Business Writing With Buzz

When The Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, reported 30,000 pigs had been swept away in the recent Queensland floods, did either the reporter or editor stop to consider what a huge number that was? Clearly not. The farmer had actually told the newspaper that he had lost 30 sows and pigs!

When Media Watch and the weekend newspapers reported the error, no doubt there were a few giggles. While the truth can get in the way of a good story, failing to check your facts in business writing could be a plain embarrassing, if not a recipe for disaster.

Using over-inflated statistics, false claims or, simply, incorrect statements makes you appear, at best, unreliable, at worst, stupid. Readers will question your credibility and capability if they spot inconsistencies or errors in your writing.

Quoting people can also be risky. Generally, we are not aiming for John Pilger-style exposés when writing business documents. Misquoting someone, or referring to a quote they are unhappy with, can cause offense and seriously damage relationships.

Check – twice!
Of course, the internet is your friend when it comes to fact checking and is the easiest place to look if you are unsure of something. But it is important that your reference sites are reputable and you understand the limitations of some sources. Wikipedia, for example, although a fantastic resource, can be updated by anyone. Its articles are not necessarily written by academics or qualified experts. It is worth cross-checking any information with another source.

Quotes and references
If your document quotes people, call them to check they are happy. To really cover your back, get them to email their permission so you have a record in case of dispute further down the track.

When you want to refer to a statistic or quote someone from a public source, it is a good idea to provide a reference. Not only is it polite to reference other peoples’ work, it also provides substance and credibility to your own piece. Most online guides on how to reference are for an academic audience, but the University of Sydney’s guide [http://writingworkshop.edtec.unsw.edu.au/quote.html] is pretty user-friendly.

Take these simple steps to get your facts right and you’ll avoid the potential for public humiliation that The Morning Bulletin reporter received from Media Watch, not to mention the weekend papers!

Anyone who missed the recent election must have been hiding under the proverbial rock, or willfully avoiding it altogether. If the latter is the case, we at Proof Communications sympathise because at no other point in the political calendar is the main purpose of communication – to impart information clearly – so casually abused, with the use of political double-talk, repetitive slogans (moving forward, anyone?) and ‘officialese’ at an apparent all time high. Or low, depending on your point of view.

You’ll know officialese when you hear it; it’s bureaucratic, hard to follow and mostly meaningless. Consider these examples from the excellent Bendable Learnings by Don Watson, author and speechwriter for former Prime Minister Paul Keating: ‘front-end strategies’, ‘leveraged solutions’, ‘the execution of deliverables’ and (our favourite) ‘synergy-related headcount reductions’, which was Nokia Siemens’ way of saying in a media release that they planned to fire a few people. It’s management-speak designed to hide either the horrible truth… or the fact that the speaker is utterly clueless about the subject. Which gives us an excellent insight into why pollies use it so much!

Officialese isn’t just a convenient tool for misinformation used by silver-tongued politicians. It’s also a disease that, if left unchecked, can spread rapidly and infect your business writing. Look at all your business communications – that’s everything from e-mail correspondence to reports and tenders – and ask yourself: is my meaning clear? Have I used industry jargon when talking to a customer who may not understand it? Am I using unnecessarily complex words when a simple, everyday alternative would work just as well?

We’ve talked about ways to make your business writing clearer in Proof Communications newsletters before but, unlike our Prime Minister’s favourite slogan, some things can bear repetition. Here’s a quick refresher on writing clearly and effectively:

1. What am I trying to say?
Identify the purpose of your communication or ‘key message’, as well as all the supporting information you need to convey.

2. Get yourself a gorgeous body.
Structure is crucial to clarity. As a rule of thumb, every paragraph should contain a unique point that contributes to your overall message.

3. Spell-check your work.
Your computer’s spell-check function doesn’t understand jargon, so it’s an excellent way of identifying industry-specific terms, as well as misspellings.

4. Honesty is the key.
Have you used ‘antediluvian’ instead of ‘old-fashioned’ because you think it makes you sound smarter? Not only do you risk alienating your customer, you might just run out of words. As CS Lewis said, “Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” Save the posh words for the cryptic crossword.

As the American Plain English Foundation says: “Though no one knows the total cost of poor communication, the information we do have suggests it's high. While writing in plain language isn't easy, it pays off in positive results”.

So stop the rot: inoculate yourself against the spread of officialese before it costs you a customer!

Resources:
www.plainenglishfoundation.com
www.plainenglish.org
http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/default.aspx?page=book&id=9781741669046

In her book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss explains why we need commas:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

'Why?' asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

'Well, I'm a panda,' he says, at the door. 'Look it up.'

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'

The sad truth is that we can't do without commas. And, to make it worse, while there are some set rules about how to use commas, writers and editors do not always agree about some of their other uses. This ambiguity means that people tend to abuse and misuse their commas.

Here’s what I mean:

All the children who love pizza will be there on Friday.

This means that only those children who love pizza will be there on Friday. Compare this to:

All the children, who love pizza, will be there on Friday.
 
All the children will be there on Friday and, by the way, they love to eat pizza.


How to use commas - lists

At school, the first use we learn for commas is to separate items in a list. For example:
 
When I go shopping I buy shoes, dresses, coats and gifts.

Sometimes, particularly in the US, we include a comma before "and" as in “dresses, coats, and gifts”. This is called an Oxford comma, or serial comma, because it was used by editors, proofreaders and printers at Oxford University Press.

In Australia and the UK it’s unusual to use an Oxford comma, but feel free if you think it adds clarity, particularly if the last two items in your list are not separate words.

For example, if we write, "I love margarita, meatlovers and ham and pineapple pizzas”, it is not clear if the last pizza is a single ‘ham and pineapple’ pizza or two pizzas: a ham pizza and a pineapple pizza. In this case, we could add the Oxford comma to say, “I love margarita, meatlovers, and ham and pineapple pizzas”.


How to use commas with adjectives

Commas in a list of adjectives are not always needed. As a guide, if you can change the order of the adjectives, use a comma. If not, there’s no need for a comma. Here’s what I mean:

The report was long, boring and too detailed.

You could shift the order of the adjectives:
The report was boring, long and too detailed.

My daughter has beautiful blonde hair and clear blue eyes.
As we can’t change the order of these adjectives, we don’t need commas.

How to use commas – to add extra information

Sometimes we add extra information to our sentences to make them more interesting. For instance:

Our business, the world’s largest producer of eggs, is opening a plant in Rio.

We could easily remove the information about ‘world’s largest producer of eggs’ without changing the meaning of the sentence.

How to use commas to join two clauses together

Use a comma to join two clauses together. These are two separate parts to a sentence joined by conjunctions such as and, but, so, or, yet, but could be separated by a full stop. For example:

I love eating pizza, but I don’t like anchovies.

This could also be written as:

I love eating pizza. But I don’t like anchovies.

There is a move away from using these commas, so if you feel the meaning is clear without a comma, go for it.

How to use commas after introductory statements

There is also a trend towards not using commas after introductory statements, which is fine if the meaning is clear. Whichever option you choose, be consistent. One of the biggest errors I see when proofreading is inconsistency – one sentence has an introductory statement with a comma and the next does not.

Here are some examples:

At Proof Communications, we help our clients to win more business.

On 5 September 2011, we will be holding a party with hundreds of guests.

You could write either of these sentences with no comma.

How to use commas around ‘interrupters’

Sometimes, to add emphasis, we use an interrupter in our sentences. These always need commas before and after:

She was, however, feeling sad about missing out on the pizza.

I asked her, reluctantly, if she would get take-away.

How to use commas: the last piece of advice

Commas give us a pause in our writing. They give us room to breathe. If you’re not sure when to use a comma, read your writing aloud. You’ll hear the need for a pause.
If you suffer from comma confusion, let us know now.

What’s the worst typo sin you’ve committed?

You’re not alone...making mistakes comes naturally to humans, so it’s not surprising that websites and marketing materials are littered with typos.

Sadly, typos cost money. Research in the UK shows that typos cost businesses there millions each year. People don’t want to do business with companies that can’t get their name right, or make mistakes in their emails, letters or brochures.

One of the worst culprits are call centres, where operators often take down the wrong details. It’s a blessing we haven’t had to ring the US call centre that had a 35% error rate in orders it took over the phone. Classics were:

The name Whithead typed in as -hithead (I'll leave you to fill in the gap).

The gift greeting With Our Love typed as With Out Love.

And these were the ones that were caught before they were sent to customers. Imagine what was missed!

Our own big companies are just as susceptible. When proofreading an annual report for a major bank, I spotted a mistake on the inside cover of the report. And this was on the day that the cover was going to print. The mistake?

Shareholders were to receive divideds, not dividends. 

It's easy to find others' mistakes, but not our own. This is why I recommend you don't proofread your own work. Here’s some ways you can avoid typo sins.

1. Read each sentence aloud. You’ll hear your mistakes.

2. Look at each word in isolation. If you have time, start at the end of the document and read each word in turn, from the last to the first. This way, you’re more likely to spot typos.

3. Watch out for the old favourites. We often repeat the same mistakes:

Missing narrow letters (e.g. ‘i’ - offical, opportunites, instnctively)
Using extra letters  (e.g. acccountancy, narrrow)
Misspelling long or technical words (e.g. physiothearapy, implenemtation).

4. Spell checkers won’t pick up typos which are correct spellings, or words that sound the same but have different meanings. For example:

causal/casual
form/from
unclear/nuclear
their/there
site/sight.

5. Double check all the headings and page numbers and that indexes match the page numbers. This is where most mistakes are made, especially in long documents such as annual reports, proposals and tenders.