Recently I attended a delightful wedding. It was perfect. Admittedly there were flaws, such as a cold and windy day, and the bride’s boat being stranded in Lyttelton Harbour. But the flaws just added to the perfection. (The clouds were aesthetically pleasing. Coastguard came to the rescue so the bride was only fashionably—not worryingly—late.)

The speeches were also perfect. Notes were abandoned and the father of the bride was sincere, funny and fluent. So were all the speakers (sincere etc., not abandoned). They kept to the time limit. And with one exception they told us what we wanted to hear: something personal, amusing, generous, good-hearted, inspiring—and totally relevant to the occasion and the audience.

One person, known and loved as eccentric if not perverse, broke the rules.

He gave a little sermon, not a wedding speech. He reviewed the movie Avatar and advised us all to go and see it. Then he asked us to stand up, hold hands, close our eyes and recite together, “Lord, we are all one.”

The sound of eyeballs rolling thundered around the hall as we obeyed. It was seriously weird, in the context of a wedding breakfast. Me, I was thinking, “He’s acting like a priest. But he’s not a priest or even religious, so who is this Lord we’re addressing? His meditation guru?”

Anyway, no big deal, and at least one of the 86 guests thought it was lovely.

As an analogy for tweeting, the wedding speech model works, don’t you think?

• Be sincere, funny and fluent
• Keep to the word limit.
• Write something personal, amusing, generous, good-hearted, inspiring—and totally relevant to the occasion and the audience.
• Don’t be a marketing priest.
• Break the rules sometimes and see what happens.

On Twitter, we’re still struggling to get the right balance between marketing, personal, responsive, useful and inspiring. It’s not easy.

Whenever possible, use common words. Words that nearly every adult is likely to understand. Words that don’t require a trip to the dictionary.

Your aim in all business and professional writing is to get your message across quickly and clearly. Using common words is a plain language trick that really helps. It’s a simple way to spruce up your writing, making it more concise and more readable.

You’ll find hundreds of examples, once you start looking. Here are a few for starters:

• not in lieu of but instead of
• not subsequent to but after
• not under the provisions of but under.

Experiment. Wouldn’t your writing be clearer if you used:

• not transformation but change
• not outcomes but results
• not prioritized but most important
• not stakeholder but you or —well, stop and think who you really mean!

200 examples of unnecessarily complicated words, and alternatives, were published by the Local Government Association (UK) in March 2009.

About nine years ago, a friend gave me a Christmas lily. Glorious white flower, one tall stalk, small pot. As a model for business growth, the lily was pathetic.

After it bloomed I popped the bulb into the garden, as you do. Since then, I’ve seen nothing but the occasional leafy stem until this year, when I counted no less than nine stems in full bloom. They’d infiltrated the entire garden: one for every fallow year.

When the Wellington winds began trashing the flowers, I rescued them and brought them inside. Beautiful. So shiny, thick, scented. So assertive. So very green and white.

That’s a pretty erratic harvest, however.

At the same time I was reading that you should start a business with the definite intention of selling it after 5 years: that implies a much faster return on investment than for the lilies of the field.

The 5-year sale plan makes a lot of sense, whether or not you eventually sell. It means taking the business seriously, pouring energy and time into it, not just playing. It means creating a business that doesn’t depend on your presence.

And it means back-pedalling on development at a certain point in favour of sales.

This is perhaps the hardest thing for small businesses, most of which begin because someone is passionate about developing a product or service. Typically the new business owner doesn’t have a clue about marketing, and I’m typical— I’d much rather be creating new online courses than marketing. Well, too bad!

And so I ruminated on gales and sales. Then dutifully returned to marketing.

Many words have optional spellings: several versions are correct. Which one will you use?

Online or on-line? web or Web? realise or realize?

In such cases, consistency rules. Your personal preference is irrelevant.

Somewhere in your (client’s) organisation is an inhouse Style Guide. It’s a publication that nobody reads except the people in Corporate Communications. Most likely you’ll find a copy there, although someone did give you one when you were first engaged.

Listed there (or should be) are the definitive spellings you must use. Otherwise chaos rules as everyone makes it up as they go along.

What’s wrong with chaos? Well, it unsettles your readers, and tortures you, the writer, with numerous fiddly little choices.

Oh dear, what if you can’t find a Style Guide and nobody seems to care anyway? Use the dictionary approved by Corporate Communications… and in extremis, use your own dictionary.

This plain language writing tip needs no explanation: the meaning is obvious. The reason is pretty obvious too. And yet it bears constant repetition, because people forget.

In a business or government office, meaningless jargon may become so common that many otherwise normal, healthy, intelligent people think it makes sense. If you work in certain environments, you bathe in gobbledegook as it streams out of memos, reports, policy, procedures, presentations and even press releases. You yourself start writing the same jargon, confident it’s the right way to go.

And you start to participate in a group hallucination. You get this extraordinary illusion that ordinary people can understand what you are saying. (Or care.)

Here’s a classic example, the first two paragraphs on a government web page:

Scion places a high emphasis on developing strategic partnerships to build stronger science capability and ensure the delivery of worthwhile outcomes.

We have developed a diverse range of relationships with other research organisations, industry groups, and commercial businesses, both nationally and internationally, to greatly expand the potential of science-related opportunities.

Flesch-Kincaid readability score: zero. That means virtually no adult reader will be able to understand it easily.

What does the author really mean, in plain language? We can figure that out. But in the end, is it worth saying?

First figure out what you really mean, then say that. If it’s worth saying, say it in plain language. If it’s not worth saying, don’t bother.

Scion: Key Working Relationships

To many people, training as a website editor still seems irrelevant to their working life. Even professional editors don’t always get the point.

So we thought we’d list some of the positions that open up to someone trained as a website editor. Different clients will certainly use different definitions, but after you’ve gained a Diploma in Web Content, you can answer advertisements for these jobs with a fair bit of confidence:

1. web content editor
2. web content developer
3. web content manager
4. online journalist
5. corporate blogger
6. social media content provider
7. intranet content developer
8. intranet content manager
9. online learning and teaching (teachers)
10. developing online teaching materials (teachers)
11. SEO copywriter
12. internet marketing copywriter.

Some of our graduates have scored their ideal jobs immediately after finishing the Diploma. That always gives us a special glow!

A Diploma in Web Content is not just a handsome, colourful certificate to hang on your wall or an addition to your CV. It gives you confidence that you can handle jobs that involve web content. And that’s priceless.

People also do many everyday writing jobs more competently after completing the Diploma in Web Content, for example, these ones:

1. technical writing
2. instructional writing
3. public relations
4. corporate communications
5. scientific and professional writing
6. copywriting and copyediting
7. business writing and editing
8. policy writing
9. report writing
10. plain language writing.

Sign up for our fantabulous little online Diploma in Web Content — why wouldn’t you?

Larry Brauner is 58 this week. And he’s celebrating for four days with a virtual birthday party on Facebook.

Larry’s Facebook party

Now, I have no idea what fizzbang shenanigans are planned, but the very idea is an example of what he stands for: thinking outside the box. It makes me smile, frown and puzzle.

It’s obvious that we haven’t even started using Facebook in a million extraordinary and rewarding ways.

And that fills me with horror: “Oh no! You mean I’m going to have to *think* about this?”… and pleasure: “Thank heavens, someone has smashed the mould.”

So, Larry gets a festival of responses. He offers floor prizes, and here at Contented.com we certainly intend to offer one. He hurls a bunch of bloggers into one spot for a purpose that’s more social than marketing.

And repercussions start percussing. Reverberations start verbing.

Let this genial, ingenious idea wander where it will.

How quickly the shiny-new Facebook became boring-boring same-old same-old. I’m happy to say that Larry’s virtual party has already seeded my brain with other social marketing ideas.

Also, as another person who is not exactly in the first flush of youth, I’m tickled pink to see him declare his age without the hint of a blush. Go Larry!

Some things never change.

I’ve just found this cartoon, which is about a million years old. Well, to be more precise, it is pretty old. I used to show it in workshops for writers at least 15 years ago. Here’s how antique it is: I drew the original cartoon on a “transparency”.

What in the name of all things pointy is a “transparency”? you young things are wondering.

Well, my chickens, long ago in the olden days, the 459th caveman had not yet invented PowerPoint. So we trainers and teachers wrote and drew our words of wisdom on pieces of transparent plastic. We placed these pieces of plastic on a glass surface, plugged in a cord, turned on the electricity and behold, the words were displayed on a screen. Or a wall. Usually crooked. But sometimes legible.

Ah, those were the days. Not.

Way back then in the dark ages, Word had already invented Styles. And writers were consistently, perversely, ignorantly ignoring Styles. To be fair, nobody ever told them about Styles. Maybe nobody has told you. If not, let me do the honours.

Styles is not about tinkering with the appearance of every word, making it up as you go alone. Styles is about consistent formatting.

Styles enables you to tag any piece of text by its function, e.g.

• title
• chapter heading
• headline 1
• author
• quote
• page number
• table of contents
• address

If the text is correctly tagged, you can ensure that every chapter heading (to take one example) is formatted the same and therefore looks exactly the same.

Styles was like a primitive, prophetic glimpse of XHTML. It’s still hugely powerful, especially for long documents. Easy as pie for a writer to use. Saves days of work later on.

Of course most other word processors now have a Styles tool also: it’s not just MS Word.

Writer, please write. Let the designers design.

And save the sanity of several people in the production line (including yourself) by using Styles as you go.

If you didn’t know this before, you will thank me later.

When I find myself lost for words or even ideas… it’s time to sign off for the year. Blogging is fun, satisfying, interesting. Personal satisfaction is the main reason why people blog, according to a study whose name and web site elude me. I find that easy to believe.

But come mid-December, the joy has gone.

The sun is shining — and sun has been the missing factor in Wellington this December.

The children are still in school, meaning the shops will be kind of accessible. My gift list is short but important.

My home is in chaos, too, with the lovely painters working in the bathroom. No shower, no dishwasher. Odd job man coming any minute to fix Leak No. 18.

My heart is broken because my kitten died of FIP. I’m getting over that, but I’m a vicar’s daughter so I need every excuse I can drum up before I stop work.

Surely that’s enough excuses?

Blogging? Tips? I’m signing off for a short end-of-year break.

Your web content (and everything else you write for business) is treated as data. Therefore:

• Write headlines and page titles that describe the document or give its key message.
• Write a summary of the document straight after the headline.
• In link-text, put key information about the page people will jump to (not “Click here”).

Virtually every time you write a business or professional document, it exists in electronic form. That electronic document is electronically labelled and stored in various electronic ways—not in a metal filing cabinet. And it will be treated as data, so that other people can find the document when they search.

The internet is hyperspace, with multiple dimensions, and that’s where your document lives.

• Entire web pages are lump of data that can be re-used in many places.
• Headlines and summaries are crucial bits of data that can appear in many places.
• Other data that’s obviously re-usable: contact details, share prices, corporate information, news items, photographs, slides, information… I could go on all day.

That data can be used and found in 1,000 places simultaneously (not just on the original piece of paper). For example, it could pop up in Google search results, on other web sites, in spreadsheets and PDFs, in Google Docs, online newspapers, on FaceBook and Twitter.

Writers, these fundamental facts about modern communication mean we need to write in a particular way. Picture your words in hyerspace—or at least in a different context: they should still make sense.