there, their or they’re?

With one exception*, my writing articles and blog entries assume some basic knowledge - if you are writing for business purposes, I assume you know the obvious rules of capital letters to start sentences, common spelling rules and the idea of paragraphs.

So I have never written about there/their/they’re - until now!

I have seen these words misused a number of times recently, and getting an email today from someone who calls herself a writer with the sentence “Their are some great news items ” was the last straw for me! (How can they own ‘are some great news’?)

If this is obvious to you, I apologise! If it isn’t, I hope this helps and I apologise for not helping you sooner!

There, they’re or their?

All 3 words sound exactly the same, but have totally different meanings and uses. Using the wrong word can make a sentence very confusing or just make the writer look silly - neither is what you want in your business (or other!) writing.

They’re is short for they are - so it is used as “They’re running late today”

There is not here - so it is used as “We will go there tomorrow”

Their shows they own something - it is used as “John and Betty will bring their car, too”

Imagine the following sentence with the wrong there/they’re/their spellings…

“They’re bringing their own car so we will meet them there.”

Use your words wisely!

* the exception is this article on basic grammar rules which I wrote to help a trainer with a communications module he was teaching.

Check presentation

I often mention checking the details, expression and grammar of your business communications. It is also very important to check the presentation as well as that is one of the first things people notice before they even read a word.

Checking means in the final form as well as in drafts, too. 

I know I have prepared something carefully on my computer, checked everything carefully and then uploaded it the internet to find it does not present properly live. Sometimes it was something simple like a bad image reference, but other times I couldn’t find a fault, only a solution!

This is why good printers and designers will provide you with proofs before printing starts, just to be sure nothing has moved or changed colour during the preparation process. When checking proofs, you have to be very focused and detail orientated.

I followed a link to a website recently. The entire site was a blog (and we’ll leave having a blog as your business website for another discussion) and I read through a few pages of it. One page was an article listing 10 points that literally looked like:

1. 1. this is our first point
2. 2. and our second point…
3. 3. and so on…
   11. closing paragraph one
   12. closing paragraph two

To give her the benefit of the doubt, I assume she had the article written elsewhere with one set of numbers, added it to her blog and selected numbered list again. Human error, probably; carelessness to not check the final result, definitely.

What is possibly worse are the sites you visit to find little red crosses instead of images, even when you visit again months later. It certainly gives the impression that they never look at their own site or pay attention to details - which is probably not a good impression to give prospective clients.

In my next post, I will cover some of the details I always check for in a final presentation draft.

Keep up to date when you write

It is important to keep track of the date and what is happening if you want your writing  (and other communications) to be credible and respected.

I heard a perfect example of this morning. As part of a news item in the 10 am radio news, the newscaster said “… will be announced later this month.” Of course, at 10am on the 29th February, there really isn’t much of the month left for things to happen in! It was probably a simple mistake (perhaps it should have been “… later next month…”,  but it stood out more than the actual news itself.

While people can allow for small mistakes, and sometimes won’t even notice them, mistakes can change the impact of what you write (or say) and that can be costly. So remember to check:

• you have the correct dates
• you refer to the appropriate season (for example, today is summer and tomorrow is autumn in Australia, but not in the northern hemisphere)
• when unusual, but important, changes occur, such as leap years, daylight savings starts/ends and when Easter is

Take particular care when you are writing something in advance. For example, if you write blog or newsletter posts weeks or even months ahead of publishing them, it can be easy to refer to current details instead of the relevant future ones.

SMS shorthand

Like pretty much anyone else, if I am sending a SMS message I will use short forms and abbreviated words - it’s quicker and easier on a small screen and keyboard.

However, as a professional writer, I cringe every time I see shortened words in other contexts.

There is no need to use SMS shotcuts on a website, in a newsletter or blog, or in any other business or professional docuemnt. Personally, I don’t think there’s much need to use it in personal emails or letters, either, but I’ll leave that alone!

Reading information about a business, we want to know if we can trust the busienss and that they will provide a professinal service*. If the business can’t even be bothered writing out full words, they do not inspire trust that they will provide much for customers.

Examples…

1. Only days ago a friend forwarded me an email she had received. The subject of the email was “Here’s to a gr8 ‘08!” and she forwarded it to me with the comment that she hadn’t even bothered reading it because the subject “really put me off!”

With something like an email subject, you only have one chance to entice people to read it, so don’t lose that chance by not using full words.

2. A while ago I was asked to review someone’s website for a service based business where she really needed people to trust her. The entire homepage was full of U (instead of you), lower case letters and other SMS-type words. Had I not been reviewing it, I would not have even read the page  - again, you only have a short time to grab a visitor’s interest on a website so make first impressions good.

So, go back to basics - use good grammar, spelling and expression to present a clear message even if you think your audience understands or relates to SMS texting language. Understanding it is not the same as respecting it away from mobile phones.

* By professional service, I mean service that is appropriate, courteous and business -like so it includes customer service in a retail setting as well as services from a service provider such as an accountant, lawyer or writer.

Capital letters…

There are certain times when you must use a capital letter:

• to start a sentence
• for a proper noun (e.g. the name of a person, place or event)
• in acronyms (e.g. the ATO, ASAP, TV)

The rest of the time, lower case letters are not only suitable - they are correct and preferred.

It Is Very Annoying To Read A Sentence Where Every Word Starts With A Capital Letter Isn’t It? And it takes more time and effort to type, too! Despite what some marketers would have you think, these extra capital letters do not make your message clearer or more important, and they certainly won’t bring in more sales. In fact, many people will see all those extra capitals and consider it a tacky attempt to manipulate them and therefore are less likely to even read their message.

It also just looks like you don’t know much about grammar or appearing professional.

And I’m not just talking about using capitals for every word, either. For instance, I received an email stating:

The first of these will address issues in Web Writing. The other two will focus on Web Accessibility: a half day Overview workshop and a full day Techniques Workshop. These are excellent programs.

There is no reason for ‘web writing’, ’web accessibility’ or ‘techniques workshop’ to start with capitals - they are not proper nouns and shouldn’t be treated a such. As for ‘overview’, I can’t imagine why someone thought it needed a capital letter!

I find misuse of capitals bad enough - but for someone advertising a writing course, I expect much better than this! I wonder if they addressed the issue of using capitals in web writing - online, capitals are considered as yelling so really should be avoided in your web and email writing.

Check details - and check again

Let’s face it not everyone will notice or care about a couple of small spelling or grammatical mistakes. But getting the details correct is absolutely critical.

Make sure you go back and check details in your work - whether it is something you have written, a professional wrote for you or a graphic designer has worked on for you. Ideally, get someone else to check your document just for details.

If in doubt at how easy it can be to make such mistakes, here are some real life examples…

1. A marketing flyer for a local shopping strip where each shop added their ad looked great except for one little detail - they spelt the name of the suburb incorrectly! And I know because I saw the flyer in circulation so it went out without being corrected.
2. A course registration form included a second page with the following under the header:
   Invoice Date:             18 December 2008

   Event:                        Course Name, Melbourne – 20 February 2008
   Obviously, prompt payment isn’t an issue with these people!

3. A business sent out invitations to an event that cost them a lot of money to arrange. The invitations were sent out stating a day and date that didn’t match so they risked many people not turning up.
4. 500 business cards were printed with the wrong mobile phone number because no one checked the original source. Luckily, the problem was noticed before any cards were given out.
5. 100,000 letterhead were printed before anyone realised the disclaimer mentioned another (related) company name. Could you afford this sort of reprint?
6. a book on small business quoted someone but used the wrong first name for her, which put her offside and made it hard for readers to research that woman
7. the male CEO of a Melbourne company was named in a photo in an industry magazine - however, the photo was a woman and the article was not even related to the CEO or his company.

 So while you won’t be alone with such mistakes, your credibility is better if you take the time to make sure details are present and correct. The cost of not checking can be huge.

Always double-check your writing

Writing well is more than just getting words onto the page - you also need to check the correct words and spelling are there to be read.

I was looking at a website the other day and I’m sure they didn’t proof read it - maybe they didn’t actually read it at all once it was written. On their contact page it states:

Submit your answers and reply or call at no time.

The bit that jumped out at me was ‘call at no time’ - not exactly a welcoming message for a business! The mistake of ‘no’ instead of ‘any’ is simple to make but has a big impact on the final meaning of your words.

Of course, ’submit your answers and reply’ doesn’t make sense either. Reading over their work (or getting someone else to read it for them) could have ended with webcopy that made sense.

So always read through and check your writing says what you wanted it to say, without missing words.

Spam writing

Writing spam? Don’t you just want to delete it rather than create more of it???

 Occasionally, I read a piece of spam that gets into my inbox - mostly by accident and sometimes as research

I can see various spam emails being useful as examples of bad writing so I can show you how to improve your writing - or give you a giggle at bad writing anyway!

For instance, I got one yesterday that started with “Kind time of day of ladies and gentlemen” - why limit yourself to good morning or good afternoon when you can cover both at once! Obviously, a simple “Greetings”, “Hello” or “Dear friend” would be my suggestion.

Then, there was “Get $999 you download our casino.” Hmmm, a casino that will give me money to download them? I am very curious as to how I could possible download a casino - but not so curious I clicked on the link A better way to say it would have been “Get $999 when you download our casino software” or “Join our casino and get $999″.

And “same problems. somewhere in the world.” could probably have been better written as “The same problems occur throughout the world” or “Someone in the world has the same problem as you.”

I could go on and on, but thought I’d finish with mentioning a blog entry that shows you how to write better spam - enjoy!

Trusting suppliers

Outsourcing is a valuable activity in business - you gain expert assistance, time and completed projects.

Yet many business owners choose to not trust their suppliers. Now obviously you need to maintain control and ensure suppliers are providing you with what you’re paying for, but you are also paying for their expertise.

I recently did some webcopy for a client. Amongst other things, I rewrote their about us page - both adjusting the content (as requested by the client) and improving the flow and grammar of the page.

The feedback from the client was ‘that’s good thanks, but we made a few changes to the about us text’. That’s great - they should take ownership and make changes so it is accurate and they are comfortable with the final copy.

However, when I looked at their changes I saw that they had replaced a lot of my text with their grammatically incorrect text again. By grammatically incorrect, I’m talking about sentences like ‘we started our business because my son needed…’ without indicating who ‘me’ actually is. It ended up not making much sense and looking very amateurish, unfortunately.

The point is that if you’re going to pay a professional writer, then take their advice on grammar, flow and style, even if you want to change the tone or content of the work.

I’ve heard graphic designers, accountants, web designers and database programmers express this frustration, too. In all instances, the professional has done what the client wanted but is disappointed in the result as they are aware of the errors. The professional is also unlikely to add that project to their portfolio so you won’t get any free advertising that way, either.

 Question a professional by all means, make a suggestion even, but listen to what they tell you before you assume your way is best.

If you are not ready to take professional advice and direction, then maybe you aren’t ready to give up any control of your business and outsourcing won’t help you. 

Outsourcing will help you and save you time, but only if you are ready to accept that help.

Writing effective ads

I have seen some ads lately that just don’t do justice to the product/service they are supposed to be promoting. Some are poorly designed so I won’t touch them, but others look great but the words let it down.

The key is knowing the purpsoe of the ad - is it to get website traffic, explain a new product, attract a certain type of person, increase sales, or …

Once you know the purpose, you can make the headline, graphics and text suit that purpose.

Next is knowing your audience - using terms like ‘lol’, ‘RAM’, ‘html’, ‘ftp’ and ‘ppc’ will work if you are attracting IT specialists but not so well if you are after people in their 80s.

The hard part is then adding enough information to meet your purpose but not so much you overwhelm or bore people. This is definitely the stage where it is valuable to write it, leave it and then review it a few days later.

As well as the above points, you need the basic writing rules, too - good spelling, correct grammar and an easy-to-read format and style. Put it all together and your ads will be much more effective than the ones I mentioned earlier.

Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs