Often time is limited and something needs to go out now. As Blaise Pascal stated, "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." In other words, writing fast and writing concisely are often at odds.

I do a profile each week for the Church of Beethoven. I have 140 words and maybe 15 minutes to do it.

For tweets from Working Like Dogs and National Assistance Dog Week (@WLDogs and @NADWeek) which I started doing recently, I have 140 characters and no time.

What do I get out of it? For the 140-word Church of Beethoven profiles, I interview an audience member or volunteer before or after the show. The profile appears in the weekly e-news that goes out on Wednesdays. I learn a lot of amazing things about the people, their interests, their background, and their work, so that’s fun.

For the 140-character tweets, which I actually almost always do through Facebook (trying to save time by posting once), I have to skim news items and figure out what the main point is, then make it short. So like the profiles, I learn a lot, but am always in a hurry, struggling to be efficient, accurate, yet hopefully interesting.

But what about the readers? What do they get out of it? Are these items reaching and teaching or motivating them?

Now that we have less time and space than ever, are we getting better at focusing our messages? Or just creating large quantities of short and not very meaningful messages?

There have always been limitations for marketing professionals: the ¼ page print ad, the billboard, the :15 second spot, the text link on the web page. And of course there’s editing to fit the space:  I just had to cut someone’s op-ed down from 1200 words to 600.

But do extremely short messages, like tweets, push us even further?  And do they really help us communicate effectively?

It’s not just brevity, but speed. When we have to get something out before it is no longer news, that makes it a rush. When we have to make it short, and do it fast, have we gone beyond what is possible? 

Going back to that quote from Pascal—everyone seems to understand that writing short takes more time. But in the current zeitgeist we are expected to do both, fast and short, each and every time. Is this really working?

Students in a professional writing class at UNM asked me to answer some questions about being a freelance writer. I realized maybe the things they were asking about were questions others might have as well.

My work is mainly centered on helping people market their products and services. Whether writing web content or a press release, I’m generally helping organizations develop their marketing messages and materials.

The students wanted to know what qualities were needed to be successful. I said self-motivation and flexibility.

I told the students you have to be able to obtain and organize your own work, and meet deadlines. You have to be able to learn new topics very quickly. If something changes on a project, you need to be ready to switch gears. Providing good customer service is essential.

When they asked about the best parts of being a freelancer, I said the ability to choose clients and be in charge of your own work. If you have a variety of clients, you can also learn about a wide variety of topics. This is fun if you are a person who enjoys learning.

Then they asked about bad experiences, and if I’d had any. I said, of course, if you are in any type of business you are going to have bad experiences. The client needs to value what you do. If they don’t see the value in what you do, there will be conflicts.

Another dangerous category of work is when someone wants you to “fix” a project someone else has started. That generally is a formula for disaster. Start fresh.

Over the years, I’ve experienced the good, the bad and the strange with various clients and potential clients. Whether it’s slow payment or someone wanting to read my palm at a first meeting, I’ve seen a lot, although I’m sure not all.

Right now I genuinely like my clients and have good relationships with them. Is this a result of luck or my many years of experience? I think a little of both.

I attended a symposium on the creative economy recently. Because I am part of the communications team and do PR for the Church of Beethoven, I was particularly interested in hearing from the professionals taking part in a panel discussion about the creative consumer.

Who are these people and how do you attract them?

Sophie Martin, of Sophie Martin PR, said one of the main audiences is someone she calls “Elaine,” an empty nester who now has the time and money to attend art and theater events. She is college educated and has been exposed to the arts. Elaine wants to support the arts and she wants to attend with her partner, friend or a group with whom she can discuss the event.

Then there’s “Nate,” a young man who has an interest in bonding with his male friends or getting lucky with a date. He has different expectations than Elaine. Nate wants to have new experiences and topical subjects to talk about.

Along with their hopes for arts and entertainment events, they both have concerns. Elaine is afraid of dangerous situations or driving at night. Nate is worried about unexpected costs. He wants to be clear about what food or parking costs because he doesn’t want to look bad in front of his friends.

Chantal Foster, a web architect, said she sees people trying to launch an advertising campaign to everyone, which of course doesn’t work. She asked how arts organizations can better focus and identify their audiences.

Martin replied that you can go see your colleagues and see who is showing up at their performances, or even look at other cities similar to yours and see what they’re doing. But she said one of the best and most inexpensive things an organization can do is to survey their existing audience. Talking to them gives you a window on who else is out there and how to reach them.

One more point Martin made: Your biggest competition is everything and nothing. It’s all the other arts and entertainment options and it’s people just sitting at home.

Hakim Bellamy, a poet and musician, added that your “competition” is your audience, too, so collaborate and work together.

Hearing all this I got some new ideas but also confirmation that some of the things we’re doing at the Church of Beethoven are the way to go.

We ran a survey for the Church of Beethoven audience members not long ago. We had a very good response rate and now need to more systematically analyze the information we collected. I’m looking forward to seeing what we can learn from the results.

Reading a lot can turn you into a tough audience, a real critic. I notice things and am appalled. Maybe most people don’t notice.

I’ve written emails to book publishers, small business owners and large company webmasters pointing out typos. Usually they’re appreciative. 

Are the typos in their ad for an editor part of the testing process? Did they really mean to misspell the name of their product?

This doesn’t mean that I don’t need my own proofreader or editor. We all do. I might be better than most at catching things, but let’s face it—if you’ve been working on a piece and seen it over and over as it’s been written and edited, sometimes you just can’t see it anymore. So having others proofread can be invaluable.

Fresh eyes can see a lot more than ones that have already read something 20 times. And don’t forget to get someone to double-check all the important details like phone numbers, email addresses and the spelling of the CEO’s name.

There are all the usual tricks such as taking a break before reading the piece again, reading it backwards, reading it aloud.

If someone has added a tiny change, even one word, beware. Cutting and pasting in even small edits can create new errors. Double “the” anyone? One changed word can lead to sentences that no longer make sense. So don’t slack off before you get to the final version.

Editing online text can be more forgiving. At least you can make changes easily, unlike after you’ve printed 10,000 paper copies of something. But still, typos online look unprofessional.

So use your word processor’s spellchecker, even if it’s not perfect. And use your eyes and whoever else’s eyes you can borrow to take a gander. Review what you’ve written. You may never achieve perfection, but you almost certainly can do better than people who never proofread do.

I’m always writing things for my clients. That’s what I do. But in some cases I might be writing with my clients.

This doesn’t necessarily mean we’re in the same room together brainstorming, writing things down, and tossing wads of crumpled paper on the floor. But we might meet over the phone or in person to talk about the document needed, its purpose, audience and the information to be included.

Sometimes I take the lead, starting a first draft. This lets me overcome that dread of the blank page that paralyzes some clients. Then the client might run the next lap, fleshing out the main concepts, with information that only they know.

Other times the client does the brain dump first and then I go in and do the cleanup on their rough draft, organizing all their information into something that has the right tone, length and if needed, with more of a marketing approach.

Any writing project can become more manageable when you have someone to help you with the parts you just don’t have time for or are just don’t like to do.  So if that’s writing the first draft, I can do that.  If that’s taking your rough and shaping it up, I can do that, too.

I can research the topic or you can simply tell me what you know. Or we can go into combo mode—give me the information you have and then I’ll go hunt down the rest.

Just because you’re the subject matter expert doesn’t mean you can’t get help shaping the knowledge you have into a well-organized article, web page, press release, or copy for various marketing materials.

So stop running the marathons on your own and sign up for the relay team. Let’s get your ideas down on paper and help you sell your stuff.

I learned about the Visual Thesaurus years before I became a subscriber. I thought of it as this interesting toy that I would try occasionally using the “trial” feature on the site, which still exists today.

Have you tried it? Just go to the Visual Thesaurus and type in a word.  This little Tinkertoy-like structure will appear on the screen, showing you the word you selected and arrayed around it, all the related words. The “word map” (their term) doesn’t just pop up; that doesn’t really do it justice. It’s more like this quivering creature, gyrating into a standing position after doing it’s “look at me” dance.

But beyond the cool visual appeal, the Visual Thesaurus is useful. Click on any of the words in the little word constellation, and it becomes the center, with its related terms circling it. See the definition(s), save words you’re interested in, and more. Just be careful or you could end up traveling through this universe of words for hours.

I finally got tired of using the trial feature, broke down and paid up on an annual subscription a couple years ago. After decades of using the tried and true Roget’s Thesaurus in print form, I decided the online Visual Thesaurus was worth having.

Numb fingers from all the flipping from the index to the numbered items in the Roget’s? I did used to really give the book a workout when coming up with company or product names, headlines or taglines. So perhaps that’s part of it, but it’s also that the Visual Thesaurus offers a lot more than just the thesaurus.

You can sign up to have the Word of the Day sent to you. There are all sorts of interesting articles and blog posts in their online magazine. With their little tool you can add to your Microsoft Word program, all you have to do is right click on a word and boom, the thesaurus comes up.

I like getting the Word of the Day email each morning.  It’s always an interesting tidbit about the origin of a word. Entertaining and educational, what more could you want?  I feel like I’m getting smarter, learning, or being reminded of the roots of words, their meanings and why they’re spelled the way they are.  It’s a nice warm up before writing. 

No, I’m not being paid to plug, push, advertise, or promote the Visual Thesaurus.  It’s just something I really like and want to share.

When I first heard about and saw Adobe Acrobat in action, it was love at first sight. For me, it solved a huge problem: how to show clients how their project would look and get their feedback.

In the bad old days, you had to show people a mockup—on paper, in person. Then people would mark things up—in writing you couldn’t read.

It was even worse when they faxed their scribbles to you. The colorful layout fought with the handwriting and all looked like mush in the B&W fax. The markups made no sense, which meant lots of rounds of revisions. So inefficient, so annoying. And since time is money, all those little changes added up to more costs for the client.

Acrobat .pdf (portable document format) files were groundbreaking. I could show people how their brochure, website or ad would look in color, quickly, and have them annotate right on the electronic document. Or even if I made the computer annotations for them, I could organize all their comments for the designers in one place. No more multiple printouts, each with their own set of conflicting notes on them.

The fact that you could type edits into little comment bubbles right on the pdf, pointing out exactly where the edit went was great. Even better, from my point of view, was that I could type the edits and the designer could copy and paste the new text right into place. No rekeying.

Maybe I was just dealing with designers who were not the greatest at typing and proofreading, but wow, that just saved so much time. When anyone rekeys info, there are more chances for errors. When a person who just sees type as a pattern and not as words that need to be spelled properly keys things in, you’re headed for trouble.

And then there were .pdfs as downloadable files on websites. People could download a client’s brochure without being at a tradeshow or sales meeting to hand it to them, or without having to mail it. It was amazing. The biggest challenge in the early days was tutoring all the clients on how to use the program.

Today, many years later, I’m still using Acrobat files. There are so many features, I don’t even use them all. Adobe Acrobat .pdf files have become so common, ubiquitous even; I don’t have to explain them to anyone anymore. I’m just happy Acrobat is still around, and keeps improving.

Choosing and using a style manual and producing and using an in-house style guide help a company create and maintain consistency in their communications. Consistency always furthers an organization’s professional image.

The style manual most people seem to have heard of is the Associated Press Stylebook. I’ve done work for organizations where I’ve been told things like: We follow AP style but we use the title Dr. for our researchers preceding their names which AP says not to do. Then the client might go on to tell me several other ways their house style diverges from AP style.

Exceptions like this should be covered in a company style guide. The in-house style guide might spell out items like the usage of the company product names and logos, but it also can detail where company usage differs from the guidelines set forth in the style manual.

I did not study Journalism in college so I did not learn about AP style until later in my career. When I had to follow it for some projects my first thought was, you’ve got to be kidding. To me, the book has always been difficult to use and illogical as it has:

• No index. 
• A system for filing items under alphabetical titles that seemed haphazard, at best. 
• Rules that supposedly stemmed from the limitations of metal type.

Even though it is considered a guide for academic writing, I prefer the Chicago Manual of Style as a reference. It has an index so you can find things. And there are a lot more things to find as the book is really comprehensive, including information about grammar. Not everything in it applies to every project. But it’s somewhere to start.

First, if your group does not have a particular style manual it follows, you might want to decide which would be best suited for your needs. Elizabeth G. Frick and Elizabeth A. Frick wrote an article in the Society for Technical Communication magazine, Intercom, which discussed style manuals and style guides and referred readers to a handy style manual matrix they created that compares the different style manuals. Their chart shows the history and purpose of each book, and can help you choose which you might want to use.

Style manuals do differ on what they feel is correct on topics like hyphenation, formatting of web addresses, and the serial comma, aka the Oxford comma. Believe it or not, people get excited about whether or not it is proper to use that last comma in a series before the “and.” I recently found out there’s even a Facebook group, "Students for the Preservation of the Oxford Comma." (For the record, I like the serial comma as it does add clarity in many situations. AP, however, says no to the serial comma.)

Style manuals give you rules and standards for writing and formatting different types of written materials. They do not all agree on what the standards are. Your company or organization may have decided which style manual to follow, but then there are inevitably exceptions to the rules. In that case a style guide might be created, just for your organization.

Your style guide doesn’t need to repeat what is in your chosen style manual; it can just talk about where your in-house style differs from the reference book and tackle issues of interest to your organization.

A website is a communications piece.  The medium has its own requirements for organization, design, writing, and technical production. Like any marketing project, it’s always best if the writer is there from the get-go to help organize information and write copy. It just doesn’t seem to happen that way all the time.

There’s a famous saying that when it comes to websites, content is king*. So I wondered, if that’s so, then why is it so often treated like a second-rate citizen rather than the top dog?  I spoke with web developer Ray Gulick of Evolution Web Development to get his take.  Here are a few excerpts from our conversation.

*Although content can be defined to include both the text and images, today we’re going to talk about just the words.
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“What happens is that when people decide they want a website, it doesn’t necessarily click that a website has to have content, or where content comes from,” Ray explains.  They think a website is a menu, a cool header, and footer and somehow all that stuff in between shows up.”

Ray says that of course he explains to people that website design is based on the content, and that a writer could help them present focused messages, but they often say they’ll do the content themselves, completely underestimating how much work it’s going to be. 

Sometimes they have an in-house writer or marketing director, but that person may be unfamiliar with how to write web content. Other times a smaller business owner will think they’ll do it themselves because who else understands what they do?  And anyway, why pay for a writer—they have Word so they can write.

When clients elect to do their own content, Ray sends them off to do their “homework.” By the time the next meeting rolls around, they quite often have come to realize that focusing their marketing messages and pulling together all the writing is going to be more work than they imagined. “Some folks need to have that experience trying it before they really understand what’s involved.” Sometimes at that point they are ready to bring in a writer.

“My best estimate is somewhere over 90% of my clients really could use the services of a copywriter,” says Ray. “There’s nothing worse than spending money on a website and finding that it doesn’t meet your goals because the communication is muddled. You could have spent a bit more and had something that actually works.”

Ray jokes that he wishes sometimes he had a computer application that would magically create content. He’d call it the Content Fairy and make a lot of money selling it to other web developers.  Until then, I guess he’s just going to have to bring in writers like me.

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I guess I’m not the only one wondering why writers aren’t brought in sooner to web projects.

The Communication Arts Interactive Annual 2010 came out recently and Ingrid Bernstein, one of the judges of the international competition, was asked the question:

How can creative teams most efficiently produce the strongest solutions?

Bernstein, the digital strategy director at JWT New York, answered that the writer should be in on web projects sooner, and gave some of the benefits of that.

See and hear her complete answer in this short video clip.

I like to read: Magazines, books, websites. Hell, I’ll even read the copy on the back of cereal boxes.

From the time I learned to do it, I’ve been reading a lot. There are some benefits to this.

• The more you read, the more you learn about different topics. This is useful to me because with a variety of clients, I am always writing about new subjects. In many cases something I’ve read before will relate to what one of my clients is doing now.
• The more you read, the more you stimulate your brain and come up with new creative concepts.
• The more you read, the more you hear other voices, and get ideas about what defines good and bad writing.

Of course defining good and bad writing can be controversial. But how about clarity? Most people will agree on that.

What’s good and bad might vary depending on the purpose. Is it a white paper or an ad? What’s the topic and who’s the audience?

Something might be appropriate for a specific audience, and you just don’t happen to be a part of that group, so it’s not speaking to you. But other times it’s not just a style thing; it’s just unclear.

Reading a variety of materials lets you see how writers address different topics, how they organize their material, how they persuade their readers. It lets you become a student and a critic, gathering nuggets of useful information and adding examples to the list of things you don’t want to do.

I do spend a lot of time reading things that might be considered work-related—
background for clients’ marketing projects, articles in professional journals, online content about words and grammar.

But other times I might be reading about cooking, a historical figure, or even fictitious characters, although I don’t get as much of this type of reading in as I would like.

I try not to feel guilty about any of it. Because if I think about it, as a writer, almost everything I read can be considered useful in furthering my work.

Yeah, that’s it; I’m not goofing off reading a book, no matter the topic, I’m working! It’s time to take a break from writing and get back to reading.