- Susan Weiner Investment Writing

Capitalize titles consistently in your publications

April 19, 2016/in writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

What’s the best way to capitalize a title when you write an article, blog post, book, or other publication? The rules vary. The best thing is to pick one approach and stick with it.

Option 1. Use sentence case when you capitalize titles

I’m a big fan of using sentence case for capitalizing titles. “Sentence case” means that you only capitalize the first letter of the first word of the title, just as you’d do in a sentence. This is easy to remember. Plus, it doesn’t require judgment calls about which words deserve an initial capital. That’s its big appeal in my eyes.

However, sentence case looks funny in book titles. I didn’t use sentence case in the title of my book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients. Perhaps that’s why the alternative to sentence case is called “title case.”

Other approaches to capitalizing titles

The alternative, title-case approaches amount to this: Capitalize the initial letter of every word in the title except for minor, helper words.

The complicated part is deciding which words are too unimportant to earn an initial capital. Typically “the” and “an” don’t make the cut. Prepositions are a bit trickier. Check your favorite style guide or use the online tool I mention in the next section.

For example, my old copy of The Chicago Manual of Style says to “Lowercase articles (the, a, an), and subordinate conjunctions (and, or, for, nor) and prepositions regardless of length, unless they are the first or last words of the title or subtitle.” I know of at least one investment management firm that uses the style guidelines of the American Psychological Association (APA). The APA’s guidelines for title case differ somewhat from the Chicago guidelines, as do the Associated Press guidelines.

A handy tool for capitalizing titles

CapitalizeMyTitle.com is a handy tool that will capitalize your title according to the rules of the style guide you choose. Just type in your title and click on the tab of your preferred style.

Laptop image courtesy of blackzheep/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Rev up with my Daily Writing Challenge!

March 24, 2016/in writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Do you struggle to write as much as you would like? I sometimes have that problem, too. When I was in a slump last year, I found a solution in a daily writing challenge on Facebook. To help me keep up my writing, I’m inviting you to join me in a daily writing challenge during the month of April.

Daily Writing Challenge rules

Here’s how it works:

You set a goal of averaging X words/day during the month. Note: it’s an average. You don’t have to write that amount every single day.
You check in daily on the Investment Writing Facebook page for accountability and encouragement.
People who reach their goal for April get the right to brag. I’ll trust you to report your success honestly.

What to share when you check in

What do you write in your daily check-in? You can

Share your word count for the day
Post your intention for the next day
Share a tip for writing despite leading a busy life
Ask for encouragement or helping in cracking a writing challenge
Encourage others

It’s up to you to choose what you share. I don’t want to ensnare you in complicated rules. I’d like this challenge to work for you.

If it works for me, it might work for you

I find that accountability to an individual or group is very motivating for me. As I mentioned in “How a blogging buddy can help your financial planning or investment blog,” I have a goal buddy with whom I check in weekly by phone. That has been invaluable.

I’ve been working with a goal of averaging 300 words daily on my blog and other non-routine, non-client writing. I hit my goal in December, January, and February. I’m not sure that I’m going to make it in March. That’s partly why I’m recruiting you to join me in my April challenge. I also figure it’s a good way to encourage the students who recently completed my financial blogging class to keep on writing.

I find that setting my intention—for example, a word count goal or planning to work on a specific blog post—the evening before my work day helps me to deliver. Also, it means that I don’t approach my computer with a blank mind. My first step is clear when it’s time for me to tackle my daily word count.

My partial date and word count record from Feb. 2016

When it’s time to pick a topic to write about, I can go to the Microsoft Outlook task list where I keep a list of potential blog post topics.

I also appreciate the support of others who struggle with keeping up the writing despite the demands of our work and personal lives.

To help me track my word count, I enter my word count daily in an Excel spreadsheet. I mostly write on a computer, so it’s easy for me to generate an accurate word count. If I were writing longhand, I’d use the old-fashioned trick of counting the number of words on three lines, calculating the average number of works per line, and the multiplying the number of lines times the average word count per line. It’s less time-consuming than counting word by handwritten word.

Declare your intention to participate in the Daily Writing Challenge!

If you’d like to participate, go to the Investment Writing Facebook page and declare your intention on this post.

Then, on April 1, post what you achieve for the day. Although April 1 is April Fool’s Day, this is no joke. I hope you’ll join me.

Note: I edited this post on Nov. 28, 2016, when I tweaked the rules of the challenge.

Force yourself to write or wait for inspiration?

March 22, 2016/in writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Procrastination can be good. That is the startling point of “Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate,” an opinion piece in The New York Times. Its author, Adam Grant, a professor of management and psychology at the Wharton School, argues that procrastination “is a virtue for creativity.” His article made me wonder about writing. Should you always force yourself to write, or is it sometimes better to procrastinate, to wait for inspiration?

Let me confess. I take writing deadlines seriously. I finish my projects early whenever possible. I’m not a fan of waiting for inspiration, which is my personal definition of procrastinating about writing. However, in this article I consider both sides of the story.

Why procrastinate?

Grant’s interest in procrastination was inspired by one of his graduate students. “She told me that her most original ideas came to her after she procrastinated,” says Grant. He and his student tested whether her experience applied more broadly. Their experiments suggested that “procrastination encouraged divergent thinking.” Why? Because it gives us a chance to move beyond “our first ideas, which are usually our most conventional.”

Of particular interest to writers, Grant reports on his experiment in procrastinating about writing his opinion piece about procrastination. Here’s what he found:

What I discovered was that in every creative project, there are moments that require thinking more laterally and, yes, more slowly. My natural need to finish early was a way of shutting down complicating thoughts that sent me whirling in new directions. I was avoiding the pain of divergent thinking — but I was also missing out on its rewards.

Clearly, procrastination sometimes pays. Still, what Grant described doesn’t fit my definition of procrastination. I think of procrastination as putting off beginning work on a piece. Instead, Grant focuses more on not finishing a piece at the earliest opportunity. In fact, he started thinking about the piece early, giving him time to come up with new ideas for it. To me, that’s a form of preparation for writing. It’s productive procrastination, unlike the unproductive procrastination of people who wait until the last minute to do any work at all on their projects.

Why you shouldn’t wait for inspiration, but can delay final draft

When my schedule permits, I like the idea of starting early but delaying the final draft. This is especially true for my creative work, such as blog posts. It is in line with what Grant suggests. I found evidence supporting this in Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott Berry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire. The authors describe Picasso’s creative process:

Exploration and seemingly blind experimentation were key to Picasso’s creative process. Rather than creating a painting to reflect his own pre-existing worldview, he seemed to actively build and reshape that worldview through the creative process. While he may have had a rough intuition, it’s likely Picasso did not know where he was going, creatively, until he arrived there.

I also like the idea of “creative incubation,” discussed in Wired to Create.

Many of us know from experience that our best ideas come seemingly out of the blue when our minds are off wandering elsewhere. Idle though it may seem, the act of mind wandering is often anything but mindless. Research suggests that an incubation period of mind wandering leads to improvement in creative thinking. The next time you’re working on a creative project or work assignment that requires intense focus and creative chops, try taking a five-minute daydreaming break every hour or so, and see how it affects your ideas and thinking. During this break, engage in a simple activity that will allow your mind to wander, like walking, doodling, or cleaning. Consider this your creative incubation period and see if you feel a renewed sense of creative energy when you get back to work.

Why force yourself to write?

One reason to force yourself to write is that waiting until your deadline nears is stressful. I regularly see my writer friends on Facebook lamenting their last-minute pressures as they hustle to finish articles that they put off until the last minute. Sometimes they lose face with their editors when they ask for extensions.

Another reason to force yourself to write is that “Research has shown that waiting for inspiration doesn’t work,” according to Paul J. Silvia in How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing. He reports on a research study that tested the effectiveness of three different writing strategies:

Abstinence, in which subjects “were forbidden from all non-emergency writing”
Spontaneous, in which subjects scheduled writing sessions “but wrote only when they felt inspired”
Contingency, in which scheduled writing sessions “and were forced to write during each session,” plus “they had to send a check to a disliked organization if they didn’t do their writing

People in the contingency group wrote far more than their peers in the other two groups. In addition, people in the contingency group reported fewer days between creative ideas than members of the other two groups, according to Silva.

Can you be creative without delay?

There’s a difference between procrastinating and taking time to prepare before you write. I believe in starting your writing early enough that you can spend time brainstorming, using techniques such as mind mapping or freewriting. When you start your draft early enough, you can let your ideas marinate.

Don’t wait for inspiration. Instead, start thinking early about your article. Follow a process to develop your ideas, write your draft, and edit. Most people will find they like the results and experience less stress.

Of course, we all have different personalities. I’m sure there are people who enjoy last-minute crunches that they’ve created for themselves. Just as there are things that I do that no one else would want to impose on themselves. Find the solution that works best for you.

Image courtesy of lekkyjustdoit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Financial jargon killer: The Wall Street Journal

March 1, 2016/1 Comment/in writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

“How can I talk my boss out of using financial jargon?” I hear variations on this question from my clients and blog readers. I’ve already written “Seven Ways to Talk Your Financial Execs Out of Jargon and Bad Writing” (registration required) for MarketingProfs. But recently I thought of a new idea to help you rein in the worst offenses by your firm’s lovers of complex language.

Here’s my idea. Ask “What would The Wall Street Journal do?” We can call this technique WWTWSJD for short, in a nod to other “What would ____ do?” strategies.

I suggest that you use WWTWSJD because most financial professionals read The Wall Street Journal. More importantly, they respect the newspaper. They don’t feel that it treats them as stupid. Thus, if you show them that the Journal wouldn’t use a piece of financial jargon, they might listen to you.

Step 1. Identify financial jargon for review

"Smart beta" jargon search results from The Wall Street Journal

Search results for “smart beta” in The Wall Street Journal

Identify the piece of jargon that you’d like to eliminate from your firm’s publications. Then search to see if The Wall Street Journal uses it.

Take a technical term like “convexity,” which is used in the world of fixed income. When I searched it on the newspaper’s website, I discovered that “No articles or videos have been found.”

How about “smart beta”? I found only three results. That result also suggests that the term isn’t widely understood.

Step 2. Dig deeper into the jargon’s usage

Let’s look more closely at the newspaper’s use of “smart beta.”

It uses the term, but quickly defines it. For example, here’s how Ari Weinberg treats the term in the first two results (emphasis added):

Even the more-complex “smart beta” or factor-based ETFs, which weight holdings according to an investment factor such as volatility or value instead of market capitalization, are able to manage constituent changes to minimize capital gains.
“ ‘Smart beta,’ in particular, creates real due-diligence problems,” Mr. Nadig says, referring to the growth in index products that shun traditional market-cap weightings and instead weight holdings according to an investment factor such as volatility, value, quality or momentum.

The third article using “smart beta” was written by one of the outside contributors to the newspaper’s “Ask the Experts” section. It seems to be considered as a blog post, based on a disclaimer on the comments page. I imagine that those pieces aren’t edited as rigorously for jargon as the pieces written by staffers. The editors let the outside contributors write in their own style.

Step 2a. Cross-test jargon with The New York Times

While I like the idea of using The Wall Street Journal to talk senior execs out of financial jargon, I’m a bit concerned about the shallowness of the archive that’s easily accessible online. The newspaper’s online search doesn’t appear to go back more than about three months. Thus, I’m checking The New York Times, another reasonably literate newspaper, because I can go back further in my search.

Here are my results for a twelve-month period:

Only one article used the term “convexity,” but it wasn’t used in a financial context. The article discussed the shape of a bowl scraper.
Four articles used “smart beta.” As you can see from the excerpts in my screenshot below, each article makes an attempt to define the term, rather than assuming the reader will understand it.

“Smart beta” results in 12-month search of The New York Times

Step 3. Define financial jargon

If you must use financial jargon, then define it.

Need ideas about how to explain technical terms? The Wall Street Journal is a good source for explanations at a fairly sophisticated level. WWTSWJD?

For more examples of how to incorporate definitions into your writing, see “Plain language: Let’s get parenthetical.”

Caveat: Sometimes financial jargon is okay

I’m a big believer in writing using plain language. Ideally, I’d like to write more plainly than The Wall Street Journal when addressing an audience outside the financial world. Even when you’re writing for institutional investors, you may encounter readers with less knowledge than you of financial vocabulary.

However, sometimes multisyllabic vocabulary and financial jargon are more precise or make for easier communication. This is true only when you’re communicating with other highly knowledgeable professionals. For example, saying something increased by 200 basis points is more precise than saying it rose two percent. And if your readers care about measures like Sharpe ratios, there’s no substitute for using those terms.

What’s too long for a blog post?

February 11, 2016/in blog, writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

What’s too long for a blog post? I stirred up a lively conversation when I posted this question on social media earlier this year. I asked because I’d drafted a 2,400-word blog post. That’s unusual for me. My natural length seems to be 400 to 600 words, although I’ve written longer.

As I expected, there’s no consensus on the perfect blog post length. However, you can make the decision that’s best for you, if you understand the issues.

The case for blog posts running 2000+ words

Long posts do best, as measured by shares and links. That’s what BuzzSumo-Moz research on content—that’s content of all kinds, not just blog posts—suggests, as reported in Contently’s “5 Ways Content Goes Viral.”

“Long” means way longer than the typical blog post. It means 2,000 words or more. To put that in perspective, according to Contently, “After studying close to 490,000 text-based articles, BuzzSumo and Moz found that 80 percent of content contains fewer than 1,000 words, while only 2.5 percent surpasses 3,000 words.”

The difference between shorter and longer content was dramatic. Content with less than 1,000 words averaged about 3.5 shares apiece vs. almost nine shares for content with 2,000 to 3,000 words, and 11 shares for 3,000+ words.

Evidence from financial blogger Michael Kitces

When I think about long blog posts, I think about Michael Kitces, who writes the Nerd’s Eye View blog. He shared the following graph with me, showing that long content dominates his shares. In fact, 2,000 to 3,000 words is his perfect blog post length.

Michael Kitces' perfect blog post length is 2000-3000 words

Michael Kitces’ share counts by article length. Image courtesy of Kitces.com

Here’s what Michael said to me in an email exchange about longer blog posts:

I’ve found that optimal length seems to be in the 2,000 – 3,000 word range.

We often say that people “don’t have time” to read long posts. And I suppose technically that’s true. Most people don’t. But people who have REAL problems, need REAL solutions, and might want to HIRE you, are the ones who are motivated enough to actually read a long post. And get interested. And do business with you.

So think of it this way: writing long and thorough posts is a great screening process, because it helps to ensure the people who read it are interested enough to potentially do business with you.

That’s an intriguing point about your best prospects being willing to read your long posts.

An earlier Investment Writing take on blog post length

For another perspective on blog post length, read this guest post on my blog “Do longer articles really get shared more often?”

Reasons you shouldn’t go long

1. Sharing isn’t the same as reading

If you’d like people to read your content, rather than simply sharing it, shorter may be better. When people share your content, they may not have read it from start to finish. I’m living proof of that.

I confess that I’ve shared articles that I haven’t finished. Why? Because I’ve found an article that I believe will interest my followers, but it isn’t that useful to me. I read enough to find worthy content and then I skim the rest to get a sense of whether it upholds the standards of the beginning. If there’s one tip in the first part of the article that can help my connections move closer to achieving their goals, I figure it’s worth sharing.

When it comes to getting your readers through an entire post, shorter is better, unless the reader is motivated to learn about the topic you present. To support this, here are some of the comments I received in response to my asking if I should publish a 2,400-word blog post:

I’ve been staying under 1000 for my site….a typical newspaper column used to be about 500
Few blog entries I’ve edited were more than 550 words long.
I think it’s too long!

Several respondents suggested breaking my blog post into two parts to make it more manageable. They also made the smart suggestion that I should structure a long post to make it easy for my readers to absorb.

2. You’re not good at writing long

Don’t write long blog posts if can’t do a good job on them. You need compelling insights or strong writing skills—or both, ideally. Without them, you’ll drive away the people whom you’re trying to attract.

One person who commented on my question said, “Long posts are better if well written.” Clearly they they don’t enjoy poorly written long posts. Who would?

3. Your topic doesn’t need a long explanation

If you emphasize length over content, you’ll end up with repetitive, boring blog posts.

Your content should be “long enough to make your point,” as one of the people who commented on my blog post length question. Don’t make it longer than that.

Short can work

What if you lack the skill or motivation to write long? Don’t give up!

Short can work.

In “How Long Should Each Blog Post Be? A Data Driven Answer,” Neil Patel shares the example of Seth Godin. Godin has been tremendously successful with short posts on his Seth’s Blog. At a quick glance, his posts generally run fewer than 300 words. Many run under 100 words.

Still, if you’re not a social media visionary like Seth Godin, consider writing longer than him. Yoast, which produces an SEO optimization plugin (to help you get found in online searches) suggests in “Common sense for your website” that you aim for a minimum of 300 words:

Your page content should contain at least 300 words. That has a simple reason: would your page be a great source for the topic or keyword you want to rank for when it would only contain 50 words? Is that all there is to say about that keyword? I don’t believe that, you don’t believe that and Google does not believe that. There should be a significant amount of content for your page to be considered a great source of information.

The perfect blog post length?

What’s the perfect blog post length? It depends. The answer will vary depending on your goals, the strength of your writing and information, and the time that you have to sink into writing.

I’m going to continue to average far fewer than 2,000 words per post, despite all the research about sharing. Shorter works for me, with some exceptions.

Speaking of exceptions, I published “My experiment blogging on LinkedIn,” the blog post that sparked this discussion, with a length exceeding 2,700 words.

Please tell me what you see as the perfect blog post length.

Blog image courtesy of Stuart Miles/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Blog post template: Write about a talk

February 9, 2016/in blog, writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Do you get tired of generating original material for your blog? Do you attend talks on topics that would interest your blog’s audience? If so, you can benefit from this template for blogging (or writing an article) about a talk. This blog post template will help you to spend less time thinking and writing. Plus, you’ll get better results from what you write.

This blog post template draws on my many years of blogging about presentations that I attended at the Boston Security Analysts Society. Plus, I also covered conference presentations as a staff reporter for Dalbar’s Mutual Fund Market News (now Money Management Executive) and as a freelance writer for Advisor Perspectives. If you’d like to learn more about writing blog posts, check out my financial blogging class.

Here is the process you can follow to apply my blog post template:

Introduce your topic
Give credit
Make at least one point
Write your headline

Step 1. Introduce your topic

Don’t make the mistake that too many amateurs do. Don’t kick off your article by saying “I went to a talk and it was great.”

Instead, start by sharing the speaker’s topic or main point. For example, I led with “‘U.S. economic growth is recovering robustly, receiving the usual cyclical boost from housing and inventories,’ said Dean Maki” in “Recovery will be stronger than consensus, says Barclays Capital chief U.S. economist,” a 2009 blog post. This quickly told the reader what they’d learn in the piece.

Doesn’t that beat the heck out of an introduction that lacks substance? For example, I can imagine an inexperienced writer starting with something like the following: “I went to one of the Boston Security Analysts Society’s excellent lunch presentations for Boston area investment professionals where Dean Maki, managing director and chief U.S. economist of Barclays Capital spoke and I got some great insights into the U.S. economy.” Yes, I’m exaggerating how badly most people write. However, I bet that you’ve read plenty of blog posts and newsletter articles that started similarly. Still, I am grateful that those authors take the time to credit the source of the observations that follow their introductions. That’s far better than presenting someone else’s ideas as your own.

Step 2. Give credit

If you pick up some great ideas at a talk, it’s good to give credit to your source. Just don’t write it in the way that I’ve parodied in the preceding paragraph.

Name the speaker, the title of his or her presentation, the sponsoring organization, and the date, if applicable. This information helps your readers to assess the credibility of the information in your blog post. The date will cue in the reader if information cited in the presentation is no longer current.

Here’s how I gave credit in the first paragraph of the Maki post:

“U.S. economic growth is recovering robustly, receiving the usual cyclical boost from housing and inventories,” said Dean Maki, managing director and chief U.S. economist of Barclays Capital in his “U.S. Economic Outlook” presentation to the Boston Security Analysts Society (BSAS) on December 8.

In the Maki post, I covered steps 1 and 2 in my first paragraph. Then, I moved to Step 3.

Step 3. Make at least one point

When you report on a talk, you don’t need to cover everything the speaker says. Especially in a short blog post, it’s fine to focus on one point.

In the Maki post, I focused on the economy’s strength, the theme introduced in my first paragraph.

Here’s the structure for the rest of the post, in terms of points made:

Paragraph 2: Maki sees a strong recovery, in contrast with the consensus, because he doesn’t see tight credit as a problem.
Paragraph 3: He thinks strong growth will be driven by these factors.
Paragraph 4: Here are his specific predictions for the economy.
Paragraph 5: Maki sees two things that could derail his predictions.

Here’s the flow of the piece, in terms of the actions I took:

State the speaker’s main opinion.
Provide supporting evidence.
Go into more detail about what the information covered above means.
Provide information about what could go wrong.

Here’s a generic version of my blog post template for you to follow.

State the speaker’s main opinion.
Make your first point. For example, you could describe the main piece of supporting evidence offered by the speaker. Or, you could describe the first of the speaker’s three main suggestions. Or, tell a story that illuminates the speaker’s main opinion.
Make your second point. For example, you could explain the second piece of supporting evidence offered by the speaker. Or you could explain why you disagree with the speaker’s main point.
Make your third point. For example, you could introduce a related theme discussed by the speaker.
Offer a conclusion or call to action. For example, if you’re an investment or wealth manager reporting on economic predictions, you might say how the predictions will influence how you manage money for your clients—or how the predictions should influence your readers’ behavior.

Step 4. Write your headline

It’s often easier to write your headline after you’ve completed writing your entire blog post or article. Writing may help you to identify your main point so you can feature it in your title. For the Maki post, I chose “Recovery will be stronger than consensus, says Barclays Capital chief U.S. economist.”

In addition to highlighting the main point, I included Maki’s corporate affiliation. I chose that over his name because I figured that Barclays Capital had better name recognition.

Apply this blog post template to a longer article

When you write a longer article, you may feel tempted to cover more of the speaker’s twists and tangents. You may also try to present the information in the order and structure used by the speaker. Sticking closely to the speaker’s approach may hurt your article or blog post.

Some speakers wander all over the place. That’s fine when you’re listening to an insightful, entertaining speaker. However, that structure doesn’t translate well into writing. I urge you to pick one theme and stick with it.

I ran into the problem of the wandering speaker when I wrote “Dan Fuss: The 50-Year Opportunity in Bonds” for Advisor Perspectives in Dec. 2008. Fuss held his audience rapt, but he rambled. He’s a leading thinker in the area of fixed income, so any speech by him is an opportunity to gain valuable insights. Still, his talk didn’t lend itself easily to becoming an article. However, along the way he made one point that riveted me: Opportunities in the bond market are as attractive now as they have been in at least 50 years.

The 50-year opportunity in bonds became the focus of my piece, which hit the top 10 list on Advisor Perspectives. I focused the article under two headings. First, “Treasuries overvalued, and investment-grade and high-yield attractive”; and second,”When will it end?”

Believe me, the talk Fuss gave was not as focused as my article. It’s fine for a talk by a leading thinker in the field to ramble. It’s not okay for a written piece. To fix the problem, I created a structure that didn’t exist in the original talk.

To identify the main themes for my article, I used mind mapping, which I teach in my book and my financial blogging class. Then, I used the mind map to organize my thoughts before writing the article.

Sometimes the most important decision you make in writing up a speech is what to omit. I ignored lots of my notes because they didn’t support my theme of the 50-year opportunity in bonds.

Try this blog post template

If you use my blog post template to write about a talk that you attend, please post a link in the Comments section of this blog. If you’d like more guidance from me on how to write this kind of piece, you can sign up for one-on-one coaching or my financial blogging class.

My financial writing crusade

February 2, 2016/in writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

“Are you on a crusade?” A reader asked me that question with a smile after he read the Barron’s article that quoted me on the need for financial writers to lower the grade level of their writing.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll probably say the answer is “Yes, I am on a financial writing crusade.” After all, I often urge people to improve their financial writing. Plus, I put the term in the title of this post, picking up on the wording of my reader’s question.

However, I prefer to think of myself as an advocate for good writing. The word “crusade” has overtones of intolerance and single-mindedness. I don’t want to demean people who are doing their best to communicate. Indeed, sometimes poor writing can be good enough for the situation. Think, for example, about a condolence card. The sincere expression of sympathy is more important than the worst misspellings and awkward wording.

Still, good financial writing beats bad financial writing. It’s important because good financial writing helps people to understand the world of earning, spending, saving, and investing. It might even make the difference between an individual sleeping peacefully instead of tossing and turning at night, due to worries over an investment. It might prevent litigation when risks are clearly disclosed by a disclosure document. On a less dramatic note, it might help institutional investors to choose the strategy that’s right for their unique circumstances.

Here’s what I believe about good financial writing.

Everyone can learn to write better

Good writers are made, not born. You’ll benefit from having other people read and edit your work. Classes, reading and analyzing other people’s work, and using software tools also help.

I think of myself as a good writer, but I still have room for improvement. I continue to read and get feedback from others to enhance my writing.

I’ve come a long way. I mention this to make you realize that you also can improve. As I said in an earlier post, “I wince when I read selections from my Ph.D. thesis, Bureaucracy and Politics in the 1930s: The Career of Goto Fumio.” It’s full of the kind of writing that I warn people against today. My path to improvement involved taking many writing classes, participating in writing groups, and being edited by savvy editors.

I’ve been thrilled to see some of the hard-working students in my financial blogging class make big improvements in their writing. Even small improvements can help. For example, if your sentences average 32 words in length, cutting the average length to 22 words will boost your readability.

You’ll benefit from becoming aware of your writing grade level

To improve your writing, you need to learn your weaknesses. One of the biggest weaknesses of much financial writing is that it’s too long-winded. The authors use too many multisyllabic words in long, convoluted sentences that pile one upon another in impenetrable paragraphs.

To get an idea of how you rate in terms of long-windedness, look at your grade level, which I discussed in “Donald Trump, grade level, and your financial writing” and “Free help for wordy writers!” Grade level calculations reflect the average length of your words and sentences.

However, don’t use grade level as the only measure of your work’s quality. Sometimes longer sentences are clearer than short sentences.

Different grade levels and vocabulary work for different audiences

The grade level and vocabulary that you can get away with depends on your audience.

Imagine that you’re a fixed-income strategist writing to your team about a change in your strategy. Using technical terms such as “duration” and “convexity” is perfect for your audience of investment professionals. These concisely convey your meaning in an exchange between professionals. You can also get away with writing long because your readers, as your employees, are highly motivated to read what you write. If they don’t grasp it, they can’t do their jobs.

Now, imagine that you need to communicate the strategy to an audience of unsophisticated individual investors. If you don’t delete the technical terms—or explain them in plain language—you’ll lose your readers. They won’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Plus, they may not care about the fine points of your strategy. Unlike your professional colleagues, they’re not motivated to stick with you.

In general, I believe institutional investors and other financial professionals crave more details than the individuals in your audience. Still, they’ll appreciate it when you streamline your writing, even when they approve of your using technical terms. Better writing benefits everybody.

Learning how to organize your thoughts before you write will help

Many professionals struggle to write. It takes them a long time to draft and edit their writing.

I’d like you to suffer less through the writing process. Organizing your thoughts before you write will help. One of the inspirations for my book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients, was my desire to describe a step-by-step process for writing that includes organizing your thoughts before you write.

When you know what you want to say and you organize your thoughts before you write, you’ll write faster and more clearly. When you use a repeatable process tailored to your needs, your stress declines even more. This is part of what I teach in my financial blogging class.

Don’t let legal and compliance feedback ruin your writing

I know some great people who work in the legal and compliance areas for registered investment advisors, registered representatives, and other financial organizations. However, as one of my old bosses told me, “Legal never gets in trouble for saying ‘No.’ ”

Learn enough about legal and compliance requirements so you can push back when necessary. Sometimes your legal or compliance experts make changes that are a matter of their style preferences—not legal or regulatory requirements. In addition, the jargon used by some legal and compliance experts can inspire the confusion and litigation that they’re trying to avoid, as I discussed in “Ammo for your plain-language battle with compliance.”

People who write badly aren’t bad or stupid people

There’s no need to shame people who write badly. They aren’t bad people. Nor are they stupid. They simply haven’t been educated yet. Or perhaps they don’t have an aptitude for writing. We all have different strengths.

If you follow me on social media, you have seen my Mistake Monday posts, in which I invite readers to test their proofreading skills by finding typos and other errors in writing samples. I don’t call those people stupid. I can’t. That’s because I’ve posted many of my own errors on Mistake Monday.

It’s hard for us to catch our own errors. If you want to catch more of your errors, here’s one of my best proofreading tips.

Let’s show compassion to the people who don’t write as well as we do.

What do you believe about good writing?

I’d like to hear from you. Tell me what you believe about good financial writing.

Image courtesy of The British Library/flickr

When do I need quotation marks?

January 19, 2016/in punctuation, writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

When should you use quotation marks? You probably know that you should use them around quotations or around the titles of some artistic works. (Books are an exception to the artistic works rule, except in AP style.) But other cases are open to debate.

I find that non-professional writers sometimes use quotation marks for emphasis, instead of their intended purposes. I don’t like that. Nor do most professional writers.

Garner’s Modern American Usage lists three times, in addition to when you’re identifying quotations or titles of artistic works, when you should use quotation marks:

when you’re referring to a word as a word, <the word “that”>, unless you’re using italics for that purpose

when you mean so-called-but-not-really <if he’s a “champion,” he certainly doesn’t act like one>

when you’re creating a new word for something—and then only on its first appearance <I’d call him a “mirb,” by which I mean…>

Some sources disagree with Garner and me on avoiding the use of quotation marks for emphasis, but urge discretion. Here’s what Amy Einsohn says in The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications:

Quotation marks may be used for emphasis or irony, but copyeditors should curb authors who overuse this device.

I’m okay with using quotation marks for irony. I believe that’s what Garner aims at in his so-called-but-not-really case. But I prefer to avoid using them for emphasis. In fact, I almost deleted Einsohn’s quote from this post because I dislike them so much.

You can make your own rules on this issue, but I suggest that create a style sheet to help you apply your rules consistently.

What do YOU think about quotation marks?

If you have strong feelings about the usage of quotation marks, please share. If you suggest a different set of rules, it’d be great if you could cite a source for your recommendation.

Disclosure: If you click on the Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I only link to books in which I find some value for my blog’s readers.

Financial content: Ask questions of your readers

January 5, 2016/in blog, writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Coming up with financial content can be challenging. Where do you get the information to put in whatever you write? Questions are a great source of information for investment and wealth managers’ tweets, blog posts, articles, and even white papers. I recommend that you keep a paper or electronic notepad handy to record questions asked by your clients.

However, sometimes you need a fresh source of inspiration, opinions, and information. It’s time to turn the tables. Ask questions to generate financial content.

1. Ask questions that people can answer with one word

A webinar presenter—I think it was social media strategist Amy Porterfield—suggested boosting Facebook engagement by posing questions that ask for a one-word answer. Because you request little from your audience, it’s easy for them to respond.

Inspired by this idea, I asked on Facebook and in LinkedIn groups for my readers to share one word that defined ideal investment commentary. The volume of replies astonished me. At one point my question was the “Manager’s Choice” on the CFA Institute’s LinkedIn group. It was nice visibility for me. I believe it happened because group members enjoyed the opportunity to express themselves on a topic about which they felt passionately. The group members’ answers broadened and deepened my understanding of my topic.

2. Run an online survey

My readers’ enthusiastic reply to my one-word question about investment commentary inspired me to create an electronic survey about the characteristics of good investment commentary.

Readers’ answers eventually led to “Ideal quarterly investment letters: Meaningful, specific, and short,” a key piece of content on my blog.

I used some open-ended questions in addition to easy-to-answer multiple-choice questions. When you include open-ended questions, you allow your readers to develop original content for you. A meaty blog post can result. However, be aware that analyzing the non-quantitative survey results can be time-consuming. While a program like SurveyMonkey can compile the quantitative answers, it can’t sort through text answers. You’ll need to evaluate the meaning of the answers and identify the best material yourself.

In the compliance-sensitive world of financial services, I find that people like the anonymity of online surveys. They feel free to express themselves in ways they’d shun if they needed approval from a compliance officer. This can spark colorful quotes.

When you write about what your readers say, you give them a voice. This helps you to build a sense of community with them. Reader-generated content also adds a sense of authenticity to what you write. This is especially true when you include direct quotes.

3. Run a multiple-choice poll

“I voted ‘yes’ on your poll.” Back in the days when I ran a poll in my monthly newsletter, my newsletter readers often mentioned my polls when I met them one-on-one. If you publish the poll results only in your e-newsletter, as I used to do, you give readers an incentive to subscribe. That’s always a plus.

Like the one-word-answer technique, multiple-choice polls don’t require much effort for people to answer, which boosts participation.

I often enable readers to add their own responses to the polls, rather than choosing from those I’ve listed. I’ve received some good insights from allowing them this freedom.

By the way, consider testing your poll on a member of your target audience before you release it. Your instructions or questions may not be as clear as you think. I think I’m a clear writer, but my outside readers have helped me to refine my questions for better results.

4. Start discussions on social media

Posing a question on LinkedIn or other social media is a great way to collect content. I especially like doing this on LinkedIn because all of the answers are collected in one place. Also, one person’s response often sparks another.

When a social media question inspires a lively conversation, that says that the topic is worthy of a blog post. It’s likely to be shared widely.

“Career strategies for wealth managers without a book of business” is essentially a compilation of answers that LinkedIn members posted in response to a question. I quoted only LinkedIn Group members who gave me their permission since I posted my question on a members-only group. If you post on a public group, then technically you don’t need to ask permission. However, I think it’s the right thing to do, unless you explicitly warn people in your original post that you are looking for quotes.

5. Ask “What do you want to read?” at every opportunity

You can ask clients, prospects, referral sources, and social media connections “What do you want to read?” Also, “What’s your opinion on that?” The people whom you ask will be flattered you asked for their opinion.

What do you want to read?

Of course, I’d like to learn more about YOUR interests. Please leave a comment suggesting topics for future blog posts.

This post originally appeared in a slightly different form on the Wired Advisor blog, which no longer exists in its original form.

Image courtesy of mapichai / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Donald Trump, grade level, and your financial writing

October 27, 2015/4 Comments/in writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Donald Trump’s appeal has surprised many observers of presidential elections. Love him or hate him, you can’t ignore his presence. Part of his appeal rests on his use of plain language, according to a recent article. That’s something financial professionals should note because of its implications for your writing.

Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level, according to “For presidential hopefuls, simpler language resonates,” which appeared in The Boston Globe. The newspaper calculated the grade level of presidential candidates’ announcement speeches. Lower grade levels use fewer characters and syllables per word, as well as shorter sentence lengths.

Simpler language wins

“Simpler language resonates with a broader swath of voters in an era of 140-character Twitter tweets and 10-second television sound bites, say specialists on political speech,” according to the article.

Trump’s language hit the lowest level of the 19 presidential announcement speeches analyzed for the article. After Trump, the next simplest were John Kasich at grade level 4.7 and Ben Carson at 5.9. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley hit the lowest grade level for their party. They tied at 7.7.

Is it a coincidence that the presidential front runners have among the lowest grade levels for their parties? Perhaps not.

Less tolerance for higher grade levels

Political speeches of the past hit higher grade levels. Here are the levels of some presidential speeches, according to The Boston Globe:

17.9 for President George Washington’s “Farewell Address”
13.9 for President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 “State of the Union”
11 for President Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”

I believe that readers are generally less patient with wordiness than they were even five years ago. I know I am.

Message for financial professionals

What does this mean for you as a financial professional who writes? If you want to attract and retain readers, lower the grade level of your writing.

I’m not suggesting that you aim to write at a fourth-grade level, although that might work for a blog post on a basic topic. I do suggest that you become more aware of your output’s grade level and work to boost the ease with which readers can grasp your message.

Try this exercise: Calculate your grade level. You can find it using Microsoft Word’s readability statistics or the website I discuss in “Free help for wordy writers!” Then, try to lower your writing’s level by two grades.

If you can delete some unnecessary words or break a long sentence into two, you’ll have made progress.

Many financial communications exceed grade 12. That may be too high for audiences with short attention spans. However, you may find it hard to hit the direct marketers’ idea of eighth grade or lower.

When you write about complex topics, sometimes longer sentences are easier to understand than short sentences. Lower grade levels may also sacrifice nuances—or fail to satisfy your compliance officer. While I often hit an eighth-grade level on this blog, I am happy when I get my clients’ work down to a tenth-grade level. Even that isn’t always possible. Still, I do my best to make even technical topics relatively easy to understand.

You may think my advice doesn’t apply to you. You may figure that institutional clients or smart people will plow through whatever you write. I disagree. No one ever says, “Please rewrite this in a hard-to-understand style.”

Don’t know where to start in simplifying your writing? Hire me to coach you or to train your employees or professional society members.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 3.0