30 Days To Better Business Writing

30
DAYS
to
B E T T E R
BUSINESS
WRITING
BY MATTHEW STIBBE
Wouldnt it be great if everything

you
wrote
was
more
interesting,
credible and effective? Imagine better

website
copy,
brochures,
emails,
letters, proposals, blog posts, press

releases...
BADLANGUAGE.NET
30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING
CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction

How to use this book
2
6
Day 1: Be a reporter

Day 2: Interview someone
Day 3: Ask the right questions
Day 4: Find the story
Day 5: Find the angle

Day 6: Pick the right structure
Day 7: Analyse bad writing

Day 8: Analyse good writing
Day 9: Write like a human being
Day 10: Write for readability
Day 11: Learn to concentrate
Day 12: Play buzzword bingo
Day 13: Eliminate the passive
Day 14: Use shorter words

Day 15: Use fewer words

Day 16: Manage your writing
Day 17: Get the right tools

Day 18: Write a proper brief
Day 19: Give good feedback
Day 20: Write a great case study
Day 21: Write a great press release
Day 22: Write a better email
Day 23: Write a blog post

Day 24: Write readable web copy
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Day 25: Invent great names

Day 26: Write a great presentation
Day 27: Find time for writing
Day 28: Break writers block
Day 29: Working with pro writers
Day 30: Final exercise

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Foreword
Youre
already
a better
writer
than you
think
Wouldnt it be great if everything you wrote was more interesting, credible and effective? Imagine
better website copy, brochures, emails, letters, proposals, blog posts, press releases...
You are already a better writer than you think. This book builds on what you already know with
some techniques used by professional writers and some guided practice.
My name is Matthew Stibbe. I am Writer-in-chief at Articulate Marketing, a marketing agency. I
write for clients including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, eBay and HM Government. Before that, I was
a business and technology journalist. Before that, in the dawn of the internet age, I ran my own
software company.
This book draws on that experience, my blog and the writing seminars I run for my clients, to try to
give you a 30-day course that you can use to improve the way you write.
This is not a book of grammar and Im not going to make you go back to school. If you want
guidance on basic written English, I highly recommend Strunk and Whites The Elements of Style
and the Economist Style Guide is also excellent. Instead, I want to help you take the basic building
blocks and recombine them in a more interesting, compelling and readable way.
Mainly, Im writing for people in business. Perhaps you work in marketing or PR. Perhaps you work
in sales and write proposals all day. Whatever you do, you probably write emails, reports and presentations. If you want to improve your writing, this book is for you.
Matthew Stibbe
EMAIL ME
READ MY BLOG
HIRE ME
matthew@stibbe.net
Bad Language
Articulate Marketing
BADLANGUAGE.NET
Introduction
If we
dont find
something
pleasant,
at least
well find
something
new
Good writing is a competitive advantage

The ability to communicate effectively is a competitive advantage. Yet, in business, good writing is surprisingly rare. We experience bad writing every day:

Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

Jargon, waffle, hype, verbiage and conventionality get in the way of real meaning.
Emails dont get to the point or make it too brusquely.
Websites waffle and waste your bandwidth and readers time
In short, business suffers from bad writing. Consequently, deals fail, careers stumble and money is
wasted.
The Bad Language manifesto

This is my manifesto. I think these truths are self-evident, but the consequences are not. This is what
compels me to write this book and what drives the requirement for better business writing.
- Voltaire

You have no right to your readers time. They are already as busy as you are. Thats not all. The
market for information is becoming more and more competitive. There are more TV channels, more
magazines, more newspapers, more emails, more newsfeeds and more websites than there were
five or ten years ago. As a result, readers spend nearly all their time doing something other than
reading your content. You have to earn their trust, interest and time.
Readability is everything. To earn your readers trust and get their attention, your writing needs
to be clear, simple and direct. Good spelling, punctuation and grammar are a start. Saying what
you mean in the fewest, shortest words possible helps. Using the right format, stories, examples,
appropriate metaphors and the right document structure helps too.
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See the world from your readers perspective. First, be relevant. Too much writing is about the
writer, their company and their problems. For example, most marketing campaigns are about what
the company wants to sell, not what the audience wants to buy. Second, unless you can see the
world through your readers eyes, you arent going understand the problems they want to solve, the
objections they might raise and the things that are going to excite them.
Be a reporter. In the beginners mind, there are many possibilities, said Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen
Buddhist priest, but in the experts mind there are few. We are all experts in our own world and the
only way to get past that is to become professional beginners. Editors talk about self-sourcing, which
is where a journalist uses their own experience or ideas as the source for an article. Bad journalists
self-source. Good journalists are good reporters. They talk to people. They ask questions. Its the same
for writers.
Writing happens. Those blank pages need to be filled. All those web pages need copy. Because
most people can write, they think that writing is a commodity. Something that can be left until later.
Something that is a low priority. By analogy, most people can kick a football, but not everyone is David
Beckham. Any time you see lorem ipsum placeholder copy, its a sign that the person in charge
doesnt think writing is important enough. Yet somehow those pages get filled. Writing happens and
you always pay for it whether you do it yourself or you get an agency to do it.
Good writing costs the same as bad writing. Substituting good writing for bad writing is free. You
always pay for writing. Your time costs money even if you dont get an agency bill for it. However, you
can choose where and how you spend your money. You can get your agencies to write better copy.
You can hire a professional writer (Yay! Me!). You can improve your own writing skills. You can change
the way you manage writing.
Bad writing is expensive. On the other hand, making no choices is also a kind of choice. The default
option in most cases is bad writing. This has a real business cost. Get it wrong and you confuse readers,
bore them, lose their trust and waste the money you spent getting them to read your stuff in the first
place.
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The cost of bad writing

RULE OF THUMB
Bad writing is expensive. It can have direct operational
costs: in 1983, Coleco lost $35 million in just a few
As a journalist, I would plan to do
months when customers returned thousands of new
one interview for each 250-500
Coleco Adam home computers because they couldnt
words of copy.
understand the manual. Im sure youve gone to a
website to sample a free online trial only to be put off
by a daunting click-through contract or weasly small
print. When I was a journalist, I saw hundreds of press
releases that took several hundred words just to clear their throat and get to the point.
But, mostly, bad writing is a leaky bucket. Money just drips out in lost opportunities. I think people know
this intuitively. When I talk to them, most people admit that theyre not happy with their website or that
theyd like more compelling product literature or case studies. This is how I make a living at Articulate
Marketing, so I know there is some demand out there!
The cost of bad writing is two-fold. First, you lose the money you spent delivering the words to the
reader. Expensive website? Waste of money. 50,000 brochures? Recycling fodder. Second, you lose the
hoped-for result. Have you ever read a brochure that bored or confused you? Did you buy the product
afterwards?
To understand the cost of bad writing, I think we have to go back to why we write anything in the first
place. In business, were not really bothered about artistic expression or entertainment. What we want is
to persuade and inform people.
Writing fails if the reader doesnt understand it, doesnt believe it or doesnt remember it or act on it.
Consequently, comprehension, credibility and retention are the requirements of business writing.
It is possible to track the impact of clear product descriptions on sales, well-written manuals on support
calls and snappy website copy on traffic. On the other hand, it is very difficult to add up the costs that
come from poor marketing collateral, obscure press releases or badly-worded letters.
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To help calculate the cost of bad writing, imagine you had a tool that could tell you how successful a
piece of writing was at meeting these requirements. The opposite of a bullshit detector. (A good shit
detector, perhaps?) It would tell you how readable it was. Think of readability as the clickthrough rate
for writing.
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How to use this book

Do one
thing
There are four good ways to use this book:

Take the 30-day course. The book was written as a step-by-step guide. Each chapter ends with an
exercise for you to complete. New sections building on preceding ones. Allow 30-60 minutes per
chapter, per day.
Read it like a regular book. Start at the beginning and read through to the end. This is probably the
least useful but fastest way to get through the book.
Graze. Browse around, try things out, see how you go. Not efficient but fun.
every
day that
scares
you.
Eleanor
Roosevelt
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DAY
BE A
REPORTER
A good reporter is forever astonished at

the obvious.
Donald Murray
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DAY
Be a reporter
Key point: Write with information
RULE OF THUMB
Good writing is grounded in the real world. The reason
that so much of it sounds bogus is because its like spun
sugar. Sweet, tasty but insubstantial. When I wrote for
Wired, my editor used to say, report it out and what she
meant was to go and talk to people and find things out.
In other words, she wanted me to write with information,
data, facts, observations and not just my own opinion and
fancy words.
This is the rule of one-half,

one-third, one-sixth. Half my time
is spent researching and interviewing. One-third is spent proofreading
and editing. Only a sixth is spent
actually writing. This is a guideline
that I used when I wrote computer
games (where the tasks were
designing, testing and coding) but
it works for writing too. The big
difference between copy and code
is that paragraphs dont crash.
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DAY
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DAY
DAY
So the first exercise in this book is about finding

information and grounding your writing in the real world.
What Im trying to do is to get you to step back from
your writing for a moment. Once you have done this a
few times as an exercise, itll become more and more
automatic. The result will be stronger writing.
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1.
Pick a topic that is important and current to you. For example, a problem you are trying to solve
or a product you are trying to sell.
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2.
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Apply your senses to the topic. What can you hear, smell, touch, feel, taste and see? Write down
the words that come to mind. There are no right or wrong answers its more a question of paying
attention.
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3.
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Use your emotions. How does the topic make you feel? What feelings does it evoke? Does it bring
up any memories? Does it create any tension or conflict?
4.
Think about the passage of time. What happened before? What will happen later? What precondi-
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tions apply to the topic you have chosen? What consequences flow from it? What weight or priority or
likelihood do you give to the different consequences? What is the pace of change?
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5.
You, yourself. How do you stand in relation to your topic? How involved are you? What biases or
attractions does it hold? How objective are you?
6.
Objective evidence. Well come on to the feelings and opinions of others tomorrow when we cover
interviews. But right now, can you find any data that applies to the topic? Are there dimensions such
as size, weight or volume that apply? Price? Are there any competitors? Can you research the topic
online? What hard facts are available?
7.
Jot down your answers and thoughts. At this early stage, I like to use mind mapping techniques, either
on paper or using software. Sometimes, I use a more structured outline, such as the outline mode in
Microsoft Word. Mostly, though, I have a Word document open and I just type things into it as they
occur to me. The important thing is not to lose the information that you gather.
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DAY
INTERVIEW
SOMEONE
The way I work, the interview never

becomes larger than the person being
interviewed.
Ken Burns
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DAY
Interview someone
Key point: understand the other persons point of view
The easiest and best way to become a better writer is to learn to see the world from your readers
viewpoint. What matters to them? What are their problems? What excites them? What do they do when
they arent reading what you write (which is almost all the time, even if we choose not to believe it)?
Interviews matter. Interviews are the foundation of good reporting. This is just as true for business
writing as it is in journalism. They are the best way of understanding a complicated situation and seeing it
from someone elses perspective.
The word interview has negative connotations in business. You go for a job interview or you face a press
interview with equal anxiety. But it is nothing more than a focused, professional conversation. I quite like
the journalistic connotation which is why I use the word, but if it makes you feel more comfortable, think
of it as a chat, a meeting or a conference call.
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What I want you to do today is go and interview someone. Plan it, book it, do it, take notes, write up your
observations and use it in something you write. Here are some examples of people you could interview:

Someone in another department who will read a report you are writing.
A potential customer who might buy a product you want to sell.
An expert inside your company who has something to contribute to something you are writing.
(If you work in a technology firm, when was the last time you actually talked to a programmer or
engineer?)
Avoid spokesrobots. Skip the usual suspects the VPs and the CEOs and get quotes and input
from the guy who designed the hinge and the woman who optimised the code. Go to the shop
floor; find the story behind the story.
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Preparing for an interview is critical. Heres how:
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1.
Find the right interviewee. Long before I got married I asked my friend, who later became my
best man, what the secret of a happy marriage was. He said, Find a nice girl and pray she says
yes. Its the same with interviewees. (Alistair Cooke had a different recipe for marriage: Frequent
separation and increasing deafness. This doesnt work so well for interviews.)
2.
Approach them nicely. People find it quite hard to say no to requests for help but make sure you
explain why you want to interview them and what you hope to get out of it. It can be helpful to say
that the interview will be anonymous or that you will let them approve any quotations you write
afterwards.
3.
Choose the right format. Sometimes a face-to-face interview is good. More often, for me, a phone
interview works best. Its easier to schedule, less intrusive and more focused on speaking rather
than appearances and body language.
4.
Phone interviews. I love phone interviews. Theres something confessional about them and its
easy to strike up a rapport with someone. I type quickly enough to take a more or less real-time
transcript during a phone interview which makes this form of interview particularly efficient. Also,
a phone interview cuts out travel time and waiting around for people to turn up. And, it makes
interviews much easier to schedule as most people can find 20 or 30 minutes in their diary but a
face-to-face interview seems to require an hour and a lot more commitment.
5.
Avoid email interviews. Ive done two or three email interviews in my time and theyve all been
unsatisfactory. The results have been stilted and unnatural.
6.
Have a backup. For face-to-face interviews, I prefer to use two recorders or one recorder and
hand-written notes. Nothing could be worse than getting back from an interview and finding that
you didnt have any record. Mind you, I ended up spending 15 minutes of an interview with Googles
Sergey Brin talking about digital Dictaphones instead of Googles future.
7.
Have enough time. I was promised an hour-long interview with an airline executive for a profile I
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was writing for a UK magazine. On the day, the PR involved said it would have to be a 15-minute
phone interview. I talked to my editor and we agreed that I should do it, but the three-page feature
would be cut to a half-page news item. Left to my own devices, I would have pulled out altogether.
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8.
Dont go on too long. Dont plan on a really long interview. Churchill said that the mind cannot
absorb more than the seat can endure and I find that telephone interviews pale after about 30-40,
minutes so I try to keep them short.
9.
Dont give questions in advance. I dont prepare questions in advance and I always say no to
people who ask me to send them a list of questions. Partly, this is because I dont work that way
and partly, because I dont want people over-preparing. Also, my interviews tend to be quite freeranging.
10.
Avoid group interviews. An interview is essentially a one-to-one situation but many people like to
have a colleague join them. Often they do this if they feel that their technical knowledge isnt up to
scratch or they want a PR minder. If I interview two people, it becomes harder to attribute quotes.
Also, you miss out on potentially valuable contributions. Only one person can talk at a time. I would
rather do two separate interviews.
11.
Prepare and research in advance. I dont usually prepare a list of questions, although Ill sometimes
have a list of topics to cover. However, I do like to Google the interviewee, look up their employer
and review other related interviews for angles and questions. I have an interview template in Word
and I usually set this up before the interview with all the contact information and some initial
thoughts and topics for the interview.
12.
Confirm the time and date in advance and send reminders. One in four interviewees dont turn
up or arent available when I call them. Ive started sending Microsoft Outlook meeting invitations
which form a sort of contract because they have to be accepted or rejected by the interviewee. Its
also helpful to send an email reminder the day before.
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If youve done your preparation well, theres no need to feel nervous during the interview itself. In fact,
it should be an enjoyable and thought-provoking conversation for both people. Your job is to steer the
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interview while not getting in the way of the flow of conversation or the interviewees thoughts.
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Introduce yourself. I like to introduce myself at the

start of every interview. I tell people who I am, my
relationship to the publication Im writing for and
what the piece is about. I call it the government
health warning. Its a courtesy, but its also a kind
of protection. Doing it consistently means that any
interviewee knows exactly where they stand.
2.
How to record interviews. I like to do interviews on Skype and use HotRecorder to record them
to MP3. A headset is a must and I use a Plantronics USB CS60 handsfree headset for Skype calls.
This leaves both hands free for typing notes. I also have a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard which is
quieter than my old Dell keyboard so that the sound of typing doesnt intrude on the interview.
3.
Observe the legalities. In the UK, you have to tell people youre recording a conversation because
of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, or RIPA, as it is charmingly known. I tend to say, Im
keeping a record of this conversation to make sure I dont forget anything. Even if it werent a legal
obligation, I think it is a courtesy to say so. I dont record all my interviews.
4.
Transcribe interviews, if you can. I transcribe all my interviews so that I have a Word document on
file for future reference. I also find its much easier to write something if I have my document open
in one window and interviewee comments open in another.
5.
Be yourself. My interview style is discursive, subjective and personal. My favourite interviews are
the ones where I find common ground with the person Im talking to and we have a fun, stimulating
conversation. This means I have to come to the party dressed as myself.
6.
Be enthusiastic. People like people who like them. They are also conditioned to think of an
interview as a potentially hostile situation and be on their guard. Consequently, you should be
upbeat and positive. Do this genuinely if you can. Otherwise, engage your sincerity simulator.
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RULE OF THUMB
1.
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A 30-minute interview equates to

roughly 1,200-1,500 words when
transcribed.
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7.
Shut up. You should be talking about 10-20 percent of the time at most. (This is my biggest
weakness I often end up interviewing myself!)
8.
Listen hard. Sometimes you can pick up a word or a phrase in an answer which you can play back
to the interviewee and get something much more intimate, interesting or honest. Interviews arent
scripted Q&As, they are intense professional conversations and you need to concentrate.
9.
Capture the basic information. I use a template form for all my interviews that captures: name (get
the spelling right), job title, contact details, time and date of interview and intended publication.
10.
Job titles can be difficult. Sometimes people have very long-winded or obscure titles. These dont
work well on the printed page. If this is the case, I like to get a more informal job description agreed
with the interviewee. Tech companies are notorious for acronym-laden job titles. The important
thing is to get the interviewees agreement to whatever you use. I like to ask: How would you like
me to describe you in the article?
11.
Get past the canned speech. If an interviewee has been media trained, my heart sinks. Usually,
it means I have to listen to 10-20 minutes of self-important waffle prepared for them by their
PR department. Sometimes you have to let people do their duty and then you can get to the
interview. Sometimes asking the same question three times will elicit, on the third go, a more
honest, human answer. Building a rapport with them on non-controversial subjects (like their job
title or their recent career history) can put them at their ease. Im not trying to trick people into
saying something they dont want to say. Im trying to trick them into saying something in a natural,
human way. A good interview sounds like an intelligent conversation over coffee not a stand-up
PowerPoint presentation.
12.
Dont lose control. Sometimes, especially with self-important interviewees, you can get into a
bit of a tug-of-war over who is in charge of the interview. Never forget that you are the CEO of
the interview. You dont have to be bossy but its important that you get what you need from the
interview and you steer it in the direction you want to go.
13.
Focus on what you need. Sometimes people get absorbed in details or get too waffly and abstract.
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Sometimes you need a specific quote or a good story. A timely intervention is sometimes required
to redirect the interview. Phrases like do you have any stories that illustrate that point? or how
does this relate to the bigger picture? can be very useful ways to do this.
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14.
Ask for collateral. Its always worth asking if your interviewee has any written material that could
add more colour, depth or detail. I find that many of my corporate interviewees usually experts in
their fields have PowerPoint presentations, a blog or other material and they are usually happy to
share it with me. Often this is as useful as the interview because it is the considered articulation of
their ideas.
15.
Ask if theres anyone else you should talk to. They might have a colleague or know an
independent expert in their field who could give you additional information or a contrary opinion.
One introduction beats a hundred cold calls.
16.
Be courteous. Say thank you. If you can provide a copy of the final article, do so.
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ASK THE RIGHT

QUESTIONS
I keep six honest serving-men

(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
Rudyard Kipling
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Ask the right questions

Key point: whats important to the reader?
A good starting point for any writing is Kiplings honest serving-men. If you start with what, why, when,
how, where and who, you will automatically answer the readers most basic questions and ground your
writing in truth.
There are two parts to this exercise:
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Take an existing piece of writing and circle the answers to these questions in the text. Something
short like a press release or a newspaper article will work very well. PR Newswire is a perennial
source of fresh press releases. For a newspaper article, just try Google News. Sometimes, as you
move from the whole article to paragraphs and then individual sentences, you may spot gaps and
non-answers. Pay special attention to gaps. See how many you can find.
2.
Take something from your own recent experience and write a paragraph or two describing what
happened. Make sure that you answer each question in what you write.
As you complete these tasks, think about how these six questions affect the story:

What? This question forces you to concentrate on what is important and get to the point.
Answering this question with clarity will help you write headlines and opening sentences.
Why? This question forces you to examine motives. Not just of the people in your story
or your copy, but also the intentions of your readers and just as important your own.
Answering the question why? is the main way you add value to plain facts. Understanding
your readers why? is the main way of finding what will persuade, entertain or inform them.
Understanding your own why? will help you focus what you are writing so that it achieves the
goal.
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When? Its astonishing how many stories ignore this question. Often, companies deliberately omit
it from a press release or a case study in case it makes them look out of date. However, my view
is that including the dates helps readers understand the relevance of the case study. For example,
even if technology has changed, the service or lessons learned may still be valid. Without a date, a
reader may be tempted to dismiss an old story out of hand. Equally, what good is a task allocation
email without a deadline?
How? This is where a writer can often supply the most useful insights. How did the project slip?
How does the product save you money? How can we solve this problem?
Where? In novels and plays, writers work hard to convey a sense of place. I know a bank where
the wild thyme grows, from Shakespeare or the the wine dark seas, from Homer, just to give two
examples. I dont see why business writing couldnt be more specific about where things happen
and, with telling details, allow the reader to be there too.
Who? Have a look at your website or any of your companys literature and see how often the
subject the person who is actually doing something gets left out of sentences and paragraphs.
It was agreed... is a classic evasion of the basic question who did it? Answering this question will
make your writing more forceful and easier to read.
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FIND THE RIGHT

STORY
When a dog bites a man, that is not news,

because it happens so often. But if a man
bites a dog, that is news.
John B. Bogart
(Incidentally, I always thought the perfect headline for Wired was Geek bites robotic dog.)
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Find the story

Key point: humans need stories to understand complex ideas
Ultimately, everything you write is a story. The human brain is wired to receive and process stories. The
ability to ask what happened next? separates us from other animals. Understanding the need for a story
will help you communicate better. A good story is:
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Real. It features people, places, times, emotions, facts all the material you have worked with on
days one, two and three. Also importantly a story arranges these elements in time to control the
effect on the reader. (Well talk about this a little more in a later chapter.)
Fresh. Why should people read this today? Whats new? Why is it important? Readers dont like
reading old news try reading a year-old newspaper to see what I mean.
Relevant. It needs to speak to readers so it must have recognisable human elements. Examples are
Scientist makes breakthrough or Manager turns round failing company. Readers like to identify
with people in stories and to learn something from them.
Important. Company makes new computer isnt really that important. Company makes smallest/
cheapest/fastest etc. computer is. Obviously important doesnt mean earth-shattering, but it does
mean you have to identify what is special about what you are saying.
Entertaining. Find a way to make information accessible and attractive. Making predictions about
the future is one way thanks to our new chip, some day, computers will be half the price they are
now. Another is to capture a moment. Think about the discovery of penicillin or Edisons light bulb.
Its not the science you remember but the moment of discovery. Good analogies always help. On
the surface, this Aston Martin looks like Lord Greystoke but under the hood its all Tarzan. (Jeremy
Clarkson is very good at analogies.)
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Try reading a newspaper or magazine and seeing how its stories meet these criteria. Try doing the same
thing on your companys last press release or website home page. Shipping News is not my favourite
film, but theres a nice bit in it where the hero has to learn to be a reporter and this is a good illustration
of how a journalist identifies a story from a mass of raw data.
TODAYS EXERCISE
Todays exercise is to take what you observed, discovered and authenticated
in the first three days of this process and turn it into a story. You can do this as
if it were a piece of short fiction, as a newspaper article, or just a list of points in
the order you want to make them. Dont worry too much about the form or the
language. Your challenge is to bring life to your data and convey a sense of why
it is interesting.
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FIND THE
ANGLE
A moments insight is sometimes worth a

lifes experience.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Find the angle

Key point: you cant say everything at once you need an angle
The way you start a piece of writing sets the direction for the whole thing. Consider the first sentence in
Carl Sagans Cosmos: The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Or Seth Godins introduction
to Small is the new big: Youre smarter than your boss or your friends or your organization believes.
Big, bold, beautiful sentences.
The opening sentence is the readers invitation to the party. You have to get it right or else youll spend
the evening staring at a big room eating hors doeuvres on your own. American journalists call them
ledes. Donald Murray, a Pulitzer winner, says that you should write 50 different ledes and then pick the
best one.
TODAYS EXERCISE
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Todays exercise is to come up with 50 different ledes (or opening sentences)

for the story you worked on yesterday. Or, if you prefer, you can take a story
from a newspaper or a piece of news from your own company and write
alternate ledes for that. Itll be a challenge, but the exercise will help you explore
all the dimensions of the story. You may not need to write 50 every time, but
learning to write different ledes will help all your writing in future.
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PICK THE RIGHT

STRUCTURE
Good communication is as stimulating as

black coffee, and just as hard to sleep
after.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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Pick the right structure

Key point: match the structure to your objectives
Prioritisation is the most important thing that a writer does. We read words one at a time. Since it is not
possible to read an entire text in one instant, the writer must control the release of information.
There are three basic structures for non-fiction and the choice depends on your objective.
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Inform. When you write to inform the reader, you focus on the control of information. You build
from concrete, familiar points to more abstract, novel concepts. The old BBC idea of say what
youre going to say, say it and then say what you have said is probably a bit too formulaic, but for
informative writing you need plenty of scaffolding to help the reader find their way. Things like
prosaic headlines rather than descriptive ones, short declarative sentences and careful explanation
of new information help. Examples of informative writing include news, website FAQs, product
specifications, manuals and (I hope) this book. Typically, you use an inverted pyramid structure for
this kind of writing. You give the highest levels of detail first when and where the fire happened
and then add layers of detail and information as the text continues. Donald Murrays book, Writing
to Deadline, is the best introduction to this type of writing. I highly recommend it.
Persuade. Consultants need to persuade their clients that their proposals are worth implementing.
Salespeople need to persuade customers to buy their wares. A lawyer needs to persuade a jury that
that someone is guilty or innocent. With me so far? Getting the reader to agree with your premise
as I have tried to do in this paragraph is the first step in persuasion. It is all about control of the
argument. In many cases, persuasive documents begin with a problem statement. If they agree with
that, they will be more receptive to your proposals and solutions. If the initial assertion or problem
is complicated, breaking it down into a hierarchical pyramid of sub-problems and sub-solutions
means that you quickly develop a pyramidal structure. This is a very brief introduction to the ideas
in Barbara Mintos The Pyramid Principle. This is another book that should be on every writers
bookshelf. For more on the psychology of persuasion, check out Robert Cialdinis book Influence:
They Psychology of Persuasion.
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Engage. If you want to capture a readers attention and engage or entertain them, you may choose
something other than a strictly linear or hierarchical style. Anyone who has given a speech or told
a joke will be familiar with a narrative structure. The secret is the control of suspense. Its not what
you say but how and when you say it. Alistair Cooke was the master of this conversational style
in his Letters from America. More recently, this discursive style is in vogue with presenters at the
presentation-fest TED. In business writing, you can use this effect in conjunction with the other
structures. For example, you can open a white paper with a story about a customer or you can
begin a presentation with a poignant joke. As business communication becomes more personal and
more human, this style will become more common. Watch this space.
TODAYS EXERCISE
Your mission today is to find an example of an inverted pyramid (easy, go and
read a newspaper), a pyramid structure and a piece of controlled suspense. For
extra credit, try writing the story you developed over the last few days using
each of the different structures.
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ANALYSE BAD
WRITING
There are no secrets to success. It is the

result of preparation, hard work and
learning from failure.
Colin Powell
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Analyse bad writing

Key point: the first step to good writing is to avoid bad writing
Everyone can write. But not everyone can write well. We all learn to write at school, but then society
makes a distinction between writers and the rest of us. A writer sits in a garret and writes the great
American novel. The rest of us write memos. Its a false division.
Because everyone can write, people underestimate the importance of writing and overestimate their
own ability. It pays to learn from other peoples mistakes.
What comes out of most companies is bad. In my experience, there are seven types of bad writing:
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Thinks too much of itself. Private Eye runs a regular column lampooning the abuse of the word
solution. For example, Dow Cornings Innovative solutions for wound management, which means
bandages. This kind of word inflation devalues meaning and arouses the scepticism of readers.
2.
Is too clever by half. For some reason, people are afraid to write how they speak. They want to
sound big, grown-up and clever. So they use big words and long sentences. For example, I was
presented with this beauty at a school board meeting once: The Governing Body are agreeing this
budget as the financial mechanism to support the education priorities of the school as identified
in the School Development Plan and will adhere to the best value principles in spending its school
funding allocation. It meant, We approve the budget.
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Gets hyped up. The latest thing is always cutting-edge, high-performance and advanced. The
danger of hype is that readers over-discount it when they read it. Also, too many adjectives make
sentences hard to read. Another manifestation of hype is the press release Frankenquote. These
monsters are made-up quotations that bear no resemblance to normal speech. For example:
Nortel has established a legacy in innovation and will continue to push the envelope Try saying
that in a pub to your friends. See if they still listen to you afterwards. Or trust you.
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4.
Tells lies. In the UK, journalists score low in public trust. Somewhere near politicians and spin
doctors. However, good journalists are obsessive about research, accuracy, good reporting, details
and, yes, truth. What works for newspaper stories also works for business communication. Level
with your audience. Put your best argument but dont pretend that there is no other point of view.
5.
Ignores the reader. As a writer, the greatest skill is to think about what the reader needs to hear,
not what you need to say. It takes an imaginative leap. For example, Google says Please read
this carefully, its not the usual yada, yada. Microsoft says This software is licensed under the
agreement below. Which one is more likely to be read?
6.
Needs to go on a diet. Most writing can be improved by liposuction. Consider the Gettysburg
Address just 272 words. This is especially true when writing for the web, when you need to cut
the word count by about 50 percent.
7.
Has no direction. My favourite tutor at Oxford told me that I had to take my essays and drive them
like Ayrton Senna (a famous racing driver). Good writing has a strong purpose. Bad writing has
either no direction or has too many.
TODAYS EXERCISE
Todays mission is to try to find an example of each type of bad writing. You
can use copy you have written yourself, copy from your own business or from a
magazine or newspaper.
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ANALYSE GOOD
WRITING
If I am walking with two other men, each of
them will serve as my teacher. I will pick
out the good points of the one and imitate
them, and the bad points of the other and
correct them in myself.
Confucius
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Analyse good writing

One way to improve your business writing is to read good non-fiction prose. It is a pleasure in itself.
It also reveals how professional writers solve their writing problems: telling a story, choosing quotes,
showing people and places etc.
It doesnt have to cost anything most magazines publish free articles online. Here are some recommendations you wont read a badly written, badly edited article in any of them:

The Atlantic
The New Yorker
The Economist
Wired
The New Yorker is my favourite. At its best, the writing in it is dizzyingly good. A friend of mine works
at Vanity Fair, a few floors above the New Yorker in their shared Times Square offices in New York. One
time, when I visited him, I got out of the lift on the New Yorker floor and did homage at the door. Its that
good.
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When I started contributing to Wired, I used to take two or three articles from each issue and dissect
them like a medical student. I used to paste the text into Word and then take it apart and make notes
on what I liked, how the piece was structured, how the writer achieved his or her objectives, what
techniques worked, what techniques didnt etc.
Id like you to try the same thing yourself. Take some writing that you admire and break it down and see
what lessons you can learn for your own work.
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WRITE LIKE A
HUMAN BEING
The most essential gift for a good writer

is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector. This
is the writers radar and all great writers
have had it.
Ernest Hemingway
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Write like a human being

Key point: for maximum impact, relax and write like a human
Bill Gates once asked me, Could you make me more human? I said, Being human is overrated. This
quotation is doubly priceless because it comes from Mark Penn, Hillary Clintons campaign manager.
However, when it comes to writing, being human is essential. Good writing is relaxed, direct and natural.
Here are some tips for writing something that reads like a human being wrote it:
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Write conversationally. You can recreate a conversation in prose by changing the way you write.
Avoid the passive. Use occasional colloquialisms. Use everyday abbreviations, such as dont. But
thats only a start. You dont need to write up every umm and ah but its okay to throw in the odd
yes, no, but etc.
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Picture a human reader. I have often interviewed people who can explain very complex ideas
simply and directly, but when they start writing they turn into robots. When they talk to me, they
know theyre talking to a human, but when they write, they picture a scary reader. A lawyer, an
examiner or a sceptical customer. So, when you are writing, picture a friendly reader and talk to
them. You can even invent a persona for your reader; imagine what they do, where they work, their
hobbies etc.
3.
Interview yourself. I have already talked about the value of interviewing people. Some of my best
lines come from interviewees. But how about interviewing yourself? Try explaining what you are
saying to someone else and write down what you say.
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Short sentences. Conversation is rarely made up of paragraphs. Its more like a David Mamet
dialogue. Short and snappy. Well, dog my cats.
5.
Short words. Unnecessarily long words make you look dumb and most people dont use them in
conversation. (Stephen Fry is a charming exception.) Use get instead of acquire, choose rather
than select, talk to in place of engage etc.
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Marketing speak. Words you would not use with your family or friends have no place in peoplecentred writing. Solution, market-leading, cutting-edge, award-winning, optional etc. etc.
7.
Break the rules. Lynn Truss be damned. If it makes the writing better, you can start sentences with
but, so, because and and. Finish sentences with a preposition and split infinitives. Why not?
8.
Dont be afraid of humour. I just finished Gore Vidals autobiography, Point to Point Navigation, and
it has a great gag in it. At a wedding, someone said to him, Im always a bridesmaid but never a
bride. He replied, Always a godfather, but never a god. Humour and politics separate us from the
animals. Use it. Just be funny.
9.
Embrace the exclamation mark. Yes, I know the grammar Nazis will come and take away my
keyboard. But if you want to sound like a real person, you could give it a try. Go for it!
10.
Use everyday metaphors. Ground your writing in familiar things. Its like... or as if...
11.
A sense of person, place or time. Include something biographical or descriptive that shows that
the author is a real person. Im writing this at the kitchen table or When I was at university
The master of this kind of writing was Alistair Cooke. Somehow he managed to make the serious sound
informal. Its worth looking at (and listening to) some of his Letters from America. The conversational
style works in business too. There are plenty of examples, but Virgin and Apple are two companies that
do it particularly well.
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TODAYS EXERCISE
Todays homework is 1) to find examples on the internet of companies that use
the conversational style and to read through some copy and analyse how they
achieve the effect, and 2) to take something from your own company or your
own writing and rewrite it so that its more conversational.
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WRITE FOR
READABILITY
Make everything as simple as possible, but

not simpler.
Albert Einstein
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Write for readability

Key point: increase readability to make text memorable and credible
Readability measures how easy your text is to read. Not everyone reads at a university level. In fact, if
you want your copy to be read and understood by the general public you need to write for a reading
age of 12 or 13. But even if you are writing technical articles for a PhD-level audience, you will increase the
credibility and retention of your material if you increase the readability of your text.
In my view, readability has two components. The first is the hygiene factors that make a piece of writing
hard to read. Examples include:

Speed bumps. Punctuation marks and other symbols are speed bumps for the eyes. I recommend
using and instead of & and percent instead of %. Avoid unnecessary commas and other
punctuation marks.
Capital letters. Technology companies and lawyers are guilty of over-capitalising Important Nouns
unnecessarily.
Unnecessary acronyms. Readers have to unpack abbreviations to understand a sentence. This

is especially true if they are new terms. Its much better to use everyday language. If you do use
acronyms, unless they are very commonplace (for example, CD and PC), make sure that you
explain them early and often.
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The passive voice. The brain has to work harder to process a passive sentence.
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Long sentences. Avoid subordinate clauses, sub-sentences in brackets, run-on sentences separated
by colons or semi-colons. Just say it. And then move on.
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Long paragraphs. Bullet lists, like this one, and short paragraphs help people to understand what
information belongs together. Long, dense paragraphs, on the other hand, make the reader work
harder.
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Long words. Short words are much better. More memorable and easier to absorb. Long words
make the reader think and potentially exclude readers with smaller vocabularies.
Mistakes. Spelling and grammatical mistakes. Typos. They trip the reader up and force them to
substitute the correct words.
The second component of readability is more positive. It comprises the techniques used to make writing
memorable, credible and compelling. They teach whole courses on this at journalism school, but among
the things that work in business writing are:

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Avoiding anything that switches off readers: unsubstantiated claims, jargon, hype
Using strong verbs, good analogies, pithy quotations
Eliminating clichs and waffly throat-clearing
Credible data from the real world
Citing believable authorities
Well-written introductions, titles and subheads
Making the first and last sentence of each paragraph especially clear
The first step to changing something is to measure it. Readability statistics, such as the Flesch Grade
Level etc. These tools give you objective feedback on how readable your text is by measuring word
length, number of syllables, words per sentence and per paragraph. By comparing these measures
against tested reference material, they give you a reading age or score for your text.
They dont read the text, just analyse it using a set of rules. They are a useful benchmark and give
helpful feedback, but dont rely on them to the exclusion of good judgement.
Microsoft Word has a tool that will give similar results. You can get a readability plug-in for WordPress
(my blogging tool of choice). There is an online readability checker on my website. It checks web pages
or pasted text.
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TODAYS EXERCISE
Todays exercise is to take a piece of existing text, perhaps from your current
work or from a business website, and edit it to improve readability. Use a
readability checker on it before you start to get a baseline score and see if you
can improve that score by a grade level.
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LEARN TO
CONCENTRATE
Nothing interferes with my concentration.

You could put on an orgy in my office and I
wouldnt look up. Well, maybe once.
Isaac Asimov
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Learn to concentrate
Key point: you cant write well if you are distracted
When I am up against a deadline and I absolutely, definitely have to get on with my work, I use a few
tactics to force myself to concentrate:
1.
Switch off email. I dont start Outlook (or if I do, I disable all the notifications that tell me I have new
mail).
2.
Isolate myself. I use Bose noise-cancelling headphones but dont plug them into anything. The
silence really is golden.
3.
Greed and guilt. I remind myself how much money Im getting paid for a particular assignment and
how ashamed I will be if I miss the deadline. This actually works sometimes.
4.
Stop with the blog already. When Im pressed for time, distractions like blogging and hoovering
become very compelling. Knowing this makes it easier to resist.
5.
Get up early. 6am is the most productive time of day for writing. No distractions. It also feels more
virtuous than staying up late with work.
6.
Little treats. I bribe myself: Matthew, if you write another 500 words, you can have a cup of tea
and a biscuit.
7.
Chunking. Setting a timer or alarm clock for 15, 20, 30, 50 minutes and doing nothing but writing
until it goes off and then taking a break seems like a good way to make progress. I have a free concentration and meditation timer on my website that will help you keep your focus on your work
for a given period of time.
8.
Go full screen. Switching Word into full screen mode (from the view menu) eliminates all distractions but the piece Im working on. You can also use a distraction-free editor to focus completely on
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the words on your screen. There is a list of editors

on my blog.
Shitty first draft. Splitting the work into distinct
writing and editing phases breaks the job down
nicely and it takes off some of the pressure to get it
right first time.
10.
Change location. Sometimes, if Im really struggling

to get started, taking a laptop or my notebook
to a cafe and scribbling out something there a
fresh new location is a good way to jolt-start an
assignment.
11.
Switch off the phone and shut the door. The book
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
describes experiments using programmers another
job that requires concentration that test productivity. People who were able to shut out noise,
interruptions and unwanted phone calls were significantly more productive than people who couldnt.
In fact, of six environmental factors that affected
productivity, five related to interruptions.
12.
Meditate or take a nap. Churchill was a great advocate of midday naps. A 15-20 minute power nap
can leave you more focused and attentive. Meditation can also help calm the mind and, over time, it
can increase your powers of concentration. Some writers, including Stephen King, take a walk and
clear their mind that way.
13.
Schedule time to write. Setting a regular time to write will help. Philip Glass, the composer, writes
music at the same time every day and he says that this helps summon the muse.
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RULE OF THUMB
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It takes about 15 minutes to really

settle down and concentrate
on my work. Psychologists talk
about a flow state where you
commune with the work you are
doing and sort of merge with it
to the exclusion of the outside
world. This is why concentration
is so important and why interruptions are so deadly to productivity.
This means that every interruption
wastes at least 15 minutes. Source:
the wonderful, wonderful book
Peopleware: Productive Projects
and Teams by Tom DeMarco and
Timothy Lister.
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14.
Avoid multitasking. Technology has made us all task-switchers. Twitter, email, phones, text
messages etc. etc. But, in an Atlantic article, The Autumn of the Multitaskers, the author argues
multitasking messes with the brain. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it
requires the constant switching and pivoting energises regions of the brain that specialize in
visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of
the higher areas related to memory and learning. It also increases stress, confusion and fatigue.
Learning to do one thing at a time will make us more productive.
TODAYS EXERCISE
Todays activity is simply to think about your working environment and the
times when you are actually writing. Try these techniques and see which ones
work for you. Take the time to stand back from the hustle of your life and see if
you can improve it a little.
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PLAY BUZZWORD
BINGO
I think my whole generations mission is to

kill the clich.
Beck
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Play buzzword bingo

Key point: buzzwords and business clichs are the opposite of effective writing
I heard a great joke the other day: If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of
typewriters, eventually one of them would write Hey Hey Were the Monkees! It came back to me this
morning as I was thinking about buzzwords. I mean, how do people come up with the jargon that gets
stuffed into business writing? Here is a list of some of the worst offenders (hat tip: BBC):

Going forward
Bandwidth
Cascading
Granularity
Drill down
Anything 2.0
Stakeholders
110%
Touch base
Offline
Incentivise
Pre-plan
Action (as a verb)
From the get go
Visibility (on some issue)
Deliverables
Low-hanging fruit
Holistic
End-to-end
In this space
Bandwidth (as applied to anything outside telecoms or computers)
Traction
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Proactive
Outreach
Solutions
Ecosystem (as applied to anything outside biology)
I dont know where it comes from but Buzzword Hell is good place to send it. Its the Room 101 for
words you hate. You can nominate words you dont like (today its paradigm shift and blogosphere)
and people can vote for them. Buzzword bingo is a favourite game and theres even a website that
generates new playing cards on a random basis. There are also a couple of buzzword dictionaries. The
first is BuzzWhack. There are some nice ones here. Finally, there is the fabulous and still-poignant The
Devils Dictionary. Bullfighter is a free add-on for Microsoft Word that will scan your prose for clichs.
TODAYS EXERCISE
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Todays objective is to see if you can find any of these phrases in your writing,
on your companys website and/or in any of the emails you sent or received in
the last week. Email me with the best examples.
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DAY
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ELIMINATE THE
PASSIVE
The active voice is usually more direct and

vigorous than the passive.
Strunk & White
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Eliminate the passive

Key point: avoid the passive if possible
The passive voice makes reading more difficult. Either it reverses the natural order of a sentence (the
mat was sat on by the cat), it hides the subject altogether (the mat was sat on) or it makes a sentence
flabby (there was a cat on the mat). In any case, it makes the readers job harder.
You can check for the passive voice using the grammar checker in Microsoft Word.
TODAYS EXERCISES
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I have two exercises today: 1) take a few hundred words from a newspaper
article and rewrite it in the passive voice. See if it reads any better. 2) take a
typical piece of business prose, ideally from your own companys website or a
press release from PR Newswire, count the number of passive sentences and
see if you can rewrite them in the active voice.
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USE SHORTER
WORDS
I never write metropolis for seven cents

because I can get the same money for city. I
never write policeman, because I can get the
same money for cop.
Mark Twain
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Use shorter words

Key point: short words are more effective than long ones
Short words are best. Now we have proof. The March 2006 issue of The Atlantic Monthly cited a
piece of research that shows that, besides clouding the meaning, the use of long words actually makes
the reader think the author is stupid. I love it when scientists have a sense of humour. The title of the
research illustrates the problem eloquently: Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of
Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly.
The author, Daniel Oppenheimer, got 71 Stanford undergraduates to evaluate different writing samples.
He created a highly complex version of each original text by replacing each noun, verb and adjective
in it with the longest synonym. This is the kind of writing by thesaurus that many business people and
techies employ when they want to sound knowledgeable and important, or because they think writing
like they speak will make them sound lightweight.
Thanks to Oppenheimer, we know that the opposite is, in fact, true. He says One thing is certain, write
as simply and plainly as possible and its more likely youll be thought of as intelligent.
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Here are some examples of common long words and shorter, better equivalents:

Additional (extra)
Advise (tell)
Commence (start)
Consequently (so)
Forward (send)
In accordance with (under, keeping to)
In excess of (more than)
In respect of (for)
In the event of (if)
Particulars (details)
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Purchase (buy)
Regarding (about)
Terminate (end)
This list comes from the Plain English Campaigns guide: How to write plain English. The exercise
today involves finding a typical piece of writing from your business and replacing as many threeand four-syllables words as possible with shorter ones. The objective is to train you to automatically
substitute shorter words wherever possible.
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USE FEWER
WORDS
A designer knows he has achieved

perfection not when there is nothing left
to add, but when there is nothing left to
take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Use fewer words

Key point: you dont need as many words as you think
Your readers spend more time reading other peoples work rather than yours. If you can get to the point
and be brief about it, youll earn their thanks and their attention.
Most business writing has too many words. Press releases typically run to 500 words or more when
200-300 would do fine. Clients often ask me to write 1000-word case studies when half that is more
readable and more engaging.
Why is this? Partly, its the way its always been done. Sometimes, document templates and web designs
force people to write more words to fill an arbitrary space created by a graphic designer. More often, its
because people lack the will to do enough editing. Was it Mark Twain who wrote: Im sorry to write you
such a long letter. I didnt have time to write a shorter one.?
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Heres a tip: its often easier to paraphrase or remove paragraphs or sentences than it is to try to achieve
a big cut by snipping a word here or there. The end result still has to be readable and natural when
youve finished it. Microsofts word count feature will help. Also, if you can find it, Word has an autosummarise tool. Just search for summarise in Help.
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TODAYS EXERCISE
Todays exercise is simple. Find a piece of writing that runs to about 1,000
words. Two pages of A4 or a long online article will do. Then edit it in Word so
that it is 500 words long. Then take that version and cut it down to 100 words,
then 50, then 25. See what is left of the story at each stage. The purpose of this
work is to practice editing for length and also to see how much of an article
remains even after you cut the number of words dramatically.
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DAY
16
MANAGE YOUR
WRITING
Taint What You Do (Its the Way That You Do

It)
Melvin Sy Oliver and James Trummy Young
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Manage your writing

Key point: avoid the circumstances that turn good writing bad
So far, we have been looking at the mechanics of writing where ideas come from and how to bring
them to life on the page or screen. Now its time to stand back from the keyboard and spend some time
thinking about the external factors that affect writing. Today, you need a framework that allows good
writing to happen. In other words, its all about managing your writing.
First, lets look at some of the things that can contribute to bad writing in a company:
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1.
Dirty briefs. Luckily, Ive only had a few pieces go off the rails. In each case, I can trace the problem
back to an unclear, or non-existent, brief. Remedy: mutual understanding between client and
writer is essential and a brief is how you get it. Well look at the art of writing a good brief in a few
days. Another step that can reduce hostile feedback is the use of detailed outlines or skeletons. If
you have to write a 2,000-word brochure, write a 200-word outline of the contents and get your
colleagues to give feedback on that before you start on the main event.
2.
Group-think. Lawyers, academics and technology firms are notorious for writing things because
this is the way weve always done it. Often my role in life is just to be the person who hasnt been
house-trained. Remedy: read and write outside your field or company. Challenge convention to
ensure that it serves the needs of readers.
3.
Brand Nazis. Some people in big companies use brand bibles and conventions to turn good prose
into ugly corporate speak; typically with too many capital letters (speed bumps for the eyes),
impenetrable product names and trademark symbols everywhere. Remedy: learn the rules and find
out what you can get away with. Use before and after examples to show why you recommend a
different approach. Like health and safety regulations, brand guidelines are often used as an excuse
for stupid decisions and conventionality. Its less risky to write like a corporate robot but it is also
less effective. If you know the guidelines better than everyone else, you will know when people are
using them for cover. Even better, try writing your own (if you dont have any) or contributing to
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rewriting your existing guidelines (if you do).

4.
Editing by committee. This is best illustrated by a video nasty: If Microsoft designed the iPod
packaging. I try to get my clients to nominate one person to act as an editor and be the focal point
for all internal feedback so that I get a single set of comments. Working within an organisation,
its important to agree who gets to sign off the document and who gets to give feedback. Agree
an editorial structure with your colleagues. The people with sign-off have a power of veto and
you want to keep that number to a minimum. You also need to make sure that you are clear with
everyone that you want feedback not rewrites. Get them to tell you what they want to change and
why but not how they would rewrite it. Like broth, too many cooks can spoil a document.
5.
Death by redlining. I love getting feedback face to face or on the phone. I hate redlined documents.
Its like a theatre director giving line readings to an actor rather than helping them explore the
character and give a stronger performance. (Line readings = when you say this line, raise your right
eyebrow. Yuck!) Remedy: try to get feedback in person or ask them to give feedback by email or
in comments rather than change the text itself. I sometimes send people documents in PDF format
so that they cant edit the actual text.
6.
Bad environment. Writers, like programmers, need a good working environment that is free from
distractions and designed for the purpose. I recommend Peopleware: Productive Projects and
Teams by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. Even though it is about software development, almost
everything in it applies equally to writers.
7.
Death march to publication. Its easy to let standards slip and lose concentration when youre
faced with a tight deadline and lots of interruptions. Try to agree sensible deadlines and manage
your workload. When I was at university, I always seemed to write my essays the night before they
were due. Now I earn a living as a writer, I tend to get things done a few days early. This is a good
habit to get into.
8.
No process. When Im working on a case study or a press release, I like to agree a workflow with
my clients before I start. I recommend you do the same, either as part of the briefing process or as
part of your planning.
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TODAYS EXERCISES
Todays homework is to review the writing you do regularly and see if these
(or any other) management problems occur. See if any of the proposed
remedies, such as agreeing an editorial structure or workflow, might work.
Instigate one change today and the rest to your to do list.
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DAY
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GET THE RIGHT

TOOLS
Do not wait; the time will never be just

right. Start where you stand, and work
with whatever tools you may have at your
command, and better tools will be found as
you go along.
George Herbert
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Get the right tools

Key point: good tools will help you write better
A good workman needs good tools. Here are some that have helped me. Your homework today is fun
and easy: just try them out, look them up and see what might work for you.

Inspiration. Try the Oblique Marketing Strategies that I wrote to help me brainstorm marketing
problems.
Silence. I often use Bose noise-cancelling headphones when Im writing to shut out extraneous
noise, but other people prefer earplugs. I use them on planes and I prefer the smooth ones to the
foam type.
Distraction-free word processors. These are simple editors that cut out all the distractions on
your computer screen, leaving you free to concentrate on the words. Mac users: try WriteRoom,
Windows users try Q10. You can also tweak Word to make it a bit less distracting. See Amit
Agarwals tips. There are more options and reviews on my blog.
A nice cup of tea. Caffeine can serve as a thoughtful break, stimulant and a reward. Samuel
Johnson, the harmless drudge who produced the first English dictionary, drank a lot of tea. Ive
seen his teapot in my old college in Oxford its huge! Johnson once said no man but a blockhead
writes, except for money. My hero. George Orwell drank a lot of tea too. In fact he wrote an article
about brewing and pouring the perfect cup, although some of his findings are still passionately
disputed. I use disposable Teeli filter bags to make single cups of tea with real tea leaves. Making a
whole pot and then pouring it through a strainer is just too much business for one cup of tea.
Time-tracking software. Try Harvest, SlimTimer or just an Excel spreadsheet to track how you
spend your time. This is useful for me as a way of costing my work. For employees, it can give you
feedback on your productivity and also justify how much time you spend writing to your bosses
and colleagues.
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Mindmapping. This is a great way of getting your thoughts from your brain to the page. Of
course, a blank sheet of paper and a pen will do fine but I sometimes prefer using software such as
ConceptDraw Mindmap or MindJet MindManager.
Forming habits. As Aristotle said, We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an
act, but a habit. I like Joes Goals, a free website that helps your encourage good habits.
Definitions on Google. If you type define:lugubrious (or whatever word you want) into Google,
youll get a selection of definitions. This is useful to check if a word means what you think it means.
Visual thesaurus. I like Visual Thesaurus. Its especially helpful when hunting for a good product
name. There is a completely free alternative called Visuwords.
Website mockup tools. Web designers seem to have a monopoly on the look and feel of websites,
but writing is important too. Rapid prototyping tools such as Balsamiq Mockups can help you see
how text looks on a web page without spending a small fortune on graphic design first.
Notebook. I use a Filofax slimline organiser, not to manage my diary, but as a simple reporters
notebook. I scribble away and then I can shuffle the pages, throw away the rubbish and file the
notes once the story is completed. Many people love Moleskine notebooks. Partly because of their
retro bohemian credibility and partly because they are well made of good materials and paper and
feel satisfying to use. I use one as a journal to scribble my thoughts in every day. My wife uses a
foolscap one for her morning pages (after Julia Camerons The Artists Way).
Get a style guide. You can check Economist Style Guide online but its better to buy a paper
copy for your reference shelf. The Plain English Campaigns guide: How to write in plain English is
shorter and it could be a useful starting point for an in-house or personal style guide.
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Writers reference sites. There are many, many useful reference sites. Here are a few:

The Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies

A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices
Data Visualization: Modern Approaches
MBA in a Page (hat tip to Guy Kawasaki)
Top 1,000 Web 2.0 sites(probably most useful for geeks like me)
Refdesk.com
Purdues Online Writing Lab grammar and writing guidelines
Economist Style Guide online
Wikipedia. A good starting place for research but not a primary source for journalism
Online Etymology Dictionary offers a brief history of words
Plain English Campaigns A to Z of Alternative Words
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DAY
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WRITE A PROPER
BRIEF
Almost all quality improvement comes via

simplification of design, manufacturing...
layout, processes, and procedures.
Tom Peters
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Write a proper brief

Key point: good writing starts with a good brief
Great buildings start with an architects drawings. Even Ikea shelves come with assembly instructions. To
write well, you need a clear brief. It doesnt have to be an elaborate formal document. It doesnt have to
be a document at all if you can answer all the basic questions in your head or by reference to something
you have done before. But you do need it. Here is the outline of the briefing document I use with my
clients.

Title. The name of the piece or project.
Client. The contact details of the individual who commissioned the piece and (if different) my
day-to-day contact and the person who will sign it off as complete.
Objectives. What does the client want to happen because this piece has been written? (Are these
goals self-consistent and realistic?)
Length. How many words? (Or page-equivalents?) Its astonishing how many clients dont even
consider this, but for a writer its fundamentally important. Words are our trade and word count is
how we measure it.
Target audience. Who is the project aimed at? The more detail I have about this, the better job I
can do. Ideally, aim for thumbnail sketches of typical readers. What else do they read? What are the
concerns and priorities?
Controlled vocabulary. Are there words or phrases that we can assume the audience knows? For
example, writing for an audience of programmers requires a different vocabulary than writing for
doctors. Are there words we absolutely have to use AND explain? A particular concern here is
words and phrases that mean a lot to the client and nothing to a reader.
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Style. English or American English? Case studies, press releases and, especially, white papers all
have different meanings to different people so spell out EXACTLY what is required. Reference
other media where appropriate. For example: This piece should read like an article in the
Economist or FT. Are there any special client requirements such as tone of voice, trademark or
style guides? If so, have they been provided and is there a contact to review and assist with getting
them right?
Synopsis. A paragraph long or bulleted summary of the piece setting out the main points and the
running order.
Delivery format. Microsoft Word? HTML? Are pictures required? Footnotes and sourcing?
Documents intended for use online must be written differently from print documents, so this
distinction is especially important to get clear.
Third parties. Are there any other parties who need to be involved, either by providing content or
approval? Typically, this can include PR or marcomms agencies.
Client resources. What will the client provide to make the piece happen: interview contracts,
access to spokespeople, samples, reports, data etc. etc? Ideally, this lists everything so that the
client has a clear understanding of what their tasks are.
Fees, rights, schedule. What media and territories are involved? Whose name will be on the
piece? Is copyright assigned or licensed? What about moral rights? What is the schedule and
final deadline? What is the fee and when is it due? What is the approval process? What rights are
reserved, for example the right to use the piece for my marketing?
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TODAYS EXERCISE
Your project today is to create a brief for some writing that you have planned.
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GIVE GOOD
FEEDBACK
Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

Ken Blanchard
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Give good feedback

Key point: good feedback is the way to get better writing from other people
If you want to get good writing out of other people colleagues, employees, agencies then you need
to master the art of feedback. Its the old Barbara Woodhouse method: train the owner, not the dog. You
can give feedback on a specific piece of writing or, with a bit more work, you can give feedback that
helps the writer do a better job in future.
Here are some tips:
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Read it all before commenting once. Often people give me feedback and there are many
comments on page one, a few on page two and none on page three. Why? Because most of the
comments are about things they felt were missing but which were, in fact, dealt with later in the
article. Give feedback on the whole text with a special focus on the first paragraph and the last one.
Proofread (at least) three times. First from start to finish for sense. Then from back to front for
typos, grammar and passive-elimination. Then word by word, very slowly and read out loud, to tidy
up. Also, use a spelling and grammar checker.
Be specific. If something doesnt work for you, explain why. If something is missing, tell the author.
If there are factual errors, give them the sources so that they can find out the right answers
themselves. Use comments in Word rather than making changes to the text, so that you explain
your thinking. Editing is a conversation not a dictatorship.
Check sources. If there are facts and figures, always query the source. A good writer should have a
list of sources for their work. I usually put sources in footnotes as a reminder. If the writer isnt in the
habit of noting down sources, your checks will ensure that they do in future.
Positive feedback helps. My grandmother said: If you cant say anything nice, dont say anything
at all. Its not quite the same with feedback. If you cant say anything constructively negative, say
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something positive. If you say what works and what you like, writers will do more of it in future.

Readability stats. You can use readability stats to give some objective feedback. (There is a
readability calculator on my company website.) Dont rely on them exclusively but, if a piece of
writing seems very hard to read, theyll give you a yardstick to measure the difficulty.
Use a proofreader. I am a professional writer and I use a proofreader for my client work. Every
magazine and newspaper has desks full of subeditors and fact checkers. Why? Checking your own
work is very difficult you get word-blind. You can use a professional proofreader or you can find
a detail-obsessed colleague to do it. This is not about editing for style. Its punctuation, spelling,
grammar and so on.
Resist committee writing. Assess your own writing skills and those of your team and allocate
jobs and roles accordingly. Everyone can write but not everyone is a writer. Separate the roles of
editing, proofreading, subediting and writing.
Check the final draft. Editing introduces errors. Especially when it is done by redlining in Word.
Check the final draft to make sure you havent added any errors during the review process.
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TODAYS EXERCISE
Your task today is to take a piece of writing and give feedback on it. If you cant
find anything from your own business, you can give me feedback on this book.
(Be gentle!)
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WRITE A GREAT
CASE STUDY
The only source of knowledge is

experience.
Albert Einstein
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Write a great case study

Key point: good writing makes case studies much more effective
Case studies help companies win business. Were in a demand-generation, deal-closing economy and
good customer evidence is the laser-guided bomb of marketing. By showing how real customers used
your product or service, you can convince other people to buy it. Here are ten tips that will help you
write and use great case studies.
1.
Go for the story, not the name. Most marketing people lust after the hero case study with big
brand recognition. The reality is that these guys rarely want to give case studies and, if they do,
they rewrite everything and take a long time to approve it. Better to find the willing customer with
a good story. When it comes to PR, the most successful case studies Ive written have been about
unknown, niche companies with a great spokesperson and a neat angle.
2.
Find a champion and build rapport. Case studies cant be written by committee. You need to
find a champion for your case study inside the target company. Ideally, they have the authority to
approve it too. I prefer to make first contact with this person, interview them, get their feedback
and their sign-off so that every contact builds a friendly, one-to-one relationship between me, the
writer, and them, representing the company. Too many cooks etc.
3.
Real interviews with real people. The foundation of a good case study is a good interview. I like
to interview my clients account manager and the most senior guy at the target company who
is willing to become a case study champion. Sometimes, because I work in tech, I need a techie
interview as well to get the facts right.
4.
Use case studies to support sales. If a case study has a good story our client cut costs by 25%
use it to show potential customers how they can do the same. Arrange case studies on your
website by benefit or topic rather than company name so that sales people can find the right story
when they need it.
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Keep them short. Nobody has time to read a four-page, 1,000 word case study. I recommend 500
word case studies and, ideally, you want a 50-100 microcontent version to go on the website and
to use as a verbal summary in a sales pitch. A PowerPoint wincard version is also helpful for sales.
Each version needs to be written for its medium web copy is not the same as printed copy or
PowerPoint text.
6.
Make them interesting. A case study is an article. It has to earn the readers interest and attention.
Write good headlines and strong ledes. Use good, powerful quotations (not frankenquotes). Avoid
hype, clichs, jargon and corporate bullshit. Think very hard about what a potential customer wants
to know about a case study. Use the conventions of a newspaper article, not a corporate press
release.
7.
Be specific. Details matter. Not only do they make the case study more credible, they answer the
readers questions. Apply your experience from the first few days of this course.
8.
Set them free. Most of my big clients have central case study databases. They have strict formats
and guidelines for case studies and big agencies to enforce them. This is fine and I can work with
it, but it often seems that these controls limit the impact and spread of case studies. Good case
studies should ripple quickly through company websites, social networking, intranets and into the
hands of sales peoples and customers by as many routes as possible. If no knows about the case
study or it tries to be all things to all people, it will likely fail.
9.
Use short legal agreements. One or two pages at most and they should include a clear mechanism
that allows the target company to stop being a case study on request (they never do) and to
reassure them that they will get to approve the case study text before it is used. A case study
release should reassure a candidate, not frighten them off.
10.
Speed is everything. Case studies have a short half-life. Technology moves on. Companies change.
Ideally, a good case study should take a week from first contact to approval. If it takes longer, it
increases the risk that the case study champion will lose interest. It should be a crescendo not an
endless low humming.
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TODAYS EXERCISES
Todays exercise is to write (or rewrite) a case study for a product or service
from your company using what you have learned so far.
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DAY
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WRITE A GREAT
PRESS RELEASE
Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt

to convince journalists that what youve
made is worth the misery of having to
review it.
Federico Fellini
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Write a great press release

Key point: well-written press releases are more likely to get you favourable coverage in
the media
Forgive me if I go on at some length about this but I have strong feelings about press releases. They
could be much, much better.
In my former life as full-time journalist, I received (and ignored) thousands of press releases. Ive seen
editors scan through a hundred email press releases in five minutes and delete the lot. Before that, as a
CEO, I paid tens of thousands of pounds for shiny press releases that got us no coverage whatsoever.
Why are they so dreadful?
Press releases suffer from committee writing that turns steak into baby food. Not only that, but
marketing people compensate for lack of bite by adding hype words, jargon and self-important throat
clearing.
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The worst sin is Frankenquoting. Heres an example:
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Nortel has established a legacy in innovation and will continue to push the envelope in delivering faster
and more efficient wireless capabilities with industry leaders like QUALCOMM, said Jean-Luc Jezouin,
vice-president, GSM/UMTS product line management, Nortel.
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Nobody talks to their friends like this but PR people think that they can excuse purple prose by
pretending that someone with a big title said it.
How to make them better?

Heres my recipe for better press releases. Id like to think that any company that adopts this approach
will stand out from the pack so much that they will be overwhelmed with gratitude and coverage.
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1.
Write descriptive headlines that explain why the story is interesting. If you cant, it isnt. So dont
put out a press release.
2.
Keep them short and factual. 250 words should be the upper limit. By all means link to a website
that contains more detailed information.
3.
Make the first sentence and the first paragraph work for their living.
4.
Always include contact details. Many dont. Whats the point of that?
5.
If you quote anyone, do a real interview and pick a good quote. Customers and independent
experts are more interesting that company notables.
6.
One writer, one subeditor, one proofreader, one lawyer. Everyone else has an opinion but not a
veto.
7.
Try writing a letter to your grandmother explaining why the news in the press release is important.
Bingo, theres your opening paragraph.
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8.
Alternatively try telling a story. What, who, where, when, how and why.
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Make sure you redact any version control history from Word documents. Theres usually a better
story for journalists in the stuff you removed at the last minute than in what you actually wrote.
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Try a new medium such as podcasts or blogs. If nothing else, it will force you to abandon the tired
old press release template.
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There are many voices calling for the death of the press release. What is needed is not execution but
reform. Here are my tips and suggestions for doing it:
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Preparation
1.
Have something interesting to say. A press release implies something newsworthy. A press release
that isnt is another form of spam. Dont cry wolf when there isnt one.
2.
Remember your audience, forget your client. A press release that your client loves is not as useful
as a press release a journalist (and her editor) loves. Make sure your press release will help sell the
story and get you coverage.
3.
Yes, journalists are cynical and lazy. Deal with it. Be uncynical. Work harder. Dont assume an
adversarial position. Dont stoop to their level. (See The top ten lies of PR companies.) Trust me;
youll get back what you put in.
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4.
Look at bad pitches. Studying bad pitches is a great way to learn about what mistakes to avoid.
Sign up for some press release services such as PR Newswire. Also check out the Bad Pitch Blog.
5.
Read the blogs and magazines of the people you are trying to reach. This is the best way to
understand what they are looking for in a story.
6.
Use surveys sparingly. Surveys are the traditional standby for a PR company in want of news. They
can be effective, but I think the public and journalists are getting increasingly sceptical. See my blog
post: Surveys: uses and abuses for writers and PRs.
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Write it well
We have covered many of these lessons earlier in this course:
1.
Be brief. Most press releases would be more readable, more credible and more memorable if they
were about 25-30 percent shorter.
2.
Get to the point. Most press releases start with a paragraph of pious throat-clearing about how
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great the company is. You need to open strong and get straight to the point.
3.
Killer lede. As with any article, the first sentence is the most important. You should aim to put as
much work into the first sentence as into the whole of the rest of the press release. It needs to
convince a busy, cynical journalist to read on.
4.
Eliminate words. You can cut out about a third of the copy in a typical press release and it will read
better and more convincingly.
5.
Be scannable. Press releases are very temporary documents. Readers dont give them a lot of time
because they are not, usually, a high priority. This is a lot like websites and one of the key lessons of
writing for the web is to be scannable. That means using bullet points, sidebars, pull quotes, bold,
underlining, lines and other page structures to make it easy to scan the page rather than read it
from start to finish.
6.
Tell a story. Human beings tell stories. They dont go to the coffee house and share press releases
or soundbites.
7.
Construct an argument. As an alternative to the story-telling approach, construct a compelling

argument using The Pyramid Principle: state a problem then explain how your product or service
solves it.
8.
Create a sense of place. Was the product invented somewhere? Did you make an important announcement in an interesting building? Try, somehow, to anchor the press release in a real place. It
will ground it and add credibility because most press releases seem to take place in the corporate
ether.
9.
Reveal personality. Again, it will enhance your credibility and make the press release more
authentic if you can capture a sense of real people. What are they like? How do they talk? Do they
have any experience, hobbies, interests etc. that relate to the subject of the press release? Details
matter. Three or four words that give life to a name will animate a whole press release.
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Echo your companys tone of voice. If it doesnt have one, help it find one.
11.
Relax. Relax! For heavens sake wont you people RELAX! Press releases dont have to sound like
a lawyers letter or the small print of an insurance contract. Imagine explaining the subject to an
intelligent friend.
12.
Use everyday words and phrases. This is important. Somehow, people think that corporations have
a dull, wordy, formal voice. Why? Their employees dont. Use the language of everyday speech. So,
do, get, make, build rather than develop, obtain, maximise, construct.
13.
Understate rather than hype. This needs a touch of humour and good writing but it can be very
effective. I loved that Virgin ad that said, British Airways dont give a shiatsu. As well as being a
cheeky attack on a rival, it was a cunning way to mention the free massages in Upper Class without
actually mentioning them. Another good example is Ronseal, the varnish company that advertises
its products by saying, It does exactly what it says on the tin.
14.
Pick short, apposite quotes. The tendency in press releases is to quote whole paragraphs (usually
made up) from VPs. Much better, I think to quote three or four words but pick really good ones.
Look for quotes that include metaphors, comparison, individuality, character and which get to the
heart of the matter. If you, as a writer, can say something better than the quote you are using, dont
use a quote.
15.
Eliminate hype. For an example of how hype words (e.g. prestigious, leading) dont work, read
the worst press release ever. Readers dont just discount hype words when they read them, they
assume the opposite of what you said. Hype words are road blocks on the journey to credibility.
16.
Eliminate jargon. Jargon is a vocabulary used within a specific company or industry. It is often
meaningless to outsiders, including journalists. If your gadget can do 48 circumfludels a second,
you had better explain what this means in English and why it matters. Dont assume anything about
what the reader understands. The same applies to little-known product names. Even Google, with
its massive brand awareness, had to change Froogle to Products because people didnt understand
what it did.
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17.
Eliminate acronyms. Acronyms and abbreviations are another kind of jargon. They assume that the
reader knows something. People often use jargon and acronyms to sound big and clever, without
realising that it actually has the opposite effect on most readers.
18.
Avoid buzzwords. These are phrases that mean more to you than they do to the reader.
19.
Throw in the occasional firework. A one-sentence paragraph. A killer quote. A spectacular analogy.
A powerful statistic. An appropriate use of an everyday expression. Always try to add a little fizz
and ginger to everything you write.
20. Close with a kicker. Go out with a bang. The last sentence needs to be thought-provoking and
memorable. It needs about half the work of the opening sentence. A typical magazine way to end
a piece is with a memorable quote from an objective source, some kind of paradox or a tiny detail
that illuminates the whole story. A short, pithy summary of the whole thing would do as well.
21.
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Be human. Used sparingly and in the right context, the pronoun we can be very powerful and
authentic, as well as helping you avoid the passive.
22. Box out the key points. Have a sidebar titled If you read nothing else, read this and summarise the
story in three very short bullet points. Yes, youd like people to read the whole case study, but only
10 percent will do that. Wouldnt be great if another 30 percent at least knew something about the
contents.
23. Write a Google-friendly headline. Write a headline that summarises the story (not what the PR
wants you to think about it). This will help with search engine optimisation.
24. Include contact details. Dont leave this information out. Its astonishing how many press releases
stored on company websites have no contact details at all.
25. Write a factual, one-paragraph summary for email. Most press releases go out by email as Word
or PDF documents. Most journalists delete them without reading them. A one-paragraph email
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summary (like this one) means you have more chance of converting recipients into readers.
Check then double-check

1.
Dont beat about the bush. Dont hedge your bets by overqualifying sentences (e.g. Many
companies find they have different kinds of problems with certain email viruses). Be more
assertive: Email viruses hit companies hard.
2.
Use a spell checker. Doh! But it happens. I sometimes see final draft press releases for my clients
that have two or three typos.
3.
Use readability stats. Aim to score under 50 in the Flesch Reading Ease, under 8 for the grade level
and no passive sentences. Journalists in a hurry have a reading age of a 12-year-old.
4.
Check facts. Especially names and titles. Most magazines are obsessive about this and you should
do the same for a press release. Its worth keeping a separate document tracking all the sources for
the different information in the copy so that you can go back and check who said what.
5.
Redact hidden content. Word hides a lot of version control changes, including copy you would
prefer journalists not to see. You can eliminate it easily by following this advice from the US
National Security Agency (PDF). Read my blog post, Unintended press release disclosures, for
an example of what happens when you dont.
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TODAYS EXERCISE
Todays homework? Guess what: its to write a 250-500 word press release that
will grab an editor by the greasy lapels of his worn-out jacket and get him to pay
attention to your company.
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WRITE BETTER
EMAIL
I dont believe in email. Im an old-fashioned

girl. I prefer calling and hanging up.
Sarah Jessica Parker
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Write a better email

Key point: email is the most common form of business writing and the one in most need of improvement
A survey by Information Mapping Inc. found that 34 percent of respondents wasted between 30 and
60 minutes a day reading badly written emails. Typical failings included:

Recipient is not clear as to what should be done or how to act on the information.
Content is disorganised.
Critical information is missing or hard to find.
Content is too long, wordy and difficult to read.
So here are my recommendations for writing better email:
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A clear, strong subject line helps people prioritise their inboxes.
Dont automatically use the important flag. I have one client who flags all her messages as
important. She obviously hasnt read the story of the boy who cried wolf.
If the subject of an email dialogue has changed, select a new subject line but put the old one in
brackets after the new subject for continuity.
Emails are more like telexes than letters. Imagine you are paying by the word. Dont give the
background, history, your life story. Stick to relevant facts and requests.
Write well: strong, active verbs; avoid jargon and abbreviations; use fewer words.
Punctuation exists to make it easier for people to make sense of what theyre reading. Emails that
look like an EE Cummings poem with no punctuation, bad spelling and inappropriate capitalisation
slow down peoples brains when they read, and make it harder for them to understand what you
are saying.
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Short paragraphs. One or two sentences per paragraph. This isnt a college essay. Be succinct.
People will skip the middle of a long paragraph. Using bullets to separate out lists is also helpful.
Deal with separate subjects in separate emails. People have bad email reading habits so a long
email with ten things in it will get the same amount of attention as a short one with one topic.
Therefore it is better to send several short emails. People can deal with some of them immediately
and you dont have to wait until they have an answer for everything before they reply. This
technique also allows people with iPhones and Blackberries to read your emails more easily.
For long emails, use subtitles to break the email into sections like a magazine article.
End strongly. Tell people exactly what you expect them to do as a result of the email. You can even
highlight action items with colour or with capitalisation.
Wait a minute. Dont send an email off the moment youve finished writing it. In fact, I generally
dont write the names of the recipients until Ive finished the email to stop myself accidentally
sending it.
Edit. Re-read it. Out loud. Delete any unnecessary words. Think about whether you can express
any point more clearly and succinctly. Check in with yourself to make sure youre not going to piss
anyone off by sending the email (its easy to write something snide in haste and regret it later).
Avoid email regret by setting a rule in Outlook to delay outgoing mail by ten minutes. Go to
Rules and Alerts, create a new rule, start with a blank rule, check messages after sending, press next
and select defer delivery by a number of minutes. The messages stick in your outbox for a few
minutes so you can cool down and think twice. You can also switch off automatic email transmission in Outlook so that it only sends mail when you actively tell it to.
Check recipient names. Use peoples surnames or full names for addresses. You may know lots of
Steves but they probably have different surnames. This will stop you accidentally sending the email
to the wrong person. Alternatively, if you have two very similar names, alter the contact data to
avoid sending an email to the wrong person.
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Dont be afraid of punctuation and emoticons. Email is an impersonal medium. Expressing your
state of mind can help people understand your words. A New Yorker article, the Elements of
E-Style, supports this view. Based on research into the way people read emails, the authors come
out in favour of exclamation points (Thanks!!!! is way friendlier than Thanks), abbreviations (Is
LOL . . . really inherently more opaque than FYI?), and emoticons (those smiley faces and the like
may bug many people but they make us smile).
TODAYS EXERCISE
Todays exercise is to take an email you wrote last month (look in your sent mail
folder) and improve it. Send me an email to let me know how you got on.
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WRITE A BLOG
POST
I used to have a blog but I went back to

pointless, incessant barking.
Dogs talking in a New Yorker cartoon
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Write a blog post

Key point: writing a blog is a good way to develop your writing skills.
Here are some tips to help you become a better blogger:

Get started. Its easy to set up a blog using WordPress.com. Its free. The great thing about a
blog is that you can use it to explore different writing styles and techniques. Its public writing but,
because it is personal, you can write without restrictions.
Write often. I try to write every week day. It doesnt always happen because of work pressure but it
is easier to maintain the discipline if it is regular. Traffic seems to drop off dramatically at weekends
so I dont post then, although I sometimes run a links list style post on Saturdays mainly things
Ive collected during the week.
Keep a scratchpad. I use the notes field in an Outlook task item for each of the blogs I write to
capture links, ideas, to do items and so on. When I actually sit down to write, Ive usually got two
or three ideas to hand and a bunch of links to explore. Its useful to have a few stub posts ready to
expand or edit in case you dont have time to write a long piece.
Have a time to write. I tend to blog first thing in the morning, usually around 6am. Thats just me. I
know other people who write after work or in their lunch break. The important thing is to work to a
regular schedule.
Variety is the spice of life. I prefer to do posts of different lengths and styles. The how to list is
popular but I like to run longer, more formal articles and interviews as well as more personal observations. One of the pleasures of the blog is that I dont have an editor who tells me what to write or
how to write it. To this extent, it is a playground for me.
Contribute to the conversation. There are an awful lot of sheep on the internet. With nearly 60
million blogs in existence, you really want to try to be a sheepdog rather than a sheep. In my
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opinion, its important to say something new and something interesting to contribute to the conversation.

Be yourself. Ideally, you want to say something interesting. Just be yourself. Some of the best
blogs are the ones that are unique, idiosyncratic, and highly personal. The extraordinary thing about
the blogosphere is that whatever you write about, there is an audience for it.
Show your face. I think its good to put a picture of yourself, your email address, and a little bit of
autobiographical information on your blog. Sometimes a nom de plume is necessary, but turn your
blogging alter ego into a real person too.
Get the technology right. If youre serious about blogging, you need to have a proper website
address and not one from a free blogging company. I use WordPress software. A Google search
will list all kinds of companies that specialise in blog hosting. Once you get your site set up, you
need things like spam filtering (I have had 15,000 comment spams since starting this site) and other
add-ons. A good site design will help but there are lots of open source designs to get you started.
Finally, I recommend using dedicated software to write posts rather than the blogging softwares
built-in editor. In my case, I use Microsoft Live Writer.
Plug into the blogosphere. The easiest way to build traffic is to comment appropriately on other
peoples sites. The blogosphere is a reciprocal sort of place. Link their blogs and they might
read and link to yours. Critical to all this is a good newsreader and a good selection of sites. I
use NewsGator because I can access my feed list on any web browser, on my PDA and on my
main work computer and they are always synchronised. Make sure your site is registered with
Technorati.
Linking and loving. Ive always been impressed by people who email me nicely when I comment
on their blogs. I wish I could find the time to do it I try. Surprisingly, the blogs that I am closest
to in terms of mutual sympathy and mutual linking are also the ones who are, on the face of it,
my competitors. They write about the same stuff I write about. Actually though, theres no real
competition and finding your online community is a good way to start building a reader base.
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Traffic is important but regular readers rule. Occasionally, youll produce a post that goes ballistic.
Ive had 20,000 visitors a day on occasion. Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Slashdot, Del.icio.us and
all the others pick it up and youre away. Only a fraction of those people stay and subscribe. Its
very exciting when it happens but what matters is the number of people who keep coming back,
who comment, who link to your site and who enjoy what you write. Write for yourself first, then
write for them. The harder I try to get a traffic monster, the more elusive they become. Its best to
concentrate on writing regularly and well and let your readers decide whats worth recommending.
Dont forget search. Google is my number one source of incoming visitors. Remember to register
your site with all the usual search engines. I use Google Analytics and Google Sitemaps to monitor
what visitors search for, and tweak headlines and content a little to make sure Im delivering
content that searchers want. Advice on interviews is very popular.
Use pictures. Pictures, cartoons and illustrations are essential. Just imagine reading your favourite
magazine if there were no pictures. Yuck! A good picture illustrates the point you are making and
draws in readers. I like iStockphoto which is a cheap source of good quality images, but they can
be a bit corporate.
Write for the screen. People read blogs on computer screens not on paper. So you need to write
for the medium. Well cover this in the next chapter.
Give people different ways to read. Make the online visit easy to read dont go for crazy colours
or unreadable fonts. Many bloggers overlook email but FeedBlitz and Google FeedBurner make it
easy for non-RSS subscribers to get Bad Language in their inbox. Make sure you have a visible, easy
to spot RSS subscription button. However, I would avoid the icon clutter that some blogs display
when they try to accommodate every single blog reader and every single news aggregator. Its
your site, not a billboard for other peoples.
Schedule blog upgrade days. Maintaining a blog is not just about writing content. I try to dedicate
a day every two to three months to upgrading the site itself. This means recategorising posts,
checking for broken links, implementing new features and other engineering stuff. I know just about
enough HTML and coding to tinker with a sites template but not enough to build a new template.
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However, there are plenty of people who can help with this stuff, and one way to stand out from
the crowd is to have a unique site design as well as unique content.

Monitor your stats. Anyone who is a true blogger will be addicted to their stats. But what is
interesting is how I have changed the way I use them over time. Initially, I was obsessed by the
raw visitor numbers. While these are still important, I am much more interested now in what brings
people to the site, what posts they liked, whether they revisit and how often, what they search for
and so on. Im trying to use the stats to help me build a better site for my readers, not to gratify my
own ego (well, a little bit of that too!)
Market your blog. Occasionally people ask me to contribute to their sites, perhaps with bylined
articles or interviews. For example, I write a regular column on Visual Thesaurus. This brings in
a nice stream of new visitors who are interested in writing. I also make an effort to comment on
sites and posts that are relevant to my readers and my areas of interest. This is probably the main
form of blog marketing. It takes time, but it pays long-term dividends. I still get new visitors from
comments I wrote six months ago. However, the comments have to be appropriate, useful and link
to a relevant page on my site. Comment spamming is naughty. Then there is the old fashioned kind
of marketing. I link to my blog from my personal site, from my email sig, from presentation decks; in
fact I mention it pretty much any time I can.
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If you want to blog for your company, things get a bit more complicated. I help a number of organisations with corporate blogs and I have run several seminars and workshops for marketing and PR folk
about blogging. This experience has made me realise that blogging is high on their agenda but often
misunderstood.
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Its an education sale. Even when people have heard about the concept of blogging, they are often
unclear about what it actually involves, what works and what doesnt. The most common misconception is that only one person can write a blog. Another is that it will involve unbridled reader
criticism in comments. There are some good examples of corporate team blogs and corporate
marketing sites that work well: Southwest Airlines and the Boeing marketing blog.
You have to allay their fears before you can appeal to their ambition. People in big companies
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rely on agencies like PR and marcomms agencies (and, yes, copywriters like me). Writing makes
them nervous. Similarly, they dont have much free time. (Who does?) Also, they are very nervous
about going public with something new that might get them fired. Addressing these concerns is
critical. Running the blog like a magazine with contributions and interviews, and proper editing with
tone of voice guidelines, helps because it is familiar territory to most marketing departments.

Marketing matters. In big companies, marketing departments care a lot about whether the blog will
conform to company design and style guides. Prototypes are helpful in addressing their concerns.
Oh no! Its the IT department. Sometimes you have to use a blogging platform that is safe but
not as feature-rich as, say, WordPress. Big company IT departments are often, understandably,
reluctant to let you deviate from company standards.
It takes longer. With my own blog, I decided to do it on a Monday and I had built it by the
Wednesday. All the corporate blogs I have been involved with took months to get started.
More people are involved. Getting things done is a meeting-heavy and consensus-driven process
that, as an entrepreneur and also as a blogger, I find alien. However, its how big companies work.
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Your mission for today is to set up a blog and create your first blog post.
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WRITE READABLE
WEB COPY
Users will read about 20% of the text on the

average [web] page.
Jakob Nielsen
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Write readable web copy

Key point: writing for the internet is not the same as writing for the printed page
How people read online
People dont read web pages in the same way as they read printed material. Research by Jakob Nielsen
shows that:

People dont read everything they see. On an average web page, users read at most 28 percent of
the words.
They scan for whats important to them. Only 16 percent of readers actually read pages word by
word. Eyetracking research shows that the majority hunt and scan around the page.
Websites are optional. People are busy and they dont always have time to read your site.
Remember these differences when reading the guidance in this section. They underpin all the recommendations.
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How to write for online reading

Be clear. Give the reader a clue. Give them a clear picture of what your page is about so that they can
make a quick decision about whether it is useful or interesting. To do this:

Write descriptive headlines that explain what the item is about.

Start with a brief summary at the top of the page.
Consider using an appropriate image to anchor the text and draw the readers eye.
Use a journalists inverted pyramid structure, starting with the conclusion.
Be concise. Respect the readers time. Get to the point and stay there. Compared to printed text, halving
the word count makes online copy 58 percent more usable (in terms of reading time, reader recall and
subjective satisfaction). There are several ways to make your writing more concise:
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Eliminate unnecessary words.

Short words are best. Replace long words where possible.
Short sentences are good too.
Aim for a Flesch Reading Ease score over 60. You can evaluate web pages using my readability
analysis tool.
Split long content into separate pages, posts or entries.
Wait an hour then re-read and edit what youve written.
Be scannable. This will ensure that readers who dont read word by word will still get the gist of
what you say. A layout that makes it easy to scan text increases usability by 47 percent. Heres how:
Highlight key words in bold or by using links to other pages.

Use meaningful sub-headings to break up the text. They are landmarks for the reader.
Use bulleted lists.
Stick to one idea per paragraph with a clear introductory sentence.
Be consistent. Use website conventions to help readers navigate and understand your text.
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Dont say click here. Instead, use the title of the page or a description as the hyperlink.
People use the search engine to find things. Think about the kinds of words they will search for and
include them in what you write.
Link to existing content rather than duplicating it.
Create a conversation with the reader. Online communications are uniquely interactive. Your writing style
should reflect this. The aim is to recreate the kind of professional, but human, conversation you might
have with a colleague.

Try to anticipate what the reader wants to know.

Use their language, not yours.
Dont be afraid to ask questions (even if rhetorical).
Its okay to say I or we.
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Be relaxed but think carefully about humour, especially if there is a risk that it might be misinterpreted.
Show respect. Observe the standards of conduct and decency when referring to other people.
Read what you have written aloud. Is that how you might speak to a colleague or your boss? If so,
fine.
TODAYS EXERCISE
Todays exercise is to take some copy from your website or another business
website and edit it to make easier to read online.
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INVENT GREAT
NAMES
A good name is more desirable than great

riches.
Proverbs 22:1
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Invent great names

Key point: good names are the result of hard work
Richard Branson said that a good name alone can practically guarantee hit records. Its the same with
product, service and company names. There are plenty of bad ones and its easy to pick a bad name
without putting in enough work to find a better one.
Today, the availability of internet domain names is another constraint on the choice of names. Too often
people pick the first name that has an available, matching domain name.
The result is names that are prosaic, obscure or difficult to spell (Qinetiq anyone?). It doesnt have to
be like this.
Compared with the tidal wave of copy that appears after you choose a name, taking an extra few hours
or days to pick a good name up front seems like a good investment. That is what this chapter is about.
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Identify your strengths. The starting point of a good name is the product or service itself. What is
unique, important, memorable, exciting, desirable or special about it? Spend time really understanding this writing lots of notes as you go and the rest of the naming process will be much easier. It
can also be very helpful when coming up with a tagline or subtitle for your name.
2.
Understand your competition. Once you have identified the brand promise of your product or
service, you can begin to differentiate it from its competitors. There is a positive and negative
aspect to this. You should look for names that differentiate you from your competitors and at
the same time avoid names that sound similar. It can also be helpful to look at the language
competitors use to describe themselves because that partly describes the linguistic landscape you
compete in.
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Brainstorm. This is the fun bit and also the most work. You need to come up with hundreds of
words that could be potential names or which are the stems or themes for potential names.
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The more ideas you come up with, the better

chance youll have of finding a good name. Give
yourself time to do this properly not only time
to concentrate on the work but also calendar time
so that you have several days to let naming ideas
percolate in your mind. The Name Inspector has an
excellent list of name types. Smashing Magazine
also has some helpful guidance. You can work with
repetition (BoingBoing), inversion (Xobni), substitution (uSwitch), alliteration (Pepe Le Pew), foreign
words and translation (Wagamama) and numbers
(37signals), places (Westwood), colours (Matt
Black), journeys (BaseCamp), weather (MetalStorm), religion (Zen Habits) the media (WordPress)
etc. etc. This is one of several sheets of names I worked through to come up with Upstage, a
business that creates websites for actors.
4.
More brainstorming. A good metaphor for the naming process is evolution through variation and
natural selection, says The Name Inspector. Periodically, pick the best stems and ideas and start
a new set of ideas. I tend to use sheets of A4 paper but you can also use mindmapping software
or a word processor. Engage with other people to get their input. Its too easy to miss rich seams
of name ideas because, well, you only know what you know. But try to encourage constructive,
incremental brainstorming. Save criticism and analysis for later.
5.
Yet more brainstorming. Between these two brainstorming stages you should try to come up with
200-500 name ideas. Its hard graft but one main difference between an amateur photographer
and a professional is that a professional simply takes more pictures. There are some excellent
websites that can help you expand and develop your ideas. They include:
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a.
b.
c.
d.
Interactive thesauruses. Visual Thesaurus and Visuwords.

Visual dictionary. Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary.
Lovely words. Try Wordie, Word Spy, Getty Vocabularies, Urban Dictionary, Rap Dictionary.
Reverse dictionary. Enter the concept and get the word using OneLook.
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Six degrees of separation. Lexical Freenet is useful for finding links between words,
synonyms and things like that.
6.
Make a short list. There is no magic formula that says: this name is best. There are some
guidelines (but like all such recommendations, they are for the guidance of the wise but the
devotion of fools):
a. Names near the start of the alphabet. This can be helpful in alphabetical listings, such as

blogrolls and telephone directories (but who uses them any more?).
b. Names that have emotional resonance. In most cases, names that trigger some kind of

emotion are more memorable and human than functional, descriptive or technical names.
c.
Short rather than long. Syllables count but there are some excellent, memorable long names

too.
d. Meaningful. Neologisms and made-up words have less impact and require more marketing to

inflate than words that are familiar and pregnant with meaning.
e. Easy to say. Imagine using the name to answer the phone. Hello, Nonsense Names here. This

is a good practical test of the mouth sound of a name.
f.
Easy to spell. People should be able to spell a name when they hear it.
7.
Analyse the names. San Francisco naming company Igor has a free guide to naming. It classifies
names into functional/descriptive, invented, experiential and evocative. These are useful labels
for sorting your names. It also has a chart that evaluates names on eight dimensions, such as
appearance, energy and sound. I recommend using it.
8.
Check domain names and/or trademarks. Once you have your short list and preferences, its a
question of seeing whether you can register them as domain names or as trademarks (if required).
There are some useful online tools that will help you find a domain name even if your first choice
isnt available. Try MakeWords.com, Domai.nr and Bust A Name. Also, Domize is a very efficient
way to check several domain names at the same time. There are plenty of prefixes and suffixes
that can transform an already-registered name into an available name. For example: -ly, -start, -HQ,
-base, -factory, -well, -now, -it, -live, be-, get-, do-, my-, your-, i-, our-, the- etc. etc.
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9.
Response research. I suggest that you avoid asking lots of people to comment on names until you
have your short list. Why? Because people find it very easy to give negative feedback and latch
onto negative meanings.
10.
Repeat 3-8 until you have your final name.
11.
Dont worry too much. Good names often have negative connotations. As the naming gurus at Igor
point out: Virgin implies inexperience yet we happily fly Virgin Atlantic and caterpillars are feeble,
slow insects but Caterpillar make big earth moving equipment. When it comes to names, the poetic
usually beats the prosaic (Apple vs. Microsoft, Virgin vs. British Airways etc.) Also, it is important to
spend time picking a good name, but there is a danger of spending too much time. The wider the
circle and the longer the discussion, the greater is the risk of compromise, averaging and risky shift.
Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good enough. W.C. Fields put it very well when he said, If at
first you dont succeed, try, try and try again. Then give up. Theres no use being a damn fool about
it.
TODAYS EXERCISE
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Your homework for today? Simple. Come up with a really good name for a new
product or service. Or a better name for an existing one.
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WRITE A GREAT
PRESENTATION
Mastering presentation skills is a lifes

work with a stupendous payoff.
Tom Peters
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Write a great presentation

Key point: fewer words = more impact
Respect your audience, says Edward Tufte in his Wired article, PowerPoint is evil. I agree. The problem
is that most presentations are stressful for the speaker and tedious for the audience. Typical problems
include:

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Too formal
Too long
Talking but not listening
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Focused on the script, not the audiences reaction
Too little preparation
Inappropriate content and images
Jargon and clichs
In fact, presentations share many of the problems with other corporate communication. So many of the
lessons in this book will work for presentations too.
In addition, there are some specific changes that can improve a PowerPoint presentation:

The presentation works for you. You dont work for the presentation. Use it to support, illustrate
and underline what you are saying but dont read out the words on the slides. People came to hear
you speak, didnt they?
The 10-20-30 rule. Guy Kawasakis advice is that a presentation should have ten slides, last no
more than 20 minutes and contain no font smaller than 30 points. I have seen corporate presentations with more than 170 slides, each full of text and diagrams. Kawasakis advice isnt right for
every circumstance but its definitely in the right direction.
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Fewer words. Treating a slide like a Word document is the most common mistake in presentation
design. The fewer the words, the greater the impact.
More images. Cartoonbank, Shutterstock, iStockphoto, Open Stock Photography, are all good
sources of pictures for presentations. A well-chosen image with a few words can have more impact
than a page full of bullet points.
Quotations. A good quotation can be as powerful as a good picture. Garr Reynolds has published a
lost of online sources for quotations.
Watch other presentations. You can learn a lot from watching great presentations by other people.
Slideshare.net and TED both have great examples.
TODAYS EXERCISE
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Create a presentation that follows the 10-20-30 rule and which uses strong
images on every page. Use it in place of your normal presentation and see
whether people pay more attention.
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FIND TIME FOR

WRITING
A man may write at any time, if he will set

himself doggedly to it.
Samuel Johnson
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Find time for writing

Key point: better writing takes time
If you want to improve your writing, youll need to find time to do it. With practice, your productivity will
increase without affecting quality. But youll still need to take the time to do your research properly and
to edit and rewrite your copy.
I believe that if you can find the time every day to focus on writing, you will quickly become a better
and more productive writer. By separating writing tasks from other work-a-day activities, you will
improve your concentration and productivity.
It helps to write something every day. Think of it as going to the gym for your writing muscles. A regular
schedule or habit helps.
I wrote this book and the blog that preceded it by getting up earlier. That extra hour or two a day was
enough for me to write 500+ articles on my blog and this book. Zen Habits has many useful tips for
increasing your productivity in general and here are my top tips for getting up earlier:
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I am not what you would call a morning person. Im a writer, for heavens sake! But recently, when Ive
had a lot of work stacking up and Ive added a blog into my daily routine, it felt as if there simply werent
enough hours in the day. So I decided to make a habit of getting up earlier. This is how I did it:
1.
Decided what time I wanted to get up. In my case, 6am, so that I could do a couple of hours, write
my blog and catch up my email before everyone else started work (and started sending me emails
and phoning me). The point is to set a time and stick to it.
2.
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that if you can make a new routine stick for a month, it becomes a self-sustaining habit. It proved
true in this case.
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3.
Promised myself a reward. I always wanted to learn

clay pigeon shooting so I promised myself I would
book a days shooting if I got up early for a month.
4.
Tracked my progress using Joes Goals. The

more I use this website, the more I like it. I used to
track these kinds of routine, habitual things using
recurring tasks in Outlook but it was a bit fiddly and,
addicted as I am, I didnt have Outlook open all the
time. I also used a little Post-it note on my monitor
and ticked off the days, convict-style.
5.
Get clothes, computer and breakfast ready the

night before. Dont want to trip over everything
trying to do basic tasks when Im half asleep.
6.
Alarms. I set my bedside alarm for 0600 and this

is the clever psychology I also set my telephone to
ring at 0605 but I put the phone on the other side
of the room so that I have to get out of bed to stop
it ringing. In the UK, you dial *55*0605# to do this.
What happens is this: either I wake up and cancel
the alarm or I get up and answer the call to stop it
ringing. First, were strongly programmed to answer
the phone. Second, Im very strongly programmed
not to wake my wife up! A ringing phone will do this
so I have powerful motivators at work: guilt and fear.
This technique works every time but I had previously
reserved it for early morning trips to the airport and
things like that.
RULE OF THUMB
1,000 words a day. Factoring in
time for research, writing and
editing, I reckon on producing an
average of 1,000 publishable words
per working day although the
work is usually done in stages over
a longer calendar period. (Theres
a story about James Joyce who
had written seven words in one
day a highly productive day for
him but I dont know what order
they go in.) Stephen King writes
2,000+ words a day. Because
writing is a subjective, intimate
business it is hard to treat it like a
company might treat a factory, but
measuring productivity is vital if
you write for a living.
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7.
Naps. Sleep is like money in the bank. If you overdraw by getting up early, you have to pay in some
other time. Initially, I did this by having short naps after lunch. I suspect that over time the body
adjusts to less sleep most army people get by on less sleep than the rest of us, for example but
this seems to happen over a longer period than a month.
8.
Earlier nights. In the long run, going to bed an hour or so earlier and having lie-ins on weekends
meant that I was getting the right amount of sleep. Like jet lag, the adjustment is a little painful but
it only took a week or two to get used to the new routine.
9.
Boast widely about your new early-birdiness. It makes me feel good to tell people Oh, I get up at
6am. Also, my friend Stuart says, We are the stories we tell about ourselves. If I describe myself
as a punctual, early-rising, efficiency robot then maybe thats what Ill become (when Im not a
bohemain, enterpreneurial writer genius).
TODAYS EXERCISE
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
Your job for today is to figure out when you can carve 30-60 minutes out of
your schedule every day so that you can focus on writing.
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16 17 18 19 20
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28
BREAK WRITERS
BLOCK
When in doubt, have a man come through the

door with a gun in his hand.
Raymond Chandler
BADLANGUAGE.NET
DAY
28
Break writers block

Key point: if you cant write, do something else until you can
We have all stared at a blank screen the unwritten report, the empty email, the blank form and
despaired.
Theres a nice post on MakeYouGoHmm.com that lists 49 jump starts if youre staring at a blank screen
trying to think of a blog post. Some of his suggestions have worked for me: reviewing a book, for
example. Id add the following:
1.
Your obvious is your talent. Find something that you do every day that may not be obvious to
other people and write about that.
2.
Seek inspiration. I created a list of Oblique Marketing Strategies which I find helpful when Im stuck.
You can see them on my Articulate Marketing website.
3.
Report it out. See Day 1: Be a reporter for more tips.
4.
Lists provoke thoughts. For me, at least, taking a topic and then writing a list seems to generate
new ideas that hadnt occurred to me before.
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
5.
Ask why. Pick a topic and speculate on why it happens.
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
6.
Ask how. Ditto but how!
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
7.
Interview someone.
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
8.
Start a campaign. Find something objectionable (in my case, lazy writing) and keep citing
examples of it until change occurs.
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16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25
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28
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
9.
Find a role model. Who writes well? Who do you admire? Praise them. The media is full of negative
stories but its your blog, so write a positive one.
10.
Expand on someone elses idea. The blogosphere is a conversation. Take something (with
attribution) and add your own original thoughts. Like this article.
11.
Cartoons. Sketches, diagrams. Anything that makes your point without words. Sometimes
browsing through the image search on Google or photo libraries like iStockPhoto can bring
inspiration.
12.
Build on a phrase. Sometimes a small phrase pops into my head and it inspires a whole article.
Listen to your inner voice.
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16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30
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DAY
29
WORKING WITH
PROFESSIONAL
WRITERS
Do not be bullied out of your common sense
by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
BADLANGUAGE.NET
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29
workING with proFESSIONAL

writers
Key point: effective management is the way to get good work from professional writers
All my clients use at least one professional writer me and most call on dozens at a time. Many of these
scribblers are hidden inside design, marketing or PR agencies. The advice below is based on my own
experience.
Selection
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
Look for writers with a track record of work in a similar format or subject, but dont get hung up if
they havent done exactly the same thing elsewhere. A good writer should be able to research new
topics effectively.
Meet the writer (not just the account manager) and make sure theres a good chemistry. Do they
talk your language? Understand your requirements? Give constructive input about ways they might
carry out your brief?
Look for a chameleon-like ability to write in different styles. A good writer should be able to follow
a corporate style guide and adapt their work to the audience and client.
Ask for references.
Check that your writer has professional indemnity insurance.
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21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30
Briefing

A briefing document should explain who the work is for (the target audience), what its objectives
are (why is it being written), what style guidelines and language will be used (for instance,
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29
American English or British English), the length in words, what the deadline is, a high-level outline
of the contents and any supplementary contact information or additional resources the writer may
need.

You can reasonably expect a good writer to help with this process, even draft a briefing document
for you based on your instructions.
Management

Like most people, writers like to get positive feedback. If theyve done a good job, tell them.
When it comes to fact-checking, you should expect a writer to keep meticulous notes and voice
recordings of any interviews they carry out.
Similarly, they should be able to provide independent sources for any facts and statistics that they
use in their work.
Like anyone in business, writers will try to schedule their work. Last minute requests and short
deadlines are okay (sometimes) but you are more likely to get a good job if you allow a reasonable
deadline.
Writers tend to think in terms of deadlines, drafts and word counts and chunk up their time in units
of interviews, research, writing and editing. Understanding a little about how they work will help
you understand what progress they are making.
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
Editing and rewriting
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
You may find writers reluctant to release work until it has reached a final draft form. At Articulate,
work goes through a fact-checking and proofreading stage before being released to clients.
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
You should expect to receive work that is spelled correctly, is grammatical and that makes sense. It
should, naturally, meet the brief.
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16 17 18 19 20
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DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
Its normal for the client to review the work from their companys perspective to check, for
example, that trademarks are properly written out or that job titles are correct. Minor tweaks like
this are fine, especially when you start working with a new writer.
In my experience, most major rework arises from a faulty brief or one that changes during the
assignment.
That said, you shouldnt have to deal with a writers ego. If the work doesnt do what you expected,
explain why not and request changes. The more specific you are, the more likely you are to get a
satisfactory result.
In my view, unpardonable sins include: missing a deadline, starting work without an agreed brief,
clichs and making the same mistake twice.
If you work with agencies, contractors or directly with writers, review the way you select, brief and
manage them and see if there are any ways you can do it better.
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16 17 18 19 20
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FINAL
EXERCISE
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again.

Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett
BADLANGUAGE.NET
DAY
30
Final exercise
No advice today. Just three challenges:
TODAYS EXERCISES
1.
2.
3.
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
DAY
Write one awesome thing today.

Make a writing plan for the next 31 days.
Send me an email to tell me how you got on, what you liked, what you
didnt.
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30

Wouldnt it be great if everything

credible and effective? Imagine better

letters, proposals, blog posts, press

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

Day 25: Invent great names

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

Good writing is a competitive advantage

Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

The Bad Language manifesto

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

The cost of bad writing

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

How to use this book

There are four good ways to use this book:

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

A good reporter is forever astonished at

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

This is the rule of one-half,

So the first exercise in this book is about finding

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

The way I work, the interview never

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

Preparing for an interview is critical. Heres how:

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

Introduce yourself. I like to introduce myself at the

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

A 30-minute interview equates to

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

ASK THE RIGHT

I keep six honest serving-men

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

Ask the right questions

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

FIND THE RIGHT

When a dog bites a man, that is not news,

Find the story

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

A moments insight is sometimes worth a

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

Find the angle

Todays exercise is to come up with 50 different ledes (or opening sentences)

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

PICK THE RIGHT

Good communication is as stimulating as

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

Pick the right structure

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

There are no secrets to success. It is the

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING

Analyse bad writing

30 DAYS TO BETTER BUSINESS WRITING