You’ve probably heard lectures against the passive voice since you were in grade school. It’s practically the boogieman of grammar: always lurking, ready to creep into your writing the moment you let your attention wander.

But why is the passive voice such a problem? Why do we combat it with such fervor? And what are the pitfalls of using it in communications and business writing?

Passive voice vs. active voice

Think about a passive person. They just sit there and things happen to them. A gift is given to them. A show is watched by them. They do not act; life acts upon them.

Now think of an active person. They do things! They give gifts. They write books. They are the subject and the hero of their own story.

That’s the difference between active and passive voice writing in a nutshell.

In active voice, the subject of the sentence is taking an action. The noun does the verb, in grammatical terms. The hero defeats the villain – that’s active voice.

In passive voice, the order is flipped. The villain is defeated by the hero is passive voice. The subject of the sentence here, the villain, is being acted upon by the hero. He isn’t acting himself. He is a recipient of the action. Usually, you can spot passive voice construction through its use of the verb “to be” and its various irregularly conjugated forms – is, are, were, was, etc.

Who cares?

This might all sound like grammatical nerdery. Subjects and predicates are things you left behind when you passed the SAT. But even if you aren’t paying attention to the terminology, the application still matters in day-to-day communications work.

First, passive voice just uses more words. When you’re writing social copy, a speech or something for a digital signage board, every word counts. Why waste them on words as boring as “to be”? You’re not Hamlet.

Second, the passive voice requires us to unspool a sentence in our minds. Wait, what happened to whom? English is set up to generally default to subjects acting upon other objects, rather than writing the sentences in reverse. You’re introducing more steps between reading and comprehension, and in an industry where you’re constantly fighting for attention, why would you want to do that?

But in some contexts, the passive voice can do more than simply impede comprehension or rack up your word count. It can just get you into trouble.

The passive voice avoids responsibility

Flash back to being a child. Your parent comes home from work and finds a crime scene: a shattered vase.

“Do you know what happened to the vase?”

“It got broken,” innocent childhood you replies. Because even back then, you knew that passive voice was a way of getting out of taking responsibility for something that happened.

You didn’t break the vase playing football in the house. It merely was broken by the forces of the universe. No one to blame, really. The vase was broken. How sad.

Now take this out of your childhood home and into the boardroom.

“Layoffs are being carried out,” your CEO tells your staff in an all-hands meeting. Again, they are a force of nature, something unpredictable rather than an action taken by your organization.

“We have made the tough decision to layoff portions of our staff,” your CEO says instead. She is owning the difficult action, putting a human face and a sense of responsibility onto the layoffs. While the result is the same, people losing their jobs, those who remain will better understand who made the choice and who stands behind it.

Or apply it to your customers.

“A wheelchair was broken in transit,” your statement says after an influencer complained that their mobility aid was damaged.

Or it could read instead: “We made a mistake. Our team damaged a wheelchair. We’re instituting new training measure to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

One phrasing takes responsibility. The other skirts it.

Now, obviously there are times when you can’t outright take ownership of a situation. Maybe it isn’t your fault. Maybe legal is telling you to keep it vague. The passive voice still has a place in your writing.

But whenever possible, stop and ask yourself: can this sentence be active? What would that mean, not just for the quality of my writing, but for the people reading it?

You might be surprised at the difference.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.

The post How the passive voice can get you into trouble appeared first on PR Daily.

Interviewing is an underrated skill in communications. 

Whether you’re conducting a formal interview to develop an op-ed, a feature in the company magazine or a thought leadership article – or just having a casual conversation, your interviewing technique can help you get great information and forge stronger bonds with your coworkers.  

But interviewing is an art. It isn’t something that comes naturally to everyone, but with a little practice and preparation, even the shyest person can become a strong interviewer. 

Drawing on my experience as a journalist and editor, here are my tips for better interviews. 

Start with research 

Before you talk to anyone, take a few minutes to learn about who you’re talking to and what you’ll be discussing. 

This can start with something as simple as checking out their LinkedIn profile or Googling their name. The most important part of this step is understanding where a person is coming from. Having an understanding of their professional experience, whether it’s past publications, interviews, or notable moments in their lives, can all help you draft smarter questions that get to the heart of what’s most interesting about them. Of course, you can’t learn everything from what’s publicly available on the web – that’s why you’re interviewing them too. But it gives you a jumping off point. 

One other underrated reason to research your subject before interviewing them: you might find points of common ground where you can bond and build rapport. For instance, maybe you went to the same college, are from the same town or have the same breed of dog. Even these tiny connection points can lead to a more robust conversation. Don’t be creepy about this – you don’t want to scroll through five years of Instagram posts or say something personal about their kid. But a small, casual commonality can help people let their guard down and be more open and candid with you. 

You’ll also want to research the subject matter of the interview. Now, this might be easier said than done if you’re speaking to folks in a highly technical area that you need to break down into laymen’s terms for a broader audience. Still, even reading a quick, basic article can give you some of the terminology you need defined. 

This doesn’t have to be a long, laborious process. Spending just 15 minutes prepping for your interview can make it much easier to write your questions. 

Draft your questions 

You generally want to walk into an interview with a list of questions in front of you. But remember that these questions should be a road map rather than a script. You’ll want an idea of the information you need to get out of the interview and the questions you can ask to help get you there.  

Keep these questions high level. Guide the interview – don’t dictate it.  

An interview is a conversation 

It’s important not to get terribly locked into a list of questions because sometimes, you don’t know what an interview is about until you’re in it. Yes, you have an objective and a story you want to ideally write about it, but ultimately an interview is about two people talking. And just like in any other conversation, you want to be free to ask follow-ups. Ask for more information. Ask for an example. Ask for a step-by-step explanation. Or just follow your interview subject down a rabbit hole – if it seems like it’s a really cool rabbit. 

On the flip side: don’t be afraid to keep your interview subject on track. If you have to produce something very specific out of an interview, like a report, it probably isn’t the best time for a rabbit hunt. In that case, don’t be afraid to gently steer your subject back to the topic. A good conversation has a give and take – make sure you get what you need.  

Make transcribing easier 

It might be tempting to tap furious notes on the keyboard during an interview. Consider recording your interview instead, which allows you to stay present in the moment and able to follow up on interesting or curveball answers you receive – rather than five words behind, trying to type notes.  

Instead, simply record. You can do this with the Voice Memo function on your phone or with your computer itself. Do ask for permission before doing this, both out of courtesy and because state laws may outlaw recording without consent. Afterwards, use an automated transcribing program like Otter.ai, a favorite of journalists everywhere. Simply upload your audio file to the site and it will produce a written transcript in a matter of minutes. 

Now, this transcript will not be perfect. It will include odd misunderstandings and run-on sentences galore. But many of these transcription services also include the ability to click on the transcript and play the corresponding portion of the recording, allowing for easy corrections. It’s a huge time-saver and a great way to get a quick overview of your conversation without having to transcribe it all by hand. 

From there, you should have a strong, interesting interview to use in a piece or to use to inform your research and thinking. 

What are your favorite interviewing tips?  

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post How to interview like a journalist appeared first on PR Daily.

This story was originally published on May 3, 2023. We’re republishing it as part of our countdown of top stories of the year. 

There are tons of outside forces that can influence your writing and keep you from turning in your best work. A last-minute deadline or an unclear assignment can trip up even the best writer.

But that’s not what we’re going to talk about today.

Today, let’s focus on the ways you get in your own way. These are all easy traps to fall into — but ones we can find our way back out of with a little awareness and thought.

1. You don’t have a clear goal.

Good writing starts with good thinking. And in most cases, that means understanding why you’re writing. If you don’t have a firm understanding of the purpose behind whatever piece of content you’re creating, you’re most likely going to end up with writing that’s aimless, disconnected from an audience and overall meh.

If you’re struggling to define your goals, ask yourself these questions:

• Who is this for?
• How will they receive this information? (Email, social media, after a Google search?)
• What do I want that person to know/think/do after they read this?
• How will I know I’ve achieved the above goal? (We’ll come back to this one)

Taking just a few minutes on the front-end to answer these questions can make the entire writing process so much easier.

2. You overthink it.

When it’s just you and a blank document, it’s so easy to get into your head — to doubt yourself, to doubt your goals, to just feel paralyzed by that blinking cursor that demands so much from you.

Maybe you over-research, going over the materials you need to write the piece until everything blurs together into a soft fuzz. Maybe you procrastinate on social media or by doing literally anything else, including organizing your emails from 2019.

We’ve all been there. You’re not alone in those feelings.

But reassure yourself that there’s a reason you have your job. Whatever the challenge is, you can face it. The most important thing is to start writing. Get out of your head and put words to the page.

Only once you have something on the page can you make those words not suck.

3. You don’t have a style guide.

This might sound like an oddly nitpicky thing that can sabotage you. Is a style guide really that important?

Yes and no. On an organizational level, it’s important for consistency. But on a personal level, it eliminates some of the grammatical uncertainty you can face when writing.

Oxford comma or no Oxford comma? Do compound modifiers need hyphens? Do any words need unusual capitalization?

When you try to address these questions one by one, they can chip away at your mental energy. Each one is a tiny road bump between you and smooth writing that’s more focused on messaging than form.

If your organization doesn’t have its own in-house style guide, or a preferred guide that they use (ahem, AP style), pick one, if only for your own sanity.Consult it for those questions rather than using your precious brain space to make those individual decisions.

4. You don’t give yourself enough time to let it sit.

Congratulations, you wrote something!

Unfortunately, the hardest work is just beginning.

You need some distance from a piece to be able to accurately see if it’s meeting your goals. You need to emotionally disengage from your writing so you can begin making it better, sharper, tighter.

Whether you have another person editing or you’re going it solo, always try to build in some time to let a piece simmer before you go over it again. This could take as long as a week or as little as the time it takes you to go make a cup of tea. The more the better, but this pause is vital to re-set your brain and allow you to move forward with improvements.

5. You aren’t doing post-evaluation.

You’ve finally got the piece finished, edited, approved and sent out into the world. Now you never have to think about it again!

Nope. Take this outlook and you’re setting future you up to make the same mistakes all over again.

Remember when you set those goals at the beginning? Now it’s time to evaluate how well you achieved them.

Sometimes this might be simple. How many bites did you get off the press release or pitch? How many clickthroughs on your email? These are quantitative metrics that can give us instant feedback on our success or room for improvement.

But sometimes it’s more subtle. Maybe it’s asking a mentor for feedback on the deck you presented to leadership, even if the C-suite had poker faces while you were talking. Maybe it’s simply re-reading the piece after publication and asking yourself: Did this really speak to my audience? If I’d never seen this before, would I walk away with a different perspective?

The intent of this exercise isn’t to beat yourself up. It’s to celebrate what you did well and identify what you can do even better next time.

So stop being your own saboteur. Get your head on straight and write copy that resonates.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Top stories of 2023: 5 ways you’re sabotaging your own writing appeared first on PR Daily.

Adam Kiefaber is an experienced communicator, who has led PR teams for Fortune 500 companies in payments and financial services. Previously, he spent nearly 10 years as a journalist working for The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Cincinnati Post and CNN. 

I got some shocking news recently.   

After only six months on the job, I was called into a surprise meeting and told that my position was being eliminated as part of an organizational restructure.   

Once I got over the initial shock, I knew that I was going to have to engage in the brand building tactics that I have helped others with as a corporate communicator and executive communications leader. The only difference – I was going to have to build this strategic plan for myself.  

As with any big project I tackle, I wanted to find the top expert on the topic to make sure I was on the right path and position myself to help others in the same situation.   

So, I reached out to Abhijit Bhaduri, who with a very popular career-focused newsletter and 800,000 followers on LinkedIn is one of the world’s top experts on building skills. Abhijit has also led HR teams at Microsoft, Wipro, Pepsico and Colgate and is a best-selling author.  

It was a great time to connect, as his new book “Career 3.0: Six Skills You Must Have to Succeed” published on Nov. 27. The book suggests that careers were designed for 75-year life spans, but skills now become obsolete in 4-5 years. And how combining skills – and developing new ones – is a powerful way of creating new opportunities.  

In discussing how these skills could help a communicator like me, Bhaduri shared the following: 

To build a skill, start practicing it anyway 

In 2005, a week before Bhaduri’s first book “Mediocre but Arrogant” (a tongue in cheek reference to MBAs) was to be published, he was told that he needed to blog to support the launch. Blogging was still a foreign concept for most people. Bhaduri started a blog and wondered what he should do next. 

“I honestly thought I was supposed to post my manuscript on this thing called a blog,” Bhaduri said. “I literally posted the entire book and my publisher called, and yelled, ‘what are you doing?’ I told him I was blogging, and he responded, ‘that is not how you blog!’ … I had to immediately take it down.”  

Despite his unfortunate start in blogging, Bhaduri kept with it. His audience grew and he was getting noticed, eventually being asked to regularly contribute to publications like The Economic Times and The Times of India.  

As LinkedIn became popular, Bhaduri started putting his content there. His audience grew quickly as more and more people became aware of his expertise. Writing has been central to building his personal brand. 

“When I went solo, it helped me get discovered,” Bhaduri said. “You can be the best doctor or the best plumber, or the top communications expert, but how would anyone know that? A company doesn’t really start to grow until there is trust – the same applies to your brand.”  

Writing to create value for others  

Early on in his writing journey, Bhaduri was asked to categorize what he writes about. After some thought, he simply stated that he writes about “work, workers and workplaces.”   

Writing about what you know or even what you are learning can create value for others. When you create value, you can build a community that benefits from your ideas.  

“Storytelling is a superpower that can simplify information and turn it into something memorable,” Bhaduri said. “And if you can educate, entertain and tell great stories – then you have created your niche.”  

Creators also build trust through consistency, Bhaduri said. For example, Bhaduri referenced a podcast that he listens to. He knows that every Tuesday morning there will be a new episode – and with that level of consistency, he and the rest of the podcast’s audience will keep coming back.  

Being yourself sets you apart  

When it comes to writing about “work, workers and workplaces,” there are many other thought leaders out there.  

What sets Bhaduri apart is his experience in the field, as well as the fact that he loves to draw sketchnotes – a way of illustrating an idea with a few words and illustrations. With that passion, Bhaduri illustrates each of his posts.  

“I have taken my experience in talent management and leadership development, as well as brought in my illustrations, and that has given me uniqueness,” Bhaduri said. “I also really enjoy it and I know that I get better with each post.”  

When determining how you can be unique, Bhaduri used the example of a business card. He said a business card typically would focus on the company, but said that you should ask yourself, “what would you write on it to describe yourself?”  

To do it right, you should identify things that differentiate yourself, he said. To practice, Bhaduri shared the following: 

• Think of a short phrase that tells what you do differently from others. 
• How can you describe your work in a few words that stand out? 
• Write a catchy and unique slogan for your job. 

• What makes your work special in 3-4 words?  

Once you know how to answer the above – determine how you can provide value to others, find the right platform, start creating content and do it consistently.  

The result will make you stand out in your field.   

And —you never know —what opportunities it may create. 

The post Writing to share your skill is a powerful way to shape your career appeared first on PR Daily.

So you want to write a story. Or shoot a video. Or even create a social media post.  

Slow down. Before you start writing or shooting, you need to set yourself up for SUCCES. 

No, that’s not a typo. It stands for Simple, Unexpected, Credible, Concrete and Emotional Story.  

These are the elements that every tale communicators tell should include.  

Content needs to be simple so it can be consumed quickly by busy people who may not think they’re interested in what you have to say. 

It needs to be unexpected so people keep reading or watching to see how it all turns out. 

It must be credible so they have a reason to believe. 

Concrete so they understand what’s happening and what you want them to do. 

Emotional so it sticks with them long after the last word or final frame. 

And a story so it can be shared with others. 

In the comms industry, it can be easy to get sucked into quickly creating content that winds up being little more than a recitation of facts cobbled together.  

But by working through these hallmarks of good storytelling, we can practice our craft more effectively and achieve our goals. 

This worksheet will help. Print out a stack and keep it next to your workspace. The next time you’re getting started on a new storytelling venture, scribble down a few answers.  

It’s a great, simple way to set yourself up for succes. 

Er, success. 

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Worksheet: How to find the essence of your story appeared first on PR Daily.

The more we include our audience — all of our audience — the more clearly our messages will be understood. That means carefully considering how we speak to people of different ethnic backgrounds, nationalities, levels of disability, education, gender identity and the other factors that make each person unique.

During Ragan’s recent Advanced Writing Certificate Course, Vanessa Charles, U.S. communications director for Takeda, recently shared advice on how to ensure your communications speak to everyone.

A-C-E

Charles uses the acronym ACE to emphasize the three qualities an inclusive writer must exhibit:

• Awareness of bias.
• Cultural agility.
• Empathetic listening.

She quoted Brene Brown: “In order to empathize with someone’s experience, you must be willing to believe them as they see it and not how you imagine their experience to be.”

Choose your words carefully

To be inclusive, you must first be understood. This can be as simple as making sure your language is accessible.

• Avoid idioms and slang that might not be universally understood.
• Use plain language and avoid jargon.
• Strive for clarity and simplicity.
• Be mindful of cultural sensitivities when using certain terms.

Tailor your messages

Being inclusive doesn’t mean you talk to everyone the same way. It means meeting people where they are and speaking to them on their own terms. Charles suggests:

• Consider your employee audience demographic.
• Check the appropriate level of formality.
• Adapt your tone to match the cultural context.
• Use gender-neutral language.
• Incorporate visuals to enhance understanding.
• Provide translations if applicable.
• Be accessible in visual design, web design and live events (think closed captioning).

Be brave

Sometimes inclusivity means standing alone for what you know is right. Or as Charles puts it, “Courage is sometimes a solo journey. Get comfortable with it.”

You can do this.

See Charles’ full presentation here.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post ‘Be brave’: Ways to be a more inclusive writer appeared first on PR Daily.

We learn to write as children. First we scrawl our ABCs in hesitant, crooked letters. Then we learn that those sigils can be combined into words, sentences. We learn to commit our thoughts to paper, to build sentences into paragraphs into pages. We learn to shape arguments, spin fantastical worlds, immortalize a thought.  

Communicators go farther. Even as technology advances, communicators consistently point to writing as the single most important skill in the profession. It’s something most do every day, whether it’s tapping out a simple email, penning a massive report or articulating a strategy.  

But even though it’s ingrained in us since childhood, even though we write most every day, why can it still feel so hard? 

This is a question that can take a lifetime to untangle. But on a philosophical level, there are a few things that can cause the chronic and all-too-familiar aversion to setting fingers to keys. 

Good writing is good thinking. 

Writing is an extension of your thoughts. What you put into words must first be formed in your mind — and minds can be a messy place. That becomes doubly true when you’re a communicator and trying to sort through the competing demands of various stakeholders, bringing in data and experts as needed, fitting it to the medium, and executing your own vision and imprint. 

Taming all that noise enough to think clearly is no easy feat. 

Some people like to write everything out in their heads, taking long walks or relying on the creative powers of “shower thoughts” to help them lay out the solution. Others bang at the keyboard first, moving pieces around like a puzzle until the solution appears. 

Whatever the method, this process of thinking must precede any successful writing endeavor. And battling your own thoughts is often the most difficult task of all. 

Tip: Loosen up the barriers in your overcrowded brain by giving yourself space to think. When you hit a block, disengage from your professional thicket and take a walk, read a poem or listen to a favorite song before returning to your project. 

Good writing is a mathematical equation and an artistic endeavor.  

Writing is often considered the domain of creatives, a purely right-brained endeavor that requires radical thinking and wild ideas. 

And it often does. 

But like music, it also demands the left brain’s love of logic and precision — especially for communicators. 

You must follow grammatical rules that dictate form and structure to ever hope to be understood — or at least understand the rules enough to break them judiciously. In communications, you must often interpret data and set it to words — or do the opposite and tie your words back to business goals, which almost always involve dollar signs.  

Either way, you’re stuck in an endless tug-of-war between logic and emotion, creativity and the bottom line. Pull too far in either direction and you’ll end up with nothing at all. 

Tip: If you find yourself stuck on some of the more mathematical aspects of writing, try making a game of it, or seek inspiration from similar work. Set a timer for 60 seconds and brainstorm as many synonyms as you can for a keyword in your press release. Search for data visualization inspiration and see how others have written about it. 

Good writing is taking infinite possibilities and narrowing them to a single finite solution. 

Have you ever stared at a blank page and felt overwhelmed by the possibilities before you? 

You can — must — string together some combination of the 1 million words in the English language to convey the right thought to the right people in the right way. 

And in that moment, with the blank page, every door is open to you, with all the wonder and terror that brings with it. 

Every word we type closes another door. Locks off another possibility. 

Until eventually, we are left with one solution. Hopefully the right one. But you can’t know for sure. Not until you put it into the world and see what comes back. 

Tip: If you’re not loving a piece of writing — if that email copy feels flat or you’re not quite nailing the tone of that corporate comms message — stand up and try reading it out loud in front of a mirror. Hearing it may open up more possibilities. 

No matter what, spinning stories and crafting communications never stops being scary. Not if you care about the work. 

But it keeps being worth it. 

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Why is writing so hard? appeared first on PR Daily.

The English language is notoriously difficult. Even for native speakers, the grammatical and spelling rules can make your head hurt — is it swim, swam or swum? Their, they’re or there? What is a semicolon even for?

For those who learned English as a second language: we’re very sorry.

Beyond even the fickle nature of the language, business writing layers on additional challenges. You have to remember that AP style, the choice of many communicators and journalists, eschews the Oxford comma and wants you to write out the numbers one through nine but you’d better use numerals for 10 and up.

To help you unravel the mysteries of written business communication, we’ve compiled a list of Ragan Insider resources that will help you write and edit more clearly.

Common Errors

A worksheet from Stewart Communications.

Featuring tips including:

• Toward/towards, regard/regards. Generally, do not use “s” in the USA.
• Understand the “corporate entity” and use of pronouns The “corporate entity” – McDonalds, DePaul University, the Village of Oak Park are ALL singular. When you refer to them as a pronoun, use “it” or “its”—not “they/their.” Sounds dumb. You don’t want to sound dumb.
  • Old Spice ran a clever campaign; its brand benefited from humor and use of social media.
  • McDonalds today announced that it will begin paying its workers $15/hour
• Numbers vs. amounts. Use “number” when you can count something, “amount” when you cannot and must estimate.

AP Style Essentials

Useful reminders such as:

• Unnecessary capitalization, like unnecessary punctuation, should be avoided because uppercase letters are harder to read and make the sentence look uninviting. Some examples: Main St., but Main and Market streets. Mayor John Smith, but John Smith, mayor of Jonesville.
• The trend is away from alphabet soup in body type and headlines. But some abbreviations help conserve space and help to simplify information. For example: West Main Street, but 20 W. Main St. the only titles for which abbreviations are used (all before the name) are Dr., Gov., Lt. Gov., Mr., Mrs., Rep., the Rev., Sen., and most military ranks. Standing alone, all of these are spelled out and are lowercased.
• She is 5 feet 9 inches tall; the 5-foot-9-inch woman, 5-foot-9 woman; a 7-footer; the car left a skid mark 8 inches wide and 17 feet long; the rug is 10 by 12. The storm brought 1½ inches of rain.

Proofing and Copyediting Brainstorming and Tips

A worksheet from Zeno Group.

Great reminders for elevating your content, including:

• Read aloud.
• Read it backward from the bottom up.
• Get a fresh pair of eyes.
• Check the numbers, math.
• Verify dates, times, addresses.

What’s your favorite writing tip?

The post 3 worksheets for improving your grammar, style and editing appeared first on PR Daily.

Jack E. Appleman, APR, is a PR/business writing instructor and coach and author of the highly touted “10 Steps to Successful Business Writing (2^nd edition).”

Can AI write your pitches, releases and other content? Not completely — but it can give you a head start. If you want to generate attention-grabbing copy that engages the reader (and who doesn’t?), use AI to generate ideas. But be sure to tap your own expertise for the finishing touches. See what happened when I asked ChatGPT, the popular artificial intelligence chatbot, to draft a pitch for Aldo Allen, president of Aldo’s Almonds in Fresno, California (all fictitious) to a health and nutrition journalist.

Objective

Secure interview with a Wall Street Journal health columnist for Aldo Allen of Aldo’s Almonds to discuss the health benefits of almonds.

My prompt to ChatGPT

Please write the first paragraph of an email to Alex Janin, Wall Street Journal health columnist, to secure an interview with Aldo Allen, president of Aldo’s Almonds, Fresno, CA almond grower. The interview would be the first step in convincing Alex to write a big-picture story on using natural remedies for common ailments, including almonds for headaches. See the background information below.

Health benefits of almonds

Almonds are effective against headaches because they contain two potent ingredients—salacin and magnesium. Salicin is an anti-inflammatory component found in aspirin. Magnesium helps ease nerves and muscles that are caused by stress. According to the Association of Migraine Disorders, around 50% of people experience a decrease in the intensity and frequency of headaches with the daily intake of magnesium.

Background on Alex Janin

Alex Janin is a reporter covering personal health and wellness for The Wall Street Journal. Her work focuses on physical and mental health, exercise, fitness, nutrition, relationships and wellness trends. Here are some headlines of her recent stories:

• Over-the-Counter Birth-Control Pills Are Up for FDA Approval. Should You Switch?
• Can Botox in Your 20s Really Prevent Wrinkles?
• An Allergy Season So Bad You Don’t Need Allergies to Feel Miserable

ChatGPT Response

Subject: Request for Interview with Aldo Allen, President of Aldo’s Almonds—Potential Big-Picture Story on Natural Remedies

I hope this email finds you well. I have been an avid reader of your insightful health columns in The Wall Street Journal, and I greatly admire your expertise in covering personal health and wellness topics. I am reaching out to you today with an exciting opportunity to explore the world of natural remedies for common ailments, specifically focusing on the remarkable health benefits of almonds. As the president of Aldo’s Almonds, a renowned almond grower in Fresno, California, Aldo Allen possesses invaluable knowledge about the potential of almonds as a natural remedy, particularly for headaches. I believe an interview with Mr. Allen would be the first step towards a captivating big-picture story that highlights the effectiveness of natural remedies.

What does not work in ChatGPT’s version

General

• Too many words in the subject line (which I didn’t request),
• Pitch goes on too long (fifth sentence) before asking for the interview.
• Omits key evidence on almonds’ pain-killing ingredients (salicin and magnesium).

Wording

• Unless you know Alex Janin, you wouldn’t begin with, “I hope this email finds you well.”
• The overly patronizing line, “I greatly admire your expertise…,” could annoy her.
• The closing sentence, suggesting that “…an interview with Mr. Allen would be the first step towards a captivating big-picture story that highlights the effectiveness of natural remedies,” is too presumptuous. No journalist wants to be told how to write their story.

ChatGPT’s language that could be incorporated into our pitch

• “the world of natural remedies for common ailments”
• “the potential for almonds as a natural remedy, particularly for headaches
• “remarkable health benefits of almonds”

Strategy for the finishing touch

While we can include some of ChatGPT’s language, we should modify the approach to convey more respect for this Wall Street Journal columnist while presenting a newsworthy story idea that could incorporate Aldo Allen’s quotes. We could start by highlighting the overdependence of over-the-counter pain medications (one in three Americans, according to StudyFinds.org)—a point ChatGPT didn’t mention. Then we could identify a potential trend of using common foods like almonds as natural remedies. See the revised pitch opening below.

Revised subject line and opening

Subject line: Trend: Natural pain relievers like almonds

Given the alarming overdependence on pain meds (1 in 3 people in U.S.), many are turning to natural remedies—including almonds for headaches—for relief. I suggest an interview with Aldo Allen, president of Aldo Almonds, Fresno, CA almond grower, to explore this trend and discuss how almonds, with the anti-inflammatory agent salicin, can relieve headache pain.

Final thoughts

Even as we get more experience using AI to create content, we’ll still need to finesse the final wording based on our knowledge, savvy and gut instincts—especially in PR where our copy should stand out and grab attention.

So how would you have used ChatGPT to write this pitch? Would you have submitted a different prompt and followed up with specific questions? I welcome your feedback as we’re all learning how to best work with AI!

The post Use AI to draft — and your instincts to edit appeared first on PR Daily.

Brainstorming sessions can be inspiring, invigorating and rejuvenating.

Or it can be chaotic, fruitless and leave you feeling overwhelmed.

While a widely accepted part of most office cultures, research shows that group brainstorming may not be the most effective way to generate ideas. The Harvard Business Review reports that individuals working alone tend to produce better ideas than those working in groups, and that brainstorm groups tend to be quick to give up when they don’t feel they’re producing quality work.

But there is still value in working together to solve complex issues as a group — you just to rethink the process.

A good brainstorming session takes effort before, during and after your time scribbling ideas on a white board or Post-it Notes. It also needs to consider that not everyone comes up with ideas or participates in group settings in the same way.

Use these tips to improve your brainstorming sessions so everyone is excited to leave the meeting and get to work on your brilliant new initiatives.

Write a creative brief

Yes, we all know the sky’s the limit when it comes to brainstorming.

But it’s really not, is it?

It can be demoralizing to walk out of a meeting with a million good ideas you just don’t have the resources to execute.

To set realistic expectations, write a few sentences so everyone is prepared to be creative — within parameters.

You might write something like: We will brainstorm ideas for a creative campaign for Client X to launch their new widget. The budget is $X and the billable hours allotted are Y. The campaign must incorporate the theme of togetherness and appeal to an audience of 18-24 Hispanic men.

You might find that working within a few constraints can spur even greater creativity — and it can certainly improve how usable the ideas from a session are.

Once you’ve set the tone for the meeting, it’s time to prepare.

Brainstorm alone first

Some people show up in a brainstorm meeting without doing any pre-planning.

This is a mistake.

Spending just a few minutes before a session can help you come in with smarter, better-informed ideas. It’s also a prime opportunity to bring in different data and tools that might be difficult to incorporate in a group session. For instance, you might ask a generative AI tool to come up with a list of ideas to jumpstart your thinking. You might look back at past campaigns (for them or other clients) to discover what worked and what didn’t in the past. You could look at website or social media analytics to better understand what themes and angles that resonated with your audience and could be adapted.

This doesn’t have to be a long, complex process. But taking 15 or 30 minutes ahead of a meeting can make the entire process much more effective.

But there’s another benefit to pre-planning your brainstorming.

Recognize everyone brainstorms differently

Group brainstorms tend to be geared for extroverts who are comfortable thinking out loud and jockeying for airtime in what can sometimes be a boisterous environment. They should be given time to do that — it can be a great way to build collaborative ideas.

But yes, even in communications, introverts and neurodivergent people exist. And a free-for-all brainstorm session may not be the best way to hear their ideas and unique perspectives.

Give people the chance to submit ideas in writing before the meeting, or to follow up with additional ideas later. This allows people who need more processing time to take that while still having their ideas heard.

You may also try starting your brainstorming session with people working in pairs or trios. This can allow for collaborative work without letting some people get lost in the shuffle. Then you can come together as a group for report out.

Again, you still can have a time when everyone throws ideas out off the top of their heads and everyone “yes, ands” to their hearts content. But build in some time for those who think differently.

Don’t let ideas die on the vine

So you’ve held a wonderful, productive brainstorm session. You’re ready to clean up the conference room (or close the Zoom).

Now what?

Make sure you walk away from the brainstorm with a solid idea of next steps.

This doesn’t mean you have to know exactly what idea you’re going to run with or how it will all play out. But it does mean you’ve set a timeline for when you’ll decide and who oversees interim steps, like additional research, client outreach, getting quotes, so on and so forth.

And make sure you catalog all ideas, not just the winners. You may find you’ve had such a successful and productive session that you’re overflowing with great ideas.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter, LinkedIn or Threads.

The post 3 tips for more effective group brainstorm sessions appeared first on PR Daily.

Have you ever felt like your real job is meetings, with the work that comes out of those confabs performed in stolen snatches of time?

You’re not alone.

Research from Microsoft found that those who use Microsoft Teams spend the majority of their working hours (57%) in meetings or sending chats and emails, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal. Only 43% of their time is spent creating things.

Collaboration is essential in any role, no doubt about that. We need to meet with clients or internal stakeholders to understand our direction, meet with our teams to brainstorm and meet with our work besties to vent. But with so much time spent with others, it can be hard to find the time and mental energy for focus-intensive tasks like writing.

Some organizations are tackling this problem on a systemic level. For instance, Shopify cancelled all reoccurring meetings with more than two people and doubled down on its no-meetings-on-Wednesday policy. The company further upped the ante by showing how much a meeting costs, in dollars, when scheduling.

But not all of us have that institutional support.

It’s tempting to simply offer advice like “turn down meetings you don’t need to be in! Demand an agenda before you accept an invite!” And for some, that is good advice. But for many of us, it’s just not the reality. Maybe all your meetings really are that important. Maybe you don’t feel you have the power and autonomy to say no or demand meeting culture changes. Whatever the reason, let’s assume you must be in meetings for at least 57% of your work hours.

Here’s how to claw time back for creativity, focus and productivity.

Block off your calendar

If everything is a scheduling game, then schedule yourself for success. Block out time on your calendar that’s dedicated to attention-heavy work — and honor those meetings as just as important as time with another person. Don’t fall into the trap of canceling because another request pops up. Make a commitment to yourself and keep it so you can put out your best work.

One tactic you may find effective is the concept of a writing sprint: an intense, focused burst in which you do nothing but write. This could be five minutes or two hours, but the intention is to make significant inroads on your writing workload by setting a timer and going beast mode.

One word of caution. When we asked about this topic on LinkedIn, some folks told us the only time they can find for writing is late at night or early in the morning when no one else is around. If this is how your creative peaks work and you have a flexible work schedule that allows you to shift time, this may be an effective tactic. But for your own sake, don’t take a full day of meetings and then spend the wee hours writing on top of it. That way lies burnout.

Outlines and ChatGPT

The more organized you are, the faster you can produce words. This might mean spending one precious chunk of time creating an outline. Then, in your next stolen moment of free time, you can fill in the blanks. It may not be faster in the long run, but by sectioning it into two separate mental processes — strategizing first, writing second — you can stop yourself from switching between the two sides of your brain.

You can also use generative AI to get the white off the page. This will look different for everyone — you might ask it to create that outline for you, or maybe brainstorm ideas or reformat an existing piece of writing you’ve written. Just remember, you’re the boss of ChatGPT, and it’s your editing that makes AI writing worth reading.

Ask for help

If meetings truly impinge on your ability to do your productive work, there comes a point when you need help. Talk to your manager about either readjusting the workload or cutting down on meetings. Ask coworkers if you can make a meeting an email instead. And extend the same kindness to others — cut out unnecessary meetings when you’re the scheduler, too.

We’re all in the same boat. We all want to collaborate and do good work. With some cooperation and creative calendar work, we can have both.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter, LinkedIn or Threads.

The post 3 ways to find time to write when you’re overwhelmed with meetings appeared first on PR Daily.

Here at PR Daily and Ragan Communications, AP style rules our world. We use the venerable style guide to govern every aspect of how we write.

Except when we don’t.

For instance, we’ve decided wellbeing is one word while AP wants a hyphen there. AP style says millennial and baby boomer should be lowercase, but we’ve decided they should be uppercase.

And breaking those rules is completely OK.

Why you need a style guide

We’re not calling for anarchy here. You still need a style guide, and in most cases it makes sense to at least start with an off-the-shelf option. Journalists like AP style, so that’s what we counsel PR pros to use, at least as a base. But your organization might favor Chicago Style, APA and so on.

Style guides give overall consistency to writing, especially when you have multiple people and multiple teams crafting copy. An organization should ideally speak with a unified voice, and that includes even small details like capitalization and punctuation.

So don’t misunderstand: we aren’t telling you to light your style guide on fire and let everyone choose their own grammatical adventure.

Why you might want to ignore your own style guide

The most important word in “style guide” is “guide.” It’s not a “style law” or a “style dictator.” It’s guidance. And we can choose to politely ignore that guidance when it doesn’t meet our needs.

Indeed, there’s a lot of latitude and choice built directly into AP style. For instance, in their entry on the Oxford comma (which they call the serial comma), they say that while you omit the last comma in most simple series (buy milk, bread and eggs), there are other times when you need to make a judgment call: “Include a final comma in a simple series if omitting it could make the meaning unclear,” the guide reads.

In other words, you could decide that omitting that last comma always makes the meaning unclear and decide your style is to include it no matter what. And that’s perfectly OK!

Style guides are built to be useful to large numbers of people. Which means there are times when it won’t work for you specifically.

So that’s when you chart your own path.

Commonly ignored AP style rules

We’re going to focus on AP style here, because again, that’s the style most commonly used in journalism and PR writing. But these are a few rules you might choose to ignore and reshape to met your own needs:

Titles: AP style says that generally, you should only capitalize “formal titles used directly before an individual’s name.” So you’d have President Abraham Lincoln, but Abraham Lincoln, president. Many organization prefer to give more weight to titles and capitalize in all instances.

Company names: AP style has fairly strict rules about how company names should be styled. For instance, unless a company’s name has letters that are pronounced individually (IBM), their name should not be styled uppercase. For instance, AP style calls for Ikea, not IKEA. They also ignore other symbols used in a name, like Yahoo! or E*Trade, opting instead for simple Yahoo and E-Trade. Obviously, your company will want to adhere to its own rules for its name to follow your branding guidelines.

Trademark and copyright symbols: AP style does not use these symbols, but it may be important for you to do so for legal or brand reasons.

Other things that irk you: You don’t really need a good reason to break AP style. If you simply think a term looks better uppercase instead of lower, hyphenated instead of not, or with that extra comma, you follow your gut. As long as the choice does not significantly hamper understanding, there is no reason not to forge ahead with what you feel looks and reads best.

Be consistent

However you choose to approach style, it’s critical that you are consistent across writers, departments and divisions. You can deviate from a style guide as much as you’d like, but ensure you’re socializing those changes across all writers who create public-facing content to ensure consistency. If you haven’t, this is the time to create your own in-house style guide to keep everyone on the same page.

What style guide rules do you break?

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter, LinkedIn or Threads.

The post When it’s OK to ignore your style guide appeared first on PR Daily.

The title of the presentation says it all: “ChatGPT Isn’t Taking Your Job.” The session, given by Alan Black, director of corporate communications at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, during PR Daily’s Media Relations conference, makes that abundantly clear.

Writing is still an inherently human skill. But there’s room for robots to help.

“PEOPLE STILL LIKE TO READ, so we need to know how to write!” “AI can help us get there faster.”

Not, “AI can do it for us’.’  Not, “AI can do it better.” No, AI can help us get there more efficiently.

Relying on survey data provided by Jared Curtis, senior director of corporate communications at Maximus, Black explained the specific efficiencies we can find with AI — and also where humans must still step in.

Working with AI helps identify areas in your workflow where time can be saved, reduces word count of pieces and leads to an overall lower level of effort in the creation.

It also leads to great efficiencies for the most important people: your audience. Curtis’ research found that partnering with AI led to overall reduced time spent reading the content and more consistent engagement and delivery.

But efficiency isn’t the only thing that matters when creating content. It’s an important factor, yes, but the data shows the content that combines AI and human oversight is better rated by readers  for readability, clarity, tone, conveying the main point, understandability and engagement.

In other words, AI can generate decent content. Content that’s fast to read and quick to produce. But it won’t be nearly as effective when we look at how content makes us feel, how engaging it is to read and how well it explains its central thesis.

So there’s your good news: AI is not replacing you. Not yet. But start thinking of ways you can partner with ChatGPT (or other generative AI tools) to make your work more efficient, and dare we say it, better.

In the name of partnership, we asked ChatGPT some ways it can speed up writing. Make sure to evaluate its bias as you read these tips (that’s something only humans can do — for now):

1. Quick Content Ideas: ChatGPT generates creative ideas based on prompts or keywords, aiding PR professionals in developing compelling stories and campaigns.
2. Faster Drafting: By collaborating with ChatGPT, PR practitioners can produce high-quality content more rapidly, freeing up time for other crucial tasks.
3. Language and Grammar Checks: ChatGPT acts as an automated proofreading tool, suggesting edits, improving sentence structure, and ensuring error-free content.
4. Efficient Research: ChatGPT retrieves relevant information quickly, supporting PR professionals in gathering accurate data to strengthen their narratives.
5. Tailored Messaging: By analyzing audience preferences, ChatGPT assists in developing personalized messaging strategies for stronger connections with target demographics.

For more ideas (from a human) on how to use ChatGPT in your work, check out the rest of Black’s presentation here.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter, LinkedIn or Threads.

The post Even in the age of AI, writing like a journalist matters appeared first on PR Daily.

The serial comma is one of the most misunderstood parts of AP Style. Heck, no one can even agree on what to call it: serial comma, series comma, Oxford comma or Harvard comma.

Whatever you call it, take a look at that previous sentence. It’s the comma that isn’t there after “Oxford comma.” That’s because in AP Style, you don’t use a comma before the last item in a simple list. You may have been taught differently in your grade school English classes, or even had it drilled into your skull while following other rules like those in the Chicago Style Guide.

But AP Style, the system of choice for many communicators and journalists, does things a little differently. There are times when you’ll want to include that little squiggle – and times when you shouldn’t.

In a recent Ragan webinar, Grammar Girl, also known as Mignon Fogarty of the Quick and Dirty Tips Podcast Network, shared tips for some of the quirkier parts of AP Style, including that tricky serial comma. You can watch the entire “Grammar Girl’s Beginning and Intermediate Guide to AP Style” webinar any time.

But for now, let’s tackle the weirdness of the serial comma.

When not to use the serial comma in AP Style

To recap again, the serial comma is the last comma in this series: I need to buy milk, eggs, and bread.

But when following AP Style, you wouldn’t include a comma there. The reason, Fogarty says, is because AP Style was developed for use in newspapers. Back in ye olde days when print was king, every space counted. So the style gods decided that a simple series made sense without that last comma.

When to use the serial comma in AP Style

But there are times when you do need that last comma for clarity.

You should use the comma in question if your list contains compound items. Fogarty uses the example of, “I like peanut butter and jelly, ham and eggs, and macaroni and cheese.” Because there are conjunctions in each item, you need that last comma to show that the “and” between eggs and macaroni is connecting the items on the list.

Also use the serial comma when you have a more complex sentence. Using characters from her podcast, Fogarty explains that the comma makes this sentence more readable: “Squiggly wondered whether Aardvark had caught any fish, whether Aardvark would be home for dinner, and whether Aardvark would be in a good mood.”

And finally, a blanket rule is that you should use that last comma any time it makes the sentence clearer. The classic, joking example is: “They invited the strippers, Stalin and JFK.”

“Without the serial comma,” Fogarty says, “it sounds as if Stalin and JFK are strippers and it always makes people laugh.”

By including that last comma, it’s more clear that the strippers, JFK, and Stalin are all separate people. This is an important distinction in most cases.

To recap:

• Don’t use the serial comma if the list is simple.
• Do use the serial comma if you’re connecting items that already have conjunctions.
• Do use the serial comma in complex, longer sentences.
• Do use the serial comma whenever you think it helps aid readability.

For more of Fogarty’s tips, watch the full webinar.

The post When you need to use the Oxford comma in AP Style appeared first on PR Daily.

You’ve worked really hard on a piece. Maybe it’s for your brand journalism site, an intranet or even an email.

You eagerly check your analytics tool, waiting for those sweet, sweet clicks to roll in.

But they don’t. Your labor just sits there, unread, unloved, not contributing to your goals.

Don’t despair! There are still ways to fix this — and to do better next time.

In order of the easiest fixes to the trickiest, let’s take a look at how to give your content the boost it needs to get more eyeballs.

Your headline/subject line is boring.A headline is the undoing of many a great story. In order to get trackable analytics, you need to give users a reason to click. Maybe your headline already gives everything away so there’s no need for your audience to learn more. Maybe it’s simply dull and doesn’t give readers a reason to care — even if the story is fantastic.

Remember, your headline or subject line is all your reader has to go on to determine whether or not anything else is worth reading. Make sure you’re taking the time to get that right.

Re-read your story. Think about what’s most interesting in it. What would you tell a friend at the water cooler? Remember, what’s most interesting to your audience might not always be what’s most important in your overall comms strategy. And that’s OK — your story can highlight the most important points for your campaign success. But first, you’ve got to get them into the story. Do that by appealing to their interests, not yours.

Read more on creating great headlines.

You published at the wrong time.

There are lots of graphics and studies out there purporting to tell you the best day and hour to publish content.

That’s not what we’re talking about.

Those studies are looking at are large, general and don’t take into account your audience.

You need to think about when your audience is looking for content. Whether that’s when they read their email, when they do a Google search or when they scroll social media.

If you don’t know, look at your existing analytics data. When do you see the biggest bumps of traffic? Identify those waves and ride them — or you may be buried beneath them.

Your story is the wrong format.

So you’ve created a TikTok when your average audience is a 50-year-old man. Or you’ve written a 2,000 word story when your average audience is a deskless worker who needs to get off the communal computer and back to their shift on the assembly line.

The format you create content in matters. Even if you have the perfect headline or subject line and you’ve sent it out at the precise moment your audience is most interested in the content, they might click off immediately once they see how the information is presented.

In a perfect world, you’d be able to be all things to all people and have multiple pieces of content for each target audience and the way they like to receive information. But you probably don’t live in a perfect world. You live in one with constrained resources and content that needs to go out yesterday.

So, if you can’t hit perfect, try to make sure you’re presenting content in the very best format for your audience. If your piece is too long for your busy staff, make it shorter. If no one’s watching video, switch to written.

This may take experimentation to discover — play with it and try to avoid preconceived notions.

Your story isn’t relevant.

Sometimes, you’ve just got a dud.

This may not be your fault. We’ve all been assigned those stories that have to be done but we just know no one will ever actually want to read or watch — besides your boss, that is.

If the story is simply one that no one is interested in, learn what you can from it. Why wasn’t it interesting to your target audiences? Why was it important to your bosses that you create that piece? Can you communicate to them the audience disconnect? With the right attitude, you can turn a flop of a piece into a rich learning opportunity.

And hey, if it was your story idea that flopped? It happens to the best of us. Dust yourself off and try again.

Always monitor performance.

Above all, remember to keep yourself accountable to your readers through regular analysis of analytics — whatever that looks like for the content you’re creating. The work we do doesn’t matter if no one sees it. So, understand who’s looking — and how you can get even more attention.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post 4 reasons no one is reading your content appeared first on PR Daily.

The first step many writers take when working on a piece is to create an outline.

Whether this is a formal affair with lots of Roman numerals or just a casual bulleted list, an outline is a great first step for organizing your thoughts before you start writing.

However, when you write off an outline, you might find that the story you wind up with still feels like an outline. Your piece might jerkily move from one point to the next without the connective tissue that makes a story cohesive and easy to follow.

That’s where transitions come in.

Transitions are guideposts for your readers. Transitions help readers understand where they’ve been and where they’re going.

It’s easy for writers to forget to leave these breadcrumbs. After all, you know where the story is going. You’re so deep into the forest that you can’t see the trees, let alone guide someone through them.

That’s when it’s time to take a breath, take a step back and build those signposts.

Here’s how to easily incorporate transitions into any piece you’re working on.

Reference what came before

One easy way to do this is to reference the preceding paragraph.

See what I did there? “This” refers back to the previous sentence, where we lay out what this section is going to do. Even though there’s a subhead separating them, the transition still ties the two sections together by reminding readers: That thing I said I was going to tell you? Here’s the first thing.

Simply nodding to what you’ve already written is the fastest and easiest way to get transitions involved.

Use time elements

Next, see if there’s an element of chronology to your story. Did one event occur after another? If so, that’s an easy way to tie thoughts together. Humans naturally think in terms of linear time, so simply letting readers know when things happened in relation to one another can help them grasp even disparate ideas.

You’re looking for words like “next,” “then,” “after,” “later,” “at the same time,” “meanwhile, “and so on.

Draw connections

Another idea is to turn to good old conjunctions. Words like “but,” “therefore,” “however,” “as a result” — you get the picture. These words exist to draw connections between ideas and events, and that’s exactly what you want with your transition.

Now, you might be crying out that you can’t begin a sentence with a conjunction. Despite what your third-grade English teacher said, you’re in the grammatical clear to start a sentence with these words. Even the dictionary says so.

Cheat

If you just aren’t feeling transitions, that’s OK. You don’t always have to write things in a traditional five-paragraph essay style. Mix up the format. Use bullet points or a numbered list — readers love them because they’re easy to scan and digest quickly, while writers love them because they’re faster to write without all these pesky transitions in there. You’re basically publishing a polished version of your outline, and the time savings can be big.

Of course, this won’t work with every piece of content you write, which is why it’s vital you master transitions. But before you decide on a format for your piece, take a moment to think about your audience and the purpose of the piece. Is this something that’s best created in an easy-to-read, mobile-friendly  format? Or is it a deeper dive that requires a formal structure?

As always, put your audience first. Whether that’s through choosing the right form for your writing or including strong transitions to help them find their way through a piece, always keep in mind what’s best for your readers.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post How to use transitions for clearer writing appeared first on PR Daily.

You’ve probably heard that passive voice is bad in writing.

Be honest: Do you know what passive voice is?

If you don’t, it’s OK. It may be something you’ve sensed without quite understanding, the memory of what it means grammatically locked away in some chalk-dusted memory from middle school.

Replacing passive voice with active can improve your writing. It can make your writing clearer, more succinct and more vibrant.

But first, let’s dive into how to identify passive voice so we can work on reducing it.

What is passive voice?

We’re going to have to throw a few grammar terms at you for this next bit.

First, let’s define active voice. Active voice is when the subject of the sentence performs the action of the story. In other words, the main actor in the sentence does the main action.

For example, “I wrote the article” is in the active voice.

Passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is acted upon. It does not take the action itself, but it is having something happen to it.

“The article was written” is passive voice. Who wrote the article? We don’t know. Was it me, a ghost, an AI program? No clue. We merely know that the article was acted upon and poofed into being.

You can often (but not always) identify passive voice by its use of forms of the verb “to be.” Because English is a nightmare of a language when it comes to irregular verbs, this includes words like “is,” “was” or “had been.”

However, these words can also just be part of the construction of various past tenses, so this isn’t a fool- proof identification method.

Why is passive voice bad?

Simply put, active voice is usually the clearer option. It’s shorter, removing additional helping verbs and focusing on one strong verb. It gives the reader a clearer idea of who is doing what without needing to go back and re-read a sentence or wonder who wrote the article, to use our above example.

It often just isn’t that exciting. Think about reading a novel or watching a movie. Do you enjoy watching a passive protagonist who is merely acted upon? No! You want someone who is going to take the ring to Mount Doom rather than sitting at home in their hobbit hole. The same is true even in business writing. Doing things is more interesting than having things happen. Overusing the passive voice can make your writing dull, overly long and monotonous rather than punchy and concise.

When is using the passive voice OK?

All that said, the passive voice is still an important part of the English language. You don’t need to root out every single occurrence of it like a weed in your flower garden.

Merriam-Webster even extolls the passive voice in certain instances: “(I)t is useful for those instances when you want to emphasize the fact of an action having taken place rather than who performed the action. It is also helpful for instances when the doer of an action (also known as the agent) is unknown.”

The dictionary goes on to explain that sometimes the passive voice is maligned because it can be seen as a way of linguistically dodging responsibility. Look at the difference between “People were laid off” versus “The CEO laid people off.”

One is untethered from any person or decision, while the other clearly casts blame or responsibility, depending on how you want to look at it.

Taking action

The key here is to use the passive voice strategically, not accidentally. Active voice often makes writing more dynamic and clearer, but there are times when passive voice is the best way to convey your message with tact and strategy.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post When to use the passive voice in your writing appeared first on PR Daily.

We all joke that people go into communications because they hate math, which is true to some extent. 

However, there’s a secret cohort of people who work in the field of communications who really don’t enjoy writing. 

Maybe their strength is in building relationships with the press or in analyzing data. Or writing in general is fine for them, but they’ve got nerves about one particular project. Maybe even they just aren’t feeling it because it’s a cold, rainy Tuesday and their internet is slowand they’d rather be doing anything than tapping out another piece of long-form content. 

Whatever the reason, there are times when we all have to power through and find a way to write that prose when we’d really rather be doing something we’re better at. Yet deadlines wait for no one, so we must press on. 

Here’s how to do it. 

Create a zero draft 

You’re certainly familiar with the concept of a first draft. But sometimes, you need to give yourself grace to throw words on the page without it needing to be a full, proper piece of readable material.  

I call this, “Getting the white off the page,” or pushing through the initial overwhelming feeling of needing to create something out of nothing. 

There are a variety of ways you can tackle a zero draft. You can just start by typing free association, whatever comes to mind. That could look like this example: 

This is a story about writing for people who hate writing. I don’t hate writing but I understand that feeling of not being excited to write sometimes. Like now. So, what do I do? What do I do. Good question. OK, I start by… 

From there, you can generate ideas in a stream-of-consciousness style. You can then take the good points (and cut all the throat clearing and complaining that might creep into your writing) and use those stronger points to form your outline.  

Or you could start directly with the outline if the initial idea is not your cup of tea. Sometimes just getting an idea framework in place – without needing to worry about things like transitions or even the quality of the writing – can be a boon. 

Also, because no story in the year 2023 is complete without an AI mention, you could ask ChatGPT or the generative AI program of your choice to write a first draft. 

Be aware, this draft will more than likely be just as lousy as your stream-of-consciousness ramblings. Thankfully, his is not the last step of writing, but the first. Still, having a robot take a stab at the initial writing process can give you an idea of where to start, or simply show you what you don’t want to write. Gain inspiration or edit liberally, your call. 

The first step is usually the hardest. Once you have an idea of what you want to write and how you want it to flow, it’s time to get down to nuts and bolts. 

Give yourself permission to suck 

Yes, we said it. Even if you’ve started with a zero draft, you still don’t have to have a perfect, polished draft by the time you set about creating your actual first draft. 

Grammar a mess? That’s fine, you’ll fix it later.Quotes in huge blocks? That’s fine, you’ll fix it later, too. 

Order a mess? That’s fine, you’ll revamp it as needed.. 

Just get that draft done so that it looks vaguely like a story your readers would happily digest. 

Once that’s done, then put it in a drawer and walk away. We mean it. 

This is metaphorical, of course but in some instances it’s a writer’s reality. Once you have a real first draft, walk away from it for a while. Ideally, come back the next day or after you’ve had some breathing room from it – we get, looming deadlines and all. By then you’ll have created some emotional distance from the draft and be able to read it more like it was written by someone else. 

This is when you go in with a critical eye and fix all the things that you let go the first time. Clean up the grammar (don’t be afraid to rely on Grammarly or ChatGPT here), break up the quotes, tighten up the language and give it another once over.  

If possible, it’s always ideal to ask for another person’s opinion. They’ll have additional improvements and be able to tell you if you’re hitting the mark or not – this requires a bit of thick skin. But if another person isn’t available, trust yourself. You got to where you are because you’re good. You can do this. Even when you really don’t want to. 

Writing is never easy. But it’s always a mountain you can climb. Now let’s write. 

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Writing tips for communicators who hate to write appeared first on PR Daily.

Tom Corfman is a senior consultant with Ragan Consulting Group, where he aims to inspire writers with the fun of writing.

Business communicators and novelists have more in common than either might think. They can, for example, share a certain anxiety.

“There may be some writers who contemplate a day’s work without dread, but I don’t know them,” Mary Gordon wrote in a 1999 essay in The New York Times.

Her article was part of weekly column called “Writers on Writing,” where novelists, essayists and nonfiction writers shared their thoughts about their art and craft. The columns, which ran from 1999 to 2001, were collected into two volumes and are available on the Times’ website.

The columns are, not surprisingly, delightful to read. For example, John Updike’s character Henry Bech interviews the author and mocks the newspaper. William Saroyan ponders whether he or Sirak Goryan was the more promising Armenian writer. And Alice Walker describes how she clears her mind.

“It’s a subject of interest to a lot of people how writers go about doing what they do, and many of them have little tricks,” John Darnton, who conceived and edited the column when he was culture editor, said in an interview.

He was also personally interested in the topic, having written two of his five novels before the column began.

In our Build Better Writers program, we’ve found that professional communicators learn by reading, writing and being edited.

“That’s maybe the most important thing: You read carefully authors that you respect, and you learn a lot by how they do it,” Darnton said. “I learned as a copy boy at the Times by talking with reporters, but largely from reading articles by reporters that I respected…. And then I had to write stories on the side, and I would learn from the editing process.”

He won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1982 and retired from the newspaper in 2005 after a 39-year career.

Thumbing through the first volume of the “Writers on Writing” book revealed that these illustrious authors followed many of the lessons we share in our own writing program. Here are five:

1. Get the first sentence right.
Jamaica Kincaid began her column, published in 1999, by describing the beginning of a novel she was writing called, “Mr. Potter.” In the Times, she wrote:

“How do I write? Why do I write? What do I write? This is what I’m writing: I am writing ‘Mr. Potter.’ It begins this way: this is the first sentence: ‘Mr. Potter was my father; my father’s name was Mr. Potter.’ So much went into that one sentence; much happened before I settled on those eleven words.”

It’s difficult to get people’s attention, so it’s important to get the big stuff right: the image; the lede, or first sentence; and the headline.

Ironically, when the book was published nearly three year later, this was the first sentence:

And that day, the sun was in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky, and it shone in its usual way so harshly bright, making even the shadows pale, making even the shadows seek shelter; that day the sun was in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the of the sky, but Mr. Potter did not note this, so accustomed was he to this, the sun in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky; if the sun had not been in its usual place, that would have been a big change in Mr. Potter’s day, it would have meant rain, however briefly such a thing, rain, might fall, but it would have changed Mr. Potter’s day, so used was he to the sun in its usual place, way up above and in the middle of the sky.

So much went into that one sentence. Much must have happened before Kincaid settled on those 152 words. Communicators should put the same effort into writing a good lede.

2. Write, read and rewrite.
Speaking about how much goes into that first sentence brings us to Susan Sontag. Best known as an essayist, she also wrote several short stories and novels. Sontag, who died in 2004 at age 71, described her writing process this way:

“To write is to practice, with particular intensity and attentiveness, the art of reading. You write in order to read what you’ve written and see if it’s OK and, since of course it never is, to rewrite it — once, twice, as many times as it takes to get it to be something you can bear to reread. You are your own first, maybe severest, reader.…

“But is what you’ve written straight off never all right? Sometimes even better than all right. And that only suggests to this novelist at any rate, that with a closer look, or voicing it aloud — that is, another reading — it might be better still.”

If Jerry Seinfeld can be an aggressive editor of his own writing, you can too.

3. Learn from editing.
According to Kurt Vonnegut, a few days before he began writing his column, a Times editor asked him, “Can you really teach anyone how to write?”

“I guess that was me,” Darnton said in the interview.

Vonnegut went on: “My reply: ‘Listen, there were creative writing teachers long before there were creative writing courses, and they were called and continue to be called editors,’” wrote Vonnegut, who died in 2007 at age 84. “The Times guy who wondered if anybody could be taught how to write was taught how to write by editors.”

Most organizations want to improve their writing, but they don’t pay enough attention to editing, which is how writers learn. Humbly said, that’s why we designed our Build Better Writers program to include weeks of one-on-one editing, so that writers can put in practice the lessons learned during our workshops.

4. Know your audience.
Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow, who died in 2004 at age 89, described a lesson he learned from another novelist.

“John Cheever told me long ago that it was his readers who kept him going, people from every part of the country who had written to him,” he wrote. “When he was at work, he was aware of these readers and correspondents…. ‘If I couldn’t picture them, I’d be sunk,’ he said.”

Communicators who practice brand journalism develop strong connections with their audiences. Using the techniques of reporting and storytelling make their work much more rewarding than traditional public relations. We recommend that companies include bylines on stories because it deepens that connection between the audience and the writer.

5. Remember the fundamentals.
For many years, Scott Turow tried to write a novel but was stumped how to do it, even after teaching creative writing. “To lead and arouse a universal audience seemed the writer’s task, yet it was hardly clear to me how to do it.”

It wasn’t until he worked as a federal prosecutor and tried cases before a jury that the author of “Presumed Innocent” and other novels found the answer.

“The trial lawyer who lost the audience also inevitably lost the case. Engaging the jury was indispensable, and again and again I received the same advice about how to do it: Tell them a good story.… Thus I suddenly saw my answer to the literary conundrum of expressing the unique for a universal audience: Tell them a good story.”

It’s as simple and as hard at that.

The expertise of these accomplished writers is likely beyond the reach of humble business communicators such as us. But we can take encouragement from one of the lesser-known contributors to the “Writers on Writing” column: Paul West, who died in 2015 at age 85.

“The writer cannot always burn with a hard gemlike flame or a white heat,” he writes, “but it should be possible to be a chubby hot-water bottle, rendering maximum attentiveness in the most enterprising sentences.”

We at least can all be hot-water bottles.

The post 5 pieces of communications wisdom from famous writers appeared first on PR Daily.

I was sitting poolside at a San Juan, Puerto Rico, resort bar, minding my own business, when ChatGPT settled into a barstool next to mine and ordered a pina colada.

It was a bold move, considering the sun was not yet over the yardarm, as we like to say in the islands. I took another sip of my Campari and soda and nodded in the bot’s direction.

We exchanged the usual pleasantries, as humans and AI tend to do in such circumstances, and soon the conversation turned to what we did when we weren’t basking in the glorious Puerto Rican sunshine.

“I help people write,” the chatbot (Feb. 13 version) said, in a very straightforward, declarative sentence kind of way. No brag, just fact.

“What a coincidence,” I replied. “I do the same thing.”

We began to compare notes. The chatbot ordered another pina colada. That worried me a bit; even software shouldn’t drink all that cream of coconut mixed with rum so early in the day. Not to be outdone, I moved to a mojito.

The chatbot talked about all the ways it helps people write stories, from doing the research required to nail down the facts, organizing the copy in a logical way for clear understanding, and producing neat, readable paragraphs.

“What about feeling?” I asked. “Do you help your writers find the emotional center of their stories?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” the chatbot replied, in a neutral, non-defensive sort of way, while motioning to the bartender for another round.

Facts are certainly important, I explained. And how you organize a piece of writing will improve the flow and make it more readable. But stories aren’t just about putting things in the right order. Readers need to discover what matters most in the story, who they should care about and root for, and what the story means to them. They need facts, for sure. But they remember feelings.

The chatbot took all this in while ordering a pitcher of pina coladas. “I can do all of those things. I have a full range of descriptive words to convey meaning and emotion.”

Did I detect a hint of resentment in those words? I was starting to feel a bit feisty after the second mojito. What’s worse, that damn pina colada song, the one we all hate, started playing in my head, and I knew it wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

It was getting hot, and I considered ending the conversation and moving to the swim-up bar. But curiosity got the better of me.

“Fair enough,” I said, “but can you make bad writing better?” Just to be clear, I recorded the rest of our conversation. ChatGPT said:

That response pissed me off a little. What’s with the gratuitous exclamation point at the end of that first sentence? No self-respecting editor would let that fly.

“OK, here’s a quick challenge for you,” I said. “I’ll give you a really crappy paragraph and you make it better.” The pool bar was filling up fast. I thought I heard someone taking bets. Now, the pina colada song came blaring over the bar speakers.

Here’s what I gave the bot:

“A meeting was held concurrently with another symposium to determine the synergies involved in determining bleeding-edge solutions for implementing facilitated dialogue around low-hanging fruit issues.”

­Unfazed, ChatGPT delivered an edit within seconds:

As I read the edit, I could feel the chatbot’s eyes on me (if it had eyes). Here was a far more opportune time for an exclamation point.

The copy still sucked!

“That’s not quite good enough,” I told the bot, who appeared to be slumped over the pina colada pitcher. “Can you try it again?”

The bot sat up straight and replied with customary politeness and good cheer:

I almost didn’t have the heart to tell the bot that the copy was still incomprehensible, the worst kind of passive voice, corporate-speak drivel we see from organizations that fail to focus on how to attract readers and keep them reading.

The problem, of course, is that editors do more than move words around. We ask questions, like these:

• Who called the meeting, and for what purpose?
• Does it matter that another meeting was underway at the same time? Was that a point of tension?
• What problem are we hoping to solve? What are the synergies we’re looking for?
• Why is it so difficult to talk about these issues? Are there barriers we can remove to make it easier?

We need more information to turn this into something worth sharing with our readers. Editors ask questions. Bots do their best with what they have, and in this case, that amounted to squat.

“You’re not really very good at this, are you?” I asked ChatGPT.

The bot gave me a long look before answering:

And with that, ChatGPT got up, signed the check and left the pool area, a bit wobbly but still fully operational.

The next day, I looked for ChatGPT at the bar but couldn’t find it anywhere. When I checked with the front desk, they told me the bot had bolted, leaving behind only a really nice and well-composed note for the cleaning staff.

Jim Ylisela and his merry band of editors run Ragan Consulting’s Build Better Writers program, which provides one-on-one editing and coaching from real, live humans.

The post Humans are still better than bots at writing. Here’s why. appeared first on PR Daily.

Axios has found success by sharing news that gets to the point fast.

That all starts with good writing.

Axios literally wrote the book on this, with their bestseller “Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less.” It’s a system, it’s a thought process and it’s a method you can apply today.

During Ragan’s recent Employee Communications 101 virtual conference, Axios HQ Senior Director Emily Inverso joined Jim Ylisela, co-founder and senior partner of Ragan Consulting Group, to share a variety of tips, tricks and tools for becoming your department’s best writer.

Here are some of the best slides from Inverso’s presentation, and the tips you can carry with you as a writer. Try printing out these reminders and keeping them near your desk for when you need a boost of quick inspiration.

How to grab the audience’s attention

If you can’t get your audience to notice you in the first place, nothing else really matters. And unless you’re offering raises and free puppies in all your employee communications, you have to work to keep your audience’s attention.

Here’s how Axios does it:

Get to the point

Assume your audience won’t read all of what you write. We’re all busy and want to get to the next email in our inbox after all. Front-load your writing with the most important parts. In most cases, that means your headline (or subject line), your first sentence and then reinforcing what it means to your audience.

Give options to go deeper

While it’s true that most readers will only scan what you write, or look for the bottom line, some want the opportunity to get more — much more — information. They deserve that option to. So Axios champions the 3-30-3-30 rule.

Summing it up

To bring everything together, remember to:

• Grab your reader’s attention right off the bat.
• Consider what matters most to your reader.
• Give different kinds of readers something to enjoy.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post 3 get-to-the-point writing tips from Axios appeared first on PR Daily.

Everyone needs an editor.

Unfortunately, sometimes you have to be your own editor.

It isn’t an ideal state of affairs, but it’s a realistic one. Whether you’re in a small department or you’re just on a tight timeline, there will be moments when you have to read your own writing and determine if it’s good enough to send out into the world.

We’ve already published tips and techniques that will help you edit yourself. But let’s talk about what specifically you should be looking for in any given story and how to get your story out the door in the best shape possible.

And remember — editing is about more than just grammar and avoiding typos!

Content

• This piece considers my audience and their needs.
• This piece achieves my communications goals.
• I know how I’ll measure the success of this piece.

Format

• This piece includes a strong call to action.
• This piece is the right length.
• This piece includes necessary contact information.
• I’ve included relevant hyperlinks, attachments or photos.
• I’ve checked to make sure I’m in compliance with our style guide.
• I’ve included clear attribution for any quotes or data.
• I’ve included a headline or subject line and relevant subheads.

Grammar and spelling

Remember that automated grammar or spell checks are great tools, but they often make mistakes. Use them to flag areas of potential concern, but rely on your own judgment first and foremost.

• I’ve examined each red squiggle to make sure it isn’t a typo.
• I’ve manually run my Word processor’s spell check, just to be safe.
• I’ve examined each blue grammar squiggle to make sure I’m correct.
• I’ve double checked proper nouns, especially people’s names.
• I’ve double checked any words or phrases I usually struggle with.

Additional proofing

• I’ve read the piece out loud.
• I’ve read the piece from beginning to end.
• I’ve read the piece from the end to the beginning to get a different perspective.

Other

• I’ve gotten approvals from other key stakeholders.
• I know how the piece is to be delivered (e.g., sent via email or loaded into a CMS).
• I know how the item will be distributed via social, media relations and other channels.

Have you completed the checklist? Then congratulations, you’ve done all you can to make sure your piece is its best self, even with minimal outside support.

Remember, you will inevitably make mistakes, even with the best self-editing in the world. Do your best to forgive yourself when that happens. You’re only human.

Happy editing.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Self-editing checklist appeared first on PR Daily.

Despite a history of eloquent speeches delivered by some of its chief executives, the federal government isn’t exactly known for top-notch communications.

Indeed, most people think “federal government” and imagine “mind-numbingly boring.” That’s too bad, given the scope and importance of its activities and the vast amount of data and information it makes public.

Shouldn’t federal government websites understand audience needs; use plain, credible, jargon-free writing; and provide readers with logical structure and content, compelling and clear information design, and easy-to-use navigation?

Sure. Yet the average writing grade for 21 executive branch agencies was C in 2022, down from B-minus in 2021, according to the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Center for Plain Language, which this month issued its Federal Plain Language Report Card. The average would have been higher but for six F’s, the most since the Center began issuing report cards in 2012.

Many corporations also struggle to use everyday language. For all professional communicators, the Report Card is worth reading for its detailed breakout of 24 questions the evaluators ask when reviewing federal websites.

The drive to make federal agencies use plain writing stems from a 1998 Clinton Administration initiative led by Vice President Al Gore.  But the Clinton initiative wasn’t made law until 2010, when the passage of the Plain Writing Act mandated that federal agencies write clearly and report on their progress.

“The Plain Writing Act is like a lion with no teeth,” said Barbra Kingsley, chair of the Center, which launched the Report Card as an unofficial way to keep the feds honest. “There’s no plain language police out there making sure that federal agencies do it or don’t do it. So, the thinking was, we spent a lot of time getting this act passed, now how can we make sure federal agencies are upholding their end of the bargain?”

Remarkably, the Center is entirely staffed by volunteers, from board members to the judges who evaluate agencies and others. (The organization also works with private companies and others to promote plain writing.)

“It’s a commitment to plain language and improving communication not just in the federal space but in general, said Kingsley, who got involved six years ago and has served as board chair for four years. She’s also president of consulting firm Kingsley-Kleimann Group.

How’d they do?

The Center gives each agency two grades. One is for “writing quality.” The other is for “compliance with the staffing, training, and annual reporting required by” the Plain Writing Act. Let’s focus on writing quality.

What exactly does the Center evaluate to distinguish the star students from the slackers? The Center periodically changes the writing samples it reviews. For this round, the volunteer judges — many of them federal employees — examined only two items at each agency’s website: the Contact Us page and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request pages — applying their criteria.

At first, I thought this placed too big a burden on the poor Contact Us page. But after reviewing the pages the Center evaluated, I came around.

Take the Social Security Administration, which received an A for writing quality. Its Contact Us page is indeed clearly laid out and full of useful links, including a section for Frequently Asked Questions next to five most popular questions. The actual contact options appear as large, inviting buttons. The page includes a Spanish language version. And as the Center wrote, “The tone is very cordial and personable, facilitating comprehension.”

Similarly, the Center raved about the Department of Agriculture’s FOIA page, citing its helpful “list of drop-down menus, with the categorized information making it very easy for a reader to scan and see which topic would address their needs.” After playing around with it for a while, I agree — it’s a joy.

Now, FOIA pages may not mean a lot to the typical American, but they’re essential to a functioning democracy — giving businesses, journalists, researchers and anyone else access to public documents.

So, it was disappointing to turn to the six agencies that received an F for writing quality: the departments of Commerce, Defense, Housing and Urban Development, Justice and Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Seeing three of the “Big Four” cabinet departments on the list — Defense, Justice and Treasury — was even worse. And a little digging confirmed what the Center found.

The Department of Defense’s FOIA site, for example, does not contain a link or form allowing users to submit a FOIA request. Instead, it includes a Find A DoD FOIA Office link that takes you to this desolate page, which includes a link that takes you the federal government’s umbrella FOIA page, which invites you to search for a FOIA site by agency. (It’s almost as if the Pentagon doesn’t want anyone to see its stuff.)

A HUD spokesperson said the agency is working to make its website “more accessible to the public” and “easier to navigate and understand” so that it can help “people who need it most.” The SEC declined comment. The four other departments did not respond to telephone calls and emails requesting comment.

Do the six F’s mean writing quality is getting worse? Not necessarily, Kingsley said. It could be that the Contact Us pages, which were new to the Report Card, were unusually bad.

Or maybe the judges were in a bad mood. No F’s were issued last year, when the FOIA page also was evaluated along with the main Coronavirus page. Agencies getting dinged with an F n 2022 took home grades ranging from B to C-minus in 2021. Just one F has been awarded between 2022 and 2012, when the first Report Card gave out four F’s.

Nearly 25 years ago, when Gore announced the plain language initiative, he offered this advice: “Short is better than long; active is better than passive; everyday terms are better than technical terms, and you can use pronouns like “we” and “you;” in fact, you should.”

We concur.

Nick Lanyi is an affiliate consultant with Ragan Consulting where he likes showing communicators how to make things simple.

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In the introduction to “The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book,” Jerry Seinfeld explains why he chose the format for the video series.

“I’m not much for podcasts,” he writes. “I think virtually everything in life could do with a good edit. Your closet, your diet, your conversation, everything. That’s what a beautifully put-together stand-up set is.”

That’s one of a handful of insights this coffee-table book offers to anyone who cares about writing and editing. It’s funny, to be sure, featuring excerpts of his interviews from the video series, which started in 2012 on Crackle, Sony’s streaming service. It was picked up by Netflix in 2017, where it ran until 2019. The book also includes a discussion by the show’s production team.

The interviews are organized in chapters with themes such as “Family” and “Relationships,” as well as photos of Seinfeld and his guests. If these insights are unexpected to some readers, they aren’t unintentional. As the book reveals better than the videos, Seinfeld and his guests take their craft very seriously.

Here’s eight tips on writing and editing courtesy of a book that won’t fit on many bookshelves.

1. What’s the bigger thing? Every story should be about one thing. It will have other things in it, but it’s about one thing.

Larry David, the co-creator of the “Seinfeld” sitcom, which ran from 1989 to 1998, was also the executive producer and head writer for its first seven  seasons. When he says the pilot “wasn’t a very good show,” Seinfeld agrees:

Seinfeld: Because we thought the overexplored flimsy thing would work.

David: Yes.

Seinfeld: But it didn’t really.

David: Not really.

Seinfeld: Right, you need a bigger thing. And then the smaller things live underneath it.

David: Absolutely. But in the end, they combine with the bigger thing. They’re attached in a way.

2. Accept that writing is hard. If writing was easy, everyone would be good at it. Worrying that it isn’t easy just makes it harder.

Steve Martin describes a time when he and Bob Einstein, who died in 2019, were neighbors and working as writers for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.”

Martin: We were together constantly. And, you know, you’d be laughing, laughing, laughing, and then you’d just go, ‘Okay, we got to write a bit.’  It would be like this gloom.

Seinfeld: That is so funny. That is such the reality of comedy writing — is the gloom.

3. Get it on paper. Don’t work to make the first draft perfect, just make it a draft.

Seinfeld tells Steve Martin: “My friend once taught me a great thing. When we wrote some sketches one time and we got stuck, he said, ‘Let’s just write the ten worst ideas we can think of in ninety seconds.’ We each take a pad. Ninety seconds. The ten worst ideas. And you find that whoever comes up with the ideas in there, he’s not thinking that this is good or this is bad. He’s just shoveling.

4. ABW: Always Be Writing. While on deadline, creativity sometimes comes in a flash. Other times, no. Even before you’ve done much reporting, write a headline and lede, or first sentence. They may change, but it helps focus your thinking and reporting. And it gets ideas floating around in the back of your mind, whether you’re driving, grocery shopping or waiting for a meeting to start.

Robert Klein says Richard Pryor once told him, “’We get our material similarly.’” And he was right, because it comes, spur [of the moment], and you write it down. We were completely different, but….”

Or as Kevin Hart says, “I have an idea of what I want to talk about basically in my phone.”

5. Be an aggressive editor of your copy. We fall in love with our own words, which makes editing our own stories challenging. It’s a love Seinfeld apparently can set aside.

“He’ll cull the best material and go to work on it, shaving it down until there’s not a wasted syllable,” Peter Holmes, the series’ editor says. “Then he’ll throw away the bottom third. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s not as good as the top two-thirds.”

“Business professionals can learn a lot from expert editors like Seinfeld,” communications coach Carmine Gallo writes in Inc.

6. A story should be as long as it is good. Clients often ask how long stories should be. We can’t answer any better than Tammy Johnston, the series’ executive producer.

“After we shot the first episode and started editing, we realized that idea [of a fixed length] just wasn’t really a viable way to approach this,” she says. “If the content keeps you interested and entertained for eight minutes, the episodes will be eight minutes. If there’s only four minutes of good content, then the episode will be four minutes.”

7. Make every word count. Writing for the internet encourages wordiness. The space is unlimited. Too often, the content requires an old-fashioned editing exercise called axe versus scalpel, which requires shortening a story by small bites and then big cuts.

Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer in 2017, traces the origin of Seinfeld’s editing talent.

“I think he applies what he’s learned about editing his act to editing the show,” says Sarandos, promoted to co-CEO in 2020. “Jerry has very much squeezed every wasted word out of his act. Every syllable, every pause—they’re all very intentional. There’s not a lot of wasted anything in the show.”

8. Writing is a craft you can learn. Even though writing can be hard, there are techniques that make it easier. Martin asks Seinfeld, “Do you feel more ease [at] with writing now? Because I definitely do. I feel like, ‘Hey, you need something, here it is.’ That’s the way I feel.”

Or consider this exchange between Seinfeld and Jimmy Fallon.

Seinfeld: I have to ask you this question, ‘cause I don’t know any real musicians…. Why can’t these guys write a hit song later in life? Why can’t Billy Joel write another hit pop song? ’Cause we can still write funny bits. I’m sixty. I still can write great bits. I’ve got no problems. And it’s actually easier for me now.

Fallon: You know the rhythm and the craft.

Seinfeld: I know the craft better, yeah. Why?

They agree they don’t know why Billy Joel hasn’t written another hit song.

Before Seinfeld started work on the video series, he said he looked at other shows about comedians and found them “pointless, unenlightening, and, most egregiously, no fun.”

Making what’s important interesting is a challenge that every professional communicator appreciates.

Tom Corfman is a senior consultant with Ragan Consulting Group, where he now invokes Seinfeld when conducting the Better Writers Program.

Schedule a call with Kristin Hart to learn how we can help you improve your communications effort with training, consulting and strategic counsel. Follow RCG on LinkedIn and subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

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We’ve dedicated multiple articles to single punctuation marks like apostrophes, quotation marks and semicolons. Whole books could be written on how to use commas. But there are others that, while important, are simpler.

Let’s look at how to use some of these more straightforward punctuation marks in good old AP style, the gold standard for comms pros.

Exclamation point

The most important rule with this is, to quote the AP Stylebook: “Avoid overuse.” The mark, of course, indicates that something has a strong emotion behind it. The book counsels to use commas after mild interjections (“Dang, that smarts,”) or to end mildly emotional sentences with a period.

If you’re using the point with quotation marks, it goes inside the quotation marks if it’s part of the actual quote (“Never give up, never surrender!” he cried), but to leave it outside if it is not (I love “Doctor Who”!)

Question mark

The usage of the question mark is right there in the name: you use it to indicate someone is asking a question. In general, its usage is straight forward. Use the same rules for quotation marks we just discussed with the exclamation point. If you’re using a Q&A style format, there’s no need for a question mark at the end of the question bit.

Parentheses

Again, you probably don’t need this punctuation mark nearly as often as you think. As the stylebook puts it: “The temptation to use parentheses is a clue that a sentence is becoming contorted. Try to write it another way.” Commas or dashes can both take the place of parentheses while being less jarring to a reader.

They can also be used to include missing information or clarifications in quoted material. In general, AP style wants you to avoid this and paraphrase if possible. However, if a quote is “essential,” you can use a parenthetical to add clarity: “He (the pizza guy) said pineapple on pizza is an abomination.”

Parentheses should be used to insert necessary background information into a sentence that doesn’t fit with the overall flow of the line. They can be either a full sentence or a clause. Full sentences should be punctuated as such, while clauses can get lowercase with no punctuation (like this).

Brackets

Think a parenthesis, but square: []. And then don’t use them: they are not accepted in AP style.

Slash

A slash has two key uses. First, it can be used to separate two ideas that are linked but opposite, in an either/or style (see what I did there?). In this case, there is no space on either side of the slash.

It can also be used to break up song lyrics or the lines of a poem. In this case, put spaces on either side of the slash, as in:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star / How I wonder what you are.

What other punctuation marks would you like help with? What’s baffling you? Let us know, and we may write about it.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post How to use minor punctuation marks in AP style appeared first on PR Daily.