Essentials

Everyone has those sites and tools they just can't live without. Head buried in other things leaves me with this rather uninspiring but, hopefully, useful post. My top 5 essential tools, sites I visit at least once a day (or once an hour in some cases).

• Cambridge Dictionaries - the cornerstone of daily work for me
• Webcredible - these guys really know their stuff: accessibility, usability, writing for the web...
• Excess Voice - Nick Usborne's blog; a man who knows about putting one word in front of another
• Contentious - Amy Gahran, Communications guru
• Out-Law.com - Legal issues and advice on technology law. Good podcast every week and a good set of resources on the ins and outs of Privacy, Data Protection , Disability Discrimination....and much more
  

Google: a great 'context dictionary'

I often use Google as a dictionary, not so much in the strictest sense of the word, but you look up a word in the dictionary and, fine, you get the official line. If I want to know how and where a phrase or word is used in context, Google, or indeed any search engine I guess, is great for doing this.

It especially helps me if I'm working on technical documents and I'm reading something saying 'did they REALLY mean to say that/what the hell does that mean/is that really a word...' etc.

I just find that article from 'paint manufacturer machine mixer monthly' journal and away I go.

Scamp

Another good tip, which I found through Polon. They linked me to the Scamp blog where the advice is, if you're struggling to crack a brief, Pretend You're Two Blokes In The Pub. Great tip, and links to more of Scamp's 'Tuesday Tips'.

Receiving loud and clear - working with TenFour

A significant new relationship started for me recently, working with TenFour Communications based in Helsinki. Plenty of exciting projects are on the horizon as part of this relationship and I'm already in the thick of things. The future looks good.

George Orwell's six rules of writing

Taken from Polon where they post some great copywriting articles. Seems the perfect set of rules to live write by:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Ahh George, how right you are...

Is your online business model a secret?

Nick Usborne asks. Nick says:

'If you can’t articulate the basic value proposition to someone in the street in ten seconds or less, you’re not going to be able to build a truly effective home page for your business.'

How right he is; in fact, you're lucky if you get even 10 seconds on the Web...

Workplace jargon isolates employees

Finally a nice high-profile article on the BBC News Web site, regarding jargon. Specifically, the article is about a survey by Investors in People, about workplace jargon and how it excludes people.

The survey points out that "The most effective bosses recognise that one of the keys to engaging, motivating and enthusing people is to communicate in a way which everyone can easily understand."

'Blue sky thinking'...honestly, what next? Anyway, now I have brought that article to your attention I am departing to readjust my nutritional priorities, think outside the box and ingest some creativity-enhancing fuel...I am off to the fridge to see what I have for lunch.

Am I falling behind the times?

Kami Huyse on her blog Communication Overtones, a blog focused on PR, in her first post discusses PR's position in relation to new media and technology.

Kami discusses the fact that 'new PR' isn't new PR at all, new media hasn't rendered PR obsolete, and the 'paperless office' still isn't here! I had a think today about all the new gadgets, tools and phrases flying my way and felt quite behind the times, but am I obsolete? Web 2.0, Ajax, user-generated content, RSS, feeds, burners.....help.

I draw comfort from the fact that whatever the future holds, however this 'content' is delivered, whatever colour or flavour it is, however 'dynamic' it is, it's still about using words, playing with language to deliver a message, at least most of the time anyway, until everyone gets bored and just resigns themselves to watching online videos of kids hurting themselves on skateboards instead....then I'm really done for.

The million dollar comma

Brought to my attention by Out-Law.com (a newsletter about technology law from Pinsent Masons) a comma in a contract, regarding termination terms for a large power company in Canada, might end up costing one of the parties involved $1 million Canadian Dollars. You'd hope that now they would check up on clauses and comma usage....

http://www.out-law.com/page-7426

Stuck for things to write about?

Blogging and writing in general can (should) be fun, when you've got something to write about. Reading Dave Taylor's article about finding topics to blog about, the basic message is 'write what people want to read, not what you want to say'. Dave's good example is the photographer with a blog writing about 'why I'm a great photographer' - how boring would that be...?

Dave writes The Intuitive Life Business Blog and the extremely helpful tech support and business questions blog Ask Dave Taylor

Case studies....so what's in a good one?

A good case study - you might ask 'Is there such a thing'? In my opinion yes, (here he goes again) if they're well written...

Case studies suffer from a bad reputation. They can be long, bloated documents, churned out to make up the numbers for some government funded project. They can be poorly structured, with logic or no flow of ideas in the language, appalling obscure section titles and leave the reader thinking, 'well, that taught me nothing I didn't already know'.

A frequent complaint I've heard is 'Well, no one reads our case studies anyway, so why bother...'. Yes, and there's a reason no one reads them - they're really really badly written, they may as well be written in Klingon!

When put together well, they can be informative insights into a business, a project, whatever the subject. In my humble opinion, empathy, logic and remembering who you're writing for are the key issues. The point of a case study is to describe someone else's experiences and communicate a message, eg 'This could be you'.

A case study can also be the only time when both the good and the bad things that happen are set out in writing. Case studies I have dealt with succeed when I know the intended audience is going to read something and imagine themselves in that position, because the content is written in language they understand, the 'story' has a logical flow and there's an overriding message running through the document. Write from the outside-in perspective, not the inside-out.

The Web Content (not so?) Accessible Guidelines 2.0

You wait 5 years for them to come along, and the WCAG, guidelines on making your Web site accessible, aren't that accessible themselves, at least in terms of language!

As pointed out by Trenton Moss of Webcredible:

"Another major criticism of the WCAG 1.0 guidelines was how difficult it is to find specific guidance and answers. It doesn't take too long to discover that the WCAG 2.0 guidelines quite clearly offer the same low level of usability.

Reasons for this poor usability include:

• The level of jargon and complexity of language is truly phenomenal (as outlined above)
• The text is littered with links making it very difficult to read"

And my favourite bit of Trenton's article:

"Ironically, there's even a definition provided for the word 'jargon'!"

The full article is linked in the post title above.

The joy of a well-chosen description

This article I dug up from Elisabeth Dahl at EEI makes some good points about the delicate process of writing a good description. The thought process that goes into choosing the 'right' words for something is what I probably enjoy most about writing. Fitting it all together is what brings about that tremendous sense of satisfaction when a piece of writing is finished.

Elisabeth describes the process very well:

'Hand-picking words, turning them over carefully, uncovers the connotations behind their dictionary definitions. This work can't be done mechanically; it's labor intensive. But it offers generous rewards. It's a pleasure not to be missed.'

Be upfront

Annoyance time again. I received my weekly Proofreading newsletter in my inbox on Friday; one of the articles was about an errant comma in a contract which cost the company concerned $2.1 million! Sounded interesting so I went to read on, only to discover after a few clicks that I'd have to register with the Canadian online newspaper in which the story appeared. Frustrating.

Point being, if you're writing something with an end in mind, a purpose, a task, then be upfront about what your audience will need to do to achieve this. I probably wouldn't have bothered clicking any links at all if I'd known I would need to register before reading the story.

A simple - 'before you go and do this, be aware that...' or 'note, registration required' would suffice.

Some useful resources

Practice makes perfect they say. Occasionally I like to polish up on the many rules and nuances of the English language and I find these very useful for the odd 'remember what this rule is/what this type of word is called' situations:

Proofread Now's Grammar Tips archive
(Their newsletter is useful as well, is focused on American English)

Cambridge Dictionaries Online
My most visited site by quite a long way (Isn't all this supposed to be in my head?!)

Advanced English lessons
For those times when you just can't remember what a modal verb is or where to stick your interjections!

Online conversations

I'm breaking my silence briefly to respond to an interesting question from Amy Gahran, who asks 'Starting conversations online, what's different?'

For me, as with Amy, it's the element of control you have. You decide when, where and how to start a conversation, you hold the cards. You might take part in a conversation you wouldn't normally go for in a face-to-face situation. You might not cover a wide range of topics, as you might in person - rapidly moving from one topic to another.

You can also choose when to stop, when things are going beyond your level of knowledge or when you think an argument might be just round the corner! However, of course, if you're discussing something and need evidence to back your argument up, its all there at your fingertips. I've had chats with people on line a few times and admit to having felt slightly smug at being able to whip a set of statistics or an article up straight away to back up my line of attack!

Staleness apology

If anyone's out there, sorry for the long break. I am in UK at the moment working on lots of things with my main customer business, so I haven't had much time to blog about the nuances of writing! I will be back at the start of August.

Empathy again, hitting the nail on the head

I've recently been reading a blog titled Captain Picard's journal. Don't run away, I am no Star Trek geek (no offence intended to the writer of this blog). I have watched Star Trek, however, and the reason I like this blog so much is that if you know what these characters are like on television, you'll see how perfectly the writing gets inside their heads. It is a brilliant example of empathy being used to bring a character to life, to speak to the reader and to guide the tone and flow of the text.

The point of my rambling here is that if you really know who you are writing for and about, everything seems to just fall into place: 'oh, they wouldn't say that in this way, they'd use this word here and it would sound like this'. It makes things so much easier, and has been the cure for a few nasty bouts of editing/writing block which I have experienced. Think like your audience and you can experience some very enlightening 'oh yeah!' moments.

Don't miss the wood for the trees

I get stuck writing all the time. If I didn't I'd figure something was wrong. Somtimes it is easy to get lost in the detail and suddenly start worrying about tenses, verbs, minor points of grammar, headings, paragraph size, all sorts of stuff. I occasionally have panic attacks and start reading my Penguin guide to grammar, thinking I have suddenly forgotten how to write properly.

Sit back, think big. I get through these 'blocks' by always keeping the big picture in mind: what am I writing this for? WHO am I writing this for? What's the overall message I am trying to communicate? These important issues help you stay focused and you can craft your piece of writing (whether it be a web page, email, newsletter, whatever) around them, tidying up the bits and pieces later.

If you don't have your reader and the message you want to communicate at the forefront of your thinking all the time, instead getting lost in the detail, you'll be off the beaten track and will lose focus, resulting in an unfocused piece which doesn't do its job.

Talk to your reader, even especially when you make a mistake

How many times have you seen an error message and actually understood what is going on?

'Error 6214, server supercalifragilisticexpialidocious database restart, please report this 6214 error to rumplestiltskin immediately'

Was that my fault, did I click on something I shouldn't have? Is it their fault, what is going on, I feel scared, I'm off to the BBC site where I feel much happier because they TELL me what is going on, and what's more I understand what they are saying to me!'.

Game over, they've gone. The article linked in the title of this post is from Jakob Nielsen's Useit.com site. It is 5 years old but still totally relevant. He also links to another article of his, Improving the Dreaded 404 Error Message, which is great advice because if something does go wrong then you really need to avoid losing people by telling them:

• What happened (in plain language)
• Constructive steps to take to correct the problem.