Hello, friend! Welcome to the 42nd edition of The Write Fit, a fortnightly newsletter from Sarah Mitchell and Dan Hatch at Typeset. Sarah is cracking on with the results of the State of Writing 2021 research and wants you to get a preview of the report dropping today, Wednesday, 28 April.
(Was this email forwarded to you? Get your own copy of future newsletters here.)
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Have content marketers thrown in the towel?
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First the good news.
The majority of respondents to the State of Writing 2021 survey have extensive experience with writing and publishing. The results of the second annual survey conducted by Typeset and Mantis Research give us a glimpse into a mature group of business communicators and content marketers.
They are exactly the kind of people we want to learn from.
More than half of the 204 respondents completing the 2021 survey reported they have at least 11 years of personal experience in writing and publishing. Only 19% said they had less than five years of experience.
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They’re an overwhelmingly optimistic bunch, too, despite the challenges presented by COVID-19. They said they’re still on top of their game with “optimistic”, “energised” and “inspired” the top answers. Less than a third are feeling “overwhelmed” and very few are feeling “bored” or “confused”.
But here’s the bad news.
Despite the impressive amount of experience in writing and publishing, 70% of respondents said they’re only somewhat satisfied or not satisfied at all with the performance of their written content in the past 12 months.
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Something is clearly wrong.
It could be that 61% of businesses plan to increase the writing they produce, but only 39% are planning to increase their budgets in the next 12 months. I think we can all agree it’s a recipe for disaster.
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Another reason could be, inexplicably, nearly half of business communicators still struggle to know what their audiences want to read. (The full report offers insight into why that may be.)
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My personal opinion is more focus on quality assurance would go a long way to improving effectiveness – and satisfaction with results. Still, only a third of business communicators are having their copy proofread before publication.
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While it was a tough year for many, respondents felt the investment made in written content in the past 12 months was worth it. That’s good news.
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And it was heartening to learn that written content is helping to achieve business goals even though there’s clearly more work to be done in this area.
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It’s one thing to get the results of research, but what should you do with the information and how can it help you improve your writing effectiveness?
This year we asked some of the top business communicators in the world for their insight into these findings and have included their wisdom to inform and inspire. The report features commentary from:
- Doug Kessler
- Michele Linn
- Andy Crestodina
- Astrid Fackelmann
- Janine Pares
- Joe Pulizzi
- Erika Heald
The report has many more findings than we can include here. You can review the whole thing on the Typeset website.
Thank you to everyone who took the survey. We’d like to continue this research into writing effectiveness every year and your participation is important. We’d also like to extend our congratulations to Jennifer Lyons who won the draw for a $100 Amazon gift card.
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Dan and I would love to hear your thoughts on the State of Writing research, either now or after you’ve read the full report. Don’t hesitate to get in touch or simply reply to this email.
Sarah Mitchell
28 April 2021
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There’s an old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip where Calvin says to Hobbes “I like to verb words”. Hobbes understandably responds, “What?” Calvin goes on to explain, “I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when ‘access’ was a thing? Now it’s something you do. It got verbed”.
The strip then shows Calvin and Hobbes walking away and Calvin says, “Verbing weirds language”.
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) says, “English nouns commonly pass into use as verbs”. CMOS calls the resulting verbs “denominal verbs”. Using nouns as verbs is known as “verbing, verbification, verbifying” or “denomilisation”.
I agree with Calvin; verbing does weird language. But it’s been occurring for centuries and it’s not likely to disappear anytime soon. However, verbing does seem to be happening faster than ever. You can now friend or unfriend someone on Facebook. If you need to know how to do something, just google it. Or you can skype or text someone to ask.
When is verbing acceptable and when should it be avoided? CMOS says, “in formal prose, recently transformed words should be used cautiously if at all”. I suggest before you use a verbification, ask yourself a few questions:
- Is the word in the dictionary? Sometimes you’ll find a word listed but it will be marked “colloquial”.
- Is it likely to pass the test of time, or is it just the latest buzzword? Is it already a cliché?
- Does it do a job no other word or expression can do just as well?
- Will your audience understand how you’ve used the word and can they relate to it? Is the verbified word industry jargon?
- Are you using it to make your writing easier to understand or just to sound cool?
With these questions in mind, I can think of many verbified words that should never be used outside of the corporate world. In fact, Dan sent me an email saying, “other bugbears are people writing ‘we’re architecting the design, he’s actioning that now, or I’d like to workshop this’ ”.
I would add instances of “do you have a solve for this?” and “let’s focus on the build”. But my pet peeves are cases of nominalisations, so we can weird that in the next Super Grammar!
Wendy Wood
Proofreader
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Missed a recent edition of The Write Fit?
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Are you suffering from a “Mojo Deficit”?
Doug Kessler provides blistering commentary in State of Writing 2021 (make sure to read the report). In the Velocity newsletter, he’s asking marketers to “send out your own unique mix of confidence, attitude, energy, passion, belief, mission and twinkle”. Check out Doug’s advice, “Meaning, metrics and mojo: the 3 keys to B2B marketing today”.
Are you using the right marketing channels?
Rand Fishkin provides an excellent breakdown of the state of modern marketing including where and how you should think about investing money and effort. The graphs are fantastic.
A really useful video on consent
If you were one of those unfortunate people who saw the Australian Government’s woeful campaign to teach teenagers about consent, bathe your eyes in the brilliance of great copywriting and clear messaging in the Thames Police #consentiseverything site. Make sure to watch the video.
Don’t stop believin’
This Journey song got Sarah through a lot of grey days in high school and it might help you to push on if you’re not experiencing the performance you want in your written content. (A fact checker would have told Steve Perry there is no such place as South Detroit though).
Until next time,
Happy writing!
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