Quote of the day on keeping it simple

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I’m a big fan of writers using plain English. I urge people to keep their blog posts, articles, and white papers as short as possible.

However, I agree with the following quote from Michael Maslansky’s The Language of Trust.

Simple does not always mean short.

As Maslansky explains, “It is always better to use five words to tell a clear story than use two and keep people confused.”

For example, if you must use a technical term, explain it in a parenthetical comment. Replace “We invest in BRICs” with “We invest in BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China.”

Plain English and good writing

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Wordle image of Susan Weiner's MarketingProfs article about plain English and good writing

Words most used in “Seven Ways to Talk Your Financial Execs Out of Jargon and Bad Writing”

Have you ever struggled to get your colleagues, bosses, or clients to accept plain English and good writing?

You have lots of company. It’s not easy to win over people who are used to a different style of communication. This is what spurred me to write “Seven Ways to Talk Your Financial Execs Out of Jargon and Bad Writing,” which appeared on the MarketingProfs blog.

In that post,you’ll find my seven best tips for persuading your authors to rethink their writing style. My examples are tailored to the world of investment and wealth management. Check it out!

More talk about plain English and Warren Buffett

My discussion of Warren Buffett in my post on MarketingProfs sparked discussion. I like the following comment by Wayne Buckhout, executive vice president at CTC Investor Relations:

I’ve used Buffett many times in the ways you suggest. The usual retort is something like, “If I had Warren’s money and job security, I could write like that, too.” My rebuttal is usually along these lines: “Let’s assume, for a minute, you have both. What would you say that you’re not saying now, and how would you say it?” I’ve been amazed at how many of their candid, “If I were Warren” comments make it into the final product.

Buckhout also shared one of his techniques for managing the approval process  with an eye to supporting the use of plain language:

If you write in the name of a company, rather than an individual, one person in the approval chain is usually a far better writer and editor than the rest, and it’s often the highest ranking member of the group. I have learned through painful experience, however, not to try to short-circuit the process by slipping a first draft only to that person, even if it’s the CEO. What works, however, is to have a private talk with that person, acknowledging the relative value of his or her input, and telling them that you understand that collaboration is part of developing the others in the group. That gives you a strong advocate in their discussions that don’t include you, and more cooperation from the rest, which typically includes the person who hired and pays you.

I agree with Buckhout that the support of a senior executive can be invaluable.

 This blog post was updated on Oct. 28. I added new material.

Finding your article’s focus with Roy Peter Clark

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Identifying their focus is one of the biggest challenges for many of my blogging class students. I try to help them by asking “What problem do you solve for your readers?” I found additional helpful techniques in the “I don’t know what my story is really about” chapter of Roy Peter Clark’s Help! for Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Faces. I discuss some of them in this post.

1. “Write a six-word theme statement.”

If your idea requires more than six words, it may be too big. A six-word theme may still be too broad. For example, consider “More women than men reach ninety,” one of Clark’s sample themes. However, at least it provides a starting point.

My theme for this blog post is “Tips to focus your articles.”

There are two ways to use your theme. First, as inspiration for your article. Write to explain your theme.

Second, use it to narrow your article. Pare away anything that doesn’t relate to your theme.

2. “Cut the elements least supportive of your focus.”

Use your best material and lose the rest. As Clark says,

Not all evidence is equal. If you can identify the weakest evidence, what is left—your strongest stuff—can support a sharp focus.

The saying “less is more” often applies to articles, blog posts, and more. By deleting flabby evidence, you sharpen your main focus.

Clark lists eight characteristics that make evidence weak. Two of them often apply to financial pieces.

  1. “It will appear in the story only because of your interest in it.”
  2. “It is impossible to write it clearly and quickly for a general audience.”
The next time you read a poorly written post, ask yourself if it suffers from #1 or #2.
……  

3. Use the funnel

Putting your ideas through a metaphorical funnel may also help. As Clark suggests on his book’s back cover:

See your work in the form of a funnel. You pour everything in at the top, but as the funnel narrows, you must become more selective, reaching a point where you can leave things out with confidence.

Alternatively, think of yourself as a sculptor with a block of marble. Only by cutting away stone can you reveal your masterpiece.

How do YOU find your focus?

There are many ways to identify the focus of an article, blog post, or other written communication. What’s your favorite technique?

 

 

The “Be” test for writers

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“To be or not to be” is one of the most famous phrases in the English language, thanks to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Despite that line’s power, forms of “be” often indicate weak writing.

To raise the impact of your writing, go on a search-and-destroy mission for forms of “to be.”

For example, change “Our firm is using an algorithm” to “Our firm uses an algorithm.” As this example suggests, searching for “ing” will highlight text that will benefit from edits.

 

Image courtesy of Dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Quantitative easing for regular folks: 3 lessons from The New York Times

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“Quantitative easing” pops up regularly in economic and market commentary. The term conveys a lot to financial professionals who know the fine points of QE3 vs. QE1. However, it’s likely to make the average American say, “Huh?”

This is why I suggest that you learn from newspapers when you discuss quantitative easing—or other technical terms—in your communications aimed at ordinary folks. I found three techniques in recent articles.

Technique 1: Avoid the topic entirely

Sometimes newspapers avoid the topic entirely, even when it’s relevant. For an example of this, see “U.S. Economy Grew 1.7% During the 2nd Quarter, Topping Forecasts” in The New York Times, which simply refers to the Fed’s “huge stimulus efforts,” which, of course, include more than just quantitative easing. You should consider this technique, too, if the details of the Fed’s bond purchases aren’t important to your discussion.

Technique 2: Discuss the topic, but skip the technical term

Another technique is to describe quantitative easing in general terms, as in the following New York Times headline: “Bond Purchases by Fed Will Continue, at Least for Another Month.” The article described the Fed’s adding “$85 billion a month to its holdings of mortgage-backed securities and Treasury securities.”

Other references in the article included:

  • “Asset purchase program”
  • “Monthly asset purchases”
  • “Bond-buying program”

In many cases, these descriptions provide enough detail for your readers.

Technique 3: Use the term, but explain it

The term “quantitative easing” didn’t surface until close to the end of the Times‘ “Bond Purchases” article, with the following sentence:

Other economists, including Lawrence H. Summers, a leading candidate to succeed Mr. Bernanke, have expressed similar concerns about the purchases, which go under the label “quantitative easing.”

Because the article had described the purchases earlier, it didn’t explain them in detail in the sentence above. If this sentence were the article’s first reference, the author could have included an explanation something like the following:

quantitative easing, the Fed’s purchase of long-term bonds to help stimulate the economy by lowering long-term interest rates

What’s right for you?

Ask yourself whether your readers need to see the term “quantitative easing.” Perhaps it’s enough for them to be aware of “the Fed’s bond-buying program.

If you’re writing for a mixed audience of regular folks and investment professionals, you may choose to use “quantitative easing.” However, I suggest in that case that you define it on first use and put the term in context, as I did in my discussion of “Technique 3.”

What’s YOUR approach?

Do you use “quantitative easing” everywhere, avoid it entirely, or mix it up?

Need hands-on help with your commentary?

I can write your commentary based on interviews with your investment professionals or based on attribution analysis and other materials provided by you. I also edit commentary you’ve written to make it more compelling and reader-friendly.

If your budget is limited, hire me to evaluate your newsletter and suggest improvements that you can implement yourself.

Dear husband, please stop

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You can learn a writing lesson from my dear husband.

It drives me crazy when he says to a restaurant’s hostess, “You don’t have a table for two, do you?”

I nag him afterwards, saying “Ask a positive question, not a negative one! It’s easier for the listener to understand what you want.”

The “go positive, not negative” rule applies to statements as well as questions.

Here’s an example of a negative statement that sticks in my mind due to my having earned a Ph.D. in Japanese history.

“The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage…”

This is how the Japanese emperor announced in 1945 that Japan had lost the war. Did you understand that?

The Japanese prefer roundabout sentences. Americans do not.

Keep it short, but mix it up

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Short sentences are easier to read. But many of us learned to write long sentences in what Natalie Canavor, author of Business Writing in the Digital Age, calls “pre-20th century writing.” The best writing mixes sentence lengths for variety, rhythm, and better comprehension.

Modern and historical sentence lengths

Canavor lists the following sentence lengths in her book:

  • 7-10 words for spoken sentences
  • 14-22 words, on average, for the most understandable written sentences
  • 23 words in the late 19th century
  • 29 words in Victorian times
  • 45 words in Elizabethan times
  • 50 words in pre-Elizabethan times

Sentences are getting shorter. As they shrink, so does readers’ patience with long-winded writing.

Variety is good, too

Short is good, but line after line of short sentences may bore your readers.

I agree with Canavor’s advice to keep your sentences short on average. In an example she cites in her book, the sentence length of several paragraphs averages 17.9 words. However, “one sentence is 41 words long and a few are less than 10 words.” This can work if the long sentence is properly crafted.

Test your writing

How long do YOUR sentences run? Take something you’ve written recently and calculate the average sentence length. It’s easy to do in Microsoft Word using its readability statistics. Other word-processing software offers similar capabilities.

By the way, the average sentence length in this blog post is 11.5 words.

Good book for novice business writers

I like Business Writing in the Digital Age as a resource for novice business writers. It has lots of practical tips, examples, and writing exercises.

Margin analysis to improve your writing

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Like belongs with like in your writing, as I discussed in “Key lesson for investment commentary writers from my professional organizer.” In Help! for Writers, Roy Peter Clark suggests a way that you can analyze and then reorganize your drafts so that your information goes in the right places.

Step 1: Print and write in margins

Print your draft on paper and then list in the margin the main topics of each paragraph. This helps you to get some distance from your draft so you can analyze it.

Step 2: List most important topics

On a separate piece of paper, list your draft’s most important topics. Assign each topic a color. Use colors of markers that you have handy or of highlighter colors in your word-processing program.

Next, color each section or paragraph according to its topic. If you see one color scattered throughout your draft, you can assess whether to leave it that way or, as Clark says, “bring those elements together in a single coherent passage.”

If you try this technique, I’d like to hear from you about how it works for you.

 

Note: On July 2, I added a clarifying phrase to this post.

Top writing tips from CFA Hartford, FPAMA, NYSSA, and PAICR

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Participants in my four May writing workshops expressed their opinions on my most helpful tips. I share their favorites below, along with related links.

1. Use mind mapping to organize your thoughts before you write.

You can create a mind map focused on the topic you’d like to tackle in your investment commentary, article, or other written piece. Put the topic in the middle of your page, then start mapping ideas. Once you have everything down on the page, it’s time for analysis. Don’t forget this key step!

Here are some of my blog posts on mind mapping:

Mind mapping was the favorite tip of my CFA Hartford and New York Society of Security Analysts participants.

2. Use the first-sentence check on your articles, blog posts, and more.

The first-sentence check is a great way to assess how well your article flows. The method also gives you a sense of how much a skimming reader might absorb.

The basic idea is to read the first sentence of every paragraph. I explain the details in “Quick check for writers, with an economic commentary example.”

This was the favorite tip of participants in my PAICR RFP Symposium presentation. In general, they favored my tips for simplifying sentences. By the way, if you’re a PAICR member, you can find my handout from the presentation on the members-only website.

3. Improve your email subject lines.

Your email subject lines will have a greater impact when you put your action items and deadlines in them. Also, pay attention to line length, or you may experience the problem I describe in “Don’t make this mistake in your email subject lines!”

The topic of subject lines clearly resonated with the attendees at my presentation to the Financial Planning Association of Massachusetts.

 

Want to learn more about these techniques? Stay tuned for the release of my book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients.

June 28 update: I revised this post to add a link to “Photo + Mind Map = Blog Inspiration,” which is one of my favorite posts. Also, I made one small word change.

Simplify and clarify to write better

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how to not write bad ben yagoda“The road to not writing badly starts with simplifying and clarifying,” wrote Ben Yagoda in “In Writing, First Do No Harm.” Yagoda is the author of How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and How to Avoid Them.

Here are some steps you can take to apply Yagoda’s advice to your writing:

  1. Use the first-sentence check method to make sure your article flows logically.
  2. Ask yourself if every sentence of every paragraph supports the paragraph’s topic sentence.
  3. Shorten your sentences.
  4. Delete excess words.
  5. Replace jargon with plain English.
  6. Test your writing on a member of your target audience.