So … Tell Me Three Thing’s That Are Wrong With This Main Headline

This Christmas I got around to watching a Russian film that I’d wanted to see for a while - “9^th Company” - a Soviet version of “Full Metal Jacket”.

On the back of the case the plot summary referred to the historical event on which the film is based and the fact that, shortly after this battle, the Soviet Union had “seized to exist”.

Seized?

Now, I know that my alleged “pedantry” is a family joke (the quote marks are there because I always think the word itself infers an unreasonably held view) but … give me a cotton-picking break!

Yes … I am constantly irritated by the increasingly poor use of apostrophes and capitalisation and the confusion surrounding singular and plural verbs. But, above all, I hate the mistakes of so-called “professionals” who have no reason for getting it wrong - unless it comes with a refund.

Especially signwriters!

The other week I followed a van belonging to a cleaning company that specialises in “Offices … Schools … Clinics … Factories” (none of which warrants an initial capital) but, then, even my car ground a gear when we both spotted that last word was spelt … “Factorys”.

I have also seen a tree surgeon’s vehicle that proclaimed “Tree’s are our business” … which is surpassed only by the fast food outlet facing the main road alongside Manchester United’s ground - which sells “burger’s” and “kebab’s”.

I can forgive the amateurish A-board outside a Timperley café that advertised “Maggies all day breakfast” but fee-charging professed professionals should be cast into eternal damnation!

Talking of inappropriate initial capitals, I recently edited a hospital website where doctors were “Doctors” and nurses were “Nurses” and the hospital, itself, was even a “Hospital” … with a “Car Park”.

Companies with managing directors and chief executives always seem to call them “Managing Directors” and “Chief Executives”. And when updating my will recently I saw that, according to my lawyer, I am a “Husband” and my wife is a “Wife”.

Thank goodness for Patrick O’Neill, editor of Cheshire Life, who shores up my shaky sanity by agreeing with my denial of capitals to such institutions as “Cathedrals”, “Churches”, “Bishops” and the rest. “The Queen, the Pope and my Aunt Bessie take capitals,” he says, “everyone else is lower case.”

And that especially includes restaurant vegetables like “Cauliflower”, “Carrots” and “Peas”. So many menus (thankfully excluding the mainly well-written one at Manchester’s Lowry Hotel) seem to think every word takes an initial capital - including “And”.

Technology is sometimes to blame. Bill Gates is probably largely responsible for the default spellchecker gradually introducing the American “z” into words such as ‘organisation’ and ‘materialise’ as well as losing the ‘u’ in colour and honour.

But the main culprit is the growing view of so many people that these things simply don’t matter any more.

They stick to the belief that Manchester Council “have” announced something, the government “have” done something or such-and-such a charity “have” received a donation.

In Manchester, recently, I saw that Slater Menswear “have” moved to a different location.

Oh no it “haven‘t”.

None of these is a plural entity. They are singular and take “has”. Despite appearances, even Marks and Spencer is singular.

There are other things, of course, that bother me less but still have great amusement value.

Like tautology - the grand art of saying something twice - which has crept into our common language to the degree that we no longer question phrases like “forward planning” (is there any other kind?) or the staple promise of the direct mail industry - “free gift” (sometimes FREE GIFT but never, ever, of course, Free Gift). Are there some that recipients have to pay for?

And then there are the common everyday phrases that don’t mean quite what you think they do.

“Decimated”, for instance, does not mean destroyed or wiped out. It means reduced by one tenth. (Dating back to Roman times when, after a poor performance in battle, the punishment killing of one soldier in every 10 was a somewhat unsubtle way of encouraging a higher level of future commitment from the others.)

And “quantum leap” - which is not another way of saying “giant step”. Anything ‘quantum’ is so infinitesimally tiny that it usually can’t even be measured.

Jargon, too, is always good for a giggle. Like the Manchester lawyer who wrote the definition of a “distance contract” as one where there is no “simultaneous physical presence” of the buyer and seller.

Simultaneous physical presence?

For the rest of us that’s a “meeting”.

Now did I hear muttering, from the back row, that sounded suspiciously like “get a life” ….?

Fair enough! But I’m getting out of here before the mobile phone text generation moves into “Senior Management”.

UN-THAMED

I don’t know David Thame but, if his gloriously grumpy full frontal attack on standards of language in the modern PR industry (and journalism?) is anything to go by, I think we could probably share an amicable pint.

The public relations professionals who have patiently sat through my own training sessions will know my feelings about bad use of apostrophes, capitalisation, singular and plural - as well as phrases that don’t mean what people think they do (‘decimate’, for instance, and ‘quantum leap’).

So I make no apologies for reprinting the following rant from David’s blog. This experienced newspaper and magazine journalist is aiming it at the PR industry but, hopefully, we can all identify with the irritants that lurk behind his fury.

Over to him …

* Please don’t bother with “branding” in the body of the text.

It’s annoying for me and for the sub-editors who have to remove it all. Sometimes we get fed up removing it and simply spike the story.

I’m not going to print, for instance, Fortyspringgardens (one word) simply because someone somewhere has dreamed that up as branding - nor will I print AMEC (instead of Amec) or adidas (instead of Adidas).

It’s not the job of any publication to violate the language to help someone’s marketing strategy. Only proper English words used in the proper way stand a chance…. If your clients insist tell them the story runs a high risk of being spiked and to stop being so daft.

* Congratulations. Oh please, please spare me quotes like this: Norman Halfwit, director at Idiot Developments, said: “I’m delighted to welcome Sh!t Marketing as our fourth tenant.”

Suzy Blonde, director at Sh!t, said: “We’re so happy to bring our expanding business to an Idiot Developments scheme.”

Not only is Sh!t a silly brand name I won’t use - but the quotes add nothing. The day the developer says: “This is a tawdry little scheme and we’re very surprised to see some one daft enough to pay our exorbitant rent” and the tenant says “Our overdraft is staggering and I have these terrible headaches all the time, so we thought what the hell,” is the day I start to use quotes like these.

If it’s just a little story then a little unpretentious (brief) press release will do nicely, thanks. Don’t fabricate daft self-congratulatory quotes.

* Please remember to tell me what your clients do.

Whilst it’s ok for Deloittes not to remind everyone that they are accountants, and no real hardship not to be told that Tesco is a grocer, it isn’t the case that I immediately understand who Hagface Bottombreath LLP are. Lawyers, accountants, procurers of immoral women? I have no idea.

And when you do say who your clients are, please don’t imagine this is an ideal opportunity for salesmanship. If they are architects please say “architects” and not “consultants to the built environment” or, worse still, “the world’s leading consultants to the built environment”  or, more hilariously, “the East Midlands leading consultants to the Built Environment.”

I’ll strike stuff like this out and replace it with “architects” and I promise that no subliminal message of their global greatness will remain.

And whilst I’m riding my high horse at a gallop, might I add: first, that “LLP” and “Ltd” will also get struck out? I’m writing news stories, not legal documents, and besides NO ONE CARES; second, if companies describe themselves, in their own PR, as “major” or “leading” it simply makes me think they are minor and following: let your reputation speak for itself, its much safer.

* Adjectives.

Best avoided unless incontestably true, especially since they are almost always either exhausted old warhorses (prime, prestigious, buoyant) that will never, ever, find their way into copy I’m writing - or simply misleading and wrong.

I’m afraid an office block in Bury or an industrial unit in Stockport is never - will never be - prestigious.

And anyone who can’t think of a better way to describe a busy market than to call it “buoyant” should be invited to check the dictionary meaning or, better still, a thesaurus.

* Don’t play around with quantities.

In other words if your client has completed 24 projects say “24 projects” not “nearly 25 projects” or “more than 20 projects”.

The phrase “more than” is only (only) applicable if the amount “more than” is very small compared with the original number, for instance: more than £1m is acceptable if the price paid is actually £1,001,000. But if the price was £1.1m then say so.

* Picture captions.

Captions like the following are absolutely not acceptable - pictures get junked, and art editors have hysterics, if the are used:  ”Four members of the Idiot Developments team” or “Sally Blonde (centre) and the winning team” or “The new recruits at Sh!t Marketing”. 

What’s wrong with all of these is a failure to comply with this simple rule: YOU MUST IDENTIY EVERYONE IN A PICTURE, BY NAME, LEFT TO RIGHT. 

* Says and said.

Amazing how many people get this wrong. In features people say things, in news stories things were said. Features present tense, news past tense.

* Always use English, not Latin.

This may sound obvious - but the house style of all but the silliest publications insists you use English words, rather than the Latin alternatives, if you can.

So it’s never “per sq ft” (per is Latin), which should be replaced with “a sq ft”, and likewise it’s never “etc” but use instead “and so on.” I.e. and e.g are replaced with “for instance” or “for example”.  

Naturally all convoluted legal phrases based on Latin must be anglicised. Having said this, where a Latin phrase is being used as a Latin phrase, then it’s ok. Ditto for French words and phrases and, on the rare occasions we use them in normal English, Italian, German, and the rest.

(Note that I didn’t say “etc” at the end of that sentence, but I did allow myself “ditto” - Italian, I think, and ultimately from dicere, the Latin verb ‘to say’ - at the beginning, but you’ll be getting the hang of this by now…..)

* Don’t use full stops if you can avoid them.

For instance sq ft and not sq. ft. or, worse still, sq.ft. (without a space). Similarly, it’s Mr, Mrs etc.

* Never use superscript or subscript. So its 10 sq ft and not 10 ft².

* Capital letters are a curse - remember this and you’ve got to the root of modern English print media style.

It is never Director of Marketing, only director of marketing. A development is not a Development. The tax partner is not the Tax Partner. Nobody signs Contracts, only contracts.

In the best publications - including almost all those for whom I write - this policy is carried to what looks like extremes. A meeting of prime ministers - for instance - has no capitals, although the Prime Minister might. So - no capital letters in job titles and never, ever, use capitals for nouns (unless they really are proper nouns).

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

Ask most businesspeople what a news release is and their response will probably sound suspiciously like the definition of an advertisement.Because, what they rarely take into account is that most notorious of four letter words … NEWS.

And if no-one else spots the difference the News Editor who reads it certainly will – because they will not print a news release that offers no valid contribution to a news or feature page.

It’s essential, therefore, that copy is presented in the right language and format. And that does not include the bright sparks at Bedford Instruments who once proudly announced that:

“Nitric Oxide is now recognised as a selective pulmonary vasodilator in adults and neonates…”

Anyone who has ever been tempted to work “selective pulmonary vasodilator” into a critical, eye-catching, ‘intro’ paragraph probably doesn’t need to be told what a “neonate” is. For the rest of us … it’s a baby. But if we needed to refer to a baby in a news release we’d probably call it a baby … errr, wouldn’t we?

Another personal favourite is the thrusting professional, in the press office of Eastleigh Borough Council in Hampshire, who allowed personal confusion to spill into a news release describing parkland trees that had been …

“provided and planted by specialist approved contractors Landmark Design and Build of Staines or Chertsey or something like that in North Surrey near London where there are silver birches and golf courses and things.”

No wonder the media is often derisory about news releases!

So what’s the solution? Well … it’s part creative and part mechanical.

First – find the news angle. What’s different? Not from a corporate point of view but for the person in the street? And, most importantly, what will the media consider different … and, therefore, newsworthy?

Second – gather the appropriate information to “stand up” the news angle.

And then – present it in a form that gives the story the best possible chance of being published.

Easier said than done sometimes – even for professionals!

STYLE

Aim for a clear, reader-friendly, mid-market style.

If you’re targeting a particular publication and can demonstrate a basic knowledge of their copy style then it’s a good idea to do so.

(A piece of university research showing that pulse vegetables contain an ingredient that induces wind was headlined by the Daily Telegraph along the lines of “Pulses cause flatulence – research reveals” while the Sun captured the essence with “Beanz meanz fartz”.)

INFORMATION

So, what sort of information do you need to begin?

Who - are you writing about
What - are they doing?
Where - is this taking place?
When - is it happening (past events should be left dateless. On no account say “recently” – which tends to flag up an out-of-date story.
How - is it being done?

… and Why.

Somewhere in this information you will, hopefully, find your news angle.

PRESENTATION

Keep your news release crisp, concise, objective, factual … and in plain English. Avoid being overtly promotional. (Tip - keep opinions within the spokesperson’s quotes.)

The intro is the most important paragraph because it’s an attention-grabber that briefly describes what the story is about and makes people want to read on.

Keep paragraphs short - and the whole release should be no longer than 400 words or so.

Watch out for tautology – such as “the business was first founded.” (Tch tch!)

Use singular and plural correctly. “Trafford Council have announced …”, “the company have said …” are singular in both cases - so use “has”!

Try to avoid jargon. I once re-wrote a technical feature that described a “simultaneous physical presence”. Got that one? (It was a “meeting”!)

And I’ve been known to write to newspapers about apostrophes! Mediaeval torture techniques would be too good for the signwriter who wrote that one of the fast food outlets beside Manchester United football ground sells Burger’s and Kebab’s. Good grief!

Date the release at the end. Give a contact name, telephone number and, if appropriate, an e-mail address.

Now you’ve finished it … who can you send it to?

That, as they say, is a whole different story.