ‘be’ verbs sparingly.
The verb to be includes:
Be, being, been, am, is, are, was, were.
Be verbs make text dull partly because of overuse, but also because they remove the reader one step from the action. They take readers the long route to meaning and can be long-winded.
Compare:
Fred is dismissive of cowboy films
with
Fred dismisses cowboy films.
The second phrase has more energy, it propels the reader along. It expresses the same idea in a clearer, more concise way.
Be verbs turn up in passive language, staying away from them helps keep your writing in the active voice.
Old-school newspapers taught journalists to never use be verbs in headlines, but prefer strong action verbs instead. It’s hard to get away with that in today’s online world, so think instead of keeping them to a minimum.
Make the active voice your first choice
The active voice is usually better than the passive voice because it is direct. This makes it easier to understand and unambiguous. With the active voice a subject does something to an object: Andy kicked the ball.
In the passive voice the object is acted on by the subject: The ball was kicked by Andy.
An active voice makes for tighter writing and easier reading. It is more personal and less formal.
Efficient writing The passive sentence used six words while the active sentence needed only four. It has simpler grammar. Active sentences are economic and clear.
Active voice phrases are easier to understand because they involve fewer stages. Think of it as fewer mental hoops to jump through. This becomes important in more complex sentences and longer pieces of text.
While active voice sentences are also easier to write, you might not always find this in practice. The good news is that writing active sentences helps organise your own thoughts. That way you’ll write clearer.
Confident words Sentences written in the active voice read as if the writer is confident about the facts. In contrast, phrases and sentences written in the passive voice seem tentative or uncertain.
Bureaucrats and corporate managers often like hiding behind the passive voice’s ambiguities. Academics like to use it.
For example, in the phrase; “the claims have been analysed”, it isn’t clear who did the analysis. On the other hand; “We analysed the claims” is definite.
It gets worse when the writer resorts to using the word ‘it’ instead of ‘I’ or ‘we’: In the sentence “It was decided no claims would be payable” the author is deliberately hiding behind the ‘it’ implying that authority comes from on high and not identifying the person who did the deciding.
There are times when you need to use the passive voice. That’s another post
Why short words are the best words
Winston Churchill said: “Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.”
He was right.
Short words are best because they don’t get in the reader’s way. They are familiar.
This makes them easy to understand and easy to spell.
They are also easier to pronounce.
Most short words in modern English come from Anglo-Saxon, not Latin, roots.
They mainly describe real world objects and actions, not abstract concepts.
Short words get straight to the point. Use as many of them as you can.
Let concrete nouns pin down your writing
Good writing is direct, clear and precise. It gives readers direct insight into your thoughts and ideas.
Concrete nouns keep your writing on track. They are unambiguous and specific.
Use concrete nouns when you need to pin down facts and inform readers.
We describe nouns as concrete when they refer to something you can touch, smell, see, taste or hear. They are all things you sense directly.
Banana, chair, piston engine, trumpet, pterodactyl are all concrete nouns.
I like to think of concrete nouns as crunchy, but they could just as easily be squishy, smelly, loud or colourful.
As opposed to abstract nouns
On the other hand, abstract nouns are things you can’t form a picture of. They are ideas, conditions and qualities, such as courage and happiness.
Many abstract nouns started life as verbs or adverbs, but become abstract nouns with suffixes. So fascinate, becomes fascination, credible becomes credibility and so on.
Yet if you want to report on events or describe something, steer clear of abstract nouns.
Abstract nouns are useful when you want to generalise or when writing about ideas. They can be good for poetry, song lyrics and other flowery types of writing. At the same time they make it hard to figure out exactly what the writer means and are open to misinterpretation.
Can you start sentence with “And”?
At school we were taught never to start sentences with “And”.
And yet newspaper journalists do it all the time. Not starting a sentence with “and” is one of the first so-called rules professional writers learn to break.
There’s nothing wrong with using “and” to begin a sentence or a paragraph. It is a great way to smooth the flow when you have a series of short sentences that would otherwise be too staccato for comfortable reading.
Only break this rule in moderation. Overusing “And” at the start of sentences quickly becomes boring.
As Keith Waterhouse points out in Daily Mirror Style, too many sentences starting with the word means your writing reads like the New English Bible.
Aim for only one “And” sentence start in a short piece of 300 words. For longer stories, you can get away with using it a few times – about once every 3-500 words. Control any urge to sprinkle sentences starting with “And” through your copy.
Other conjunctions
The school rule didn’t just apply to “And”, starting sentences with other conjunctions was also forbidden. As an aside, conjunctions are ‘joining’ words used to string phrases together – usually, but not always, to build more complex sentences.
There are plenty of alternative conjunctions to call on at the start of your sentences:
“But” is a great way to start a sentence that disagrees with the previous one. “Yet” is a less-frequently used alternative. “Or” is a great word for helping text flow. Some people don’t like sentences to start with “However”. That’s another rule worth breaking. “Although” is a possibility. In practice, it can be better to shorten the word to “Though” at the start of a sentence.
Tech: Rural divide in comms, law firm hack, Reddit goes bonkers
Last week’s RNZ technology slot:
Technology correspondent Bill Bennett joins Kathryn to talk about the Commerce Commission’s Telecommunications Monitoring Report and why rural telecoms is now the main political and regulatory frontier for the sector.
Starlink’s entry to New Zealand has made some think problems with rural access to broadband is now solved - but is it?
Bill also looks at the implications for the massive data breach at Australian law firm HWL Ebsworth after a ransomware attack and why Reddit has suddenly become extremely popular.
The term “content” is a barbarism that bit by bit devalues what journalists do.
- Jay Rosen, Chair of Journalism at New York University
Short, snappy writing works best online.
Snappy writing works best online
First, people are less ready to read long pieces online than short articles.
Second, people read online material about 25 per cent slower than print. Jakob Nielsen explains why in In defence of print. Nielsen wrote his article in 1996, but things haven’t changed.
Countering distraction
Third, people get distracted easily online. There are advertisements and links to other websites as well as bleeping notification of incoming emails, tweets and instant messages.
If you write a brief article, there is more chance a reader will get to the end before skipping off elsewhere.
Brevity is the key
Fourth, skilled writers aim for brevity because good, vigorous English is concise.
A writer’s goal is to get messages to readers as swiftly and as accurately as possible.
Get on. Say what you need to say. Get off.
Leave the fancy, flowery stuff to poets and fiction writers.
A Mac user's guide to word processors and other writing apps
Mac owners have a wide range of great writing apps to choose from. Here’s how to find the one that best suits your needs.
2023 Ashes series
Wasn’t sure about staying up late last night, getting up early this morning to watch the opening Ashes test from Edgbaston in England. English daytime cricket matches are played at brutal times when you live in New Zealand. When the Black Caps play in England I move my life to British Summer Time.
Judging by the first day’s play, this series is going to live up to the hype. And anyway, sleep is overrated. 🏏
Cold comfort for journalists
The life of the journalist is poor, nasty, brutish and short. So is his style.
Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
Companies, especially tech companies, will spend time and money on press releases that are predictable, dull and boring. I wrote about this 12 years ago in billbennett.co.nz/predictab…
Twitter’s move to make third parties pay heaps for API access isn’t going to make me use the service any more than I do today.
In fact, the opposite is true. There is even less reason to go there.
Ten years ago Apple made a significant battery life breakthrough with a MacBook Air that could run for an entire working day on a single charge. While this literally changed my life, the story at my website was not about me.
Today’s Download Weekly newsletter looks at the impact Apple’s spatial computing is likely to have on data traffic and broadband networks.
Apple Vision Pro demands fast fibre
Getting found online
As an experiment I submitted the URL for the latest post on my business blog (https://billbennett.co.nz/ia-presenter-launch/) to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Bing had the link online instantly… I searched and found it on the search engine in less than 60 seconds. DuckDuckGo had it well inside another 30 seconds (probably instantaneous). It’s 30 minutes since I posted it to Google and still nothing.
That doesn’t make Bing better, it does mean Bing is responsive.
On a related note… in the last week my site got about 20 per cent of its traffic from Facebook… I haven’t had a Facebook presence in more than a decade.
Guidelines for writing better headlines
Short – cram the maximum amount of meaning into the minimum number of words. There’s no strict guide to ideal word length, but search engines only care about the first 64 characters. Make every word count.
Clear – good headline are unambiguous. They must be immediately understandable in any context. Not everyone reading your writing will be a native English speaker. Keep this in mind.
Straightforward – use mainly nouns and verbs. Remember your nouns will be keywords for people using search engines.
Use simple words – short, Anglo Saxon words are best. Everyone knows exactly what they mean and they help you cram more meaning into fewer characters.
Active – use the active voice.
Avoid – forms of the verb to be. Articles ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’ are space wasters best left out of headlines. Use a comma rather than the word ‘and’. Try not to use pronouns.
Plain English – there’s a grab-bag of short clichéd headline words that people never use in real life – such as nix, slam, rap. It’s better to stick with everyday language.
Some experts will tell you lists, questions and commands work well in online headlines. All may be worth trying, it depends what you are aiming for. Either way, they’ll work better if you keep my earlier points in mind.
If you want to buy a fancy phone, the two best options at the moment are Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro Max and Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra. This blog post I wrote last month compares them:
The Mobile to satellite communications – update blog post was missing its embedded table. Fixed that now.