Tune up your writing skills on Nov. 10 or Nov. 19–or hire me to help you

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Could your writing skills use a tune-up? If you work with investments, you’ll get useful tips from my November 10 lunchtime presentation to Boston Women in Finance (BWF) on “How to Write What People Will Read About Investments.” Lunch is included in the program cost.

This program sold out the first time I presented it to BWF, so register early. 

It would be great to meet you at this program. Please introduce yourself as one of my readers.

If you’re a NAPFA member who lives in the Boston area, you can see me present on “How to Write Effective Emails and Letters to Your Financial Planning Clients” at your November 19 study group. 

If you can’t attend either presentation, consider hiring me to train people at your company. I’ve presented across the U.S. and Canada on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read.” I can develop presentations tailored to you. 

Note: I updated this blog post on Oct. 21 with the BWF registration link and NAPFA information.

3Q09 vs. Q3 09 –which is better?

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You probably know that Q is the abbreviation for quarter. But what’s the proper way to abbreviate “third quarter of 2009”?

I prefer 3Q09 to Q3 09. It seems cleaner to separate the 3 of third quarter from the 09 of 2009. I worry that readers will get confused if the numbers in Q3 09 run together, as in Q309.

Looking for evidence to back up my opinion, I did a Google search. I found about 121,000 instances of 3Q09 vs. 10.9 million for Q3 09.

Wow–that’s quite a disparity! Q3 09 is the format that @BillWinterberg sees in regulatory filings. Perhaps that explains it. I wonder if the SEC requires the Q3 09 format. 

Please answer the poll in the right-hand column of my blog. I’ll track your answers with interest and will report on them in my November e-newsletter. Thank you!

Do you use “pride capitals”?

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If you’re in business, you probably use capital letters more than grammar geeks recommend.

I confess. I was guilty of overcapitalizing titles until Prof. Albert Craig, my Ph.D. thesis advisor, drummed the rules into me. I learned to write “Goto Fumio, home minister” instead of “Goto Fumio, Home Minister.” Titles should be capitalized only when they directly precede the titleholder’s name, as in “Home Minister Goto Fumio.” Goto Fumio, by the way, was the focus of my Ph.D. dissertation.

For a quick overview of the rules, see the Grammar Girl blog’s “When Should You Capitalize Words?” (Sorry, this post is no longer available.) The blog post, written by Rob Reinalda, who goes by word_czar on Twitter, discusses “pride capitals” to explain why “One mistake business writers often make is capitalizing words simply for emphasis or to augment their importance.”

You’re using pride capitals if your firm’s biographies refer to “Jane Smith, President and Chief Investment Officer” instead of “Jane Smith, president and chief investment officer.”

 

Note: edited on Feb. 11, 2016 to delete an outdated reference and again on Dec. 12, 2016.

Image courtesy of FrameAngel at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Thank you, Maine CFA Society!

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The Maine CFA Society got into the spirit of my Sept. 17 presentation on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read.” They skewered me for using an unnecessary adverb in a sample sentence.

That’s the enthusiasm I enjoy when I teach CFA charterholders to write more concise, compelling investment commentary.

Six ways to stop sending emails with errors

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Everybody sends occasional emails with typos and punctuation mistakes. But some emails are more important than others. When you want to make your email perfect, follow these rules. 

1. Print out your email.
Somehow it’s easier to see errors on paper. 

2. Read it out loud.
This is good for catching missing words that your mind might otherwise fill in.Otherwise, you often see what you expect to see.

3. Get someone else to proofread it.
It’s easier for a third party to catch your errors. 

4. Let it sit overnight.
When you read with fresh eyes, you’re more likely to catch errors. 

5. Use a spell-checking program.
If your email program doesn’t support spell-checking, copy the email into your word-processing program, so you can check it there. However, remember that spell-checkers aren’t foolproof. 

6. Create a checklist of common errors.

Using a checklist makes you slow down and, so you’re more likely to catch the errors highlighted on the checklist. For example, let’s say you’re confused about “How to punctuate bullet-pointed lists.” Add to your checklist: “check bullet point punctuation rules” with a link to the rules. 

Have you got other suggestions for keeping emails error-free? Please share them in the Comments section.

Proper usage of periods: One space or two?

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As a dinosaur who wrote the first chapters of her Ph.D. dissertation on a manual typewriter, I grew up leaving two spaces after every period. But times have changed, and today I leave only one space between a period and the new sentence that follows it.

The two spaces made sense when we used typewriters with monospacing, as Grammar Girl explains in “How many spaces after a period?” But now that we’ve switched to proportional fonts, one space has become the standard.

If you feel passionately that we should use two spaces, you’ve got company, as you’ll see in “How Many Spaces After a Period: One or Two?“

More posts about punctuation:
* How to punctuate bullet-pointed lists
* Bloggers’ top two punctuation mistakes

Image courtesy of Just2shutter at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Poll: What newsletter strategies work best for investment and wealth managers?

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Newsletters are an important part of marketing for many investment and wealth management firms.

You’ve got lots of options. 

  • Print newsletter vs. e-newsletter
  • Quarterly, monthly or weekly frequency
  • Market commentary and/or other topics
  • Articles that you write yourself vs. articles written by a writer whom you hire, so they reflect your firm’s views vs. articles that are mass-produced by a firm that sells the same content to others

I’d like to learn your opinion on what works best. Please answer the poll in the right-hand column of this blog. 

Also, feel free to leave a comment below.

FINRA’s limits on registered rep use of ghostwriters

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Registered representatives, if you distribute an article with your name, FINRA wants you to contribute most of the content.

That seems to be the minimum requirement, according to comments I’ve received from other financial marketing writers in LinkedIn’s Financial Writing/Marketing Communications Group. Your compliance department may have stricter requirements, so check before you publish.

“Misleading Communications About Expertise,” a FINRA regulatory noticed dated May 2008, appears to lay out the rules. It says, “Registered representatives may not suggest (or encourage others to suggest) that they authored investment-related books, articles or similar publications if they did not write them. Such a publication created by a third-party vendor must disclose that it was prepared either by the third party or for the representative’s use.”

However, what does it mean to write an article?

It appears that ghostwriters can be involved if they aren’t providing the information for the article. In other words, if the rep provides the article’s substance–either through an outline or an interview conducted by the ghostwriter–and if the rep oversees revisions to the article, then it’s okay. At least that’s what I took away from the comments of writers who interact more closely than me with compliance experts.

Again, be sure to check with your firm’s compliance department before you publish.

If you’ve had experience with this topic, I welcome your comments.

“10 Easy Secrets of Good Grammar”

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“10 Easy Secrets of Good Grammar” by Martha Brockenbrough gives useful advice.

Many will be surprised by number 2: ” ‘I’ isn’t always the more educated choice.” But she’s got it right.


I don’t agree that “semicolons are easy to use,” even though I’m getting better at them.


But don’t rely on my comments. Read Brockenbrough’s article now!

What financial advisors can learn from the "60-Minute Naked Truth Salesletter Formula"

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Having a hard time writing your first sales letter? The “60-Minute Naked Truth Salesletter Formula” can get you started. But you should tweak his formula to reach your audience and to keep your compliance officer happy.

The formula 
Here’s my interpretation of the formula. You can read more details in Michel Fortin’s explanation of Dean Jackson’s formula in “60-Minute Naked Truth Salesletter Formula.”
1. Start by completing the following sentence: “I’m writing to you because I want you to…”
2. Complete the following sentence with a bulleted list: “The reason I’m writing to you specifically is because I think you want…”
3. List your services’ features and benefits.
4. List your prospects’ top 10 questions or objections–and your answers to them
5. Explain how you guarantee results or remove risks. Obviously this step poses challenges for financial advisors.
6. Write a “call to action,” giving steps the reader can take to connect with you or your company and describing exactly what the reader will get.
7. Give your reader a sense of urgency, so they’ll act soon.
8. Supply testimonials. This is another step that financial advisors–especially investment managers–should skip because of the SEC prohibition against testimonials. 

Pros and cons of applying this formula 
The pluses of this formula include
* Making it easy for your readers to understand what you want and how it’ll benefit them–Too many financial advisors get hung up on features instead of benefits. Or they fail to anticipate objections.
* Organizing your information logically  
* Developing a good understanding of topics that you need to discuss with prospects
* Ensuring that you include an action step, the “call to action,” in your letter 

The drawbacks of this formula include
* Landing you in trouble with your compliance officer through discussion of guarantees or testimonials (although it’s easy enough to skip Steps 5 and 8)
* Sounding too formulaic and too much like a late night TV ad for something that grinds, chops, and does everything else
* Creating a letter that’s so long no one will read it

I learned about Michel Fortin’s blog post in an email from marketer Sonia Simone of Remarkable Communication. Thanks, Sonia!

Related posts:
*  Focus on benefits, not features, in your marketing
*  Your mail has three seconds to grab your reader’s attention
*  “Institutional investing” isn’t as great as you think