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…or how to avoid mixing, dangling and losing control
OK, let’s jump on in.
Oh you thought there’d be a witty intro, a scene-setting anecdote, did you? You thought you could just sit back and enjoy the ride?
Well you can, in just a moment. But first, here’s a question for you:
What is a paragraph?
Give up? Well cast your mind back to your English class, and you’ll remember that each paragraph should have one idea. When you move on to a new idea, or a new angle on the same idea, then start a new paragraph.
It really is that simple.
(Paragraphs also allow you a little breathing space, as you can see.)
Now if a sentence is part of a paragraph, it too should have a purpose. And it does: it conveys part of the idea, and should have a focus all of its own. Pack too many elements into a sentence, and you’re heading for trouble.
Here’s an example from The Guardian newspaper:
Having been one of just 10 women MPs when first elected in 1982, at seven months pregnant, she has long been a critic of the gentlemen’s club culture, and while many of her colleagues are calling this crisis a catastrophe, to reformers it is also an unmistakable opportunity.
Feeling seasick yet? I certainly am.
This never-ending sentence is taken from an otherwise well-written profile of Harriet Harman, focusing on the MPs’ expenses scandal.
It’s a one-sentence paragraph, but look at how many ideas are in it:
- She was elected in 1982
- She was one of just 10 women MPs
- She was seven months pregnant
- She’s a critic of the gentlemen’s club culture
- Some of her colleagues are calling the crisis a catastrophe
- To reformers [is she one of them?] it’s an opportunity
This sentence is a bulging holdall, a ragbag collection of unrelated ideas. And yet it was written by a journalist with decades of experience.
Tip #1: don’t mix too many ideas in one paragraph, or in one sentence.
Say what you mean
Though the above sentence is long and winding, its meaning is still (just about) clear.
That isn’t always the case.
I know what I mean, you say to yourself, as you read back over a sentence you’ve just written. Sure, it’s not the most elegant sentence in the world, but then, you’re not looking for prizes – just to get your message across.
But it doesn’t matter if you know what you mean. Does your reader?
Last week, I came across the following sentence:
Interestingly, and perhaps in a sign that this is changing, Cruddas goes out of his way to praise James Purnell, who resigned on Thursday night with a spectacular call for Brown to do the same, both personally and intellectually.
I scratched my head. Aren’t all resignations personal? And how do you resign intellectually? I read it again. And again.
Then, in desperation, I read it aloud. And finally, I realised the meaning. It’s this:
Interestingly, and perhaps in a sign that this is changing, Cruddas goes out of his way to praise James Purnell, who resigned on Thursday night with a spectacular call for Brown to do the same, both personally and intellectually.
Tip #2: read everything you write out loud (but make sure you’re alone first).
It takes two to dangle
Have you ever received a letter or email that begins:
As a valued customer, we’d like to make you a very special offer.
Something feels wrong, doesn’t it? (I mean other than the ‘special’ offer, and the fact that you’re valued no more than the 100,000 other recipients.)
This problem revels in the delightful name of a (deep breath) dangling non-participial modifier.
In plain English, it means that the first part is unrelated to the second.
Who’s the valuable customer? You are. So the first word after the comma should be you. The corrected sentence looks something like this:
As a valued customer, you qualify for our great special offer.
Alternatively, you could rework the beginning, giving you:
As you’re a valued customer, we’d like to make you a very special offer.
See? That works better. Well the English does anyway – I’m not so sure about the offer.
But that’s another story.
Tip #3: if you begin a sentence with ‘as’, be on your guard. You might just be dangling (and it’s not a pretty sight).
Why plain talking means plain sailing every time
So here we are. 2009. A bright, shiny new year to play with. Kick the tyres, walk around, get on in.
Let’s take it for a ride.
And on the way, we can chat about New Year’s resolutions. Oh you haven’t made any?
Well how about this? Tell it like it is. Write like you talk. Say what you mean. And mean what you say.
In a year that’s likely to see credit crunched even harder, more businesses going to the wall, and belts tightened even tighter, telling it like it is might give you the edge over the competition.
It’s not that hard. Really.
Froth to go
Doublespeak is everywhere. And even the coolest, funkiest, hippest companies are not exempt.
A while back, I talked about Starbucks wasting 23m litres of water every day. And their response was as insubstantial as their cappuccinos:
“We recognise the opportunity exists to reduce our total water usage. Starbucks’ challenge is to balance water conservation with the need for customer safety.”
Well they’ve done it again. The story was simple: in 2009, they said, their sales would fall.
Add an extra shot of gobbledygook to that, and some sugar-free spin, and you’ve got:
“Any resulting decreases in customer traffic or average value per transaction will negatively impact the company’s financial performance as reduced revenues result in sales de-leveraging which creates downward pressure on margins.”
So let’s précis that. Sales. Will. Fall.
Never mind the quality – feel the width
Why do we do it? And yes, at times, we all do it – hide behind grand-sounding phrases, and double-decker words.
The credit crunch is a perfect example. ‘Collateralised debt’ is simply debt that nobody understands or can track back to the source. ‘Highly leveraged’ means in debt – lots of it. And ‘highly geared’ doesn’t mean you have a BlackBerry and an iPhone.
It just means that you’re in debt. Lots of it.
Often, we use doublespeak to hide mistakes. In June 2000, the Millennium Bridge opened in London. The futuristic metal footbridge linked Tate Modern, on the south side, with St Paul’s, on the north.
Within hours, it was closed. It wobbled – badly.
Eight years later, a study carried out by Bristol University showed that the problem was caused by:
“the presence of lateral bridge motion without changing the pedestrian walking frequency and applying the same foot placement strategy to maintain balance”.
Translation: it wobbled.
The designers got it wrong. They made a mistake – but they’re passing it off on the pedestrians whose ‘foot placement strategy’ was at fault. Well that’s all right, then.
Doublespeak makes a bad problem worse. You get something wrong, then you try to talk your way out of it. And your customer, your friend, your wife, your husband, the person whose car you’ve just pranged – all of them will think less of you because of it.
Next time you make a mistake, try this approach:
I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I’ll try better next time.
(It works, really. I should know.)
Plain talking – and that means plain writing, too – sends an immediate signal to the person you’re talking to: you can trust me.
And in 2009, we need all the trust we can get.
Happy New Year.
You’re confused? Spare a thought for your readers.
In summer 2007, I decided I was stressed (long story, email me for all the juicy details). So I took myself off to a meditation course.
The course leader was a sweet old lady in her 70s. Grey hair piled into an unruly bun, skewered by a dark brown chopstick. A lived-in face and a sweet, sing-song voice.
To break the ice, she asked everybody where they were from. It all went smoothly until she reached a man in a rumpled tracksuit.
“And where are you from?” she said solicitously.
“Where,” he repeated in a dull monotone.
“Yes, where are you from?” she said again, the embodiment of indulgence and patience.
“Where,” he repeated, without the rising intonation of a question.
“That’s right – where are you from?” with not a hint of exasperation. (She was a walking advert for the benefits of meditation.)
“Where,” he said again. “W-a-r-e. It’s a place in Hertfordshire.”
We all smiled and heaved a collective sigh of relief. From there, the only direction was upwards.
***
Confusion is everywhere, in the written and the spoken word. And here are the second five in my Top 10 easily confused words.
- affect / effect
This one is guaranteed to set your head spinning, so take a deep breath before carrying on.
Affect is usually a verb (dredge your memory banks – a verb is a doing word). So you might write the credit crunch has badly affected the housing market.
Effect, on the other hand is usually (note the usually) a noun (a thing, in common parlance). I had three whiskies last night, and I’m still feeling the effects (a purely hypothetical example, you understand).
Now here’s the chaser: effect can also be used as a verb. Nicolas Sarkozy promised to effect change in France.
- imply / infer
To imply is to suggest something: my boss implied that my work wasn’t up to scratch. In other words, he made it clear, without actually saying it straight out.
It’s very often confused with infer. So here’s an easy way to remember which is which: imply is to do with sending, infer to do with receiving.
So if, on the other hand, my boss made a remark about my work that was ambiguous, or open to interpretation, I might infer that my work wasn’t up to scratch.
Luckily for me, I’m my own boss – so the implying and inferring is kept under one roof.
- fortuitous / fortunate
If you know the difference between these two words, then you’re very fortunate indeed – most people don’t.
Fortuitous means by chance. It’s random, and not necessarily positive: the principal made the fortuitous discovery of my stash of cigarettes [bad].
Fortunate means lucky. So I could say fortunately, the principal didn’t discover my stash of cigarettes [good].
- they’re / there / their
“If you are in your 40s and British,” The Economist wrote a couple of weeks back, “it is quite possible that your spelling is an embarrassment. You may never have been taught the distinction between “there”, “their” and “they’re”, or perhaps even your times tables.”
It’s not just forty-something Brits, though. These three little words cause confusion among people of all ages and in all locations.
They’re is a contraction of they are. There is the opposite of here. And their means of them.
Put them all together and you have they’re going to put their bags over there.
- led / lead / lead
A few months back, a client corrected some copy I’d sent them. It had included the phrase this led to big increases in productivity. Her amended version read this lead to big increases in productivity.
So who was right? Here’s a clue: not her.
It’s an easy mistake to make. The past tense of lead is led. Unfortunately, it rhymes with lead (as in pipes, pencils and balloons). So there’s an understandable hesitation.
Unconfused? Good. Now perhaps you’d like to do something ahout your stress levels. I know a very good course.
Just email me and I’ll tell you Ware where.
You might not notice – but somebody will.
Several years ago, a friend of mine worked for a recruitment consultancy. Let’s call them Acme Inc.
Their contracting arm (which supplied staff to companies on a contract basis) was called Acme Inc. Independant Services.
Did you feel a twitch of discomfort as you read that? Good. So did my friend – and one day, over an end-of-the-week glass of Chardonnay, he mentioned it to his boss.
Independant, he explained, doesn’t exist. Dependant does (the woman had three dependants). Dependent does (the three children were dependent on her). Independent does (he stood as an independent candidate).
But independant doesn’t.
His boss, playing for time, drained his glass. Then, he smiled his twinkly smile, and slurred, “it’s a deliberate mistake. It shows that we really are different.”
My friend returned his smile, considered his career, and kept his mouth shut.
Write to the point
Good grammar is important to good writing. Would you consider showing a client around messy offices? How about answering the phone informally? Or having a logo that’s skew?
Of course you wouldn’t.
But somehow, dodgy grammar flies under the radar. At least, most of the time. For somebody out there will notice – and they’ll draw conclusions pretty fast.
So here are the first five of my Top 10 easily confused words.
- who’s/whose
Who’s is a contraction of who is. So you can say who’s at the door? But you can’t say the man who’s car I ran into. It’s an understandable mistake (Peter’s car, Jane’s car, who’s car). Instead, you should say the man whose car I ran into.
- i.e / e.g.
If you’re a Latin scholar, you’ll never confuse these. But most people nowadays don’t know their amo from their amas. i.e. stands for ‘id est’, which means ‘that is’. In other words, you’re explaining what you’ve just referred to (the Chancellor of the Exchequer i.e. the Minister of Finance). e.g. on the other hand, stands for ‘exempli gratia’, and means ‘for the sake of example’. It’s used when you’re giving one example among many. So you could write one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council e.g. France.
- disinterested / uninterested
It’s common nowadays to see disinterested used as the opposite of interested, as in my brother is disinterested in politics. It should be my brother is uninterested in politics. Disinterested means impartial or neutral, so you could say to resolve the dispute, we need a disinterested party to hold mediation talks.
- principal / principle
Just the other day, I read on a web site our guiding principals are honesty, integrity and efficiency. And that’s wrong. For a principal is more likely to guide a school, if anything. Or you could talk about a principal ballerina. If you’re talking about values, it’s principle every time.
- it’s / its
This is a very common mistake – and an understandable one. If you can say Peter’s hat and my uncle’s house, you’d expect to say the house lost it’s roof in the storm. But you don’t. Instead, you say its roof. It’s is a contraction of it is. So you could say it’s a lovely house (but not if it lost its roof in a storm).
If your head’s already hurting, then perhaps it’s time to lay lie down.
Part 2 next week.
Audience, tone of voice and the K word.
And you’re writing for…?
Make sure you know your audience. It’s very tempting to write about you, your products, your history, your mission statement, your experience and your goals. But what about the poor reader? They, as always, want to know (as I say in my Top 10 copywriting tips) what’s in it for them.
So make sure you know them. Typically, how do they get to your site? Is it your first point of contact with them, or will they visit the site after you’ve been in touch with them (by direct mail, phone or email)?
What sort of first impression does your site make? What’s the very first thing you say to them?
What do you want the site to do? Is it to inform people, or to educate or entertain them? Do you just want to raise your profile? Or perhaps you simply want to use it as a way of disseminating information or reducing customer queries.
It’s the way you tell ‘em
Remember, all writing is telling a story, and web copywriting is no different. You open with an introduction, then elaborate with more detail, then have an ending. And you need to decide what that ending is. You need to figure out what the destination of the ‘customer journey’ is.
Don’t just say ‘this is us, this is what we do, we’re really proud of it, we’ve been doing it for a long time’. Instead, say ‘Hello. We know just who you are and what’s important to you. Here’s what we can do for you and here’s why you need us. And here’s what you should do next.’
Now they understand.
Keywords, keywords, keywords
It’s tempting when you’re writing for the web to pack your copy full of keywords. And to repeat those keywords. And then to use a few more keywords. And if you can squeeze in a few more keywords, that’s good too. Keywords, keywords, keywords.
Trouble is, keyword-heavy copy doesn’t read very well, does it? You’ll get to the top of the search engine listings, but what will people have to read? Nothing but keywords, keywords and … that’s right, more keywords.
It’s a trade-off. You want them to come, but you want to make sure they stay. So watch out that you don’t have too many keywords.
You might just regret it.
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