Reviewing and editing

Before you start editing someone’s writing, you need to be clear about the brief. The four types or stages of editing are:

• Reviewing
• Structural editing
• Copyediting
• Proofreading

If your brief is to proofread a document, you may check accuracy with the writer, but your focus will be on the little things, such as grammatical errors and typos, that detract from the document.

When you’re reviewing a document, you overlook the little things to make sure the document is logical and leaves no questions unanswered.

Your brief may be to do all types of edits for the same document in which case, you must start at the top with the review.

Reviewing

When you review a document, you need to place yourself in your readers' shoes and ask yourself if the report works:

• Will the readers be informed?
• Will the readers be able to make an informed decision?

Structural editing
With a structural edit, you need to find the bones of the report to see if the structure is appropriate. Often with this type of edit, you will cut and paste sections to change the order of the information.

Sometimes this edit will reveal gaps you need to consult the writer about. You need to take care with a structural edit that you do not change meaning.

Copyediting

When you are copyediting, your task is to improve the language and tone of a document and make sure it reads well. The paragraphs and sentences need to be clear and concise and the language appropriate.

Proofreading

Although you may have picked up some errors while copyediting, proofreading is a separate stage. If you have made comprehensive changes to the document, put it aside before proofreading it.

When proofreading, look for:

• Accuracy – correct referencing, typos etc.
• Styles – has the writer used the styles outlined in their style guide?
• Consistency at every level – headings, spacing, styles etc.
• Layout – does the report look visually attractive?

Although we seldom achieve perfect copy, a thorough edit improves clarity and readability. 

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Does creativity pay when it comes to complaining?

Complaining by letter or email is not the only way of making your voice heard these days.

Some creative people have launched their complaints through websites, YouTube, Twitter and discussion groups. A few creative examples that went viral are: ·

• Adam Brimo was tired of waiting on hold for Vodafone customer service so he set up a website, http://www.vodafail.com. He used Facebook, Twitter and an internet technology discussion group to alert other Vodafone users. He and his followers were not alone in complaining about Vodafone at the time, but his site had an impact and I understand Vodafone is working to improve its service. (I am not a Vodafone user so can’t state that categorically.) ·

• When an airline refused to compensate musician Dave Carroll for bag handlers breaking his guitar, Dave posted a song on YouTube. The airline eventually offered some compensation, which Dave refused. He didn’t lose out though – the guitar company gave him two new guitars and his music career got a boost. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo&noredirect=1

• Have you heard about a woman called Keara O'Neill who was abused by a retail assistant in trendy Chapel Street, Melbourne? An email from the company's area manager in response to her complaint went viral, impacting so badly on the brand that the company closed its Facebook page. Read an article in the Herald Sun that attracted 412 comments at http://bit.ly/nLI52s 

Well-crafted complaints can have an impact and a bad response from a company can affect a brand.

Have you used any creative methods to complain that have achieved results?

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Writing letters of complaint

Letters of complaint are the ones that I often compose in my head and seldom send.

I am sure you all know those moments when you’re overcome with irritation with your telecommunications provider or whoever it is who has let you down.

Usually, the irritation passes and we move on. But occasionally, we do need to write or submit a complaint online when we want to: 

• Have the problem fixed
• Receive compensation
• Prevent other people sharing our experience 

Sometimes I think a letter is better than submitting a complaint online because you take the time to crystallise your thoughts and get to the point. When you’re angry or upset, it’s easy to write a ‘who did what, when’ type of complaint that rambles until you reach your word limit.

Once I submitted such a poorly written complaint online that the response I got was: Before we can proceed with your complaint, we need your customer number... (I wasn’t a customer, just a complainer!)  If I’d been writing a letter, I would have summarised the ‘who did what, when’ background into a sentence or two, or if I thought it was all relevant, I might have put it in table form or as an attachment.

If you’re the sort of person who, like me, writes letters in your head but rarely sends them, you might find this website useful: http://www.complaintline.com.au/index.html The site even has a template letter to get you started.

And there is a website where you vent your complaints and if they are not resolved, your vents are made public: http://www.uvent.com.au

When my children were little, I wrote a children's story around letter writing, which you can listen to on YouTube.

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Misuse of bullet points

Bullet points are useful for lists, but I have three gripes about the way they are misused.

First gripe
They are often used when a paragraph would be more effective. Take this following example from a hospital information sheet:

After surgery:

• sit on the side of the bed initially
• transfer to the bedside chair
• walk to the bathroom
• walk freely around the ward
• progress should be gradual, no exertion.

The main idea here is that the patient should move gently at first, but it's buried at the end of the list. And isn't 'transfer' an odd word choice?

Second gripe
Another common mistake is long bulleted lists with no introductory paragraph. This causes two problems — you don't know what's most important and as the information isn't grouped, you have to mentally sort it as you read. You can easily overlook key information in such lists.

An example from the same hospital information sheet dumps sport, sex and bathing in the same list.

Following surgery:

• Short baths can be taken (10–15 minutes).
• Showers may be taken as soon as you are able to walk around.
• Wounds may get wet but should be dried thoroughly. Use a hairdryer if necessary and leave Steristrips on wounds for 5 days.
• Sport: start gradually and build up (walking, swimming, jogging), no exertion, avoid high-impact exercises for 6 weeks (3 months for pelvic floor surgery) and stop if it hurts.
• Sexual intercourse can resume after 4–6 weeks.
• After major surgery avoid heavy lifting for 3 months (i.e. no more than 10kg/2 telephone books).
• Avoid standing for long periods.
• Recommence driving when pain medication is no longer required (check with your insurance company regarding cover following surgery).
• Recovery from major surgery is dependant [sic] on the individual and may take from 4 weeks to several months.

Third gripe
My third gripe is inconsistency of style. When all bullet points relate back to the same stem statement, you should be able to read them as if they were separate statements.

Look at the structure of the above list and you can see that several of the bullet points do not relate to the stem statement (Following surgery recovery from major surgery is dependant on the individual ... ).

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Storytelling in your marketing

We all love a good story, so how can we use stories in our marketing material? It’s easier to tell stories when face-to-face with a prospect, but we can also use some storytelling concepts in our written marketing material.

How to use a storytelling structure
A storytelling structure is easy to follow as we are all familiar with how stories work. Ros Jay, author of How to Write Proposals and Reports that get Results says writing using a storytelling structure has four components: position, problem, possibilities and proposal.

Take Hansel and Gretel, for instance.

Position
Hansel and Gretel were left in the woods by their parents (woodcutter and stepmother), who couldn’t afford to look after them any longer.

Problem
They found a house made of gingerbread, but unfortunately it belonged to a wicked witch who imprisoned them.

Possibilities
They could try to escape or they could trick the witch. Otherwise they would be cooked and eaten by her.

Proposal
In the end the best option was to trick the witch by pushing her into her own oven so she burnt to death. Then Hansel and Gretel escaped and ran home.

Using this structure, if are writing a brochure or proposal, you first set the scene and make your potential clients feel you understand their situation. Often this means stating what both you and the reader already know, but you are establishing common ground.

Once you have demonstrated you understand their situation, you can discuss their problems (you would probably choose a word other than ‘problem’) and how you can help. You may not write about possibilities, but considering your client’s options helps you state the benefits, rather than just the features, of your products or services.

In my view, this structure doesn’t work as well with web copy where your writing has to be more direct. You don’t have time in web writing to do much scene setting. The exception is the US style of long-copy marketing pages (e.g. www.mequoda.com/free-reports/master-landing-page-templates).

Telling stories in your case studies
Case studies allow you to demonstrate how your products and services work in practice or how other clients have benefitted from them. In other words, they are stories, and are powerful on the web as well as in your print material.

In a blog posting, Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow and All Marketers are Liars, itemises some of the ingredients of great stories that you can use to make your case studies powerful.

• Great stories are true and trusted.
• Great stories make a promise. They promise fun, safety or a shortcut.
• Great stories are subtle. The fewer details a marketer spells out, the more powerful the story.
• Great stories happen fast.
• Great stories appeal to our senses.
• Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone. The most effective stories match the world view of a tiny audience that spreads the story.

You can read the full blog post on Seth Godin's website. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/04/ode_how_to_tell.html

This article first appeared on Flying Solo's website: http://www.flyingsolo.com.au

Find out about Mary's writing courses online at www.onlinewritingtraining.com.au

Writing to change behaviour

Communicators have a large role to play in changing our behaviour. For example, we would not be nearly as aware of the dangers of sunbathing or speeding without regular campaigns. Issues such as climate change and obesity have become difficult ones to tackle. How can you write in such a way as to make people want to change their behaviour, particularly if there is a financial cost to changing?

A website worth looking at is http://www.cbsm.com

Dr Doug McKenzie-Mohr is a pioneer in community-based social marketing and his work draws on social psychology at the community level.

On his website, you can download his free e-book, browse a number of case studies and read articles on how to target specific behavioural changes (e.g. encouraging people to install low-flow shower heads). Each article looks at:

• why the behavioural change is important (e.g. low-flow shower heads reduce water consumption, enhance energy efficiency and lower CO2 emissions)
• what is known about the perceived barriers to change
• the most effective programs to date that foster the behavioural change.

The colleague, who told me about this website, attended a workshop where Dr McKenzie-Mohr told the following anecdote. Forest vegetation in a park was being damaged by people wandering off the pathway. Signs asking people to stay off the vegetation made no difference. Research identified that people were trampling the vegetation to take photos, so the sign was replaced with a new one stating that the best place to take photos in the park was a short way ahead. Problem solved.

If only all change were so easy!

You can download Dr McKenzie-Mohr’s free book at http://www.cbsm.com/public/images/FosteringSustainableBehavior.pdf

Write your own marketing material

Many of us have to write our own marketing material whether or not we enjoy writing. Often we’re so busy thinking about what we want to say that we lose sight of our audience. Even experienced writers can fall into this trap.

The problem with writing marketing material for ourselves is that we tend to waffle before we get to the point. Sam Leader, director and editor of Flying Solo, says that having edited some 600 articles for Flying Solo, she has “to get rid of an average of two or three warm-up paras time and time again”.

So how can we avoid this? I suggest you clarify your thoughts before you start writing by asking yourselves questions using PACKO: purpose, audience, context, key messages and outcome.

Purpose
Why are you writing this document? What do you want to achieve?

You may want to provide information, make a recommendation to solve a problem or persuade your readers to buy your products or services. Sometimes you may have more than one purpose.

Understanding your purpose helps determine the structure of your writing. For example, if you’re writing an informative piece, you can often get straight to the point without much preamble. You simply record your information in order of importance to the reader.

If you want to persuade your readers, you may need to spend more time setting the scene to demonstrate that you understand their situation. The challenge is to write from their point of view, not yours.

Audience/s
Having established what you want to achieve, think about your audience/s. What do you know about them? Are your writing for single or multiple audiences?

The more you tailor your writing to suit your readers, the more powerful it will be. As Cicero said:

If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words.

Context
I never used to think about context, but I have become increasingly aware that many writers make assumptions about their readers’ knowledge when writing marketing material. Explaining the context or background may not always be relevant, but if you think about it, you’ll know whether or not you need to explain your terms or include some background information.

For example, at the end of 2008, the media covered how Bernard Madoff lost his clients a lot of money through a Ponzi scheme. Many newspapers did not explain what a Ponzi scheme is, leaving readers to guess or look up the information. (According to Wikipedia: “It’s a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors out of the money paid by subsequent investors rather than from profit.”)

Key messages
What are your key messages?
You must be able to articulate your key messages in clear statements that even a 12-year-old can understand.

This sounds common sense, but it’s amazing how many highly intelligent writers don’t make their key messages clear. I think it’s sometimes because they think they’re obvious. Professor Chip Heath of Stanford University calls this the “curse of knowledge”.

Outcome/s
How do you want your readers to respond? This question relates back to purpose, but thinking about it separately reminds you to check your details.

For example, a friend of mine, who owns a restaurant, sends a wonderful chatty email to customers. A recent email was as interesting as usual, but she’d forgotten to include the restaurant’s phone number. Had she thought: “bookings, bookings, bookings”, the phone number would have been prominently displayed.

So before you start writing marketing material next time, just pause for a moment and ask yourself the PACKO questions.

This article first appeared on www.flyingsolo.com.au

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