Your job as a writer is to get your message across clearly and quickly.
One way you can sabotage communication is by laying traps for readers. Traps that halt a reader’s natural flow as their eye scans over text.
Punctuation – as the name suggests – stops flow. This is why I leave out optional commas.
You can also slow down a reader’s flow when you use capital letters incorrectly. For the same reason you should never write a word entirely in capitals.
Companies that insist their names are spelled out in capitals only do this because they want to halt the reader’s flow and make them take notice. You do not have to indulge them. It’s another story if they are paying you to write marketing copy.
Likewise I don’t use the ‘&’ symbol – instead I always write ‘and’. The exception to this rule is when the ‘&’ forms part of a company’s name.
The same applies to ‘+’.
It is also better to write out percent in full than use %. Although some newspapers, including one where I work, insists on using the symbol.
Never resort to phone text-style language in anything written for a wider audience. It isn’t funny, clever or useful.
Got a GST reminder from Inland Revenue last night for my biggest tax period of the year. Worried all night that I hadn’t paid quite a large tax bill, was concerned about the money and resigned myself to an hour or two with Xero fixing things this morning. Turns out the reminder was incorrect.
The good thing about reading the football news pages first is that the stories are never triggering: unless you happen to be a Spurs or Everton fan.
Over the summer I’ve been fixing the broken links on my other website. There are close to 2000 pages on the site and by the end of November there were around the same number of broken links.
Links break when sites go offline or move pages from one URL to another without a redirect. This is sometimes known as link rot. It has become far more common in recent years. Some weeks the service I use to flag broken links shows as many as dozen either vanish or move. The most I noticed in a single week was 28.
Fixing broken links is tedious and time consuming. Some I just let go and delete the link. OK, I let a lot of them go. If they are easy to repair, I’ll rewrite the link.
So far this summer I’ve repaired or trashed, mainly trashed, about 1400 broken links. The downside of doing this is that twice I have accidentally hit the wrong button and republished the page with the broken link.
My newsletter readers might be wondering what is going on.
Avoid jargon if you can. Sometimes you have no choice.
It makes your writing difficult to understand and puts readers off. Jargon confuses readers and in many cases jargon is ambiguous – always a sign of poor communication. It puts a barrier between you and your readers.
This is especially hard if you interview someone who talks in jargon and mangement cliches. You have a duty to report their words accurately, but you also have a duty not to bombard readers with gobbledegook.
Where you can, turn quotes into indirect speech and simply drop the jargon term. Use easily understood descriptive words and phrases instead.
When you can’t avoid a jargon term give your reader a short definition in plain English.
If possible add an example to illustrate the definition.
I had to write about management when the term ‘participative management’ came up as unavoidable jargon.
I explained this as:
Participative management, a way of running things where the workers take part in decision-making.
It would have been so much better if the interviewee said that in the first place.
The post is ancient, but Erin Brenner wonders “Does spelling still matter?”
It does. It matters a lot.
Some people think worrying about spelling and grammar is anal and backward. They are wrong.
There are two reasons why spelling and grammar are important and will remain important for as long as people still read printed words:
First: Well-written, properly-spelt, grammatically-correct English is unambiguous.
Poorly written English is open to misinterpretation.
If being understood is important, then worry about spelling and grammar.
Second: Well-written text flows, it’s a pleasure to read. It sends readers a message about your professionalism and wisdom. It is credible. People want to read more of it.
Poorly written English jerks around, it causes readers to stumble. They may not realise why this sets off alarm bells in their heads, but it does. They won’t look for follow-up reading.
Too much poor English and they’ll question the message. This may not happen on a conscious level. It may not happen with all readers. It will happen enough for it to matter. So yes, spelling still matters.
A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
Use capital letters for proper nouns. Avoid them for common nouns.
Proper nouns are the names of things. So use capitals for the names of people, places, months, days of the week, companies and so on. Don’t use capitals for common nouns.
People run into difficulty with capitals because there’s a temptation to use them for important words. In business writing people often use capitals as a way of avoiding offending someone or something by implying he or it isn’t important.
Another difficulty is with titles. Newspapers typically use a capital letter when the title comes directly before a person’s name but not otherwise.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key is correct, but it would be the prime minister’s desk.
For more on this see Narcissistic capitals.
In his book Newsman’s English British newspaper editor Harold Evans says;
“Avoid using them unnecessarily. The Parks Committee, but subsequently the committee. The South West Regional Hospital Board, but then the hospital board.”
One piece of advice I had early in my career as a journalist is: “If in doubt use lower case unless it looks wrong”.
Lastly, do not use capital letters for emphasis and avoid writing words in all capitals.
I suspect people in Sicily will understand why the big tech companies are all making huge “donations” to the Trump inauguration fund.
One thing I absolutely HATE about TradeMe is that I filled in fields saying that I don’t allow pickups and I’m not open to offers and yet all week long I’ve had annoying fools sending messages for both these things. And I can see these people are major online traders.
Two years ago I spent three or four days chopping back half a dozen privet bushes on our property. I drilled holes in the stumps and poured in non-toxic weed killer. There wasn’t much last summer, but this year it has returned with a vengeance. It turns out my earlier work only amounted to pruning.
Disappointed Australia’s Northern Territory News didn’t feature any crocodile stories over Christmas - New Year. Standards are slipping.
My motivation for using TradeMe to sell the old tech from my cupboard is about recycling not about making money (which I send to good causes). I’ve noticed if I price low, traders will buy and resell my items at many multiples of my price. I have mixed emotions about this.
Man City v Everton - Home
AFC Bournemouth v Crystal Palace - Home
Chelsea v Fulham - Home
Newcastle v Aston Villa - Draw
Nottingham Forest v Tottenham Hotspur - Home
Southampton v West Ham - Away
Wolves v Manchester United - Away
Liverpool v Leicester - Home
Brighton v Brentford - Draw
Arsenal v Ipswich - Home
Last week I imploded with only two correct picks.
“Affordable” is one of the weasel words used by marketing people. What they hope you’ll read is “this is cheap”, what they actually mean is “you can buy this if your children miss out on essentials”.
It’s not a profound or original thought, but I’m overwhelmed at how many excellent pie makers there are in New Zealand. It’s something we do really well.
Yes, Australia is good at this too, their best are up there, but here the general standard even in modest looking suburban bakeries is high, often gourmet.
In urban areas you are rarely more than 15 minutes from great pies. Where I live I can count at least six first class establishments within 20 minutes.
For health reasons I have to limit myself to no more than two in any week, but the temptation is strong. What a way to go.
I love to fix broken things. My daughter gave me her stick vacuum. Turns out the problem is the battery, found a replacement battery, but it costs more to buy the replacement and pay for shipping than the price of a new vacuum. This is why landfills are full.
From my site 15 years ago. Looking back I’d say musicians have done way better than journalists, but that’s not a high bar.
Aston Villa - Manchester City - Home
Brentford - Nottingham Forest - Away
Ipswich - Newcastle - Draw
West Ham - Brighton - Home
Crystal Palace - Arsenal - Draw
Everton - Chelsea - Away
Fulham - Southampton - Home
Leicester - Wolves - Home
Manchester United - Bournemouth - Draw
Tottenham - Liverpool - Draw
Last week was a disaster with only three correct.
So far this season I have 62 right out of 129 games predicted (I didn’t start until Match Day 4). That’s a hit rate of 48 percent.
Made it to December 16 without hearing a single Christmas song… but from here on in it gets harder. Apart from anything else I can’t avoid the supermarket much longer
How bad is it when a New Zealand company INSISTS on a mobile phone number before you can order online, but will only accept numbers in the international format but without the + part of +64. Having to guess the required format is a customer usability nightmare.
I don’t see any away winners this week, that’s statistically unlikely, but here goes:
Arsenal - Everton - Home
Liverpool - Fulham - Home
Newcastle United - Leicester City - Home
Wolverhampton - Ipswich Town - Draw
Nottingham Forest - Aston Villa - Draw
Brighton & Hove - Crystal Palace - Home
Manchester City - Manchester United - Home
Chelsea - Brentford - Home
Southhampton - Tottenham Hotspur - Draw
Bournemouth - West Ham - Home
Last week I scored seven out of nine, my best week yet. The postponed Liverpool - Everton game would probably have given me an 80 percent hit rate, but there’s still time yet.
As of this week I’m at 59 right out of 119 games, a fraction under 50 percent.
At some point I managed to disable voicemail on my phone. That’s good, I hate using it. But then I upgraded my phone and there are now a dozen voicemail messages that I don’t want to listen to and I’ve forgotten the magic incantations needed to switch it off agin.