I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential.
Read, subscribe to my newsletter, enjoy!Tash
Always double-check your writing
Writing well is more than just getting words onto the page – you also need to check the correct words and spelling are there to be read.
I was looking at a website the other day and I’m sure they didn’t proof read it – maybe they didn’t actually read it at all once it was written. On their contact page it states:
Submit your answers and reply or call at no time.
The bit that jumped out at me was ‘call at no time’ – not exactly a welcoming message for a business! The mistake of ‘no’ instead of ‘any’ is simple to make but has a big impact on the final meaning of your words.
Of course, ‘submit your answers and reply’ doesn’t make sense either. Reading over their work (or getting someone else to read it for them) could have ended with webcopy that made sense.
So always read through and check your writing says what you wanted it to say, without missing words.
Trusting suppliers
Outsourcing is a valuable activity in business – you gain expert assistance, time and completed projects.
Yet many business owners choose to not trust their suppliers. Now obviously you need to maintain control and ensure suppliers are providing you with what you’re paying for, but you are also paying for their expertise.
I recently did some webcopy for a client. Amongst other things, I rewrote their about us page – both adjusting the content (as requested by the client) and improving the flow and grammar of the page.
The feedback from the client was ‘that’s good thanks, but we made a few changes to the about us text’. That’s great – they should take ownership and make changes so it is accurate and they are comfortable with the final copy.
However, when I looked at their changes I saw that they had replaced a lot of my text with their grammatically incorrect text again. By grammatically incorrect, I’m talking about sentences like ‘we started our business because my son needed…’ without indicating who ‘me’ actually is. It ended up not making much sense and looking very amateurish, unfortunately.
The point is that if you’re going to pay a professional writer, then take their advice on grammar, flow and style, even if you want to change the tone or content of the work.
I’ve heard graphic designers, accountants, web designers and database programmers express this frustration, too. In all instances, the professional has done what the client wanted but is disappointed in the result as they are aware of the errors. The professional is also unlikely to add that project to their portfolio so you won’t get any free advertising that way, either.
Question a professional by all means, make a suggestion even, but listen to what they tell you before you assume your way is best.
If you are not ready to take professional advice and direction, then maybe you aren’t ready to give up any control of your business and outsourcing won’t help you.
Outsourcing will help you and save you time, but only if you are ready to accept that help.
Style Guide vs Style Sheet
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the use of style sheets to help you keep your writing consistent. The next step is a style guide.
What’s the difference?
A style sheet is short (usually only one page) and lists very specific items, such as preferred spellings of particular words.
A style guide is a comprehensive set of rules to keep everything consistent. A full style guide can list the logo colours, spelling style, formatting, design and more, and would include everything in the style sheet as well.
Often, a style sheet is a summary of frequently used details from the style guide.
Which is better?
A style sheet can be on your desk or wall as a quick reference you can refer to as you work. So it is great for everyday items.
A style guide is important to maintain your brand. It can be used by your suppliers as well as by staff to ensure that everyone uses the same rules to keep consistency regardless of who does the work.
If you are a sole trader, you may not think a style guide is worth the effort as you control everything. But as your business grows or if you leave someone else in charge when you take a break, a style guide can keep your control in place. It can also be a very useful tool to offer potential buyers if you later to choose to sell your business.
For a professional appearance, a style sheet is a great start, but I would recommend a style guide as something to aim for over time.
I’m sure they start earlier…
Yesterday, we had the chance to look at the grade 1 classrooms our child may be in next year. We had time to wonder around and look at the children’s work and the provided posters on the walls.
It was interesting to see that they have learnt about adjectives, different writing styles (narrative, reporting, discussion, etc) and proofreading – I’m sure I didn’t know all that in grade 1!
I occasionally help a trainer with a communications module he teaches as part of a course, and I can tell you there are a lot of adults who don’t know what these grade 1 students are learning. Of course, I see many other examples as I read things in general, too.
Maybe we’ll have a very literate community in 30 years or so, or maybe it’s just our school setting a high standard. Either way, I’ll keep sharing writing and grammar tips here and in my newsletter in the hope of helping people use correct grammar – and parents stay up with their kids!
Polite emails
Writing an email is so quick and easy that sometimes we forget it is in writing and still reflects on how we are perceived.
For starters, emails should be just as polite as letter or face-to-face contact. Apart from being likely to get a positive response to good manners, it is simply a sign of respect and professionalism.
I recently received an email from someone who runs a network which I don’t participate in. The second paragraph started with “If you are not a fan of using Forums, perhaps now is a good time to change your attitude.”
It didn’t help that there was no greeting to start the email (It opened with “Just a reminder to go to the Forum”)
I found this quite rude and it actually made me less likely to join her forums in case that is how I would be treated there as well. She made no allowance for people being busy, having concerns over online security* or not knowing how to use a forum – she just assumed I have a bad attitude and that I should change it to suit her.
So how do you keep an email polite?
start with a greeting, and preferably use the person’s name
use words like please and thank you
don’t insult people – if you must say something negative, put it in positive or constructive terms
be brief so you don’t waste their time
use proper sentences so it is easy to understand and you look intelligent and literate
treat the reader with respect – if you wouldn’t say it to their face, it isn’t appropriate to write it either
* Her email mentions that non-members can read the posts so I would have concerns about the security of the site.
Quotation marks
Have you ever noticed how many unnecessary quotation marks are used?
I once wrote the following as a guest blogger:
Quotation marks seem to be fashionable at the moment, which is a shame as they are being used so badly! “Recommended by doctors and mothers” makes me feel like they are telling me a lie – if it is a genuine statement, why does it need to be in quotation marks?
Quotation marks are correctly used to:
– indicate you are quoting someone
– indicate speech (e.g. He said “How are you?”)
– present a title of something
– show the text lacks credibility or truth, or at least is not verifiable (e.g. The media release stated the product was “superior”)
If you are tempted to use quotation marks for emphasis, try bold, italics, underline, colour, indenting or size of font instead – it will stand out more and not send any incorrect messages!
So I was rather amused when I came across a blog dedicated to silly use of quotation marks. I hope you enjoy seeing these grammatical blunders, as well as getting tips for your own writing!
Style Sheets
Business writing, well good business writing, is made up of a lot of elements. One important element that isn’t mentioned very often is consistency.
While consistency in style, design and so forth are important, I am talking about consistency within the content itself.
It can be consistency in spelling (advisor or adviser?), capitalisation (Internet or internet?), hyphenation (multi-media or multimedia?), abbreviations (A.T.O. or ATO?) or apostrophes (CDs or CD’s?) Sometimes there is a right or wrong way, but in other cases either way is acceptable. However, switching between them in the same document or on your website can be distracting and even annoying. It also doesn’t send a good message about your attention to detail.
Let’s take the example of adviser and advisor. Both are acceptable spellings of the word, although some dictionaries list advisor as the American spelling; adviser tends to be more common in Australia.
If you are writing a webpage about your services as a business adviser, it is likely you would write adviser quite a few times. And by the time you have written the entire website, you will probably have used adviser at least a dozen or so times.
Now, if you have a strong preference for writing adviser, it will be easy and you probably wrote adviser every time. Likewise if you prefer advisor.
But what if you can never remember which is the ‘right’ way? Or you prefer adviser but whoever wrote the older webpages used advisor and it’s hard to remember which to use.
How can you remember which way to spell adviser? And at the same time remember to keep everything else consistent?
One way is to prepare yourself a style sheet.
How does a style sheet work?
Your style sheet can simply be a list of things to watch out for, or it can be a grid with each square being a letter of the alphabet so you can sort the things to watch out for.
An example style sheet is:
Style Sheet for Word Constructions Blog
Adviser
CDs
database
e.g.
internet
multimedia
program
Next time I need to write about a multimedia program within my blog, I just check that style sheet for the appropriate spelling.
Style sheets can be particularly useful if you have more than one entity to write about. You might have a style sheet for your job and another one for your own business, or maybe you need a style sheet for each client.
Company and product names can also be included in a style sheet as getting these names correct is an important part of branding.
The time it takes to create a style sheet will be paid for by having greater consistency in your writing. And a style sheet makes a great starting point for a style guide later on.
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