People in one study rated a disease that kills 1,286 people out of every 10,000 as more dangerous than one that kills 24.14% of the population (Yamagishi, 1997). But in fact, it’s about half as dangerous.

Why? The way you present, or frame, the information changes the way people — even experts — perceive it.

“If you tell someone that something will happen to one out of 10 people, they think, ‘Well, who’s the one?’” Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon psychologist, told Money.

Trying to help readers make a complex decision? Reframe the data so people can more easily see its meaning. Here’s how:

1. Choose frequencies, not probabilities.

People process frequencies (2 out of 100) better than percentages (2%) (Kaplan, 1986). Frequencies are effective because they:

• Demonstrate the importance of data. People weigh frequencies as more important than percentages when making decisions (Lipkus, Samsa and Rimer, 2001).
• Help people make better choices. In one study, faculty members and students at the Harvard Medical School made much better decisions when they received information about diseases and symptoms in the form of frequencies instead of probabilities (Huffrage, Lindsey, Hertwig and Gigerenzer, 2000).
• Help even experts see the situation more clearly. Forensic psychiatrists and psychologists judged a patient’s risk of being violent as much greater when it was communicated as a frequency instead of a probability (Slivic, Monahan and MacGregor, 2000).

2. Frame as a loss (or gain).

Give readers new ways to think about information by highlighting the potential gain or loss. You can frame your data as:

• Mortality vs. survival rates. The effect of dying seems to be greater when it is framed as a mortality rate of 10% than when it is framed as a survival rate of 90%. And both patients and doctors found surgery less attractive than radiation therapy when risk information was presented in terms of mortality rather than survival, despite surgery having better long-term prospects (McNeil, Pauker and Sox, 1986).
• Risk vs. reward. Consumers understood information much better, valued it more and gave it more weight in decision-making when it was framed as a loss or risk than as a reward. So “protect yourself from problems in health plans” is more effective than “get the best quality” (Hibbard, Harris-Kojetin, Mullen, Lubalin and Garfinkel, 2000).
• Loss vs. gain. In six out of seven studies, framing information as a loss was more effective than as a gain in communicating prevention, detection and treatment (Edwards, Elwyn, Covey, Matthews and Pill, 2001).
• Consider the message within the frame. Framing your message as a loss is more effective when promoting screening. Framing it as a gain is more effective when promoting prevention (Rothman, Martino, Bedell, Detweiler and Salovey, 1999).

3. Generalize a little.

In order to be as “correct” as possible, communicators often include too much information — six decimal points of precision, for instance, or data about confidence intervals.

But that actually makes important details harder to suss out. As a result, people weigh this information lower when making a decision (Hsee, 1996). So, for instance, offer an average point estimate (a score of 8) instead of a more correct one (7 to 9).

But don’t pile on the data.

To help people make better decisions, reframe the data — don’t just offer more data.

Take the ‘Numb’ Out Of Numbers.

Want to master the art of making statistics more interesting and understandable?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Take the ‘Numb’ Out of Numbers workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Wylie Communications Inc.’s senior writing coach to improve your own copy in one-on-one writing coaching.
• Learn more: Download Ann’s “Take the Numb Out of Numbers” e-book (free to RevUpReadership.com Gold members). And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Get the whole story in the latest issue of Rev Up Readership. And find dozens of Take the Numb Out of Numbers tipsheets on RevUpReadership.com.

___

Source: Judith H. Hibbard and Ellen Peters, “Supporting Informed Consumer Health Care Decisions: Data Presentation Approaches that Facilitate the Use of Information in Choice,” Annual Review of Public Health, 2003, Vol. 24, pp. 413-33

My favorite city magazine, Portland Monthly, runs five one-sentence stories per issue. Editors manage to cover the most Portlandish news of the month in an average of 26 words each.

JUST THE GIST Portland Monthly synopsizes the five most Portlandish news items of the month in just one sentence each.

Samples:

“News that Powell’s Books and Rogue Ales are collaborating on a beer infused with actual pages of Moby Dick raises the troubling prospect of 50 Shades of Grey-flavored absinthe.”

“Portland State professor Cameron Smith’s homemade space suit, built with hardware store parts and a 1970s Soviet fighter-pilot helmet, takes Portland’s DIY fascination to soaring new heights.”

“It happened in the early hours of New Year’s morning, but the outer Northeast beer pong stabbing will be hard to top as 2013’s dumbest crime story.”

“Yamhill’s new high school viticulture program easily trumps the self-taught alcohol curriculum offered at most high schools.”

“History’s most depressing souvenir knickknack arrives: the newly released Portland skyline rain globe.”

“Andrew Basiago, a Vancouver, Washington, lawyer who claims he frequently traveled through time as part of a secret government program, read all these stories long before you did.”

Taglines: “Because there’s simply no time for details.” And: “If brevity is the soul of wit, our one-sentence news nuggets belong in the Hilarity Hall of Fame.”

More one-sentence stories

PoMo’s not the only one-sentence-story game in town. Among others:

• One Sentence: True stories, told in one sentence
• One Sentence Stories: Sample: “A shiver went up my spine as I watched what I feared would happen again — my $100 black stilettos in my dog’s teeth.”
• Monkeybicycle One-Sentence Stories: Sample: “His skin tastes like pan-fried chicken soaked in buttermilk, mustard, shortening, but I’m a raw vegan.”

Try it yourself.

Short stories increase readership and understanding. Can you tell one of your organization’s stories in a single sentence?

Cut Through the Clutter

Is your copy easy to read? According to communication experts, that’s one of the two key questions people ask to determine whether to read a piece — or toss it.

Fortunately, academics have tested and quantified what makes copy easy to read. Unfortunately, that research virtually never makes it out of the ivory tower and into the hands of writers who could actually apply it.

But in Ann’s Cut Through the Clutter writing workshop, you’ll learn “the numbers” you need to measurably improve your copy’s readability. Specifically, you’ll learn:

• How long is too long: For your paragraphs? Your sentences? Your words?
• Three ways to shorten your copy — and which is the most effective way
• How to cut your copy before you’ve even written the first word
• How to avoid causing your reader to skip your paragraphs
• A tool you can use (you probably already have it, but you might not know it) to quantifiably improve your copy’s readability
• A seven-step system for making your copy clearer and more concise

Want to bring Ann’s Cut Through the Clutter writing workshop to your team? Contact Ann.

How do you create tweets that goes viral on Twitter?

PUNCTUATE, PERIOD Some 98% of retweets contain punctuation; just 86% of normal tweets do. So don’t drop the colons, periods and exclamation points.

Punctuate, counsels Dan Zarrella, HubSpot’s viral marketing scientist.

Zarrella spent nine months analyzing 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets to find what makes some messages travel the world while others just stay home on the couch.

Among his findings: Some 98% of retweets contain some form of punctuation, compared with 86% of normal tweets. So don’t forget the colons, periods, commas and hyphens.

But do forget semicolons — “the only unretweetable punctuation mark,” according to Zarrella.

Reach readers online.

Want to get the word out on the Web?

• Get it off your desk: Bring Ann’s team in to write Web copy for your organization.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Web writing workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to polish your Web writing skills with one-on-one writing coaching sessions. And find out about Ann’s upcoming webinars on writing for the Web and social media.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s Web writing learning tools. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Get the whole story in the latest issue of Rev Up Readership. And find dozens of tipsheets on reaching readers online at RevUpReadership.com.

In 1931, a man named Herbert William Heinrich noticed something odd about accidents.

SPEAK NO EVIL Safety communications are more effective if you’re honest.

Heinrich’s Law

An inspector for Travelers Insurance Company, Heinrich spent his days looking at clients’ accident rates and found a ratio. For every 300 injury-free accidents, there were:

• 29 minor-injury accidents
• 1 major injury accident

This ratio, now known as Heinrich’s Law, is now a key model for safety professionals.

Communicate ‘the next big one.’

Safety communicators can also tap this law by communicating how close we are to a major accident.

“The ratio of accidents for railroads in the U.K., is 12 to 1.5 to 1,” writes TJ Larkin, principle of Larkin Communication Consulting. “So if the UK railroads experience six near misses in six months, safety communicators can say:

“We are very near a major accident.
In the next 6 months,
we will probably kill somebody.”

Small accidents have similar causes to big ones. So, Heinrich learned, if you can reduce smaller accidents, you’ll can help eliminate the big ones.

Making sure your employees know “where we are” in the escalation to a big accident can help.

Plan powerful communications

Want to master the art of effective communication planning?

• Get expert advice: Bring Ann in to help you adopt a strategic editorial approach.
• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to write or edit copy that helps your organization achieve its business objectives.
• Boost your own skills: Work with Ann to improve your strategic writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching.
• Learn more: Study Ann’s communication planning learning tools. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Get the full story in the latest issue of Rev Up Readership. And find dozens of communication planning tipsheets on RevUpReadership.com.

___

Sources: TJ Larkin & Sandar Larkin, “Employees Should Know How Close They are to Killing Someone,” Larkin Page No. 56, February 2007

H.W. Heinrich, Industrial Accident Prevention — A Scientific Approach, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1959

Linda Wright and Tjerk van der Schaaf, “Accident Versus Near-Miss Causation: A Critical Review of the Literature, An Empirical Test in the UK Railway Domain, and Their Implications for Other Sectors,” Journal of Hazardous Materials, July 26, 2004, pp. 105-110

The rumor that I moved to Portland, Ore., solely because of the restaurants is only slightly exaggerated. But boy, do these people know how to eat.

So I found Karen Brooks’ new book, The Mighty Gastropolis, delicious on several counts: Not only did I gobble up the juicy back story on Portland’s restaurant scene, but I also devoured Brooks’ delectable metaphors.

Here are some highlights to amuse your brain as well as your bouche:

On butchery at Simpatica Dining Hall:

“It began with the sudden appearance
of an outsized leg of prosciutto
swinging from a ceiling pipe
like a shout-out from a Francis Bacon painting.”

On Portland’s dining scene:

“For years, Portland was a backwater,
its food scene relegated to the kids’ table
while rival sister Seattle sat with the big boys.”

On the 2011 James Beard Award nominations, held in Portland:

“Inside the Oregon Culinary Institute,
the air was tighter than the stock market floor
during President Obama’s
‘let’s get tough on Wall Street’ speech.”

On dining at Evoe:

“Scan the wall-size blackboard menu,
every inch crammed with possibility,
call out your order, and Kevin Gibson begins performing
like a biology professor on Restaurant: Impossible.”

On Oregon’s natural bounty:

“Enterprising pickers and pluckers
wheel up to the back doors of restaurants,
scales in hand, to peddle wild porcini
the size of small purses
or twenty kinds of heirloom tomatoes.”

On Xocolatl de David Raleigh Bars:

“… the thinking person’s Snickers:
one bite, and there’s no going back.”

On Laurelhurst Market:

“Dyer calls it ‘a reaction
to where the meat industry failed itself,
a response to cutlets on foam trays
wrapped in plastic with a diaper underneath.’”

On a dish at Castagna:

“No one seems to notice
that the famed steak and haystack fries
have been replaced by halibut
cloaked like a Christo installation
in an outsized cabbage leaf.”

On pizzas at Tastebud:

“The pizzas are back, and, on Saturdays,
the oven spits out the original flatbread
in salty flaps as big as a queen-size pillow.”

Make Your Copy More Creative

Want to communicate better with creative copy?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a creative writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Make Your Copy More Creative workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to Make Your Copy More Creative in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next Art of the Storyteller webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s learning tools on storytelling, metaphor and human interest.
• Join the club: Find dozens of tipsheets on creative copywriting at RevUpReadership.com.

How can you cook up metaphors like Brooks does
to make your readers devour your messages?

All talk and no pictures make comics a dull read.

HE SAID, SHE SAID
Make dialogue pithy.

And that’s the first rule of comic dialogue: Leave room for the art.

Tighten to fit.

Here are ways to keep comics short:

Let the pictures do the talking. In our first draft of a script for “Safety Moment” (below), your brilliant editor (me) included the line, “a 3-foot flame shot from an electrical outlet.”

I must have forgotten that readers would be able to see the three-foot flame the artist drew. Remember: Show, don’t tell.

Keep maximums in mind. Some writers limit themselves to 17 words per balloon, 30 words for a typical-sized panel or 60 words on a page, write Nat Gertler and Steve Lieber, authors of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating a Graphic Novel, 2nd Edition.

There’s no magic number, but you might study a comic book like the one you’re creating and use its standards. One page of The 9/11 Report, for instance, has 176 words, as many as 56 words per panel and as many as 18 words per balloon.

Drop unimportant details. If it doesn’t help your story, cut it.

Break it into two balloons. Still too long? “Two shorter balloons are less daunting and easier to integrate into the art,” write Gertler and Lieber.

Talk the talk.

Here are some more tips for polishing your dialogue:

• Make it conversational. This is people talking in a comic strip — don’t make it too stuffy. Two ways to practice writing dialogue, and they both involve the ear:
  1. Listen to what people say and how they say it. Capture dialogue at the deli, on the bus and in the interview.
  2. Read your dialogue aloud. “I often work out conversations aloud before typing them up to avoid that stiffness,” Gertler writes. “That’s why you see me talking to myself on the bus.”

• Don’t forget the action. “There’s an instinct to stop everything, putting characters into chairs to do nothing but chat,” Gertler writes. “That’s not a wrong thing to do, particularly in drama. But if you take the same conversation and stage it during a bike ride, or at a boxing match, or at the zoo, it becomes more interesting.”
• Don’t get too creative with accents. “Yerr readerr vill kvickly tire uv tryink to dezypher ebery verd,” write Gertler and Lieber.

Learn more about how to write conversationally.

Anatomy of a comic script

Here’s the evolution of “Safety Moment,” a four-panel strip. Notice how the more words we strip away, the better the strip becomes.

SAFE PLACE ‘Safety Moment’ started out as a 197-word story and a photo of a guy standing next to an electrical outlet.

PICTURE THIS At 56 words, this four-panel cartoon is hard to read. Perhaps we should have tipped in a tiny magnifying glass to help readers see the tiny words.

SAFE BET At 38 words — including the sound effects — this piece is more visual — and more readable.

Learn more about how to cut copy.

Give Twitter followers some space. Space to include a comment when they retweet your message, that is.

Yes, you have 140 characters to work with on Twitter. And that’s not much. But leave 20 characters for your followers’ notes, and you’ll encourage retweeting.

That’s right: 120 characters is the new 140.

Reach readers online.

Want to get the word out on the Web?

• Get it off your desk: Bring Ann’s team in to write Web copy for your organization.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Web writing workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to polish your Web writing skills with one-on-one writing coaching sessions. And find out about Ann’s upcoming webinars on writing for the Web and social media.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s Web writing learning tools. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: And find dozens of tipsheets on reaching readers online at RevUpReadership.com.

ROSE COLORED GLASSES? If you don’t report bad news, employees get nervous.

Some 84% of executives say their communication is intentionally “optimistic.” That’s a mistake.

Withholding bad news makes employees feel uncertain. That uncertainty can be worse than the bad news itself.

Indeed, research by David M. Schweiger and Yaakov Weber shows that communicating bad news as well as good decreases employees’ uncertainty and stress.

Bad news increases employees’:

• Job satisfaction
• Commitment
• Trust in the company
• Intention to stay at the company

How can you improve employee relations by communicating the bad along with the good?

Plan powerful communications

Want to master the art of effective communication planning?

• Get expert advice: Bring Ann in to help you adopt a strategic editorial approach.
• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to write or edit copy that helps your organization achieve its business objectives.
• Boost your own skills: Work with Ann to improve your strategic writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching.
• Learn more: Study Ann’s communication planning learning tools. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: And find dozens of communication planning tipsheets on RevUpReadership.com.

___

Sources: TJ Larkin & Sandar Larkin, “Communicate the Good and the Bad,” Larkin Page No. 46, October 2006

David M. Schweiger and Angelo S. Denisi, “Communication with Employees Following a Merger: A Longitudinal Field Experiment,” Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1, March 1991, pp. 110-135

David M. Schweiger and Yaakov Weber: “Strategies for Managing Human Resources during Mergers and Acquisitions: An Empirical Investigation,” HR – Human Resource Planning, Vol. 12, No. 2, 1989, pp. 69-86

In Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, Andrew Graham-Dixon compares the artist to the light lights and dark darks of his paintings.

CARAVAGGIO LIGHT AND DARK Andrew Graham-Dixon extends a metaphor to show Caravaggio’s sacred and profane sides.

Notice how he extends the metaphor:

“He was one of the most electrifyingly original artists ever to have lived …”

“He lived much of his life as a fugitive, and that is how he is preserved in history — a man on the run, heading for the hills, keeping to the shadows.”

“But he is caught, now and again, by the sweeping beam of a searchlight.”

“His youth is the least documented period of his existence — the darkest time, in every sense, of this life of light and darkness.”

“But in its shadows may be found some of the most important clues to the formation of his turbulent personality.”

“Suddenly here is Caravaggio, caught in the flashbulb glare of a barber’s memory: ‘This painter is a stocky young man, about twenty or twenty-five years old, with a thin black beard, thick eyebrows and black eyes, who goes dressed all in black, in a rather disorderly fashion, wearing black hose that is a little bit threadbare, and who has a thick head of hair, long over his forehead.’”

“Bellori, echoing Vasari’s idea that artists resemble their own work, wrote that ‘Caravaggio’s style corresponded to his physiognomy and appearance; he had a dark complexion and dark eyes, and his eyebrows and hair were black; this colouring was naturally reflected in his paintings … driven by his own nature, he retreated to the dark style that is connected to his disturbed and contentious temperament.’”

Extend your metaphors.

To extend a metaphor:

1. Find your base. In this case, light and dark.
2. Explore your base. Go a level or two deeper into your base and list the key elements you find there. Graham-Dixon comes up with words like electrifying, shadows, flashbulb, searchlight, disturbed and contentious.
3. Make a metaphor. Compare your target to your base, as Graham-Dixon does here.

How can you extend a metaphor like Graham-Dixon?

Make Your Copy More Creative

Want to communicate better with creative copy?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a creative writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Make Your Copy More Creative workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to Make Your Copy More Creative in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next Art of the Storyteller webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s learning tools on storytelling, metaphor and human interest.
• Join the club: Find dozens of tipsheets on creative copywriting at RevUpReadership.com.

I love it when my clients send me before-and-after pieces after I present a writing workshop.

BUILD A SOLID STRUCTURE Rethink your story with the feature-style story format.

For one thing, it’s gratifying to see that people’s writing actually improves after I visit! For another, these pieces make great case studies in good writing.

Workers Compensation Board-Alberta writer Caren Baroudy recently did a wonderful job rewriting an article for the WCB’s client magazine. Notice how her rewrite:

• Focuses the angle on reader benefits. Baroudy moves from event to impact, changing the story angle from WCB’s new opioid claim rollout to how employers can help save employees from addiction and overdose by using the board’s new resources.
• Uses the feature-style story structure. This approach has been proven in the lab to be more effective at reaching readers. It also allows writers to plug and play their information into an existing format, saving time and effort. In fact, Baroudy did much of this revamp during a morning workshop — a workshop in which your dear writing coach spent most of the time talking.
• Keeps the piece short. The revised piece weighs in at less than 200 words — a one-minute read. The original is actually a little longer, at 213 words. Which goes to show that you can use the feature-style story structure even when you don’t have a lot of space.

Here’s Baroudy’s original piece:

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And here’s Baroudy’s rewrite:

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Thanks to WCB-Alberta’s communication leaders, Marcela Matthew and Dayna Therien, for sharing this piece with me and for letting me share it with you.

And to my other clients: I’d love to see your befores and afters. Please send them to me. It will help me illustrate my tips and techniques — not to mention feed my ego.

Build a solid structure

Want to master a story structure that increases readership instead of cutting it short?

• Get it off your desk: Bring Ann’s team in to write compelling copy.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Go Beyond the Inverted Pyramid workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann on developing the feature-style story structure in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next Beyond the Inverted Pyramid teleseminar.
• Learn more: Get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Get dozens of tipsheets on the feature-style story structure at RevUpReadership.com.