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Wordophilia - February 2009

The Word Philes 3

February 28th 2009 22:39
The Word Philes
The Word Philes

This week, The Word Philes looks at two examples of sales writing. Marketing is big business, especially on the Web: with so many different companies offering similar services, the ability to capture a reader's attention and spark interest in one or two paragraphs is critical.

Today's example texts come from two companies selling web site design services. Have a look at them both and decide with which organisation you would rather spend your hard-earned business loan.

Today having a website is not an option but a necessity and {Company A} is the perfect partner to design your own website to run your business and show your place on the market without the headache to build it and on the top of this will help you to manage this project and run the web site.

Whatever you are an individual, self-employed, a start up or an established company. {Company A} get the solution you need to start selling your products, subscribtions or increase your sales through the web as communicate information or get a better return on investment to improve marketing and strategy, reference your website on high debit engine search such as google and others, show your place on the market.

{Company B} is a website design agency based in London. We specialise in creating and communicating clear, compelling brand and marketing messages across interactive media.

By combining rigorous analysis with creative spark, and integrating fresh perspectives with hands-on practical experience, {Company B} define, create, build and communicate brands. Be it professional website design, online marketing, website development, content management systems, flash animations, or a viral marketing campaign, we have the flexibility to work with clients in the way that best meets their objectives - no set solutions or formulaic approaches here.

Company B, right? But why?

Both texts try to sound dependable and reassuring. Company B uses a few more buzzword expressions, which management types seem to like, but adds a promise of personalisation and flexibility that many companies need.

Apart from the service description, Company B also has much better copywriters. A company's web site is its public face: any errors on that page will be reflected back on the organisation and not on the site creator. Unfortunately, Company A makes some fundamental mistakes. The first sentence is far too long and complicated. It would be better if it were split into two parts. The second begins with an incomplete phrase, which should be joined with the overly-long second sentence. This paragraph also has spelling errors and missing capitalisation.

Consequently, the main message transmitted by Company A is that any written content on a site they design will quite likely be badly formulated and erroneous. The message - the most important part of any writing - will be lost in rambling phrases. This is a real shame as most customers won't stop to consider the possibility that the site structure and functionality may be excellent. With a little extra work and effort, Company A could have had as much chance of winning a contract as Company B.

Once again, the lesson to learn is to examine your work carefully before publishing and to have it checked by a third party. An occasional mistake in an article is inevitable, but marketing text requires a great deal more attention to detail. Missing an error can cost you your client, or even your whole business.

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Common Mistakes

February 27th 2009 11:46
Too Many Mistakes
Go on. Click it. You know you want to.

There are some words which suffer terrible abuse from writers. Frequently, marketing consultants pick these poor, defenceless pieces of text out of a dark, slimy part of their brain and dump them onto paper. There, the words are slapped around and told that they have new meanings or are forced to wear the horrible, fluorescent pink and green "Operation Buzzword" uniform.

In an attempt to help these over-worked, under-appreciated little pixel pals, Wordophilia proudly presents the real definitions and usages of some of the more battered among them.

Unique: one of a kind. Cannot be qualified - in other words, an object cannot be 'very unique' or 'quite unique' - it is either unique or it is not. No middle ground.

Irrespective: without regard for. Ugly and over-used. You're better off with the far more handsome 'regardless'.

Perfect: without flaw. Another absolute, like unique. Something is either perfect or it is not: there is no "very perfect". Often used to express a liking for something ('almost perfect for me' and the like), but is better replaced with more expressive words.

Capitol: a building where the state legislature meets. The Capitol (with a capital) is the one in Washington, D.C. (which is the capital).

etc.: et cetera, literally 'and the others' or 'and the rest' (yes, I studied Latin and yes, it should have a period after it). Horribly abused when writers run out of examples. This abbreviation should never appear at the end of a phrase which starts "for example": that's a total cop-out. Give a few examples and end the phrase. Should also never be used mid-sentence.

Worthwhile: returns value for the time spent. Should only be used before a verb, as it is a measure of the value of an action. "A worthwhile film" is an impossibility: the film makes worthwhile viewing, perhaps. Few people will complain about this one, except poor little Worthwhile herself. She really hates that pink-and-green suit.

Literally: in a strict sense. "He arrived home and was literally dead from exhaustion" is a phrase to end a novel, since the character is no longer living. Modern usage allows the variation of meaning to include "virtually" or "almost", but many people consider this incorrect. Find another expression to use.

Peruse: read thoroughly and carefully. Frequently misused in the place of "skim", which is appropriate for reading a document quickly. "Scan", bizarrely, can have both meanings.

Could care less: an expression rather than a word. This one always amuses me: "I could care less," they say. Well, that's good - it shows they are at least a little interested. If they'd said "I couldn't care less", I'd have been upset.

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Job Roundup

February 25th 2009 23:21
Jobs Logo
Work, work, work!

After all that discussion about writing, I thought I'd stop frying your poor brain cells for a day and do a quick run around the various writing sites to see what's up for grabs at the moment in the freelance world.

[ Click here to read more ]
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Cultural References

February 24th 2009 23:40
Al-salaam 'alaykum
Al-salaam 'alaykum

A little while back, the post about colloquialisms discussed the possibilities and pitfalls of including local slang words in writing. Today's post looks a little closer at the question of cultural references.

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The Word Philes 2

February 23rd 2009 19:39
The Word Philes
The Word Philes

This week's entry in The Word Philes is a blog. Let me give you a bit of background before I point you to it, though.

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First Or Third Person, Part 3

February 22nd 2009 16:30
First person or Third person

As promised, the third and final post in this very short series about first- and third-person writing is to provide a few examples of their usage.

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First Or Third Person, Part 2

February 21st 2009 19:40
First person or Third person

Yesterday, I discussed some of the advantages and disadvantages of writing in the first person ("I") as opposed to the third ("S/He"). Today, we'll look at the third person. In deference to a commenter's request, examples will follow in a third post!

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First Or Third Person, Part 1

February 20th 2009 23:48
First person or Third person

After yesterday's post about humanising the hero of a story, I thought I'd talk about the two normal options for tale-telling: first or third person.

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Humanising Heroes

February 19th 2009 20:28
Roger Zelazny
The God Of Writing

Relating to the hero or heroine of a novel is vital for readers. This is one of the basic rules of successful storytelling: after all, if the main character is too distant from the reader in terms of motivation or psychological make-up, it becomes almost impossible to understand or sympathise with their actions. If there's no empathy, the hero's journey through the tale becomes uninteresting and unimportant.

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Miss Direction

February 18th 2009 13:10
Corrections Officer Costume
Do as you're told!

You'll have to forgive the awful pun (and the image from costumebuy.net). The new traffic stats email just arrived from the Orble Gods and I've been looking at where most of the visits have been. You know, all that link analysis and other funky stuff.

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Career Opportunities

February 17th 2009 11:49
Paid Blogging Job
Paid Blogging Job

Thanks to everyone who wished me a speedy recovery yesterday (or early this morning). General Vit C's counter-attack on the Evil Head Cold's troops appears to have had reasonable success and I'm a lot better today!

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Head Cold

February 17th 2009 00:27
The beast is within me now. It sits behind my eyes, burning the retinas, making me blink painfully and forcing me to focus more than usual on each word as it flickers onto the screen.

Since the first waking moment of the day, it has fed on my essence, growing stronger, larger, heavier with every passing hour. It seeks to fill all the corners of my head, those private places of musing; to fill them with its thick, mucus-like secretions, inhibiting thought and slowing my movements. It begins to spread its dark influence further, working down into my neck, my throat, scratching and clawing at my larynx


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Mentally Disturbed Writers

February 15th 2009 20:36
TED logo
TED says...

Just a short entry today since I have an important anniversary this evening. One of the posters over at MyLot (that's a paid-to-participate forum place) mentioned a rather interesting little talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. She wrote a very successful book called "Eat, Pray, Love" and here discusses some of the implications of trying to continue writing when, quite possibly, she's been as successful as she ever will.

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The Word Philes 1

February 13th 2009 19:20
The Word Philes
The Word Philes

Today I'm starting what will hopefully be a regular weekly post on Wordophilia: The Word Philes. Each week, I'll keep my eyes open for a particularly remarkable piece of writing and will review it here. It could be something terrible, interesting or wonderful: the entry will either be a bit of random promotion for some great work or a critique of mistakes to be avoided. In the latter case, the writer will, of course, remain anonymous!

[ Click here to read more ]
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Attention Writers!

February 12th 2009 17:25
Technorati logo
Das Uber Blog Catalog

News today on three items that could be useful for budding writers. First off, the Helium Marketplace has picked up nicely after a slow start to the year: there's quite a batch of titles available at the moment for the journalists among us. They still have their $1 bonus running if you're the first person to write to a title, too.

[ Click here to read more ]
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A Question Of Style

February 11th 2009 20:25
Ben Elton and J.R.R.Tolkien
Comedy and satire or serious writing?

Some people are very lucky: they can write successfully in a variety of styles. Others stick to one tone. The hard thing is knowing which you're good at - and in certain cases, that can be a very difficult assessment to make.

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Colloquialisms

February 10th 2009 21:19
Dick Van Dyke
Great smile, fun acting, crap accent

Over the past few days I've been considering a difficult question. Since my connection's been yo-yoing, I've had time to take another look at one of the novel ideas I had a while back and try to get a bit more written. The place I got stuck is with colloquialisms.

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Yo' Gramma's Punctuation

February 8th 2009 00:24
Not smarter than your average politician
Ah, the quotes!

In writing, there are few subjects which will cause as much emotional debate as punctuation and grammar. It's a never-ending discourse, frequently based on the same opposing arguments: on the one hand, the "old-school" writers who believe we should punctuate properly and structure sentences according to strict rules; on the other, the folks who believe language is an ever-changing mish-mash of current conventions and should adapt and change as life dictates.

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Bad Blog! Bad!

February 1st 2009 02:07
Bad blog layout
Modern art or bad blog?

There's been a flurry of activity this week over at Bloggercises here on Orble. It all started when I posted a whine about AdSense revenue - or rather, a badly enunciated remark about the tiny revenue we small-time bloggers see from it! Since then, Mr Bloggercise (that'd be Chris) has responded and continued to look into the idea of blogging for a living. The posts make for excellent reading, whether you're a serious online writer or just keeping a little journal.

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