Our Blog

When used correctly, your style guide can be a helpful tool.  When used incorrectly, it can cause confusion and suck up time.

Don’t let your style guide derail your sane train! Bone up on these tried-and-true tips:

1.    Don’t put it off. Always have your style guide set before you start writing.  A style guide will help you establish, guide and rein in all stakeholder expectations over the course of the project.

Whatever you do, don’t fool yourself into believing you can write now and create your style guide later. You probably won’t. And if you do, rest assured, it’ll be a painful and messy process.

Tip: If you already have a style guide, give it a good once-over. What should change, if anything? What should remain the same? If you’ve found yourself ignoring major sections of the style guide in the past, consider updating it. A tight, clean style guide is a happy style guide!

2.    Make sure you “get it” get it. Don’t make assumptions about your style guide. If anything seems wonky, illogical, or even just “off,” clarify it. That goes double if other people are going to be using it, too.

Tip: Everything’s relative. Words especially. Nail down slippery terms by defining what each one means to you. If you’re going for a “conversational” tone, put together a comparison chart:

 Conversational is …

3.    Bob for phrases. Okay, so, you’ve nailed down the definition of conversational. Great. Now, go a step further.  Hunt down real-world examples of conversational copy. Websites, blogs, Twitter feeds—they’re all easily accessible content mines. When you see a turn of phrase you like, copy and paste that baby into a spreadsheet.

In a nutshell, build out the left-hand column of the diagram above.

Tip: The word bank is supposed to serve as inspiration. You should not copy phrases verbatim from your word bank into your content. In other words, don’t plagiarize.

4.    Check in. After you’ve revised your style guide, run through it again. Make sure you’re on board before proceeding. This might seem tedious. And time-consuming. That’s because it is.  But, it’s the only, only, only way to stay on point.

Tip: When revising a style guide (especially if you’re not the person who created it) give justifications for your changes. This can be a short intro paragraph, or comments in the word document. Or, it could simply be verbal. Whatever you do, though, justify.

5.    Honor and obey your style guide. Inevitably, maybe after a few happy years with your style guide, you will see another one. It will appear fancy and wonderful. And you will think, “Hey, no fair! I want a fancy and wonderful style guide.”

You will be tempted to stray. DON’T. Stay the course. Ditching your style guide mid-project, or—dread of all dreads!—near the end of a project, will only lead to heartbreak. 

Tip: If you’re working on an ongoing project, and you’re not happy with the style guide, consider revising your style guide for the next major content rollout. 

Comments

Tags: Add new tag
Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, Uncategorized, Web Writing

When I found out that my dog Sam might have a brain tumor, I went straight to my computer to learn everything I could. A Google search led me to a pet website with articles ranging from light-hearted topics, such as pet costumes, to serious subjects, such as health conditions.

The article on canine brain tumors was very informative and left me feeling a little sad, but hopeful. And then, I reached the last line. It read: "I hope you found this article enjoyable."

My mouth dropped and I said out loud to no one, "What? Are you serious? No, I did not enjoy this article, you oompa loompa. My dog might be dying."

I knew, because I understand some things about content management systems and re-usable page templates, that this line appears at the end of every article on the site.

Aside from it being completely inappropriate for the topic at hand – especially when the reader is likely a pet parent on an emotional roller coaster – it’s just not good practice. What’s the benefit to the user in this little pat-yourself-on-the-back, lazy approach to ending the article? Give me something I can use – what’s my next step, where can I get more information?

If you absolutely must use static content on a page template that will be re-used, make absolutely sure it fits for every possible content type or topic, or risk losing your credibility and your users. Better yet, think carefully about whether it serves the users’ needs in the first place.

Comments

Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, Web Writing

Fake celebrity Tweeting is web writing. On crack.

Web writers have to adopt appropriate voice and tone while remaining pithy. Fake celebrity Tweeters have to adopt appropriate voice and tone while remaining super pithy—and telling pudding jokes. It’s a hard job.

Here are some of our favorites:  

• “Economy?… TRASH!” @OscarTheeGrouch

• “Even though he looked like a wax figure, Mr. Jackson could do a strange backward jig, the likes of which I’ve never seen. He will be missed!” @HalfPintIngalls

•  “Hulk smash!” @incredible_rawr
•  “zippity hippity dop! zooba shawow! with the people, and the places, and the ohhh try some jello pudding. it’s such a good snack SHEBOP!” @JelloPudding
• “Hey twitter.” @HeyBrotherBluth

Would YOU like to be a fake celebrity Tweeter? Last we checked, these celebrities weren’t taken:

•  William Howard Taft

•  Jessica Tandy

•  Zach Morris (for real!)

•  Kevin Costner

• Rudy Huxtable

Comments

Posted in Around the Office, Web Content, Web Writing

Like many information architects, I come from a design background. That’s why I am very familiar with the tasks and process involved with design. While I have always worked closely with writers throughout my career, I have never been a writer myself.

I know that in past lives I have made a terrible assumption. Working at Brain Traffic I have seen daily proof that I am not the only person to make this mistake. And while I have seen the light, this assumption still runs rampant thorough the industry.  I’m here to set the record straight.

Here it is … ready?

It’s the information architect’s job to find the source content.

Many information architects and designers try to draw a parallel between writing and design. Finding and selecting the colors, fonts, images, etc., is an engaging and exciting part of creating a great visual design. Searching for or creating the source imagery is why many designers get up everyday and go to work. 

Conflicts often arise between information architects and designers when the interface is involved. It’s understandable, then, that the IA might assume that writers don’t want the IA to have anything to do with choosing the source content they’ll use to write a website. Wrong.

The writer loves it when an IA points out the relevant source content so he or she can read it, decipher it, and consolidate it into a clear and useful message. They want to focus on the tone and voice of the content. They want to turn nonsense into plain language, often on a tight timeline.

With all respect to the design process, locating source content for every single page of a site is much more time-intensive than finding source assets for representational pages of visual comps. And, digging into the source content is something that should never be skipped when you’re creating the architecture for a new site. From my experience, it’s the only way to plan for a great site that has meaningful content on all of its pages.

So, make sure you know what source content will be used for every page on your site and document it for your writer. Your writer will thank you for it. Trust me.

Comments

Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, Information Architecture, Web Writing

The simplest sentences and websites take the most thought. Ruthlessly revising and deleting is the hallmark of great writing — and how you keep readers on your site. Jakob Nielsen reports that readers read at most only 20 to 28 percent of the contents on a web page. Many stay for less than FOUR SECONDS.

To reiterate: You have FOUR SECONDS OR LESS to show a user that you have the information that he or she is looking for. Anything that’s not entirely relevant or usable has got to go. Or your user’s gonna leave your site.

Knowing that, here’s some advice from the pros that I rely upon when I’m getting too wordy:

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
Ernest Hemingway

“Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.”
Joseph Joubert

My favorite book on writing is On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. The lessons are incredibly relevant, even if the bulk of the book was written before the dawn of the internet. There are a million golden rules on every page, but it’s not overwhelming. I’ve highlighted nearly everything in the book.

Here’s what’s most relevant in terms of the work we do every day:

“Clutter is the official language used by corporations . . .

Beware, then, of the long word that’s no better than the short word:
•    assistance (help)
•    numerous (many)
•    facilitate (ease)
•    individual (man or woman)
•    remainder (rest)
•    initial (first)
•    implement (do)
•    sufficient (enough)
•    attempt (try)
•    referred to as (called)
•    and hundreds more

Beware of slippery new fad words: paradigm and parameter, prioritize and potentialize. They are all weeds that smother what you write. Don’t dialogue with someone you can talk to. Don’t interface with anybody.”

Comments

Posted in Editorial Strategy, User Experience, Web Content, Web Writing