Archive for January, 2012
The Departed – Words we should all say goodbye to in 2012
Every New Year should begin with a period of reflection, renewal and reinvigoration and your press releases should be no different. For over 35 years, Lake Superior State University in Michigan has produced The List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness which attracts interest and submissions from all over the world from annoyed and infuriated writers and readers.
The word that was chosen as the most annoying this year was was Amazing. This was unusual as it was the first time it had made the list. The top list of words and phrases also includes (in order of submissions received):-
- Amazing
- Baby Bump
- Shared Sacrifice
- Occupy
- Blowback
- Man Cave
- The New Normal
- Pet Parents
- Win The Future
- Trickeration
- Ginormous
- Thank You in Advance
Some are more obvious than others and are quite unexpected – Baby Bump and Pet Parents for instance are quite niche in their use but Man Cave and New Normal are fairly widespread and equally unwelcome. Thank You in Advance has always been quite a presumptious phrase so its good to see it being taken down a peg or three.
How does this compare to the 2011 selection?
- Viral
- Epic
- Fail
- Wow Factor
- Aha Moment
- Back Story
- BFF (Best Friends Forever)
- Man Up
- Refudiate
- Mama Grizzlies
- The American People
- I’m Just Sayin’
- Facebook/Google – used as Verbs
- Live Life to the Fullest
Every writer has to walk a tightrope between using engaging, action words and not relying on cliches or crutches. The phrase New Years Resolutions could almost make this list by itself but if you are going to make one then keeping this list handy and not using any of the guilty parties could be a strong start. Remember to add it to your list along with joining the gym, drinking less coffee and not using TXT SPK outside of a Smartphone!
Back to Basics
1) Know your audience
Who are you writing for with each particular release? What kind of readers does each outlet you are pitching to attract? Do they exist in print and online or one or the other? The best press release success will come from slightly tweaking and reworking your release for each audience you are trying to address.
2) Inform, Educate, Entertain but don’t promote unnecessarily
You have a great message, perfectly crafted, for the right audience but it still might fall down if you get carried away with your writing. Journalists filters are more sophisticated than ever and if your release comes over as a ‘puff piece’ rather than actual, useful information or knowledge then it will be making its way to the spam folder quicker than it took to send it.
3) Context is King
‘Content is King’ is so 2011; Context is going to be the buzzword in 2012 in Press Releases, Social Media and more. Why is your story important? Why should your message be heard? Journalists are busier than ever so the easier you can make it for them to read your story and understand its appeal, the greater chance of it appearing in wider circulation.
4) Just the Facts
A certain flair with words is always an advantage but sometimes you have to rein in your creative urges for the good of the message. Writing about a new burger restaurant in glowing Shakespearean terms will definitely make you feel better as a writer but will it hit the key audiences and messages you want? If in doubt, cut it out.
5) Be Personal
That is not to say that you must subsume your personality and gifts entirely. Your introduction to the publication should be friendly, inviting and personable. No fake “Hey Editor, This story is for you!” or any platitudes, approach with a simple “This is a story I think would appeal to your readers” or “I have a new xxxx to tell you about, we think it’s great but let me know what you think’ – always remember the golden rule – it’s a press release, not an advert.
6) Belt and Braces
Before you hit ‘send’ hit the spell and grammar chekcer first (see what we did there?); it should be second nature but it is always useful to pick up any stray errors that have snuck by your perspiring eyes. Also, do a brief manual check yourself as some correctly spelled but inappropriate words may also be willing to trip you up. What a machine will ignore, a human reader will hone in on straight away. Finally, if your release is a rewrite or goes to multiple respondents then make sure they are getting the correct version – if it says, Dear Steve, make sure it is going to Steve, etc. And no matter what you do, make sure you don’t have ‘INSERT LINK HERE’ or other giveaways lurking to give you away.
Don’t Check Out After Using Your Spellchecker!
I have been ruminating all week on the previous post about using spelling and grammar checkers. This is such an important part of what we do as Press Release writers yet is frequently the most overlooked part of our job. It is so much easier to press a button and ‘fire n forget’ about the release be the button ‘spell’ or ‘send’. The downside is that easily catchable mistakes stand out in press releases and as well as detracting from you message, also reflect badly on you as a writer.
Spellcheckers are useful in catching the most obvious and egregious errors but are not infallible. Here are the 10 most common ways a spellchecker will let you down and why you should take an extra ten minutes to proof read all of your press releases and material. The small amount of time you invest now could save a lot of needless bother later.
- Homonyms - This odd sounding phrase just means words that sound the same but have different meanings. Spellcheckers don’t know whether you mean ‘pear’, ‘pair’ or ‘pare’; or ‘there’, ‘their’ or ‘they’re’ – all are equally valid in the soulless eyes of the spellchecker.
- Incorrectly divided compound words – a grammar checker will have better luck than a spellchecker on whether you meant to say ‘courtyard’ instead of ‘court yard’ or ‘yesterday’ instead of ‘yester day’.
- Incorrect pronouns – in the delightfully homogenous spellchecker world there are no masculine or feminine words so they won’t pick up on ‘his’, ‘hers’, ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’!
- Usage errors – the most common faults are overlooked and you have to see for yourself if you want to say ‘its’ or ‘it’s’.
- Missing words – Only you know what you intended to say in a sentence and as long as it’s spelled correctly then you won’t get any clues from your friendly automated dictionary.
- Wrong words – gobbledygook such as ‘My supervisory experience sensitized me to the marital difficulties that married employees can encounter when pressed to work overtime” will look OK to a spellchecker but rarely to a reader.
- Incorrect dates – be especially careful here as dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy or any variation of will not be picked up either.
- Misspelled proper names – Given the propensity of personalization of names these days, be extra careful when including people and titles in releases. Chris, Christopher, Kris, Kriss, Criss, Cris and Kristo are all one and the same to a spellchecker despite being up to seven different people.
- Incorrect verb tenses – If you have inadvertently confused past, present and future tenses then only you will be able to detect this error, or have detected this error.
- Repetition - If you happen to type the same word twice in a row then a spellchecker will catch this, even correctly used such as ‘there, there’ or ‘the the’ but they won’t catch other kinds of repetition such as using the same phrase or sentence twice in a row – or saying exactly the same thing twice, in different words or phrases.
We are not against spellcheckers in any way; they are essential to any writer but should purely be used as a first line of defense rather than a 100% fault-proof firewall. The best judge of accuracy is always the writer.