Web writing for the skimmer

Get right to the point and make your web writing more effective.

Almost nobody reads from left to right, top to bottom any more. Most of us skim. We are trying to get as much information as we can for as little effort as we can get away with.

Here is an article I didn't read: The Social Media Revolution: Exploring the Impact on Journalism and News Media Organizations Apologies to its author, but I didn't have time and I couldn't work out what it was really saying. This is why:

When people skim they give more weight to the information in certain places:
 o  The first couple of words of the headline
 o The first five words of an obvious picture caption
 o The first few words of any page furniture (stand-firsts, pull-quotes, cross heads, box heads)
 o The first five or six words of the intro
 o The first few words of each paragraph

So when I saw the article above what my brain actually took in was

Social . Media . Journalism . News

... and I thought it might be interesting , so I skim read on. But there was no picture caption or other page furniture. What do the cross heads tell me?

Introduction . Literature Review

... not much.

Now I read the first five words of each paragraph. What do I learn?

Twitter. Facebook. Digg. MySpace. LinkedIn.  (Good - interested again)
Many traditional and non-traditional media... (going off the idea)
The main purpose of this... (starting to get bored)
The report will respond to...(eyelids beginning to droop)
Media industry publications and critics... (zzzzzzzz)
Understanding where traditional news organizations...

Before being able to define...
Others have evaluated the news...

It is about Twitter and it is a report. I know nothing else about this piece because I didn't read any more. It is unfair on the poor author but I really am that ruthless... and so is everyone else.

Jakob Nielsen's research shows that we skim a web page in a few seconds and we use the words we find in the tops and lefts of the text to decide whether to read on.

For a writer, the answer is to get straight to the point. The words at the beginning should carry the greatest meaning. Don't use headings like Introduction. Say instead, for example, Audiences Expect to Contribute. Now the skim reader (everyone) gets more value from your writing.

Look at the start of each paragraph. Do we learn anything about what is in the paragraph. If not, you are not getting to the point quickly enough.

PS: for an example of someone doing it better see A Better Mattress in the Economist although I would have a caption on the picture.

Journalism: truth vs the big story

Journalists miss the truth, too often, because they seduce themselves into writing the story that readers want to read.

Journalism is about truth, right? The whole point of it is to report what's going on in the world, and if we make stuff up, it rather defeats the object.

In the internet age, truth has gained a new importance. So much of what we read is suspect, that journalists are looking afresh at sourcing, independence, transparency. To stand above the static of more than a trillion pages of information, journalists must (simply must) be credible.

So journalism is about truth. And yet, if I tell you I am badly in need of a haircut, it's true, but it's not really journalism, is it? The number of things that are true is enormous. The number of things that anyone would care to read about is smaller.

The truth is in here somewhere

Selecting and prioritising information is also a vital part of the journalist's job. Never more so. Using the web is like being invited into a giant warehouse full of identical boxes and being told that what we need is in there somewhere. (Thankfully, Google does a pretty good job of checking out the contents of all the boxes). Some journalists seem (to stretch the analogy beyond its limits) to work flat out filling boxes with random stuff, just to make it more difficult to find anything useful.

It is simplistic to say that we prioritise the most important information. In fact, good journalists are looking for the biggest story. Herein lies the danger because stories don't have to be true.


What makes a big story

• New and factual (it's news)
• Human element (how much will our audience care?)
• Scale and impact (how many died (for example) +
  what effect does that have on our audience?)
• Triggers a strong emotional response
• Dramatic
• Visual (good pictures but also stories that, in the telling, are easy to visualise)
• Quirky, surprising, downright weird

In practice, there is another, subtler element at play. We all deal with the randomness of life by trying to force things into categories or shapes. Sometimes information falls into a pattern and we think: "yes, I get that". It makes the world easier to deal with (particularly if the news is bad).

This week's tragedy at Ft Hood, Texas, is a good example of the phenomenon. Right from the start, the authorities were anxious to dampen speculation surrounding the fact that the shooter was a Muslim. Why did they do that? Because there is an instinctive, almost primeval, urge to fit the facts to a story. A big story. If he was a warrior for the forces of terrorism living secretly among us, that is a huge story that fits the big facts. And it is a story that is easy to retell.

The story fits the scale of the
events too well to resist

But if he was a confused man, frightened of going back to war, that is a more muddled, smaller story. It does not seem to fit with the outrage of what he did. It is more difficult to see how the facts might lead to the consequences.

At the time of writing, it is impossible to know the truth. It could be either of these scenarios or something else entirely. However, it is already possible to see the first story forming in the pages of newspapers and on the web. There will be people who believe it, even if it turns out not to be true. The story fits the scale of the events too well to resist.

Brave journalists will, of course, go after the truth despite the enormous pressure to tell the story their readers want to read. Others will succumb and the truth will dissolve into a collective false memory.

The conflicting draws of truth and the story are understandable in reporting big, complex events. But too often, journalists are distracted from the truth in day-to-day reporting. That damages credibility.

For example, your readers may very well think that the diet of children today is so bad, it is surprising they don't get scurvy.

Does the story get precedence over the truth?

Everyone knows about scurvy because there is a story connected with it. It is caused by lack of vitamin C and is associated with the exploits of great explorers like Captain Cook. Any modern story including the word scurvy brings with it associations of dramatic deeds, romance, the smell of salt air. At a push, a writer could use one of those special words guaranteed to get a response from any audience: pirates.

So when the Daily Mail discovered that cases of childhood scurvy were on the increase, they may well have felt they had the dream story. Sick children, pirates, adventure. And above all, it fits with their readers' preconceptions.


But is it true?

There has been an increase in the number of children admitted to hospital with scurvy but:

• The increase is from 61 to 94 over three years. The numbers are so small (relative to the total number of sick children) that it is dangerous to draw conclusions.
• The Mail says straight out that it is due to poor diet, but there is no evidence for that. If you read past the bit about the pirates, the Mail quotes Ursula Arens of the British Dietetic Association -- the only person they talked to who is qualified to comment. She said: it was not possible to say how the children were getting scurvy: whether it was from a poor diet, or as a by-product of other diseases such as cancer.
• I am indebted to EvidenceMatters who points out that the figures could be explained by the increased survival rate of children with cancer or short gut syndrome. Scurvy can be a side effect of these diseases, and if fewer children die from them, then more will exhibit symptoms of scurvy.
  

So what would you do? Run a complex story about inconclusive stats or a more definite one about pirates and child poverty?

There is a third option. Resist the urge of the great story altogether. Because the truth is there wasn't much of a story in the first place.

Tweaking sports news

Good writing is both visual and human. Small tweaks can make all the difference, particularly in the intro sentence.

Ferrari has confirmed that Fernando Alonso will drive for the team from 2010, replacing 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen, in a move that follows months of speculation.

I like the main verb to be visual. It makes the story more dramatic if the reader can picture what's going on. The word "confirmed" is not one that instantly conjures up an image. Could we re write so that "drive" is the main verb? It seems like the obvious word to use.

The writer of the original intro, wasn't sure about the change. There have been rumours this was going to happen for weeks. The reader probably already knows that Alonso will drive for Ferrari. It feels like the confirmation bit of it is the news.

If the reader cares about the actors in your story, they are more likely to read on. In general, people care about other people more than organisations. Could it be about Alonso first and then Ferrari?

It could be written more simply as

Fernando Alonso will drive for Ferrari from 2010,

but the writer worried that this misses the main part of the news out - the confirmation.

The important thing is to grab the reader's attention in the first few words. When you have them, you can tell a more complex story. What comes first should be as attractive as you can make it. Other information can always come later.

Focusing on the human interest and visual, obvious words gives us:

Fernando Alonso will drive for Ferrari from 2010, the team has confirmed, ending months of speculation.

What do you think? It is more or less the same sentence, but by moving some of the words around we have given it more punch. It is more likely people will read on.

Good journalism from the master

Keith Waterhouse, probably the best writer in journalism of his generation, died earlier this month at 80.

Among his accomplishments was Waterhouse on Newspaper Style, a manual for good writing. Most of what he says there is as valid in the digital age as it was when he wrote it. Here are a few snippets:

• Journalists with flair write in the language of their readers  
• If a news story is dramatic, drama should come out in the telling. It is not enough simply to assure readers that the drama was there  
• Deadline fever encourages taut, crisp writing. The truly awfully written story demands time
• To use outsiders' jargon is to take their own evaluation of themselves on trust  
• An interesting story does not have to open with a war-whoop  
• Despite the invention of the tape recorder, many newspapers have a tin ear for dialogue  
• Few journalists realise that the ground-rules for the human-interest story were laid down in Cassel's Book of Indoor Amusements, 1881  
• It is the tendency of cliches to generalise, approximate or distort

More on Twitter editing

Using all 140 characters on Twitter does not kill the re-Tweet.

Fewer than 120 characters should be your target for a Tweet, a couple of commenters said on my post about editing for Twitter. Maybe 110 if you want to include hashtags.

This allows people who want to re-Tweet a few characters to credit you as the source and if a sufficient number of people do that, then you go viral and your life improves in unfathomable ways.

Of course, someone might re-Tweet the re-Tweet, so let's say 100 chars, and if one of the re-Tweeters has a long name then maybe 90 is all we should allow.

I'm stubbornly sticking to 140 characters against all advice, and here's why. I find the Tweets containing the most information are also the most likely to be re-Tweeted (interested to know if other people have the same experience). I note that most information is not necessarily the same as the greatest number of characters.

And, the good news is that writing 140 character Tweets does not seem to stop me going viral (in a modest way, at least). Here is an example:

Huffington Post wrote:
Enter the news literacy movement. Situated in the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University and the DC-based News Literacy Project, these entities, according to Stony Brook Dean Howard Schneider, seek to nurture "a generation of news consumers who would learn how to distinguish for themselves between news and propaganda, verification and mere assertion, evidence and inference, bias and fairness, and between media bias and audience bias--consumers, who could differentiate between raw, unmediated information coursing through the Internet and independent, verified journalism."


On Twitter I wrote exactly 140 characters:
News literacy movement seeks to nurture news consumers who can distinguish between verification and mere assertion. HuffPo http://tr.im/uFgs

It was picked up by @EvidenceMatters who wrote (138 chars):
rt @AdeMacLeod: News literacy movement nurtures news consumers who differentiate verification and mere assertion. HuffPo http://tr.im/uFgs

This was picked up by @murzee who wrote (137 chars):
RT @EvidenceMatters: rt @AdeMacLeod: News literacy : consumers to differentiate verification and mere assertion. HuffPo http://tr.im/uFgs


One could argue about the different meanings of the three Tweets (@EvidenceMatters gets my vote) but that's not the point. The point is that 140 characters did not kill the re-Tweet.

Why typos matter

Standards in writing have never been more important because users are judging your credibility

Every web user knows that fake and malicious sites exist and many have strategies (conscious or not) for deciding how much they should trust what they read. Even reputable sites get it wrong -- users know this too.

Reputation, brand, design, physical interface are all important. But on the web, anyone can publish a professional-looking web site for free. Logos can be copied, sophisticated templates downloaded for free. A site may look reputable but it could be something else.

Guardian illustrates credibility problem with one letter extra

Imagine a malicious 12-year-old on his computer. How long would it take him to fake the Guardian's website? A few hours, probably, until he had something that looked and behaved as the Guardian site. But how long until it read like the Guardian? Maybe never. It is much harder to fake a professional writing style.

The thing that is hardest to fake is the content: both the quantity and the quality. Users know this and often it is the quality of writing they use to judge the credibility of a publication. If they spot a typo or poor grammar, then they trust the rest of site that little bit less.

Subbing for Twitter's 140 chars

The secret of a good Tweet is to cram as much information as will fit in your 140 character allowance.

This requires good old-fashioned sub-editing skills and some editorial judgement. In the example below, I was determined to keep the amusing quote which meant I had to be ruthless. You decide: did I go too far? (This is the actual process I went through: it may not be the most efficient way of getting there.)

253 chars (cut and paste original)
Swedish newspapers threaten to boycott Britney concert over photo restrictions. "The next step would be to tell critics they can't write anything critical." Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/10/swedish-newspapers-threat_n_229582.html

190 chars (trim link URL)
Swedish newspapers threaten to boycott Britney concert over photo restrictions. "The next step would be to tell critics they can't write anything critical." Huffington Post http://tr.im/rN8T

172 chars (sub down text)
Swedish papers threaten to boycott Britney concert over photo restrictions. "Next they will be telling critics they can't write anything critical." HuffPo http://tr.im/rN8T

160 chars (lose "threaten to" - changes meaning but within acceptable limits?)
Swedish papers boycott Britney concert over photo restrictions. "Next they will be telling critics they can't write anything critical." HuffPo http://tr.im/rN8T

145 chars (close)
Swedish papers boycott Britney concert over photo restrictions. "Next they'll say critics can't write anything critical" HuffPo http://tr.im/rN8T

138 chars (final)
Swedish papers boycott Britney concert over photo rules. "Next they'll say critics can't write anything critical" HuffPo http://tr.im/rN8T

Web news: 10 things on the BBC

Analysing a typical BBC News story reveals some important lessons for web writers. Many of us are so familiar with the BBC format that we don't realise how clever it is.

1. Limiting heads to 33 characters means they work for readers, for search engines, for news feeds. Everyone working online should do this, but it's hard work.
2. A single sentence intro in bold works on its own in a feed but also leads into the main story.
3. A pic or video adds visual interest. Often these show people which helps to humanise the story. Pics and videos carry a caption: important in enticing a visual audience to start reading.
4. An early quote, often by paragraph 4, makes the writing livelier but also adds credibility and authority to the story. The first quote usually justifies the head and the intro.
5. A balancing quote offering the opposing view or an alternative insight is also important in adding credibility to the story. Giving voice to several views may broaden their audience too.
6. Covering the story in as many different ways as possible also broadens the audience. Video may not be ideal for a reader who is in a hurry, but it will make the story real for those who browse.
7. Expert analysis helps readers understand the significance of the story. The personality of the analyst adds a human touch. It also adds a link to the blog section of the site.
8. More visual interest as readers scroll down. A second pic also has a catchy caption.
   
9. Encouraging readers to respond to the story helps them to become involved. News becomes more like a conversation than a broadcast.
10. Giving that itching mouse finger lots of things to click keeps readers within the site and adds value to the story.

The original story can be seen on the BBC news site.

When readers become users

Understanding web users and their day-to-day behaviour has never been more important


The New York Times has stopped calling its readers readers and started calling its users users, Advertising Age reports.

It reflects the venerable US paper's realisation that no longer do we passively take what we are given. The web has changed all that. Now we expect to interact. To click, to vote, to comment. To drive with our reading (sorry -- using) habits stories up or down the most popular ranking. To add our own pictures and stories to the melange.

This week I found myself, on the recommendation of a friend, using two web stories:

• The Interview with Alaa al Aswany from the Observer
• Show or Tell from the New Yorker

The first was 2200 words, the second 5600. No in-line links, no commenting, no video footage. There were admittedly pictures and, in the case of the New Yorker, cartoons. But as an experience, frankly, it felt a lot like reading.

Web writers are beginning to realise that rules they used to apply do not always work. Or, perhaps, that others are succeeding without adhering to the same rules. How can this be? The two examples above show us that our stories can work without fitting into an arbitrary word count. It is not true that every story needs a direct headline and a news-style intro. We don't always fail if our work is insufficiently loaded with multimedia gadgets.

"As an experience, frankly, it felt a lot like reading"

In discussions about the future of journalism, two concepts have caught my eye:

• Hyper-interest
• Context

These seem to me to be the keys to rule-free web writing. Hyper interest (I didn't coin the phrase but I have lost the reference -- apologies to whoever did) is the same as interest but accounting for digital language inflation (geeks exaggerate). It is neologism meaning that no trick or gadget is ever going to beat something that genuinely catches our imagination.

I think the two articles cited above are genuinely interesting, but you may disagree. This is the problem with hyper-interest -- so much depends on the user. It means that before you write something interesting, you have to work out who it is going to be interesting to.

Context means that the same user will find different things interesting according to what is going on in their world. If they are sitting on the sofa on a Sunday morning surrounded by toast crumbs and cats, the New Yorker may be the very thing. If they are on their way to work on Monday and just want to know whether we have the same prime minister so they don't look stupid in the 9:30 meeting, then maybe the BBC's news feed 31 character headlines are what they want.

"If they are sitting on the sofa, surrounded by toast crumbs and cats, the New Yorker may be the very thing"

For writers, hyper-interest means you have to model your reader more carefully than ever before, so you know intuitively what will grab and keep their attention. Context means you have to go even further and model their behaviour patterns. This may mean providing information in a variety of formats so that users can choose the one that suits.

Reader modelling is old school but it is more important than ever. Ironically, some writers freeze on the idea that because anyone in the world (not really) can read their stuff, they have to write for everyone in the world. In practice, the web loves specialism. Writing that focuses on a small group of readers and gives them what they want is generally the most successful.

Sight and sound in writing

Think about how your writing would work if you filmed it and what the soundtrack would be.

Media owners are launching a concerted effort to trumpet the power of their platforms as they attempt to ride out one of the deepest advertising downturns in decades.

This intro appearsat the top of a story in FT.com today.

The visual

If we were to film it, we would need a trumpet and something to ride -- a horse maybe. Then we'd need to find a rider who could play the trumpet while riding.

The phrases trumpet the power and ride out the downturn are metaphors -- there is no actual trumpet or horse in this story but they add visual elements to an otherwise abstract story. Metaphors are great. Cliched metaphors are less good because the reader is so familiar with them that they don't bother to conjure up the images (which was the whole point of the metaphor).

Mixed metaphors are bad too. Now the reader has to conjure up two images, but they are liable to get them confused, so they end up picturing a guy bouncing around on a horse trying to play the trumpet.

One metaphor in a sentence is plenty and if it could be original that would be even better.


The soundtrack

Writing is a representation of the way we speak. The sound of the words is an intermediate stage as the reader's brain processes language. Many writers use this to advantage -- repeating sounds to draw the reader's attention to certain words.

However, repeating sounds accidentally or for the sake of word-play can be counter-productive. Listen to the repeating sounds in the FT's intro.

Media owners are launching a concerted effort to trumPet the Power of their Platforms as they attempt to ride out one of the Deepest aDvertising Downturns in Decades.

The -p- and -d- sounds are hard, explosive even. The effect on the reader's brain is similar to someone rasping a washboard -- p-p-p. d-d-d-d. Not, I am certain, what the writers were going for.

Alliteration (repeated sounds at the beginnings of words) is a technique one should use sparingly. Save it for when it can really create an impact. Otherwise it may just be annoying.

Top ten writing mistakes

1. Not clear what your writing is for or about
2. No illustrations
3. Doesn't get to the point quickly enough
4. Not easy for different readers to find the information they want
5. Lacking in hard facts
6. The structure suits the writer but not the reader
7. Incomprehensible language (passive, vague, jargon)
8. Doesn't answer obvious questions the reader may have
9. Headings and captions contain no useful information
10. Boring

Science writing: keep asking why?

Hubble gyros fixed after struggle, the BBC told us on Friday, but didn't explain what a gyroscope is or why it needs to be fixed.

Every journalist knows the importance of the who-what-why-where-when formula but so often the answer to the why goes missing. In fairness, it is generally the toughest question to answer. But it is also the most significant because, without it, the reader doesn't get the point of the story.

Astronauts have completed the most critical repair to the Hubble Space Telescope after a long struggle, the story goes on.

Why is it the most critical repair? The writer doesn't make that clear either.

A gyroscope is like a spinning top. As long as it keeps spinning it will stay the same way up. Spacecraft use them so they know which way they are pointing. They are critical to the Hubble Telescope because a telescope is pretty hopeless if you don't know which way it is pointing.

This is what a NASA gyroscope looks like by the way

In practice, gyroscopes are a bit fancier than spinning tops. They are precision machined and work like an electric motor to keep them rotating. They also have tiny sensors to detect their movement and tell the telescope which way up it is.

Herein lies the problem. Keep a tiny, precision motor running for 19 years and it is likely to wear out or break down. Hence NASA's mission to replace them.

There that wasn't so hard, was it? Source of the information . . . wait for it . . . NASA.

Space repairs make an exciting enough story without detailed explanation. But don't you think the reader deserves to know more about the science after they have read a story like this?

Beware the cliched intro

Writing in a way that is relevant to your reader is important right from the start. But some tricks are overused. Relating technology to sci-fi films, for instance . . .

Its not quite as advanced as Terminator technology. But a new concrete that can heal its own wounds may soon bring futuristic protection to bridges and roads.

Move over, Superman. The Man of Steel has nothing on the collapsed cores of massive snuffed-out stars, scientists say.

Cloaking devices, like the Star Trek technology that can make whole Romulan warships disappear, came a step closer to reality last week.

From National Geographic: three in eight days?

Speaking to writing

Writing the way we speak is a good start. It tends to make our copy appropriate and chatty.

Most of us wisely take out the ums and the errs. But we do lots of other things when we speak that do not translate well into writing and these should be deleted too. Just like the ums and errs, they mostly happen because we are trying to think of the next thing to say while we are still saying the last thing.

• Cliche and stock phrases give us plenty of time to think when we speak but they tend to deaden the language when we write. This start: What's in a name? It's all change at... is fine in speech. Two cliches while we work out what we're going to say. It will wash over a listener. But a reader has to process all these words and they really don't mean anything.
• Waffle does the same job when we speak and has the same problem when we write. Get straight to the point.
• Strings of verbs lengthen the communication process giving us time to think when we speak but the get the way when we write. So meet rather than hold a meeting, fund rather than put funds in place, protect rather than being able to meet the short term need to protect.
• Lists of three things that mean more or less the same is another trick speakers unconsciously use. The costs, resources and capacities needed to tackle the problem might be better written as the resources needed to tackle the problem.

Travel language

It no longer seems polite to simply get off a train or a plane. These days one must detrain or deplane. The language seems stilted because train and plane are nouns and sticking the prefix de- in front doesn't really turn them into verbs.

The people at Eurostar insist that you embark and disembark and the thing you are doing when you think you are getting off is disembarkation. The root of the word -- bark -- actually means boat so maybe it conjures romantic images of ocean liners for some.

South West Trains still use alight to mean get off. This has a lovely 1950's Brief Encounter feel to it so, frankly, I prefer to alight if it means I can avoid detraining. However, it does rather imply that their trains are dark places.

A guard (sorry, customer services manager) on Scotrail invited me to uplift my personal items before leaving the train. So I sang a couple of hymns to my suitcase and left it where it was on the luggage rack before alighting at Perth.

The sound of writing

The secret of good writing is to listen. Philip Eales and Alan Whicker taught me this. Good writing has to sound good. Write something and read it back to yourself in a Whicker voice. If it sounds right then it generally reads well.

Of course, if you have no idea who Alan Whicker is, this approach may be problematic.

Philip Eales gave me the idea. When we were at school together he went around for some weeks imitating Whicker saying:
The gay cops of San Francisco. A world within a world. A community within a community. Where good is bad and bad is about as good as you're going to get.

I've no idea if Whicker ever actually said this (he did do a programme on the gay cops of San Francisco) but it has his cadence and the joy of repetition and balanced sentences. The point is that Whicker's writing had to sound good because his audience listened rather than read.



Here is how the approach can be used to improve (I hope) some copy:

Version 1
A quiet revolution is taking place in wireless that promises new operational and cost efficiencies for cellular base stations and handsets. Dubbed software defined radio (SDR), the development involves implementing radio functions in software. A simple enough technology trend, you may think, but with it comes significant ramifications for the wireless industry. And its biggest benefit is still to come: software defined radio is an important enabler of dynamic radio spectrum allocation that will benefit service providers and end users alike.

I like quiet revolution but it is kind of lost because the first sentence takes you down the garden path.

What about a full stop after wireless to give it more punch (you could even delete "in wireless" because it will probably be obvious from the context).

Could new operational and cost efficiencies be cheaper and easier?

Version 2:

A quiet revolution is taking place. The development, dubbed software defined radio (SDR), promises to prolong the life of cellular base stations while simplifying the design of smart phones. Implementing radio functions in software is a simple enough technology development, you may think. But with it comes significant industry ramifications. Indeed the biggest benefit is still to occur: SDR will help open up new spectrum once mobile operators' own exclusive bands become choked with data.

Now listen to the sound it makes. Try, for example, saying implementing radio functions in software is a simple enough technology development out loud.

Version 3:
A quiet revolution is taking place. Software defined radio (SDR) promises to prolong the life of cellular base stations while simplifying the design of smart phones. But the biggest benefit is yet to come. Mobile operators' own bands are fast becoming choked with data and SDR will help them open up new spectrum.

Short-long-short-long (like dancing) works quite well for flow. We could really do with another short at the end to tease people into starting the next par. Something like:
The challenge is getting everyone to agree.

The second sentence gives us an the opportunity for a balanced sentence of the type Whicker might use:
(SDR) promises to prolong the life of base stations and shorten the design-cycle of smart phones.

Version 4:
A quiet revolution is taking place. Software defined radio (SDR) promises to prolong the life of base stations and shorten the design-cycle of smart phones. But the biggest benefit is yet to come. Mobile operators' own bands are fast becoming choked with data and SDR will help them open up new spectrum. The challenge is getting everyone to agree.

Not quite the gay cops of San Francisco but getting there, I think. Many thanks to the anonymous donor of the original copy.

Clear, concise writing examples

Before	After
To support the proposed changes to policy and practice it is felt that a strong influence should be cascaded from the management population.	Managers will need to push the policy changes.
The procedure aims to encourage a dialogue in the workplace between employer and employee about how to meet both parties' needs. Therefore the meeting should be structured in such a way as to allow open two-way discussion about the employee's request.	You should talk with the employee to see if there is a way to keep everyone happy.
If frequent occurrences of sickness absence have been identified, careful investigation and consultation needs to be undertaken with the employee to establish whether there is an underlying problem.	If someone is off sick often, you should talk with them to see if there is a reason behind it.

Confusing heads

Recent headlines from the BBC news website succeed on brevity but fail on clarity.

Wife jailed over rap band killing

implies that she killed the band. In fact, she employed band members to kill her husband.

China firework bar blaze kills 15

suggests they have firework bars in China. Groovy. In fact, the blaze was caused by a firework set off in an ordinary Chinese bar.

The problem is caused by trying to squeeze two strands from a story into six words. Wife jailed for killing husband is a better single strand head, but a little mundane. Jail for wife who used rap band to kill husband gets the second, more interesting, strand into the head but now it is too long. Could be it is an impossible puzzle to solve?

When 'no-one dies' is big news

No-one died when an Airbus A320 crashed into the Hudson river, New York, last week. So why was it such big news?



We get used to stories where the number of people who die determines whether or not they make the front page. It's a bigger story if 1000 die than if only 10 die —for some people that is beginning and end of judging news value. Yet US Airways Flight 1549 made the front page even though no-one died.



All sorts of other things drive news value. In this case, the visual nature of the story was important. Even without the pictures, a plane landing on water is a visual story. The reader can imagine the great plume of water as the plane hits and that makes the story compelling.

It is also dramatic. Most of us have been on a plane when that cabin crew demonstrates the life jackets and so we have a picture what the passengers must have gone through. It is a story most readers will relate to.

This story was a visual gift. But with any story it is worth thinking about the value of things we can picture instantly, and we can relate to instantly.

Writing with style

Kurt Vonnegut offered the following tips on writing with style:

• Find a subject you care about
• Do not ramble, though
• Keep it simple
• Have guts to cut
• Sound like yourself
• Say what you mean
• Pity the readers

His entire article can be found here.



He recommended Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

My complete reading list for journalists and writers includes:

• Essential English: For Journalists, Editors and Writers (Pimlico) by Harold Evans
• The Elements of Style by William, Jr. StrunkWriter's Handbook (Penguin Pocket) by Stephen Curtis
• Bloomsbury Grammar Guide: Grammar Made Easy (Bloomsbury reference) by Gordon Jarvie
• Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson
• The "Times" Style and Usage Guide by Tim Austin
• The "Economist" Style Guide
• The Oxford Style Manual by Robert Ritter
• The Guardian Stylebook by David Marsh
• New Hart's Rules: The Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors (Reference) by R. M. Ritter
• Eats, Shites & Leaves: Crap English and How to Use It by Antal Parody
• Mother Tongue: The English Language by Bill Bryson
• The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg
• McNae's Essential Law for Journalists by Tom Welsh
• International Libel and Privacy Handbook: A Global Reference for Journalists, Publishers, Webmasters and Lawyers by Charles Glasser
• Oxford Dictionary of English by Catherine Soanes

New words in 2008

Medal became a verb in 2008 (the team includes athletes who have medalled at Olympic, World and European level) while fail became a noun (that is an epic fail).

The New York Times gives us frugalista and recessionista.

The people: web writing secret

The Irish government is expected soon to pledge to hold a second, high-risk referendum on the EU's reform blueprint within less than a year, writes The Guardian today.

What's happening within less than a year? It takes a moment to work out, doesn't it? That's fatal in web writing. You get seconds to tell the reader what's going on and to get them interested in it.



The problem is that we have expecting, pledging and holding all happening in quick succession. One verb per sentence is plenty but sometimes the information is too complicated and we need more. Here we have to understand three things to make sense of the story:

• The Lisbon Treaty which reforms the EU
• The rejection of it by Irish voters in a referendum in June
• The need for a new referendum

Tough work in a single sentence which also has to get us interested in the whole thing.

Irish voters who rejected the Lisbon Treaty in June will be asked to vote again on the issue next year, paving the way for controversial EU laws to be introduced in Britain is how the Telegraph covered the same story.

It is still complicated: we have rejected, asked, to vote, paving and introduced all in one sentence. But changing the viewpoint from the Irish government to Irish voters seems to make it easier to understand.

This is a good general rule. In order of preference, make your writing about:

1. Real individual people
2. Groups of people
3. Organisations
4. Intangible or abstract nouns

Only consider 3 or 4 if you really cannot make it work with 1 or 2.

News approaches on the web

Failing U.S. carmaker General Motors says it will run out of cash this month unless the taxpayer comes up with $4billion (£2.68billion) immediately, reported The Mail on 3 December.

This 21 word intro presents a complex news story simply and clearly but also manages to include elements that will grab the reader's attention:

• Real people the reader will care about -- the taxpayer
• A big number -- $4billion
• An urgency -- immediately

Here is how the Washington Post started the same story on the same day:

General Motors, an icon of American manufacturing and the world's largest automaker, yesterday threw itself at the mercy of Congress, saying it needed $4 billion to avert a cash crisis by the end of the month and as much as $18 billion in federal loans over the next year.

This version has the big number and the urgency but lacks the human element. It also requires the reader to process a 49-word sentence with a diversion into a sub-clause almost immediately. There is so much information on the web and it is so easy to find, that readers tend to be impatient. This means that a 25-word sentence containing a single thought is plenty, even for an intellectual audience.

The WP writers know their intro is not grabbing attention so they have hyped it up:

• ...an icon of...
• ...threw itself at the mercy...

But sadly these cliches tend to deaden writing rather than enliven it. Talking of cliche, this is how the Times of India reported the story:

To tide over the turbulent times, the beleaguered auto makers are leaving no stone turned [sic] to secure financial aid from the US, with Chief Executives of General Motors and Ford even ready for an annual salary of one dollar.

US and British English

US and British English are different but often the differences matter little.

Even if you notice that colour is spelled color, for example, you will still understand what the writer means.

The important thing is to standardise (or standardize) on one version of the language or the other. The reader certainly will notice if you keep changing the way you do things. The decision on which will depend where the bulk of your readers live.

However, there are some differences in the use of the language which are less well known.

That was quite good to an American means that was very good. To a Brit it means that was approaching good (not as good as good).

If you are writing in the version of English which is less natural for you, there are all sorts of pitfalls like this. It is therefore worth considering the predominant origin of the writers as well as the readers when you choose which version to standardise on.

This blog is in British English, but I am currently in Washington DC. Last night a waitress asked me are you getting dessert? I understood this but my first thought was that she was asking me whether I had behaved well enough to deserve a dessert. In Britain I would have been asked would you like dessert?

Suggestions of obscure differences between US and UK English gratefully received.

Blogging stimulates new language

The word blog has spawned 214 derivatives according to Damp Squid by Jeremy Butterfield including:

• Blogger
• Blogosphere
• Blogospheric
• Blogospherical
• Blogroll
• Bloggerati
• Bloggocks
• Blogstipation
• Bloglish

Writing to be found

Google-friendly writing techniques ensure that as many people will see your stuff as possible (it helps for search engine optimisation [SEO]):

• Update your site as frequently as possible
• Think of the words that people will search on if they want to find your page
• Use those words
• Do not use elegant variation unless synonyms are also words people will search for
• Make sure key words are in prominent positions
• Scoops, opinion and major facts will encourage linking
• Independence, balance and authority also help
• Be generous to sources and they will be generous to you
• Include as much detail as you can at the deepest levels of your site

Google Trends is a useful way to see what people are actually searching for.
Webconfs has a useful keyword density checker.

Online news tips

The structure:
Put the most significant thing (for the reader) first
Put the background last

The intro:
Sum up the main point in a single sentence paragraph of about 20 words
Keep the intro simple (don't use multi-strand intros)
Focus on who, what, why (the where and when can come later)
Start with the who
Make the who individual, personal
Make the who someone the reader will identify with
Make the what visual, dramatic
Never miss out the why
The why should tell the reader why the story is of value to them

The body:
Use quotes and stats for authority
Use quotes or vox pops to include the voice of the reader
Link to related archive material
Link to tables, graphs, maps
Link to blogs and wikis
Link to relevant external sites

Keeping it fresh:
Add bullet intros to longer stories
Use pull-quotes to pick out interest points from within the story
Use relevant, interesting pics
Always caption pics
Use cross-heads (sub-headings)

Most irritating words

Oxford University has compiled a list of the phrases people find most irritating according to the Daily Telegraph, which also comes up with its own list based on reader response.

The research is published in a new book by Jeremy Butterfield called Damp Squid.

Oxford's most irritating are:

1. At the end of the day
2. Fairly unique
3. I personally
4. At this moment in time
5. With all due respect
6. Absolutely
7. It's a nightmare
8. Shouldn't of
9. 24/7
10. It's not rocket science

The evil of the comma

A good piece of writing has few commas.

If you use few commas, it indicates you are writing well.

Among other things, a limited use of commas, to all intents and purposes, suggests the writer knows what they are doing.

Only the first of these sentences is always true. You can tell because it contains no commas. Simply removing commas is not a solution, however. Commas have a useful function in separating parts of a sentence so our reader can understand it. But an overuse of commas suggests that a sentence could be written in a better way.

Solution 1

Change the order: it gets rid of the comma and makes the sentence more elegant.

If you use few commas, it indicates you are writing well.

becomes

(it indicates) You are writing well if you use few commas.

The redunant phrase it indicates somehow becomes more obvious this way round. It can go.


Solution 2

Simplify the sentence. Maybe you need more that one.

Among other things, a limited use of commas, to all intents and purposes, suggests the writer knows what they are doing.

becomes

A limited use of commas suggests the writer knows what they are doing. It is only an indication and there are other things to look out for.


You will produce clearer writing if you can work out how to do without the comma. You will also be more concise.


Thanks to Roy for suggesting the topic after he noticed a New Scientist article containing few commas.

Reader models

The best form of communication is between one person and another. And the better the two people know each other, the better they communication. Radio journalists have known this for years. They talk about the listener (singular) and when you hear the best of them, they sound like they are talking just to you. That's because they are talking to just one person and they think of that person as a friend.

The trick is to condense your audience into a single person. That person does not have to embody every aspect of every member of your actual audience. It turns out that vaguely typical is close enough. You do have to know them well though. You need to know them as a complete human being. Their tastes, their foibles.

There is a useful technique called the phantom friend. Construct an imaginary friend by answering a few simple questions. The answers can be driven by prejudice or intelligence or research. It doesn't much matter. It gets you thinking about the audience as a singular human being. Here are the questions:

• What is their name?


• What age are they?


• What is their job?


• What are their hobbies?


• Where to they live and with whom?


• What newspaper do they read?


• Where do they buy their groceries?


• What do they watch on TV?


• What car do they drive?


• What clothes do they wear?


• What do they spend their spare cash on?

The better you understand this person, the easier it is to make decisions about your web site, so be creative. Don't just say they live in London. Say they live in a converted Victorian terrace in Islington with a girlfriend they are trying to get around to dumping and a fluffy cat that makes them sneeze. It doesn't limit your audience to people with cat allergies, it just reminds you they are real people.

Grammar misconceptions

1. You CAN split an infinitive.

To boldly go where no man has gone before

...is fine. Some argue that because the infinitive form of a verb is a single word in Latin, but is two words in English (to go) you should not put anything between those two words. No authority for 200 years has agreed with this argument, although some suggest that it is more elegant to avoid splitting the infinitive. Best of all find a more expressive verb than go, and that way you can do without the boldly and avoid the issue altogether.

2. You CAN start a sentence with and or but. Shakespeare did it, so why not you?

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?


3. You CAN end a sentence with a preposition. Prepositions include with, for, to, after. Some argue (wrongly) that they are used to join nouns and so they cannot come at the end of a sentence. Occasionally it can be more elegant to avoid ending with a preposition, but usually you just end up with pompous or old-fashioned writing.

The things we have to put up with.

The things up with which we have to put.

Put people first

Good writing is all about people. If a tree falls over in a wood, what we care about is whether it hit anyone. What we write about is what happens to people, what the impact is on people, how people react.

An asteroid hit Canada today,

is badly written because it does not address what is most important.

Hundreds were killed and thousands injured when an asteroid hit Canada today,

immediately tells us the scale of the events, and gives us and idea of the impact (excuse the pun) on our lives. After all, if the asteroid was only 1cm across and fell in a lake harming no one, it is not much of a story.

If there is more than one group of people in a story, focus on those your readers are most likely sympathise with. In fact, most of the time, your readers (at least some of them) will be the subjects of your stories. If you are writing for a small business website:

The government has announced regulations on sewerage,

seems dull and irrelevant.

People who make textiles say it will cost them millions to implement new sewerage regulations,

grabs the readers' attention a little better. It is the same story, but it has been written to focus on individuals.

There is an order of priority for deciding who should be the main subject of a story:

1. People like your readers


2. Representatives of people like your readers


3. Official organisations or government representatives

Only mention big anonymous organizations if you really cannot rewrite the story around individuals. Personal insight and case study material will work best, but remember it is arrogant to assume you are like your reader: don’t make yourself the case study.

Sometimes writers forget they are writing about people, and write about job titles. What someone has to say is usually more interesting and relevant than who they are.

Following the asteroid strike, Sir Hugh Jellicoe, Professor of Meteorology and Interplanetary Science at the University of Toronto said: "Run for your lives."

If the quote is as urgent as this, it is much better coming first. Even complete paragraphs can be turned around so that what someone has to say comes first, and the background comes afterwards. This can seem counter-intuitive, but by putting the interesting stuff first, we build up enough good will to keep the reader going through the boring stuff in the rest of the paragraph.

Shaving copy

There are writers who use 1000 words where just 12 will do. And there are give away signs that a sentence could be shorter. The first is that the sentence is a long one.

Post Office workers who staged an unofficial wild-cat strike this week in protest over new terms and conditions which Royal Mail managers want to impose, have said they will not be prevented from taking this course of action again.

The second give away is cunningly concealed repetition. Are Post Office and Royal Mail not the same thing in this context? Unofficial and wild-cat have the same meaning too. Are terms and conditions different?

The third clue is the use of unnecessary words. How, for example, is a course of action different from action? In any case, action is a vague word. What the writer really means is strike which he has already said, bringing us back to concealed repetition. This says the same thing:

Postal workers say they may strike again over terms their managers want to impose.

Making writing personal

• The writing is easier to relate to
• It helps credibility if the reader feels they know you
• But... it is easy to do the opposite if you write about yourself too much
• Remember the person the reader cares about is them, not you
• Use personal references only where they help the reader make sense of your story
• You can also make writing more personal by referring to the reader, using case studies or profiles, by creating fictional characters

The redraft - a 10 step guide

1. Read the copy. It might seem obvious, but many stressed-out writers try to circumvent this first step, editing the intro before they have read the conclusion. You cannot do a good job unless you have the whole story in your head.
2. Assess the story for:
   • Relevance to the reader
   • Interest value
   • How it works with other material
   If necessary, consider substantial changes to make the story more relevant, and add more information.
3. Assess the structure looking particularly at:
   • Sense and logical flow
   • Use of hard facts
   • Attribution of quotes and other information
   At this stage you may need to consider structural changes to improve the flow of the story, to bring out the most interesting or most important facts first, and to focus the story better on individuals.
4. Check the angle and the intro of the piece. Are they working? Can you see a way to make them work better? Often, when you identify interesting or important information that has been buried in a story, you also find a new and better angle.
5. Rewrite the story.
6. In the process of restructuring, cut out unnecessary words, remove cliches, rewrite passive and negative sentences, and make the copy clearer and simpler wherever possible.
7. Go back to 1 and assess the piece as you have rewritten it. You may have to go round this loop several times until you are happy with the copy.
8. Check the facts. If there is anything you are unhappy with, go back to the original source or a second or third source to verify the facts.
9. Check spelling, grammar, punctuation. Check also that the copy adheres to the publication’s style guide.
10. When you are absolutely happy with the copy, just check it one last time (bet you spot something).

Easy trimmings

Writing concisely makes things easier for the reader. Sometimes it is easy to lose words without losing meaning:

In order to................to
In the event of............if
In the near future.........soon
For the purpose of.........for
As a result of.............because
He is a man who............he
Checkup....................check
Join together..............join

In order to establish whether there are living organisms on the planet Mars, be advised that scientists are in the process of initiating a programme to send a robotic sample collection device in order to analyse samples of earth from the planet surface.

These 43 words could be recast as just 13:

Scientists will send a robot to see if there is life on Mars (and isn't this easier to follow?).

Be positive

Writing is generally clearer when it is cast in a positive way (even if it is still a negative thought). So not:

• The wine has not yet arrived.
• I have nowhere to live.
• The cat did not sit on the mat.

Rather

• The wine is delayed.
• I am homeless.
• The cat spurned the mat and sat on the sofa.

Negatives are bad enough. You should never avoid not using double negatives.

Write actively

An active sentence works better than a passive one. The cat sat on the mat (active) is simpler and clearer than the mat was sat on by the cat (passive).


The reader's brain works faster than their eye. If you start a sentence the attack... they may already be thinking about tanks, or vitriolic newspaper articles or a mugger in a dark alley.

If the sentence goes on the attack on the castle... the reader may have to discard previous pictures and now they may be thinking about a knight in shining armour. If the compete sentence reads the attack on the castle was carried out by Zorro, they discard all previous images and come up with a completely new one.

Conjuring up all these images is hard work and it can leave the reader confused. It is much clearer to work out the action in a sentence the attack and who took that action Zorro and put the actor first, then the action, and then the scenery the castle.

Actor - action - scenery
Zorro attacked the castle

Strict grammarians call the actor the subject of a sentence, the action the verb and the scenery the object.

Subject - verb - object is the definition of an active sentence and those are the best sentences to use.


Sometimes you will think you need a passive sentence but, really, you don't:

My house was broken into last night (passive).

You don't know who broke into your house (there is no subject) so you cannot make the sentence active. But you do know who broke into your house, you just think you don't:

Thieves broke into my house last night (active).

Direct language

Good writing is direct and immediate. Here are some tips on how to make your writing more direct:

• Visual: use language which is easy for people to picture
• Active: use active sentences (subject - verb - object)
• Modifier free: use as few adjectives and adverbs as possible (none is a good target)
• Postive: avoid using the words not and no (say delayed rather than not arrived)
• Short and simple

Writing visually

People process visual information (pictures, colours, layout) instinctively and quickly. We had to learn how to read and so generally we do that only after we have made judgments about how useful a piece of info looks.

Often users only take in a few words before giving up. The reasons are varied, but they amount to the same thing: reading is hard work.

You can make your writing easier if you write visually -- if your writing projects images in your reader's head. It is particularly effective in heads, intros and picture captions because those are the places where the reader's brain will make the transition from working visually to dealing with words. If the words are visual the transition is easier.

The way to work out if your writing is visual is to ask yourself "could I draw a picture of this?"

I have under consideration the implementation of a canine training strategy

is difficult to draw.

I'm going to teach my dog to jump through a hoop

is easier and therefore better.

Words that are easier to picture:

• Short
• Familiar (we learnt them at a young age)
• Learned in direct relation to the thing (by our mum pointing a dog, for instance) rather than in relation to other words (oh, canine means the same as dog, doesn't it?)
• Specific (jump can only mean one thing; give could be pictured in a number of different ways)

Attention span problem

Many people use the web to find information and they want it quickly. Actually the same is true in print. But the knowledge that Google will give you millions of pages with similar information means that web users often give you only a few seconds of their time.

Solving the attention span problem

• Make the language direct
• Make it clear what is going on
• Make it about the user
  
• Check that they benefit from what you are providing
  
• Make it obvious where they are in the virtual universe
  
• Avoid irritating them
• Make text easy to scan
• Give them something to play with

The credibility gap

It is so easy to publish on the web and so many people to it that there is a lot of dubious information out there. The result is that users trust what they read less and less.

Solving the credibility problem

• Well written
• Objective
• Independent
• Accurate
• True
• Facts and figures
• Balanced
• Authoritative sources
• High Google pagerank
• Be generous in using and crediting third party sources

Make it interesting

• Make it about people
• Make it about people your reader can identify with, or people like your reader
• Make it a story with a past and future as well as a present
• Make it so your reader benefits from reading it
• Make it new
• Use hard facts (345m long) rather than soft facts (big)
• Pick out the surprising, the quirky, the unusual
• Make it visual (yes, use pictures, but also make the writing conjure up pictures in peoples heads)
• Evoke and emotional response