Writing Matters

Give Us Your Feedback and Get a Free Copy of Our New Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail Workbook

We need your help! We’re revising Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail: A Writing Workbook for Customer Service Agents. We need your real-world input. Give us your suggestions for what to include in our revision, and we’ll give you a complimentary copy of the new workbook.

Workbook Users
If you’ve used our Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail Workbook and/or E-Mail Writing Skills Competency Exam, we’d welcome your feedback:

• Which chapters or activities did you find most helpful?
• What new subjects or topics would you like to see included in a revised workbook? (We’re planning to include new chapters on formatting e-mails and writing useful subject lines, plus exercises specifically for help desk support staff.)

Contact Center and Help Desk Managers
If you haven’t used our workbook, but you are a seasoned customer service or help desk manager, we’d welcome your input:

• What writing problems or issues do your agents struggle with? 
• Download the workbook Table of Contents. What’s missing? What other topics would you like to see covered in a writing workbook for customer service agents?

And Finally, Customers! 
We’d like your input too:

• What writing problems do you find most prevalent (most annoying!) in the customer service e-mails you receive?
• What suggestions do you have to improve the writing of customer service agents?

Give us your suggestions as comments on this post, send us an e-mail, or give us a call. We’d love to chat with you about customer service e-mail writing.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions!

--Marilynne Rudick
marilynne@ewriteonline.com
301-986-9627

Unsubscribe Me! An Indispensible E-mail Management Tool

My e-mail inbox was so cluttered with newsletters, white papers, and marketing fluff that e-mail management—separating the real e-mail from the chaff—was an onerous, time-consuming chore. Last night, in a flash of brilliance, I realized I could streamline my e-mail management by simply unsubscribing from unwanted mailing lists. I attacked my inbox like Sherman through Georgia.

In most instances, unsubscribing only required me to click on an unsubscribe link. But sometimes I had to look long and hard to find that link. It was always at the bottom of the message. Sometimes it was below and even smaller than the small-print disclaimers and legal gibberish. But a few organizations made unsubscribing confusing, complicated, and time consuming.

Thank You for What?
Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I’d successfully unsubscribed. For example, at TMCnet, after clicking “Remove me from all of the eNewsletter and third party e-mails,” I got this message: “Thank you for subscribing to the freshest communications and technology Industry eNews.”

Unending Circuit City
Among the most annoying unsubscribes was Circuit City. The instructions on the unsubscribe page were unclear. At the top of the page, I was asked to “enter the email address you’d like to update.” I didn’t want to update it; I wanted to delete it. I was then offered the option of getting fewer e-mails ("only receive 1-2 e-mails per week"). Only after scrolling down to the bottom of the page, did I get to the “unsubscribe” button.  

Circuit City was relentless. After clicking "unsubscribe," I got a screen confirming my unsubscribe and offering me the opportunity to get its marketing materials via RSS! ("Don't want the email but still want the deal?")

Turning that offer down did not lessen Circuit City’s ardor. It sent an e-mail confirmation that once again offered me a chance to sign up for its RSS feed. But the last straw was a P.S. asking me to complete a short survey about why I was unsubscribing!  (Circuit City do not darken my e-mail box again!)

UnDemocratic Unsubscribe
It was complicated and time-consuming to unsubscribe from The Democratic Party's e-mail updates. The unsubscribe page also had a large “Contribute” button and “Get Updates” field, which would re-subscribe me. (What part of opting out didn’t they get?) Even worse, after I entered my e-mail address to unsubscribe, a screen message asked me to enter a four-digit confirmation code that would be e-mailed to me in a few minutes. They don’t make it easy for you to become an unDemocrat!

Winnowing down my e-mails by unsubscribing was incredibly satisfying—like finally cleaning out the junk drawer. And the efforts bore fruit—a lean inbox this morning. I appreciate the ease with which most organizations let me unsubscribe. No hard feelings, and I’m open to doing business with you in the future. As for those that made unsubscribing difficult, there’s a lingering bad taste that will make it harder for me to reengage.

While I unsubscribed to lots of lists, I was also surprised by the number of newsletters and e-mails I wanted to continue receiving. Many organizations, I realized, provide useful and timely information that I welcome.

--Marilynne Rudick

"Plain language is a civil right..."

And with those stirring words, Annetta Cheek, chair of the Center for Plain Language, kicked off last week's 2009 Plain Language Symposium.  And the stirring words about the need for clarity in writing continued throughout the event. Here are some of my favorite quotable quotes from the Symposium:

• "Don't make readers wander through the crap in your mind," advised Karl Gude (currently an instructor at Michigan State's University School of Journalism, formerly Newsweek's graphics director) during his talk "Understanding through visualization."
• "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough," said Albert Einstein who wasn't actually at the Symposium but was quoted several times by presenters.
• The absence of plain language "...keeps citizens from getting the government benefits and services they're entitled to," said Congressman Bruce Braley (D. Iowa), sponsor of The Plain Language Act of 2009. Braley cited the hot-off-the-press Washington Post article, "Time for a plain language revolution," which leads with a pretty good line of its own: "Sometimes Uncle Sam sounds like he has marbles in his mouth."
• "Some people think clear and conspicuous is just a pair of desperate modifiers in search of a noun," said Karen Schriver of KSA Communication Design & Research during her talk "Clear and conspicuous: Designing content visually."

From Ginny Redish of Redish & Associates, a wonderful download instead of a quotable quote. Ginny's excellent Symposium presentation, "Plain language makes a difference when people vote," summarized the results of the usability research she's done for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) related to the 2002 Help America Vote Act. You can download the report she prepared for NIST: "Review of the gap between instructions for voting and best practice in providing instructions." "But I don't need to know how to write instructions for voting," you might argue. Download Ginny's research report anyway:

• it's loaded with common sense, research-tested advice about how to write usable instructions
• it's illustrated with examples of how the instructions should be written
• you can use it as a model document which demonstrates how to write about research in clear, engaging, plain language

I attended the Center for Plain Language's Symposium last year and provided links to some of the 2008 presentations. As soon as this year's presentations are available, I'll let you know.

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

Wordle: My Favorite New Toy

Wordle may not be new, but it's new to me and I can't stop playing with it. Wordle is "... a toy for generating 'word clouds' from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text." For word-loving writerly types, Wordle is irresistible. Not only does it take your words and make them look pretty, it displays them in a way that reflects their importance.

Here's the word cloud Wordle generated when I input most of the content from our E-WRITE home page. I'm thrilled with it for a couple of reasons:

• The words writing and content are huge, and that's what E-WRITE is all about.
• The cloud gave me insights into underlying meanings or emphases in my text. I didn't realize that want, need, and needs figured prominently in my home page copy. I'll have to contemplate this discovery for a while to decide what to do. Should I edit these terms out or celebrate the fact that they show up so often?

Other cool uses of Wordle:

• Study a politician's speech. ReadWriteWeb offered Word Cloud Analysis of Obama's Inaugural Speech Compared to Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Lincoln's 

• Present survey data. About a year ago, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press asked voters for one word that best described the candidates for president and vice president. Pew used Wordle to display the survey results. Here's the biggest Wordle word for each candidate: McCain - OLD, Obama and Palin - INEXPERIENCED, Biden - EXPERIENCED.  Interesting word clouds, especially in light of the election results! Check out Pew's Wordle clouds at The Candidates: In a Word
  

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

P.S. Thanks to D. Kokinda for turning me on to Wordle!

Action Buttons Confuse When There's Nothing For The User To Do

This strident pop-up from my bank (note the huge exclamation point) has a simple message: Sandy Spring Bank is improving my ebiz reports. I'm happy. And they've provided me a nice little bulleted list of the four ways the new reports will be better than the old ones.

Now, most web users like to click buttons. When I'm offered a"Tell Me More" or a "Remind Me Later" button, I'm as likely to click as the next guy or gal. But don't invite me to do something when there's really nothing for me to do. [Click the screen shot to see it full-size.]

Instead of helping me dig deeper, these buttons raise all kinds of confusion in my mind:

• You offer to tell me more, but what more is there for you to tell me, Sandy Spring? I only want you to tell me more about the new reports if I have to take action in order to get them. Do I need to do something? If so, why aren't you telling me now?
• Remind me later? To do what? Again, if I need to do something, tell me now.

This pop-up begins by illuminating a new offering, but it ends by confusing me. And while I might forgive another site for an action button content glitch, I hold my bank to a higher standard. I'm banking online these days, and I want to be quite sure that my bank is solid, responsible, and credible. So I've got to say that these go-nowhere buttons—combined with the error-laden first sentence—are causing me to have a big question mark (not a green exclamation point) about my bank.

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

Research Report: Old Writing Rules Apply to New Social Media

While updating our web writing courses, I've been scouring usability research to find new studies that apply to web writing. The findings from two separate research studies from the Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) at Wichita State University remind me that old web writing guidelines apply to new media—social networking sites. Both studies flagged common writing issues—confusing and unfamiliar terminology, and inadequate user feedback and error messages—as problems that harm usability.

1. Usability Evaluation of Three Social Networking Sites. The study evaluated the usability of MySpace, Facebook, and Orkut. Users completed 10 tasks for each site, including adding new information to a profile, making a photo album, and changing notification options for messages. Users rated the difficulty of each task and their satisfaction with each site.
2. Trick or Tweet: How Usable is Twitter for First-Time Users? Users performed eight tasks on Twitter, including creating an account, posting a tweet, and responding to a tweet. Users rated the ease of use and their satisfaction with the site. 

Confusing and Unfamiliar Terminology
SURL researchers found that inconsistencies in link terminology resulted in users' failure to complete tasks. For example, My Space uses the Term “My Account” as a link. But clicking on the link brought up a page with the heading “Settings.” 

Users were confused by unfamiliar terms. MySpace users clicked on “Photo Cube” expecting to make a photo album. They found that “Photo Cube” is a function that allows users to print photos. Twitter users were unclear about whether to use “Profile” or “Setting” to edit their information.

Not surprisingly, most new users “had difficulty learning the ‘language’ that was unique to Twitter.” What was the difference between followers and following? Users were confused about Twitter-unique terms such as “RT” (retweet) for reposting a message from another user, the use of @symbols to indicate usernames in tweets, and the use of hashtags (#) to indicate topic tags for messages.

Twitter language proved so confusing that users had very poor success rates in some tasks: Only 15.4% were successful in sending a message and only 38.5% were successful in replying to messages. Users concluded that Twitter was “complex and felt they would need to learn quite a bit before using it.” Participants reported that "they would not use the service often.”

Poor Feedback and Unhelpful Error Messages
Poor feedback and unhelpful error messages also contributed to the failure of social network users to complete tasks. MySpace provided a poor error message to users who forgot to give their photo albums a name. Twitter users often weren’t sure whether they had successfully completed a task  such as sending a message. They were looking for feedback, a completion message or visual confirmation—an icon or a change in font color—to confirm their success.

Tips for Applying the Research to Your Writing
The studies’ usability findings are specific to social networking sites. But applying the recommendations to your writing will improve the usability and user satisfaction for both traditional and new media websites. 

• Use terms consistently. Don’t change language mid-stream. For example, is “editing” a profile the same as “updating” a profile? If so, choose one term and use it throughout the site. Consistency is especially important for links because the repetition of link language assures users that they’ve landed on the correct page. If users click “My Account,” the landing page should be labeled “My Account” not ‘Setting.”
• Use plain and intuitive language. The link “print photos” is more intuitive than “photo cube.”
• Explain new terms. You may think a term is self-explanatory, but first-time users may not know your language: tweets, followers, following, photo cube, wall. Provide a brief explanation of terms when users encounter them or link to a glossary.
• Provide helpful feedback and useful error messages. Provide confirmation messages to users: “You have successfully added photos to your album.” Write error messages that explain why the user failed. “Your user name and password do not match” is more helpful than “login failed.”

--Marilynne Rudick

World Usability Day Offer: Free Plain Language Consult, Training, Resources from Webcontent.gov

The folks at Webcontent.gov really know how to celebrate World Usability Day, which falls this year on November 12, 2009. It won't be just another stale-donuts-in-the-conference-room party, no sirree. For this year's World Usability Day, Webcontent.gov has a great free offer for all you web managers and usability analysts:

Build your Plain Language skills and celebrate the sustaining power of Usability + Plain Language on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at this year’s World Usability Day!

• Sign up for a FREE “mini-consultation” by phone with a usability or plain language expert to improve your government webpage or document
• Register to attend a FREE in-person plain language training on Nov. 12  in Washington, DC near Union Station
• Use our Plain Language + Usability Resource Kit to conduct a World Usability Day activity at your agency

Register and find more information at World Usability Day 2009 on Webcontent.gov

With questions, contact Nicole Burton, Usability Specialist at nicole.burton@gsa.gov

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

Social Media Press Release: Tips and Examples

Does the traditional press release format work in the world of 24-hour news, blogs, Facebook and Twitter? Many media professionals think the 100-year-old press release format is ineffective and obsolete. They're calling for a new approach. Read my companion post: The Social Media Press Release: A New Approach to the Old Problem of Getting Noticed.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Social Media Press Release (SMPR)

1. Think modular. Whether you are using the template approach or a traditionally written press release enhanced with multimedia and social media elements, make sure each component or section of the release can stand alone.
2. Link, link, link. Optimize links for search engine visibility. If your SMPR is being distributed by a news service, make sure to link back to a landing page or newsroom at your website. Include links to related information at other pages on your website. Link out to social bookmarking and social media sites, such as delicious, Digg, and Technorati.
3. Post content in multiple channels. In addition to including multimedia elements in your SMPR, post components of your release to appropriate sites for increased search engine visibility. For example, post your videos on YouTube and your photos on Flickr.
4. Write your SMPR content for online readers. They scan rather than read word for word. Write short, use bulleted lists, and write message headings.
5. Use keywords to maximize search engine ranking. Repeat the keywords in headlines, subheads, and in the text of the social media release.
6. Use visuals. Include your logo, a headshot of your organization's CEO, maps and charts, and photos of products or services. Also include video. Videos don’t have to be professionally produced. YouTube-quality videos help reporters understand your product, and that helps them explain it to their readers.
7. Incorporate interactivity. Engage in a conversation with the media and customers by providing a way for them to comment or ask questions.

Social Media Press Release: Resources and Examples

• “Anatomy of the Social Media Press Release,” a presentation delivered at the 2008 Public Relations Society of America conference, explains the concepts behind the SMPR and includes a good annotated sample.
• The National Restaurant Association lists its social media releases going back to December 2008,including “Winners of 2009 Restaurant Neighbor Award for Outstanding Community Service“ and “Healthy Kids’ Meals, Local Produce, Mini Desserts Among Hottest Menu Trends for 2009.”
• The 2008 GovGab SMPR announced the first birthday of GovGab, the U.S. government blog. The multimedia elements in this SMPR include audio, commenting, photos of the GovGab bloggers, and links to their bios.
• “Second Life Reforestation Project Qualifies as a Finalist in American Express Members Project,” distributed by RealWire, is a good example of an SMPR that uses the full gamut of social media elements, including video, tags, and commenting.
• Dupont’s release on Nomex® On Demand™ , fiber technology that protects firefighters, is a good example of a wire service traditional release enhanced with multimedia elements, including a YouTube video that shows how  Nomex® On Demand™ actually works.

--Marilynne Rudick

There’s [Grammar] Hell to Pay If You Break These Rules

Grammar rules die hard. I learned that after my post Five Grammar Rules That Beg To Be Broken. I heard from a number of readers who, invoking the ghosts of eighth grade English teachers past, refused to break the rules. Despite my advice, they will not split infinitives or end a sentence with a preposition—ever.

The English language is changing. But some of the rules that we learned are still hard and fast.  Here’s my top five grammar and usage rules that should not be broken. Breaking these rules will land you in grammar hell, where you’ll have to diagram sentences and speak to your eighth grade English teacher in complete sentences—for eternity. 

1. Possession Is 9/10th of The Apostrophe Rule
The apostrophe doesn’t do heavy lifting. Its two main jobs are standing in for missing letters in a contraction and showing possession or ownership. Despite its slim task roster, it’s subject to more than its fair share of abuse. In its job of indicating possession, an apostrophe between the noun and the s shows singular possession. For example, “the doctor’s office” indicates that the office belongs to one doctor. Placing the apostrophe after the s with a plural noun, “the doctors’ office,” shows that the office belongs to more than one doctor.

Some misguided people feel compelled to put the apostrophe between any noun and an s. “The doctor’s have a large office.” This is incorrect. Remember, the apostrophe indicates that the noun is possessive, not plural.

2. Its or It’s? Small Words Big Difference
Confusing it’s and its is probably the grammar error I see most frequently.

• It’s is a contraction for it is. “It’s the best pizza I’ve ever eaten.” 
• Its is a possessive pronoun. “Remove the pizza from its box before reheating." As one of the oddities of the English language, despite indicating possession (See #1), its does not have an apostrophe.

3. “It’s Me, Not I”
For some reason, me has gotten a bad rap. People think that using I is classier or more correct. The truth is me is high class enough when used correctly. So when is that? Me is correct when it is the object of the sentence or object of the preposition—not the subject. “John went to the ballgame with me” is correct because in this sentence John is the subject and me is the object of the preposition. 

The confusion between I and me crops up when there is a compound object. “John went to the ballgame with Susan and me.” You don’t need to grapple with parts of speech to figure this out. Let your ear be the judge. Take away Susan and you are left with “John went to the ballgame with me.” “John went to the ballgame with I” sounds—and is—incorrect.

4. Subject-Verb Disagreement
Errors in subject-verb agreement are also common. The rule is simple enough. A singular subject requires a singular verb. A plural subject requires a plural verb. The problem occurs when writers incorrectly identify the subject.

• Incorrect: “A good set of tools make repairs easier.” This is incorrect because set (singular) not tools (plural) is the subject.
• Correct: “A good set of tools makes repairs easier."

(For those who have difficult identifying the subject of the sentence, try diagramming!)

5. Punctuation with Quotes: Insider’s Rules
A common conundrum: when you have quotation marks combined with other punctuation—comma, period, question mark—do these other punctuation marks go inside or outside the quotation marks? 

In American usage (Chicago Manual of Style Online), periods and commas always go inside the quotation marks. Other punctuation marks—colons, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points—all go outside the quotation marks unless a question mark or an exclamation point is part of the quoted matter.

• The boss asked all employees, “Will you take a cut in pay?” In this example, the question mark goes before the quotation marks because it is part of the quoted matter.
• Did you hear that the boss asked all employees, "Will you take a cut in pay”? In this example, the question mark goes outside of the quotation marks because it applies to the whole sentence, not just the quotation.

Does breaking any of these rules spell surefire disaster for your business or career? That depends. Lands’ End has made a small fortune despite a misplaced apostrophe.  President George W. Bush was not impeached for his subject-verb disagreement: “Is our children learning?"  And Barack Obama—President, Harvard Law Review editor, and book author—has incorrectly used I instead of me repeatedly:  “a very personal decision for Michelle and I.”

So, you may escape cataclysmic ruin in this life and even prosper if you break these rules. But then there’s the afterlife in grammar hell!

--Marilynne Rudick

Social Media Press Release: A New Approach to the Old Problem of Getting Noticed

When more than 50 people lost their lives in a train wreck in 1906, Ivy Lee—the father of public relations—issued the first-ever news release, a public statement about the crash from Pennsylvania Railroad officials. The New York Times was so impressed with this innovative approach to corporate communications that it published the release verbatim.

Getting the NYT to publish a release is still every PR practitioner’s dream. But the reality is that although the press release remained the same for more than 100 years, the media landscape has changed beyond recognition, thanks to 24-hour cable news channels, fewer magazines and newspapers, and thousands of blogs and social media sites. With the major online news services distributing more than 2,000 press releases a day, the odds of your release getting noticed—much less reprinted verbatim—are slim to none. The majority of press releases end up in journalists’ trash bins.

In his 2006 blog post Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die!, Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher argued that the traditional press release incurs lots of expense and effort for little return. He issued a clarion call: Ditch the 100-year-old format and reinvent the press release to reflect the needs of today’s media.

Foremski’s redo—the social media press release, or SMPR—called for stripping the press release of “top-spin” (claims that something is the biggest, the newest, the best) and deconstructing the release into stand-alone components:

• A brief, straightforward description of the announcement about the new product, event, or service
• Quotes from top executives, customers, users, and analysts
• Financial information
• Product specs or other relevant details
• Multimedia elements
• Links to the organization’s website and external links to other news stories or resources
• Tagged content so that information can be easily found by search engines and social bookmarking sites, such as share-it!, Technorati, and delicious.

Announcing The Social Media Press Release Template
It didn’t take long for Foremski’s ideas about a 21st century press release to gain traction. Shift Communications was first out of the gate with its Social Media Press Release Template. True to form, it announced the SMPR template with, you guessed it, a release that uses the template. With input from PR professionals and journalists, the Social Media Group offered a refinement in 2008: its own social media press release template. Social Media Group’s template emphasizes audio, video, blogs, and interactivity.

Some Assembly Required
Foremski said that given the components of the SMPR, writers—whether they’re reporters or bloggers—can assemble the news story and put their own slant on the content. For example, a journalist writing an article about economic trends could draw from several SMPRs and buttress forecasts from the Federal Reserve with statistics from researchers and think tanks, as well as a quote drawn from the National Restaurant Association’s social media news release about economic trends in the restaurant industry.

Hybrid Releases: The Best of Old and New
Although some organizations have fully embraced the social media press release format, they are a definite minority. A 2009 MarketingSherpa study found that nearly 50 percent of B2B and B2C companies didn’t know what a social media press release was. Of those who did, only 20 percent actually distributed them.

More common is the multimedia news release (MNR), a press release that uses the traditional linear format but incorporates social media elements—photos, videos, podcasts, and social bookmarking. The online distribution services, including PRWeb, PRNewswire, and RealWire, offer MNR options. You can see an MNR example at the PRWeb site: “DuPont Introduces Innovative Nomex® On Demand™ to Better Protect Firefighters.”

One advantage of publishing an MNR rather than an SMPR: you “control” the story a bit more, while enriching it with multimedia and social media elements to make it more appealing to the reporter or blogger.

Overcoming Two SMPR Obstacles
One of the stumbling blocks in the adoption of social media press releases is figuring out how to distribute them. That’s why many organizations use multiple distribution channels. You can:

• Send an e-mail to your organization’s press or subscriber list that includes a link to the SMPR.
• Push the SMPR out via an RSS feed.
• Use online news release services, such as PRWeb, PRNewsWire, or RealWire, which have incorporated multimedia capabilities into their press release formats.
• Use a wire service to deliver a traditional press release (cheaper than a wire service MNR) with a link back to the organization’s newsroom, where the release is also available in a social media format.
• Announce the SMPR via social media—Twitter, corporate blog, LinkedIn, and Facebook—with a link to the SMPR.

Yet another challenge is institutional: getting the older staff members, who know products and press relations, to work with the younger ones, who may be web-savvy but have less product knowledge. You’ll have more success if you can get these two groups talking to each other and working as a team.

Changing Format Means Rethinking Goals and ROI
Nontraditional press releases have also changed the goals of a press release. “ROI of Online Press Releases,” a 2008 research study by the Society for New Communications Research, found that reaching customers directly, creating online content, and optimizing for search engines were as important as the traditional goals of announcing news and increasing visibility.

All change takes getting used to, so switching from the traditional press release to the social media press release may happen slowly in your organization. But with traditional newspaper and magazine publishing in a state of upheaval, the risk of clinging to the old press release format is too high. Social media’s no longer a novelty; publishing a press release in a social-media-friendly format just makes sense.

• For more information, see my companion post Social Media Press Release:Tips and Examples.

--Marilynne Rudick