To do great writing, read great writing. Here’s the great writing I’ve been reading this week:
Keep it simple stupid – I’d never heard of the Center for Plain Language until yesterday when I heard American Public Media’s Marketplace reporter Kai Ryssdal interviewing its director, Annetta Cheek. In the interview, a transcript of which you can read here, Cheek explains how she and a group of federal government employees formed the nonprofit after becoming frustrated with how poorly government agencies and businesses communicated with their constituents. As a follow up, Marketplace put up this list of common business jargon and what it really means. Here are a few examples, with the center’s suggestions for clearer alternatives:
- Instead of “economically marginalized” use “poor.”
- Instead of “negative economic growth” use “recession.”
- Instead of “in the event of” use “if.”
- Instead of “We obtain information that causes us to believe that” use “We find that…”
Sadly, the problem with obtuse writing isn’t limited to government officials and corporate executives. I see it on a regular basis in magazines and newspapers as well as in stories I edit. For business and technology reporters particularly, it’s an easy trap to fall into because industries have their own jargon-filled vocabularies and sources use it in interviews. But our job as writers is to translate the jargon into plain English. Keeping it simple and readers will thank you for it.
AP style or SEO? – Speaking of language, the Associated Press’ announcement that it’s switching from “Web site” to “website” in its AP Stylebook sparked an interesting online debate (at least interesting to word nerds like me) about what’s more important for journalists to know today, AP style or SEO. Anybody who ever graduated from j-school got AP style drilled into them. But is it still relevant today when content lives and dies by whether it’s searchable by Google? Online Journalism Review’s Robert Niles takes the position that SEO trumps AP style. Be sure to click over to his post because he’s included links to a number of excellent resources to help journalists understand SEO.
Great references Michelle.
As readers of the OJR piece will see, I have very strong opinions about the AP vs. SEO discussion (though I go on something of a tangent in that I don’t really address the AP side of the coin). Meanwhile, I’m prone to fall into the obtuse language trap, though I also appreciate clear, straightforward language (especially when I’m the one doing the editing, hypocrite that I am), so I appreciate the Center for Plain Language reference.
I’ll note one other intriguing piece that I read today: Lisa Barone’s “The 5 Old Blogging Rules Killing Your Readership.” I don’t know if you accept html in your comments so I’ll just write out the link here: http://outspokenmedia.com/blogging/outdated-blog-rules/. I very much appreciate this take emphasizing lasting value. It was refreshing to see such a perspective from someone in the marketing industry.
Thanks for point Barone’s piece out Bill – she does make some interesting points. I follow some of the old rules – during the upcoming blogathon I’ll be blogging every day – and some of the new ones, like linking out to other people or news organization’s posts or site (any long time reader of this blog knows I do that a lot).
Michelle
Really don’t think the comparison between AP style and SEO is appropriate. SEO is about manipulating the reader for the sake of a search engines. It really has nothing to do with writing clearly. I can instantly tell an article that has been written by an SEO expert as opposed to an article written by a journalist trained in SEO. There’s a MAJOR difference. As a journalist trained in SEO I’ve written upteen articles for link building, link baiting and SEO purposes and to tell you the truth they are much more difficult to write because I use both standard AP style, and combine them with SEO principals. (SEO isn’t a writing style IMHO). But the number one principal a good writer should adhere to no matter what the medium is clarity! Less is more. If following SEO principals can get more J-students to do that then by all means suit them up for SEO training.
I agree with you that a writer’s main concern should be clarity. However, speaking as a someone who’s doing a lot of editing right now for an online-only publication, I need to understand SEO basics in order to write headlines, tags and a meta descriptor that will help bring more traffic to the site I work on, and I expect the writers that work with me to be able to do it too. I’m not concerned with SEO for the actual story, just those other things.
Michelle R.