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Why ease is better than facilitate
- By Peter Carruthers
- Published 07/23/2008
- Marketing and Sales
- Unrated
A while back I wrote about the fog index - a simple way of seeing how easy your writing is to read. Great concept. The problem is that nobody uses it!
Just because we have e-mail, and word processors, and possibly a thesaurus, we each assume that we are a William Shakespeare in the making. Combine that with automated mass e-mail delivery and it is not surprising that most of us are being flooded with sad offers for pharmaceutical inflation of our diverse parts.
I get more than 500 spam e-mails each day. 90% of them are trying to sell the above answers (to which I do not yet have the question).
For the purposes of this article, however, it is the other 50 emails or so that really bother me. You see, they come from people like you and me - business owners trying to make a living by advertising what they do. The problem is that their writing is so bad that they are not worth reading.
Which brings me to the point of this week's e-mail. I was reading a wonderful book called "Web Copy That Sells" by Maria Veloso, and chanced on a segment about replacing rational words with emotional words.
In looking at the list (and a few examples follow) I noticed that almost all the rational words had too many syllables, while their emotional equivalents got to the point far more quickly.
Test the emotional words in your writing, and I give you my word that you will have far more success. (And the fog index of your writing will improve remarkably, which means that more people will read it.)
For whatever reason, it seems that when we have to put pen to paper, we have some form of verbal conniption, and we start to spew the biggest words we can think of.
For most of us, our public writing is like my pole vaulting. Out of practice.
After almost a twenty five years of writing, I still use a thesaurus every day, trying to find shorter and better words. My first draft is often full of great words, but they're too big. That's why almost every piece I now write can easily be read by a 15-year-old.
At the risk of insulting the younger folk amongst us, many folk leave school unable to read well.
Many of the people that I graduated with in 1975 read just five books in their entire high school career. All of those books had more colour pictures than words. These are the people that now make the decisions that affect my income, because they decide whether to buy or not. It seems to me that it is common sense to help them easily read what I write.
May I humbly ask you to test your writing on your children? If they can understand it, so will I. If they can't, it might be worth a rewrite? (At least if you want me to buy anything.)
Just because we have e-mail, and word processors, and possibly a thesaurus, we each assume that we are a William Shakespeare in the making. Combine that with automated mass e-mail delivery and it is not surprising that most of us are being flooded with sad offers for pharmaceutical inflation of our diverse parts.
I get more than 500 spam e-mails each day. 90% of them are trying to sell the above answers (to which I do not yet have the question).
For the purposes of this article, however, it is the other 50 emails or so that really bother me. You see, they come from people like you and me - business owners trying to make a living by advertising what they do. The problem is that their writing is so bad that they are not worth reading.
Which brings me to the point of this week's e-mail. I was reading a wonderful book called "Web Copy That Sells" by Maria Veloso, and chanced on a segment about replacing rational words with emotional words.
In looking at the list (and a few examples follow) I noticed that almost all the rational words had too many syllables, while their emotional equivalents got to the point far more quickly.
Test the emotional words in your writing, and I give you my word that you will have far more success. (And the fog index of your writing will improve remarkably, which means that more people will read it.)
| Rational facilitate anticipate challenge astute beneficial construct donate immediately intelligent manufacture preserve subsequent to terminate utilise wealthy | Emotional ease expect dare smart good for build give right now bright make save since end use rich |
For whatever reason, it seems that when we have to put pen to paper, we have some form of verbal conniption, and we start to spew the biggest words we can think of.
For most of us, our public writing is like my pole vaulting. Out of practice.
After almost a twenty five years of writing, I still use a thesaurus every day, trying to find shorter and better words. My first draft is often full of great words, but they're too big. That's why almost every piece I now write can easily be read by a 15-year-old.
At the risk of insulting the younger folk amongst us, many folk leave school unable to read well.
Many of the people that I graduated with in 1975 read just five books in their entire high school career. All of those books had more colour pictures than words. These are the people that now make the decisions that affect my income, because they decide whether to buy or not. It seems to me that it is common sense to help them easily read what I write.
May I humbly ask you to test your writing on your children? If they can understand it, so will I. If they can't, it might be worth a rewrite? (At least if you want me to buy anything.)