At Common Noun Consulting we write all the time. We are with our words day in and day out. Strangely enough, this helps to provide us with some distance from words and from writing. There is some perspective to it all, and that perspective helps us to write.

These pages offers you some ideas. Matters that help us write, and that help us work together with our clients. These things may help you in your own writing. Small matters to consider when you put words to paper. Cautionary matters to consider when you think it is just so don’t-you-get-it obvious how to get that idea across. And, new concerns that you might not have known existed; matters for these very exciting WEB times. Times when the whole nature of writing itself is undergoing massive change. And you think it’s fun and you can write it, but you’re just not quite sure.

Now, everyone seems to offer WEB advice these days. How to work with the latest approved or not-so-approved version of HTML; how to write that perfect page that will bring you wealth and acclaim. All that advice is fine and we’ll draw links for you when we find those links helpful. But what we’ll concentrate on here is not so much the technology issues per se, and not so much the glitz. We’ll try to look at the bigger issue: what does it mean to write these days and just how do you go about doing it?

Enjoy. And let us know what you think.

Dust Off Your Writing 101 Notes

Respect Convention

Don’t Obsess About Originality

Our first suggestions are deeply conservative: Dust off those old English Composition notes from high school or college days and then show a little respect.

Dust Off Your Writing 101 Notes. As good a place as any to begin is the Elements of Style by E.B. White. The book looks at such basics as

• grammar and usage
• clarity and consistency
• the need to understand just who you are writing for

The book bears reexamination.

Respect Convention. Writing is a form of communication and a form of social interaction. In your writing you are involved with a give-and-take with others. You are talking with some one; you just don’t happen to be there to do the talking. You are dragging them along to the store so that they will buy your product. They just don’t see the rope. You are impressing them with your mastery of Internet marketing lingo (cool words). They are dialing up your 1-800 number, demanding a translation from your overworked technical support staff, and making your numbers look lousy.

All forms of interaction rely on conventions. Matters that are jointly understood by all involved. These conventions can be thought of as the good manners of the interaction, the etiquette of the meeting. Your customers might not think about the conventions consciously but they know they are there.

Writing is one kind of interaction, one kind of meeting between parties. And so, there are also conventions to writing. Conventions that make people comfortable. Make people feel that they know what is going on when they read what you have written.

• Black text on a white background is a convention.
• Margins are a convention.
• Meaningfully placed white space on a page, space that blocks off, separates and focuses the reader’s attention. That is a convention.

There are large numbers of these conventions and they will be discussed in some detail in later issues of Uncommonly Clear.

All these conventions taken together might be called literacy. They are what makes a person understand what they have read.

Make sure that what you write respects convention.

Don’t Obsess About Originality. In writing you have to avoid the danger of introducing your own private conventions. Things that work for you and so you think ought to work, period. Things that mean a lot to you and that you think should be equally obvious to everyone else.

Here is an example: Perhaps you are excited about the work you do. Your company is involved in mapping the earth's surface; you know that your customers are interested in this also. And the new HTML technology is wonderful; you can use those maps as background image on your company’s WEB site. Sample 1

Take a deep breath; hold back; try for a white background instead.

Are you thinking of placing that expensively designed new logo all over your writing also? Take another deep breath.

Originality, your originality, only makes sense against a backdrop of what is understood and familiar. And so, people will understand what makes you special and unique (and ultimately, worthy of their time and money) only against the backdrop of the familiar. As obvious as this may sound, keep in mind that a white sheet of paper is something that is familiar and comfortable. Go with this comfort and use it as an excuse to think about the issues of originality and comfort in writing more generally.

The Words Have to Work, Just Like Everybody Else

It's Healthy to View Writing as Just One Component in your Overall Product or Service

Interface, Product, Service and Words are One

You Need a Word Policy, You Need Inventory Control

It’s good to start off efforts at being Uncommonly Clear by not having too romantic a view about your words. Instead, consider words an integral part of the business, subject to the same constraints and scrutiny as all the rest of your business. Look at words as no more special than any other part of what you do. Here are some no-nonsense, even grumpy conclusions:

• The words have to work just like everybody else.
• The words are an integral part of the products and services your provide.
• The words need to be managed and governed by some corporate policy.
• The words have to be inventoried.

Let's consider in more detail the ways in which words are just an ordinary part of your business.

The words have to work, just like everybody else. In a business there is work that has to get done, and people and machines to do the work. Every day is one giant to-do list. Imagine the following scenario:

You work for an agency that provides loans to small businesses. Potential borrowers must meet a number of requirements to qualify for the loans. You write the application form that these small businesses must fill out to apply for the loan.

Imagine three versions of this application form:

Version 1. The application contains the words, "If you have further questions concerning eligibility do not hesitate to call us. We are here to help you."

Version 2. The application contains the words, "If you have further questions concerning eligibility do not hesitate to call our support hotline at 444-456-1234. We are here to help you."

Version 3. The application contains some simple questions and check boxes

that the applicant must work through to self-determine eligibility.

Clearly, all three versions of this writing take steps to help the customer get what is needed, namely, an answer to the crucial question, "Am I eligible or not?"

Notice, however, that in the three cases, the workload gets split up very differently.

Version 3. The applicant performs the work of determining eligibility (and probably doesn't mind doing so).

Version 2. The applicant and your company’s technical support staff perform the work. The cost to your company is greater.

Version 1. Lots and lots of people perform the work. The harried customer spends additional time looking up phone numbers. A number of calls are made based on the uncertainty of which phone number is the appropriate one. The customer perhaps isn’t sure how to phrase the question correctly, and so inadvertently draws in any number of people at your company. The cost to your company is great.

The work has to get done one way or another. That customer has to get the answer he or she needs. The words can do the work, or someone else can do the work.

It’s healthy to view writing as just one component in your overall product or service. Your company provides a product or service; someone or something that does something that customers are willing to pay for. It’s easy to think of this product or service as primary. And then accompanying the product or service are assorted words. Perhaps it’s some product documentation, some marketing materials, some registration forms. It’s easy to think of these as supporting or secondary material.

Try to avoid this easy way of thinking. Words are an integral part of the product or service itself.

Consider an example from the virtual world of software development, an example in which product, service, words and interface are one:

Interface, Product, Service and Words are One. Imagine that your company has just developed a new piece of software. It will be used by general contractors to estimate construction projects. The contractor will type information into the software via some nicely designed forms based interface. Out comes a cost estimate along with a listing of materials required.

Next, imagine that the contractor obtains his or her requirements by interviewing potential customers. He asks what sorts of wood they like. She measures their kitchen and sun room. All this is done using a standard hardcopy interview form. And then back at the office, the interview material is keyed in and then the software goes to work.

Next, imagine the obvious slight twist. Instead of the interview and the paper form, the potential customer is sent a document via the Internet. It talks about the contractor’s way of looking at kitchen construction projects. And every once in a while it asks the user a question.

Now, is this document a piece of software, an interface, a marketing piece, a service?

Well, yes.

Is it a document as we tend to think of documents, the sorts of things that, say, writers write? We can try to draw all the logical distinctions we want. But from the reader’s standpoint (we writers call‘m readers, computer folk call them end users) there is no software, interface, marketing piece, service, what have you. There are just some words. And the words get responded to or not by the reader. The interface, product, service and words are all one.

In this sort of world, words truly do work. They truly do have power. They truly do do things.

This is the world we live in.

You Need a Word Policy, You Need Inventory Control. Imagine you are a manufacturing concern. You are a large one. You have suppliers. Distributors. You have a large customer base reflecting a wide array of customer profiles.

You have thousands of products. Your products are in various stages of development. Some are mature; some are at early stages in the product lifecycle.

You keep track of all of this.

Words are no different. They must be managed and they must be inventoried.

The WEB has put to rest, once and for all, the notion that you can have stand alone pieces of writing. Suddenly, everything is tangled in with everything else. To take control of your company’s words, to insure that they are a true asset, you should start confronting a number of issues and questions. These are the sorts of things that perhaps feel very different to you from what you have comfortably thought of as writing. But they are part of writing nevertheless:

• How can I keep track of the sheer mass of words and documents I am working with?

You may want to look into Document Management Systems.

• How can I begin to share words with others in my industry?

You may want to look into the possibilities of SGML based writing.

• How can I make all my customers happy all at once?

You may want to build your documents from simpler building blocks and rearrange those building blocks as is audience appropriate.

• How can I insure proper placement of my words?

You will have to make your peace with the various search engines, YaHoo!, Lycos and the others.

Whatever questions you may eventually have to answer, you should start developing a word policy now.

Words are delightfully romantic sorts of things. But sometimes it's healthy not to be all that romantic about them. In future issues of Uncommonly Clear we will attempt to further pin down some more of these very practical issues surrounding the business of good writing.