Lately I’ve caught myself vacillating between the words on and in when writing. The quandary, tiny though it is, must have used a good 55 seconds of my time over the last couple of weeks.

I say, I read such-and-such in the newspaper, or in the New Scientist. Then I catch myself saying, I read such-and-such on the New York Times.

On the New York Times? Strange picture that produces, isn’t it? As if the article was a message in scrabble tiles scattered all over a newspaper. Or written on a Post-it attached to the newspaper.

Of course it’s because I read some things on paper (like the New Scientist or Elizabeth Knox’s latest novel, The Angel’s Cut). Whatever I read there is firmly, physically inside the covers. But wait a minute. How about paper newspapers? In the Dominion Post, something on (on) the front page is not literally inside a physical object, but on the outside. Oh no, that’s nit-picking.

But the New York Times I read online. I read articles on the NYT web site. I guess that’s what’s happening to my semantic choices.

This silliness is a canary in a coal mine. If I’m momentarily confused, so are thousands of others, no doubt. And one day we might all be saying, I read it on the newspaper.

That will not be hard for people using English as an international language. They won’t mind if they themselves use the wrong preposition. The meaning will still be clear, which is more important.

The Future of the book conference (Auckland, 24-25 June 2009) was deeply satisfying for me. It answered all my burning questions about jumping into the ebook arena. Like:

• Why am I confused? Because there’s a major announcement every week about the ebook explosion, doh! so it’s confusing.
• Could I be locked in to a proprietary ebook system and never escape? No no no no no. But do start with XML.
• Are there do-or-die, irrevocable choices to be made here? No, Milady Author, you can have it all. But some paths are less knobbly than others.

To-do list
1. Buy iPhone OS3 in July, or the new Apple device if it truly is born in July.
Let it change my lifestyle.

2. Check contracts: do I have electronic rights (or all rights) for my back list of books? If not, get them. (List of publications to check off…)

3. Compile a poetry collection for iPhone ‑- but nothing rude or sexual!

4. Tidy the manuscripts:

• no page breaks
• simplify pre-pages
• Re-do all screenshots in Write me a web page Elsie! High res., colour.

5. Get new ISBN numbers for electronic version of the books.

6. Get manuscripts converted:

1. convert to XHTML
2. convert to e-pub
3. For Kindle, convert to AZW (last on the list)
4. DRM (digital rights management, i.e. preventing theft) e.g. Adobe ADEPT
5. Zinio.com for Write me a web page, Elsie! because of screenshots

6. Research channels ($%, rights, format) and send to all channels.

• Iphone – App Store – Legend? Stanza?
• ecoreader.com.au
• ScribD.com
• nz stores, libraries
• 1000 great NZ e-books
• ebook warehouses, and lots of others.

7. Carry on marketing for years!

I’ve been thinking about what makes the curriculum of CONTENTED online courses in writing web content so different from all the rest. At the most basic, we have different assumptions about who we are writing for.

These assumptions are nearly always unspoken. So I thought I would speak them aloud. (Warning: generalisations ahead.)

Many courses (and books) on writing web content assume an audience of small business owners who create their own web sites. They include web design-lite, for example, what to put on the home page and a drop of information architecture.

Some courses assume their students are journalists, especially freelancers. Such courses assume that web content writing means writing articles and handing them over to an employer or client. They tend to omit any technological aspects whatsoever. Outsourced writers don’t use the employer’s publishing tool: they just hand over the articles.

Some web content courses assume their students are copywriters, producing nothing but persuasive sales or marketing copy.

Obviously, these are all valid assumptions because there really are small business owners, journalists, copywriters and web designers out there who want and need courses on writing web content.

CONTENTED online courses come from another angle. We assume:

• our students write for work, and work for a business or government organisation
• much of what they write becomes web content or intranet content
• they have IT help
• they have no responsibility for web design
• they use a content management system or publishing tool
• their content may have multiple uses
• their content may be stored in an EDRMS and searched by an enterprise search engine

See the difference? Without CONTENTED, these people would not be well served.

But don’t get me wrong. Many satisfied web designers and ICT professionals have been through our courses, and say they have enjoyed them and learned a lot.

At next week’s conference on the Future of the Book, I’ll be really interested in one topic as a writer. And this topic affects you too, if you write for work. Which you do.

How People Will Read Digitally
To create effective digital publications, you need to understand how people read digitally. This session explains the latest research findings and shows some cutting edge techniques being developed to enhance the digital reading experience.

David Bainbridge, University of Waikato

Since this is about ebooks, the implications for writers go far beyond what we know about how people read web content on a computer screen. Ebook readers do not have the same type of computer screens, and they’re not online, usually. And people read ebooks on iPhones: the tiny screen is an everyday book “page” for many.

I’m sure I’ll learn much about how to write ebooks for the new environment. Obviously, any old book can be turned into an ebook. And obviously, endless examples of short, easy, how-to books have been written expressly for sale as a PDF.

But as a writer I want to know how I can make a work of fiction desirable, enticing, comfortable, and friendly, in the new environment? What design tips will work regardless of how the books are read? What sort of structure might work well — must every future novel be picaresque, for instance?

The same information will apply, somehow, to business writing. It’ll be fun trying to figure this out.

Exciting times. Meantime,

Radio NZ audio: Sherman Young discusses the future of books.

Image: bolted books by artist David Boyle.

Bethany Cagnol highlights an acronym nightmare attached to international communication. Download her slide show for the full picture.

Most web content in English does need to communicate with people who are not native English speakers. Never mind whether the web site is directed at people living in other countries, because it’s just crazy to assume everyone in the US or UK is a native English speaker.)

So, says Bethany, we need to use a special kind of language: ELF (English as a Lingua Franca).

Oh no! Not Latin! A Latin word for Frankish language? How plain is that?

• ELF , otherwise known as
• EIL (English as an International Language), or
• EILF (English as an International Linga Franca), or
• English as a Global Language, or
• Offshore English, or
• Globish, or
• Panglish, or
• Interlanguage, or
• EIAL (English as an International Auxiliary Language), or
• English for Cross-cultural Communication , or
• EIP (English for International Purposes)…

At last, this is common knowledge: native English speakers cause greater confusion than non-native English speakers.

A Business Spotlight follow-up survey on communication at work (2007) found these bald facts.

Why do you have communication problems in English with native speakers?

• They speak too fast 86.1%
• They use unknown expressions 60.0%
• They use too many idioms 57.4%
• They use difficult words 55.7%
• They don’t speak clearly enough 55.7%
• They have a heavy accent 45.2%
• I can’t make myself understood 15.7%
• They talk too much 13.0%
• They make grammatical mistakes 1.7%

Sobering information. We should take it seriously not only for podcasts or videos but for written web content.

Global English (short version here) is what I called it in 1997. My main concern is figuring out practical ways of fixing the problem. Luckily, it’s not too hard. But in one respect, it’s counter-intuitive.

My main concern it to show you

My message was that native English speakers have to adjust their language if they want to communicate with non-native speakers… who were then called EFL or ESL speakers. (Again, that’s the short version.)

There’s a reason for this sale, and it doesn’t begin with an R. Yes, our online web writing courses are half price for the rest of the month.

We plan to change CONTENTED courses over to a new platform in July. Result: anyone buying the courses in June has to finish them by 30 June. That’s not hard, because they take only 6-8 hours to complete.

Sale price for June 2009 only, per person:
US$107.50 (reduced from $215)
NZ$150 (reduced from NZ$300) plus GST

You’ll have access to the courses until 30 June and not a minute longer.
So hurry! Buy online or by invoice.

We’ll let you know when the new Contented courses are up and running. We’re certain you’ll love our 3 new courses and the exciting new format. You’ll be able to do individual courses, or do 10 courses for a Diploma in Web Content.

A recurring them in the feedback we receive is FUN - for example:

I really enjoyed the course - it is very user-friendly, helpful and fun to use (don’t change a thing!).

Please let me commend you for offering a great course. It really was work disguised as fun.

Don’t worry. We promise the new courses will be even more substantial and even more fun than the courses in Version 1. CONTENTED online web writing courses have a lot in common with games:

• they’re fast-moving and heaps of fun
• the rules are clear
• you improve your skills as you play
• we tell you straight away when you fail
• we reward you when you succeed.

Here’s where you buy:
http://contented.com/buy.php

“All publishing is digital publishing. All writing is writing on the Web.”

Andrew Savikas, VP of Digital Initiatives at O’Reilly Media says this in his speech on The Future of Publishing. That’s not just a glib soundbite: these are his closing words in a 31-minute video full of facts and figures and graphs. It’s his summary of the future of publishing.

CONTENTED courses train people to write content for web sites and intranets. But these same courses teach precisely the skills we all need for pretty much everything we write — including books.

I still encounter editors and writers who assume that “good writing is good writing”, and that Strunk and White’s old mini style-book tells them all they need to know. Wake up and smell the electronic paper! It’s more urgent than ever to get some vital skills that were not taught in journalism classes 15 years ago. Or even 10 years ago.

Since then, everyone’s familiar with these basic technology developments:

• desktop PCs, laptops, netbooks and mobile phones
• the internet, hyperlinks and browsers
• search engines and EDRMs.

So how come those writers cannot see that those elements have irrevocably changed the way we ought to write?

Andrew Savikas says we need to make books look more like web pages. Add links! That’d be a start. I’m very curious about other changes that might make novels, for instance, more tech-astute.

A New York Times editorial talks about an initiative to pour government data on to the Web for all to see and use. Says the NYT:

With little fanfare, the Obama administration has begun its first agency feeds onto Data.gov, a new Web site. Mr. Kundra promises to release vast amounts of raw data there, so taxpayers can see what’s going on more instantly and clearly, and, ideally, come back with suggestions on how to fix government problems.

Barack Obama is pushing hard to make government more transparent. He’s also a strong proponent of plain language. So I sent this email to Data.gov:

A great initiative. But let’s have plain language throughout the site, no exceptions. On the home page this is a sentence many will struggle with:

“Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data.”

President Obama strongly favours plain language. More clarity will help people use the site with ease.

I’d love our New Zealand government to imitate data.gov. Thank you!

Data.gov. Take a peek.
Photo (c) Edinburgh University Data Library

Jim and Mary Barr survey headlines covering a relatively positive art sale at Sothebys. In isolation, the international headlines got me scratching my head. Here’s a sneaky double negative, for instance:
Sotheby’s Sale Fails to Meet Low Expectations – WSJ

Gee that sound bad. But it means people paid higher prices than expected.

Bidders Respond to Lower Prices for Contemporary Art - Reuters

Sooo, they paid lower prices? No, they paid higher prices.

The Barrs see this media distortion of the facts as schadenfreude, or delight in misery of others. The sub-editors perform linguistic contortions to persuade us it’s all bad bad bad and art investors are fools.

Words with negative meanings have a deadly power to infuse readers with their own gloom. Worth remembering, whether you’re aiming to mess with people’s minds or to write plain language. Glance at those headlines and what hits you?
* fail
* lower expectations
* low prices

Grammatically, fail is positive. But its meaning is negative, both literally and psychologically.

Denise Wakeman talking about How to Drive Quality Traffic to your Blog has excellent tips for business bloggers. And free. She practises what she preaches about sharing expertise with readers.

Here are 2 statistic tips:

On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. [...]

Posts that use numbers consistently bring in 3 to 8 times more traffic. [...] So something like: seven steps to blah blah blah. 30 days to whatever. 10 tips for blah blah blah. Things like that.

Fancy that! Thanks Denise.