Anything else Archives - Page 8 of 9

CONTRACTIONS DON’T HAVE TO BE PAINFUL

May 11, 2011 by Scott Flood

One of the biggest misconceptions about writing for business or promotional purposes involves those handy little word combinations that we call contractions. You’re familiar with them: cannot becomes can’t, will not shortens to won’t, and so forth.

When professional writers insert those handy contractions into the copy they develop, it often creates a strange reaction among their clients. Suddenly, those clients doubt the very competence of the writer they’ve hired or assume that the writer must have been poorly educated. Why? Because one or more of their teachers told them that using contractions was a big no-no.

BIZARRE FUNDRAISERS AND A TORNADIC GOOF

May 4, 2011 by Scott Flood

While I’d never try to find the light side in the horrific tornados that scraped across the southern U.S. last week, I can’t let one story I read pass without comment. The story made reference to one of the Alabama communities that was devastated.

One line in the story read: Neighborhoods there were leveled by a massive tornado caught on video by a tower-mounted news camera that barreled through late Wednesday afternoon.

Did you catch what jarred my brain?

QUIT THE QUOTATIONS

April 27, 2011 by Scott Flood

Quotation marks are a very familiar punctuation device, and we’d have a tough time surviving without them. As a famous writer once said, “Quotation marks allow us to identify what someone actually says, as opposed to simple statements being made by the writer.” Actually, I just made that quote up, but it illustrates one of the primary roles of quotation marks. The other is to denote when something is being lifted from another source.

There’s a third use for quotation marks, and it’s not well-understood. It’s to imply that something isn’t really what you’re presenting it as. For example, if I wrote that a necklace was made from “silver” or “real” silver, I’m implying that it’s actually an imitation. If I said that a particular political candidate is “smart,” I’m suggesting that she’s dumber than that proverbial box of rocks.

MAKE THE FIRST TIME MEMORABLE

April 21, 2011 by Scott Flood

Even if your job makes you say something 150 times a day, never lose sight of the fact that it may be the first time your audience is hearing it.

I think about that every time I’m shopping in a store and the cashier or an employee on the PA mumbles “thank you for shopping with us.” They don’t mean it. They don’t even try to pretend that they mean it. It’s something they’ve been told to say, so they say it with no enthusiasm.

DEATH TO THE AMPERSAND!

April 6, 2011 by Scott Flood

No, I’m not advocating violence against punctuation. And I’ll admit that the ampersand (that little “&” mark) can be handy now and then. But it’s one of the most-misused tools in the punctuation toolbox.

The ampersand serves as a graphic replacement for the word “and.” When used in graphic design, it can even be a thing of beauty — much prettier than those three letters it replaces. Designers will twist and turn ampersands, run words through and around them, or present them in different colors and typefaces.

FOOLING OTHERS — OR YOURSELF?

February 23, 2011 by Scott Flood

When I started my business, I’d spend a lot of time reading through online forums and other small business advice sites. I found some good advice (along with a lot of really crappy stuff from self-styled experts).

One issue that came up again and again was whether the owners of these new businesses should refer to themselves as “I” or “we” when writing about the business in brochures and other materials. (Websites were still new enough that people weren’t agonizing over them.)

WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PAGE?

February 9, 2011 by Scott Flood

Another simple way to gauge your copy’s potential effectiveness is to highlight it in two different colors. Whether you’re developing a letter, a brochure, a web page, or any other channel, take a few moments to highlight all of the sentences that are really about your customer and his or her needs. Let’s do that in pink. Next, highlight all the sentences that are about your company and what it does in yellow.

Now look at the page. What color is your page?

NEKKID FROM THE WASTE DOWN AND OTHER GOOFS

January 26, 2011 by Scott Flood

“… He then undressed her from the waste down and cut open her shirt and bra …” That salacious gem came from a story on the Indianapolis Star’s website. I had images of Lady Gaga wearing an outfit made of trash, or perhaps someone who was stuck headfirst into a landfill. Once again, a story was spellchecked, but not edited. Or maybe the writer really wasn’t referring to a woman’s waist.

A similar, but less exciting example appeared in the February issue of Trains Magazine. In an item about a railroad executive, a writer mentioned that the man “was previously general council.” No, that would be “counsel,” a noun most often referring to attorneys when preceded by “general.” A “council” is a group of people gathered for a particular task, such as a “town council” or a “merchants’ council.”

THE BEST ADVERTISING TEXTBOOK OF ALL TIME

January 19, 2011 by Scott Flood

I’ve read a lot of great books about advertising and marketing, but none even comes close to one I read as a teen. It still occupies a prominent place on my bookshelf.
It’s a 1972 text called “Madvertising (or Up Madison Ave.),” and it was created by the same geniuses who guided Mad Magazine through its glory years. Many of those writers and artists had cut their teeth in the advertising industry, and they used the book to skewer the many tricks and techniques major advertisers employ.

JUST BECAUSE WORD DOES IT …

January 12, 2011 by Scott Flood

As a society, we’ve developed a frightening level of trust in technology. We often abandon our own knowledge and better judgment because some aspect of technology has a different answer — and it must be correct, right?

Microsoft Word is an amazing piece of technology. I spend several hours with it every day, and I know that I’ll never do more than scratch the surface of its capabilities. But any piece of software is only as good as the knowledge and preferences of its programmers.