Category Archives: Writing

Simple Writing is Better

Writing

Thanks to Seth Godin for pointing out  Steven Johnson’s fascinating Literary Style by the Numbers. Seth’s conclusion in The secret of writing to be read is that:

Basically, short, simple sentences not only sell more books, but spread ideas farther and faster.

Johnson started that thought with a fascinating analysis of amazon.com’s new "text stats" feature, rating books by a delightful dozen or so statistical ratings including words per sentence, percent of complex words, even words per dollar and words per ounce.  He looks at the ratings and compares results for a number of popular writers including Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell, two of my favorites. What those two have in common according to this analysis is significantly fewer average words per sentence and significantly fewer complex words.

And another thing they have in common is very successful very popular and very insightful books.

Hmmm ….

Don’t Send a Ten Dollar Word to Do a Two Cent Word’s Job

Writing

Here I am posting against bureacratese and MBA speak and I missed this on the Huffington Post this week:

They’re utilizing "utilize" when they could just as easily use "use." They’re talking about "selling solutions" when the company really makes and sells nuts, bolts, or ball peen hammers.

In the process, they’re throwing away the common sense language of American business — a language where people say what they mean, mean what they say, and make real money in the process.

There is pure business genius in simple language. Consider,  "Lather. Rinse. Repeat."

In "Lather" and "Rinse" we have a complete set of instructions for shampooing our hair. The genius — the American business genius — is in "Repeat." This one word, written in the imperative instructs us to double the rate of product consumption. Untold gallons of shampoo have gone down the drain because America, "repeats." Billions of dollars have been amassed and dispersed to stockholders.

And make no mistake about it. America doesn’t "reutilize." It "repeats."

Peter Smith is mainly a humorist, I gather, but sometimes humorists are writers. It’s a good reminder, and funny too. Here’s the link to the story:

Link: Peter Smith: Don’t Send a Ten Dollar Word to Do a Two Cent Word’s Job – Business on The Huffington Post.

50 memos a day without thinking

Writing

You may already have heard of, and even used, the famous Dilbert mission statement tool, or MBA Writer, an amazing java application that generates magical business phrases at the click of a mouse (thanks to Luke Froeb of Management R&D for pointing me to this one). What power and grace. MBA Writer’s author, a Vanderbilt economics professor, claims you could use it to write 50 memos a day for more than 100 years without having to think.

You can guess what it does but it’s much more fun to just go there and see.

I wish he hadn’t named it as he did, because I always have to think twice about knocking MBAs in this space after a combination of posts, including my magic of metrics post of a couple weeks ago that highlighted how much I like my subscriptions to go up, and the MBA buzzwords post tracking back to a Guy Kawasaki post early last week. Both seemed to generate a drop in subscriptions. Guy pointed it out on his blog, I saw it too on mine. I won’t give you numbers though, because mine are so much lower than the biggies.

Lawyers like the lawyer jokes, don’t they? Or have I just been hanging around the right lawyers, or maybe too much Nolo Press?  And I know consultants like consultant jokes because I’ve been there for sure. So what’s with the MBAs lacking humor?  Not good.

However, the MBA Writer is too good to pass up. It was also the second anti-business-speak post by Luke Froeb in two days. In the first he quotes a poor downtrodden student with a terribly twisted gobbledygook sentence, and adds: "I don’t know what it is about MBA students that makes them write in a style that no one wants to read." On that post he says he had his students read "Fred Kahn’s classic My War Against Bureaucratese, the gobbledygook written by government bureaucrats designed to hide what they are really doing."

And, kidding aside, there is a point to be made here. In my case it’s not just the writing of college students, but also the business plans I read regularly as part of my normal work life. There’s a lot to be said for short and simple English sentences.

–Tim

And I Thought They Were Muppets!

Current Affairs, Writing

I didn’t know they called it sock puppeting. Here’s a quote from today’s New York Times:

"This digital-age deception has a name, ‘sock-puppeting,’ and a precise definition — the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company."

Speaking of the John Mackey masquerade I wrote about in Huffington Post last week, NYT titles its story The Hand That Controls the Sock Puppet Could Get Slapped. It’s interesting reading.

The Times says the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an investigation. I did say I thought it was illegal, but I wasn’t sure, and in fact neither are they.

The Times story also chronicles some other CEO "sock puppetry." One CEO has been convicted of mail fraud and obstruction of justice and faces a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison. Others have been publicly embarrassed. And some CEOs write under their own names, voicing their own opinions, without the problems of what I called pseudonymity last week.

On a related but tangential note, between sock puppetry and pseudonymity, it’s getting to be a hard world for editors. My writing tools kept complaining with red wavy lines, but I finally silenced them with a resolute "Add to dictionary." Thank goodness the English language, and most word processors, can take it.

— Tim

Articles vs. Blogging

Weblogs, Writing

Jacob Nielson, Internet interface guru, suggests you should "write articles, not blog postings" to demonstrate expertise. Bill Brelsford, of Small Business Building Blocks, says that "doesn’t even past the smell test."

It’s hard to discount Nielson. I’ve read two of his books and refer to them frequently. Strange how ugly his website looks, to me, given his expertise; but he’s still definitely one of the best on Internet design and interface.

Still, I think Brelsford’s analysis is right on target. He suggests that it shouldn’t be either/or situation. "Both formats have their merit – what’s important is how to best communicate with your intended audience."  Articles show expertise, while blogging is conversation. I like that view.

Somewhere at the core of this question is recognition of different objectives, different formats, and different content. I think it is short-sighted to see only a portion of that. "How-to" material lends itself to the article. "What’s new and what do we think about that" lends itself to the blog post. Pitting one against the other seems almost silly, like talking about whether books or magazines, or newspapers or television news, are "better." In Nielson’s defense, he does focus his commentary on the specific area of communicating expertise, but still, there are different kinds of expertise.   

I really enjoy writing articles on planning and entrepreneurship. My career has been mainly as an expert in business planning and entrepreneurship. My articles are all over bplans.com, and also at entrepreneur.com, allbusiness.com, and elsewhere. I’m proud of this work and I refer to it often, but it is by its very nature one-way material, much more a lecture than a conversation. While I love to talk to audiences about business planning, and teach it, the bulk of my articles written over the past 10 years are still valid. Many of my articles on subjects like cash planning, strategic focus, and sales forecasting  don’t need freshening up.

On the other hand, I also really enjoy blogging. 

I do have a general way to divide material into articles or blog posts. If it’s about how to develop a business plan, meaning tips, techniques, and classic "how-to" material, I put it on bplans.com, or in my columns at entrepreneur.com, or my business planning demystified blog at allbusiness.com. If it’s anything else it goes on this blog or Huffington Post or the bplans.com blogs.  That seems to work for me. 

In my case it took me stepping down from running my company to get me enough time to start actively blogging. I’m glad for how that went. So now I’m grateful to several people, particularly four who are now running my company and one in New York, for helping me see my way out of the articles-only rut and into the blogging.  Blogging is an exciting new world. It’s fun.

— Tim 

Hooray! At Least one VC Says Spelling Counts

Business Planning, Venture Capital, Writing

I’m so glad to see I’m not the only one left. I too, like Stephen Fleming, read a lot of business plans, and damn! Bad spelling and bad grammar throw me off, I can’t help it. It’s distracting, like a bad note played in a concert.

I suppose I should add that Stephen Fleming calls his site "Academic VC" and he teaches entrepreneurship too, so maybe you’re not going to believe him either, if you are one of those who believes spelling and grammar are an obsolete remnant of a dying age. Here’s a quote:

"When I teach my classes on entrepreneurship, I always have at least one student protest my statement that ‘Spelling counts.’ Especially when they’re not native English speakers. ‘It doesn’t affect the meaning! And it certainly doesn’t affect my ability as an entrepreneur!’"

"Sorry, folks, but spelling does count. Not because correct spelling is a virtue in and of itself — William Shakespeare couldn’t spell his own name, when he wasn’t busy taking credit for the Earl of Oxford‘s plays — but because of what it says about the person sending me the document. Usually the CEO."

"If you send me a document that says ‘Our plan estimates there costs to be…’ or ‘the product and it’s derivatives,’ you are telling me that (1) you don’t have good attention to detail, or (2) you’re in a hurry, and (3) you don’t know when to ask for help. None of those make me want to invest in you."

The thing is — and this is me now, not Stephen (although I’m pretty sure he’d agree) — decent simple and correct business writing is not that hard. Nobody says it has to be rhymed or suitable for framing, but at least know the difference between their and there and it’s and its and, my personal favorite, then and than. There’s also this trend to make all plurals possessive, with apostrophes.

We all make mistakes. I’m a good writer and a good speller but I make tons of mistakes from simple typos or writing too fast, and it’s hard to read and catch your own mistakes. In my case my mind moves ahead of my eyes and knows what I intended, sometimes missing glaring errors. But having somebody else look at it is a very good idea. It shows respect for the reader.

In the age of email, and IM, and txt, I suspect the "oh lighten up, you know what I meant" trend will continue. So at least today I’m glad to see Stephen’s post.

Here’s the link to the full post; Academic VC: Spelling Counts

— Tim

About Words I Won’t Put in the Title of This Piece Despite the Temptation

Journalism, Writing,

"Tim," Matt said, beer in hand, in a bar in Mexico City, "you have to learn about 50 words that will almost guarantee you play in the papers." He swallowed. He looked at me and frowned. "But you’re so young," he said, shaking his head, "you’re probably not going to like it."

He swallowed again, then started listing the words: "naked, violent, brutal, cruel, vicious, rape, clash, showdown, face-off, fists, bare, nude, stripped, fight … " I can’t remember them all.

This was in 1974.  Matt Kenny, 50-something, gray hair, glasses, and quick to smile, was day editor for United Press International in Mexico City.  I was night editor. Matt had been with UPI longer than I’d been alive. That’s me in the picture, taken in 1974, in the UPI bureau in Mexico City.

I was unhappy because he had rewritten my lead about a Kon-Tiki-like raft trip arriving on Mexico’s Caribbean coast in 1974. I covered the story live, Matt handled it on the desk. It was a scientific expedition, a social science experiment, or so said the adventurous organizer. Matt rewrote the lead to emphasize "suntanned bikini-clad" women and the co-ed journey across the Atlantic Ocean on a raft.

Ironic, 33 years later, he was right: I was very young.

United Press International, alias UPI, was a wire service with generations of history as the "other wire service," the competition to Associated Press, AP, which still lives today. Mexico City was an outpost. We filed stories from Mexico City to the New York editors using a 1940s teletype system (the clackety clackety of old movies and old newsrooms) until my last year there, in 1974, when they got one of the first word processing systems, which we called, with fear and dread, "the computer." (For you computer historians, it was an early Atex system).

What’s most interesting about that whole system, and strangely relevant in the blog world of today, was that the system gave the editors in New York our first sentence only, as they scanned new stories coming in from the boonies (and another rambling historical note, BTW, was that Mexico City was considered the boonies to UPI New York editors in 1974, although it was already one of the largest cities in the world).

Repeat, for emphasis: they saw the first sentence only, and from that decided whether or not they wanted to see the first paragraph. Bloggers, consider that for writing pressure.

Matt Kenny was not unhappy or bitter or cynical or even hard-boiled. He was a pro. He did his job well. Matt’s 50 words don’t tell us that much about him — I liked him a lot, was proud to work with him — but they tell us a lot about us, the news business, and readership.

(Image: that’s me in the picture, in 1972, in the UPI Mexico City Bureau, photo by David Navarro)

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

Entrepreneurship, Writing

I took this screen shot from a website I saw today. I haven’t forgotten to link to it, I skipped the link on purpose.

  1. Would you invest $50,000 in this company?
  2. Isn’t this securities fraud? Against the laws passed about 70 years ago to protect people from shady get-rich schemes involving sales of stock? That’s why I skipped the link. I don’t want to break laws.

I assume the person behind this post doesn’t mean to break the law. We’re all sympathetic with the desperate entrepreneur, but, seriously, do you want to invest in somebody who’s been working 70-80- hours a week for nearly a year, and is really tired, is willing to sell equity like that?

The "dottering old rich uncle who is loose with his checkbook" is a whole ‘nother ball game. As an entrepreneur, do you want dumb investors as partners? People you can take advantage of? Good luck with that one.

He says "I’ll show you the numbers." Too bad you didn’t look at them yourself, a few months ago. I’ve seen the site, read the business description. It looks like you had something that could have succeeded. But you needed partners a while ago. Too bad.

Stupid Grammar Tricks

Writing

Carefully Designed to Make You Look Stupid indeed, from Seth Godin‘s blog, is about apostrophes. What we’d all like to ignore is that stupid grammar mistakes do hurt. I read a lot of business plans and these dumb errors always catch my eye, make me wince, and hurt the flow of the reading.

Here’s a great list of 10 flagrant grammar mistakes that make you look stupid. 

I’ve worked with some brilliant people who simply ignore spelling and grammar. That’s dumb. Why look bad when you don’t have to? Is it that hard to know then from than, or it’s from its? There’s an email culture that encourages sloppy writing, but is it necessary? I do understand why you need to use pigeon writing when thumbing things on a cellphone in txt, but when you’re doing a business plan or any other real document you expect real people to read, why make yourself look bad?