Avoid drowning readers in alphabet soup
Acronyms appear to speed communication. After all, if you can boil a multisyllabic pileup of words down into a handful of letters, that moves information faster, right?… Read the full article
Phrase tighteners
When to use an adjective or adverb
Use them to change, not intensify, meaning
Beware adverbs, counsels The Poynter Institute’s Roy Peter Clark.
Too often, they dilute the meaning of the verb or repeat it: “The building was completely destroyed.”… Read the full article
Why avoid adjectives or adverbs?
They make journalists cry ‘hype’ & more
Why cut adjectives and adverbs from your copy?
Because modifiers:
1. Strike journalists as hype
Writing media relations pieces?… Read the full article
Why cut the marketing fluff from your web page?
Hype reduces reading, sharing — even sales
When “king of usability” Jakob Neilsen cut the fluff from a web page about Nebraska, the neutral web page was 27% more useful.… Read the full article
When to use adverbs and adjectives
‘Applewood-smoked bacon’ just tastes better
Turns out a Southwestern Tex-Mex salad by any other name would not taste as good.
Vivid menu descriptions — “applewood-smoked bacon,” “Maytag blue cheese” and “buttery plump pasta,” for instance — can increase restaurant sales up to 27 percent, according to research by Brian Wansink.… Read the full article
Redefine the way you define terms
5 ways to rethink definitions
When I was customizing an in-house writing workshop for a utility company, I wanted to see whether there was a better way to define kilowatt hour, or kWh, for consumers.… Read the full article
Avoid alphabet soup
7 ways to get the acronyms and abbreviations out
Seattle investigator J.P. Beaumont, a character in J.A. Jance’s Partner in Crime, tells this story:
“The world we live in is made up of shortcuts and acronyms — the Seattle PD, the U.S.
… Read the full article Make tech terms clear
Bring complex, scientific words, phrases to life
How do you make technical, medical and bureaucratic terms clear? Winners of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award demonstrate their techniques:
1.
… Read the full articleMake nanotechnology accessible
Model physicist Richard Feynman’s piece
So you think your subject is complex? Try taking on the topic of nanotechnology.
That’s the subject of “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom: An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics,” a classic speech by Richard Feynman, one of the most influential American physicists of the 20th century.… Read the full article
Run the B2B test
Are you using industry terms or in-house terms?
As I was conducting one-on-one writing coaching with a client recently, I noticed that he’d used the term “onboarding” without defining it in a press release for trade publications.… Read the full article