Writing Matters

Lessons From the Insurance Industry: You Don't Need a Gecko to Set the Right Tone

We recently evaluated the correspondence of a major insurance company and its competitors. Using a benchmarking tool we developed, we rated their e-mails and letters to customers on seven Standards. One Standard that we carefully looked at was tone:  "Correspondence is written in a personal, professional tone."

While the topic of the correspondence frequently involved complex legal and regulatory issues, the insurance companies did a very good job of creating a personal and professional tone. Exactly how did they do this? We've identified the excellent strategies they used and provided some examples. We've also flagged some lapses in tone that you may find creeping into your own correspondence. 

We think these do's and don'ts provide guidance on creating the right tone in any industry or organization. 

Strategies That Create a Personal, Professional Tone

1. Do use personal pronouns.

• You will receive your ATM/Debit Card by mail within seven to ten days.
• You're automatically enrolled in our free online bill paying program. 

2. Do use active voice.

• Send your payment to the address on your billing statement.

3. Do use action verbs.

• You can pay bills, transfer funds, request your auto ID card, place stock trades, set up alerts and more.

4. Do use plain, simple language.

• We’re letting you know about those changes so you can take advantage of today’s earning levels and rewards. You will not lose points, and you have until March 31, 2010, to redeem your points at the current level.

5. Do use words that show respect for customers.

• You are a valued customer, and we thank you for banking with us.
• For more information, please call a customer service representative at XXXX. We apologize for this inconvenience and look forward to continuing to serve your financial needs. 

Tone Lapses That Make the Writing Stiff and Bureaucratic

1. Don't use passive voice.

• No action is necessary unless this activity occurred without your knowledge or permission.

2.  Don't use bureaucratic language. 

• Our records show that on 5/12/09 at 11:44 AM, you accessed your online account and established or updated the following information: Password
• The disclosed and corrected information is as follows:
• We are enclosing an "Important Information About Damage Caused by Flooding" notice, which you should also keep with the above referenced policy.

3. Don't use inflated and clichéd words and phrases.

• Rest assured that you will continue to enjoy unparalleled value from our rewards program.
• Due to the new regulations
• These are challenging economic times for everyone.

4.  Don't use caveats and legalese. 

• Based on the information you provided and certain assumptions we made (such as assumptions about the credit report information we obtained) to calculate this estimate, the estimated cost for the auto insurance we discussed with the coverages, limits and deductibles shown below is $407/6 months.

What did we learn by evaluating insurance industry correspondence? It doesn't take a gecko to communicate with customers. The right tone is not a matter of accent or species. It's choosing the right words. 

-- Marilynne Rudick

Does Passive Voice Mean a Passive President?

Poor President Obama. Besieged from the right and the left on Afghanistan, Iran, the economy, not to mention the oil disaster in the Gulf. He's accused of being too cerebral (No drama Obama) and of being too belligerent ("know whose ass to kick").  Now he is under attack from the Word Police. 

The Global Language Monitor (GLM) dissected his Oval Office address on the oil spill and found him rhetorically deficient. Among his sins: overusing the passive voice, writing overly long sentences, and writing at too high a grade level. 

But is he guilty of those sins? And do they matter? Or do clarity and message trump sentence structure and grade level?

Does Passive Voice Mean a Passive President?

According to GLM, 13 percent of Obama's speech was written in the passive voice, the highest percentage of any presidential address this century. Politically speaking, the passive voice is used to obscure the doer of the action. The most famous passive voice sentence in politics is President Nixon's "Mistakes were made." He said that in taking "responsibility" for Watergate.

If 13 percent of Obama's speech was written in the passive voice, then 87 percent was written in the active voice. As a writing instructor, I've taught that good writers vary sentence construction. And it didn't seem like he used the passive voice to deflect blame. In well-constructed active voice sentences, he clearly identified those responsible for the spill: "But make no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused."

His passive voice constructions seemed appropriate: "Over 5.5 million feet of boom has been laid across the water to block and absorb the approaching oil." Using the passive voice here puts the focus on the action (laying the boom) as opposed to the doer (Coast Guard, BP).  

Does Long Make it Wrong?

Obama's sentences averaged about 20 words in length, considered kosher if well crafted: "We consume more than 20 percent of the world's oil reserves but have less than 2 percent of the world's oil reserves."

True, Obama lost points for this 39-word mouthful. But that's because of the ten-word tag he appends to any mention of Chu: "That's why, just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge, a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation's secretary of energy."

On the whole, Obama varied the sentence length--not too many short sentences that can sound choppy, if not boring. Rather, he used short sentences powerfully: "And the region still hasn't recovered from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. That's why we must make a commitment to the Gulf Coast that goes beyond responding to the crisis of the moment. I make that commitment tonight."

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Using a variant of the Flesch Test , which analyzes reading level, GLM determined that Obama's oil spill speech was written at the 9.8 grade level. How does that compare to other presidents? Reagan's "Tear Down this Wall" speech earned a 9.8 grade level. Kennedy's inaugural address was 10.9. George W. Bush generally gave speeches at the 7th grade level. This hardly makes a case for lower grade level being better. Exactly what grade level is "They misunderestimated me"?

So, is Obama guilty of crimes against the English language? Ron Yaros, assistant professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, pooh-poohed GLC's analysis of the Oval Office address. What's important, stressed Yaros, is clarity: “It was straightforward and easy to understand.” 

--Marilynne Rudick

"Attrit" or Death By Buzzword

I've spent the last two days attending (and speaking at) the ACCE Call Center Management Conference. I have heard lots of insightful presentations about providing excellent customer service and I've met some really intelligent and interesting people. It's been a great event.

And I have heard some buzzwords! Some buzzwords that are new to me and that strain the English language to the breaking point. We're not talking about the tame paradigm shift or the old school think outside the box. No, we are talking about some killer buzzwords, ones that leave actual meaning in the ditch beside the road.

Here's a short list of new items for my buzzword collection:

• baked in, as in "That analytics feature is baked into our system."
• scale, as in "This project model is not going to scale."
• federate, as in "Our group needed to federate the task."
• decisioning, as in "We used real time decisioning to spur proactive events."
• career pathing, as in "We have a low rate of staff turnover because we offer career pathing."
• space, as in "We intend to be leaders in the pharmaceutical space."
• incent, as in "We incent our sales team for bringing in repeat business."

My all-time favorite buzzword:

• attrit, as in "Generally, we don't want to lay people off. We'd rather attrit them."

Do you love buzzwords? When you attend a meeting or a conference, do you enjoy a robust round of Business Buzzword Bingo? If so, let's keep the list going. Send me your favorite buzzwords or post a comment here.

-- 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!