Shaw & Todd - Advertising and Marketing Communications

I’ll admit, I have a Pavlovian-esque reaction to a misused apostrophe – head shaking, eye rolling and even the occasional exasperated sigh. Think I’m overreacting to this tiny punctuation mark? A quick peek into the blogosphere reveals a multitude of lengthy and even heated discussions on the topic. I even stumbled upon The Apostrophe Protection Society, which isn’t nearly as funny as I had hoped.

Now I’m hardly qualified (or apparently passionate enough) to swing a bat with these major leaguers, but I do make an effort to avoid the most common misuses of the apostrophe: it’s/its and you’re/your.

‘Its’ is a possessive pronoun, while ‘It’s’ is a contraction of ‘it is’.

‘Your’ is a possessive pronoun, while ‘You’re’ is a contraction of ‘you are’.

Clearly, its use is necessary; it’s just not to be abused. Or ignored for that matter. The poor, modest apostrophe; it’s just trying to help!

 Oh, apostrophe

Well-intended yet abused

It’s our fault, not yours

I’ve found myself on more than one occasion extolling the value of Google and Yahoo alerts as brand monitoring tools and have been somewhat astonished at how many people still don’t know about or use them.

It’s a reminder of the enormous amount of information resources that are out there, and that in many cases each of us is using an entirely different set of tools to obtain our news and info.  President Bush was asked not long ago if he used Google and he replied, “One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps.” (watch interview). Translation: It’s pretty obvious W. does not regularly use Google because nobody says “the Google”. That’s as obvious a “tell” as when someone declares themselves a fan of “Star Trak” or the “Jerry Steinfeld Show”.

Anyway, I’m digressing. Back to topic. If you haven’t done so already, sign-up for Google and Yahoo! alerts immediately. By no means should they replace traditional, comprehensive clipping services like Cision (formerly Bacon’s) or Custom Scoop but what they do provide are additional monitoring devices that every marketing professional should take advantage of. And did I mention that they’re free? Simply sign up and enter your choice of query or topic and you are sent an email each time your search term is referenced on the web (you control the frequency of the emails you receive). You can even set the alerts to troll the blogosphere to clue you in whenever your company (or name) is mentioned by a blogger.

Here are the links:

Google Alerts: www.google.com/alerts

Yahoo! Alerts: alerts.yahoo.com

I recently read a local newspaper’s article about a small drug discovery company. In the details was a description of a microplate—small plastic trays with many tiny wells, about the depth of a thin paperback book. For a split second, I wondered why they spent so much time describing such a commonly used consumable. Then I remembered that this wasn’t a scientific portal, this newspaper was available to the general public—with many education levels, market experiences and even language backgrounds. Not everyone has contemplated the use of skirted vs. unskirted vs. semi-skirted or discussed how many wells to blank without inferring mortal danger to the poor wells.

This newspaper was right—it’s important to write to your audience.

When writing technical articles and communications to peers, a more complex writing style is useful to clarify your message. On the other hand, general releases like corporate events and news can be accessed by readers unfamiliar with the industry. Too many intricate details can scare a potential investor away.

There are several methods to gauge the readability of your written communications, most using calculations compared to a chart or graph. Popular methods include:

1. Gunning Fog Index. From a 100-word sample, determine the average sentence length. Add this to the percent of multi-syllable words. Multiply by 0.4. The result is the grade level required to understand the sample.
2. Fry’s Readability Graph. From three 100-word samples, plot the average number of syllables and the average number of sentences from each passage on a pre-set Fry graph. The point where the two values meet determines the grade level required to understand the sample.
3. Flesch-Kincaid Formula. From any written piece, plot the average number of syllables per word against the average number of words per sentence. Or, multiply the average sentence length by 1.015 and the average word length by 84.6. Add the two numbers. Subtract this sum from 206.835. Or (my personal favorite), in Microsoft® Word, go to Tools > Options. Click on the Spelling & Grammar tab. Under the Grammar section, click the “show readability statistics” box, then click the “Okay” button. You only have to do this step once. Then, go to Tools > Spelling & Grammar… After the document is analyzed, a summary report, including readability score, is automatically calculated. Any of these Flesch-Kincaid methods will provide the grade level required to understand the article.

These formulas are subjective and should be used as a general guide only. Appropriate readability can help to engage readers and clarify your message. And for the curious, this blog scored near grades 11, 10, and 10 respectively.