Media Training, the Local Press and Your Marketing Message

   I’ve been thinking a lot about President Obama and the press, particularly in light of the drastically shortened “news cycle” that comes with all-news-all-the-time cable TV, the blogosphere and influential online news organizations like Politico and the Huffington Post. As Ken Auletta notes in The New Yorker, just six short years ago, when George W. Bush was finishing his first term in the White House, there was no Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, and dozens of regional newspapers and television stations were highly profitable.

   Now the Washington press corps barely has time to scare up some “he said/she said” quotes to get two sides of a rapidly developing story that may owe its existence to a Politico blog at 6 a.m. that day. When I covered aviation and defense in DC in the 1980s, there always seemed to be time for a “think piece” (also known as “thumb suckers” or “navel gazers” to describe their supposedly contemplative nature) from beat writers at the major papers. But now Auletta quotes top Obama aide David Axelrod, who used to write for the Chicago Tribune: “There are some really good journalists [in DC], really superb ones. But the volume of material they have to produce just doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for reflection.”

   For me, that’s the real danger of where we find ourselves when it comes to national civic dialogue. But I don’t know how you slow things down. In the hothouse atmosphere of Washington politics, it’s all about who won and who lost and the cable TV ratings bonanza to be gained from pumping up and cheering for the side that’s got even “moderate” senators like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins from my state voting with the right wing of their party.

   How is that reflected in the marketplace of ideas outside the Washington Beltway? The answer, I think, is that it may not be, despite the cry from media critics that the Fourth Estate (the national incarnation, at least) has descended into celebrity- and conflict-obsessed “infotainment.” If you’re running for local or state office this year, as are some of my former media training clients, you may find that reporters are more attuned to pocketbook issues such as property and sales taxes and education funding, and less interested in baiting their opponents.

   What’s more, you won’t find the likes of Fox’s Glenn Beck or his adversary Keith Olbermann at MSNBC on the local scene, in good part because the network affiliates have the ground covered. There just isn’t enough personality-driven news to generate all that semi-hysterical bleating and heavy-handed sarcasm and finger pointing.

   What you will find are myriad opportunities to get your marketing message out at little or no cost. Community newspapers and regional TV stations know that their profits – even survival in some cases – depend on being relentlessly local. That means lots of space for your press releases (promotions at your firm, new products and services, awards, etc.) and events.

   Last summer, I helped attract a local TV station to a “golf marathon” fundraiser aimed at setting up seven-week “camperships” for deserving kids. The hook was that each of the golfers had promised donors they’d play at least 100 holes, and they did. That made for some fine visuals and interviews with golfer after golfer about what it’s like to hit shot after shot after shot (“tiring, but worth it because it’s for the kids,” etc.). And now we’ve got a higher profile and a video to show when we start asking for golf marathon backers this summer.

  But there’s more. We sent out a press release after the event and the state’s largest daily responded with a Sunday feature piece about the 90-plus-year-old son of the camp’s founder, which in turn was sent to camp alums who’ll be asked to kick in for the annual fund. You can call that manipulating the press.

  As a former journalist, I call it a “good story.”

Dave Griffiths does freelance writing and freelance editing, as well as media relations training, writing training, presentation skills training and business communication training. http://www.davegriffithscommunications.com

Business Communications And Mindless Imitation Pitfalls

“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

   Doesn’t he though? I always tell my business writing skills and presentation skills students that they won’t go wrong if they assume their readers/listeners are intelligent adults paying attention because they want to add to their knowledge. Communicate under that premise, and you will gain respect.

   Serial copycat abusers of our mother tongue are anathema to that audience. As I noted a few months ago, mindlessly inserting “going forward” and “due diligence” and “most unique” risks irritating your readers and listeners, which changes the context in which they evaluate your thinking. Remember: That’s you on that email or memo, and if you’re dealing with a new contact, remember this as well: You never get a second chance to make a first impression when it comes to business communications.

   So, to the third installment of the Language Hall of Shame:

• Low-hanging fruit — When this one pops up I’m tempted to make eye contact with someone else in the room and share a knowing grin. But let’s try to be serious. Here’s the day-to-day “business world” interpretation of low-hanging fruit: When faced with a challenge, you do the easy stuff first. So how about instead: “Let’s confront this problem one step at a time…”? I recall attending a planning meeting where “low-hanging fruit” entered the discussion early and was repeated eight times by four or five other adults. Apparently, all it takes is one brief utterance to turn otherwise bright people into language lemmings.

• Defining moment – I take that to mean the one crucial stage or decision that lets us know whether we’re facing success or failure. If so, then by its very definition, the phrase must be used sparingly. Yet it sounds so precise that we overuse it because we feel authoritative and insightful. But how many “defining moments” can there be? Pile up too many of them and they lose their impact while you look shallow and unimaginative.

• Rgds and tks — Whoa, you must be one extremely busy and important executive if you can’t find the time to write out “regards” and “thanks.” And lest I forget that, tks for reminding me of your stature every time you send an email. Maybe, as the poet William Wordsworth said, the child really is “father of the Man,” and we should start aping the shorthand that our brilliant offspring use when they “text” each other.  

   While I’m at it, a word about the etiquette of business writing when it comes to emails: Why are we no longer starting them with a proper salutation, such as “Hi, Bob” or “Good Morning”? When you pick up a phone for a business call or run into someone at work, don’t you usually start with a “Hi, Bob” or a “How are you?” What is there about email that gives us permission to be abrupt, even rude?

Dave Griffiths does freelance writing and freelance editing, as well as media relations training, writing training, presentation skills training and business communication training. His website is http://www.davegriffithscommunications.com

Media Training Lessons, Thanks To Tiger

We’re coming up on two months since Tiger Woods got chased out of his house by an enraged, golf club-wielding Swedish woman. I heard it’s taken him so long to make a public appearance because his wife reconfigured his face, making it virtually unpresentable for some time. Maybe so, maybe not. In any case, a few things occur to me.

But first, some background: I also do crisis communications training, and the topic is usually a short-term challenge. At a Portland (Maine) Water District exercise involving a chemical leak, officials had to deal with broadcast media (that was me) clamoring to know whether 50,000 customers could drink from their taps. I also helped senior officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security learn how to deal with a simulated emergency involving illegal immigrants in a holding facility on the Arizona-Mexico border. In any such case, the goal is to get the information out quickly, but only when you know it’s accurate and as comprehensive as time allows.

But what about Tiger? His problem has some legs to it. Speculation, rumors and jokes are going to sell lots of ads on cable TV and grow in intensity as the Masters looms next April. Against that background, is it enough for Tiger to say “I’m sorry” on his website, then disappear from public view while his wife lets it be known that she wants a divorce?

I don’t think so. When I was in Washington, some of the most highly regarded public relations experts could be found at NASA, the Israeli lobby, the Marine Corps and the Air Force. The trait they shared was openness, or at least the appearance of openness. Rarely if ever would you hear a “no comment” or any blatantly evasive communications tactics.

Closest to my beat was the Air Force, which did a splendid job of quietly promoting the B-1 bomber, even though President Carter cancelled it. Fortunately for the men and women in blue, Ronald Reagan made the cancellation a campaign issue in 1980, then reinstated the program. (I thought then, and I think now, that the B-1 was an unnecessary and costly interlude between the venerable B-52, which is still flying, and the Stealth bomber, but I kept that opinion out of my reporting).

Now that the B-1 was back in, the Air Force was primed to usher it through the shoals of budgetary politics. What the defense establishment in DC didn’t expect was a glitch in the plane itself. But that’s what it got – fuel leaking from the wing tanks. At that point, the Air Force could have hunkered down and said little more than “No comment. This is a classified matter,” or “No comment. We’re working on it.”

What it did instead was call a press conference, admit some hardware development errors, and lay out the fixes in detail. After a couple weeks, the story faded from sight, and the B-1 eventually went into full-scale production, enriching contractors all over the U.S. The immediate goal, at a time when Democratic legislators were looking for ways to embarrass the Reagan Administration, was to stay out in front of a rapidly developing story. The ultimate point was to build 100 B-1s, and they did.

That kind of PR thinking was ingrained in the Air Force. When USAF colonels got their first star (brigadier general), the service’s public relations specialists put them through intensive media training, including videotaped interviews with “60 Minutes-type” ambush questioning.

How does all this apply to Tiger Woods? It might be painful short-term, but just imagine if he’d come out a few weeks ago (assuming he wasn’t nursing ugly facial wounds) and gone through a bunch of interviews. Supposing he’d kept his AIM: audience – damn near the whole world; intent – get back to being the best golfer in the world and all those product endorsements; message – “I made a mistake, I love my family, and I’m a new man.”

He’s got the charisma and the smile to pull off the interviews. (His deadly serious eyes are a different matter, but as any fan knows, they’re just windows into the mind of the fiercest competitor on the planet.)

Dave Griffiths does freelance writing and freelance editing, as well as media relations training, writing training, presentation skills training and business communication training. His website is http://www.davegriffithscommunications.com

Don’t Let Language Rules Hamstring Your Business Writing

“From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put.” – Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

I love that thought from the old statesman/historian/blowhard because it illustrates a collective affliction in the way we use our native tongue. Not only do we fall unthinkingly into copying each other when it comes to the latest trite phrase; we also adhere rigidly to grammar shibboleths such as “proper” sentence closure.

In the writing classes that I teach for federal agencies, nonprofits and private firms, otherwise intelligent men and women admit to hang-ups that have bedeviled them all the way back to that blue-haired high school English teacher diagramming sentences on the dusty blackboard.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against rules – if they make sense. Take capitalization and spelling. If you casual email communicators can’t exert the effort to capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence, I assume you’re just as indolent in the “thinking” that goes into the message itself. By the same token, if you rely solely on “spell-check” and blissfully ignore the distinction between “their,” “they’re” and “there,” or fail to edit your writing for proper name spelling, I have a perfect right to ask: “What else is wrong with this email (or white paper, memo, proposal, etc.)?” Or worse: “I thought this guy was a professional.”

No, the “rules” that trouble me are the imagined ones, such as not ending a sentence with a preposition, or avoiding “And” to start a sentence, or placing commas. My advice: Lighten up and be yourself. Back in my Washington journalism days, when I was struggling with the transition from covering civil and military aviation for a trade publication to covering the Pentagon for a lay readership at Business Week magazine, I got some great advice from an editor: “Write as if you’re having a conversation with an intelligent friend.”

Try it. When you talk to your boss, a colleague, a vendor, etc., I guarantee you already end your sentences on a preposition and start the next sentence with “And.” And when you actually write, try saying the words out loud. Reach a natural pause, and it’s comma time. Try it. The key here is to keep process from hamstringing product, to avoid focusing on form so much that content suffers. That’s the key to efficient business communications.

Dave Griffiths does freelance writing and freelance editing, as well as media relations training, writing training, presentation skills training and business communication training. His website is http://www.davegriffithscommunications.com

Enough Already With Pompous Business Writing

Management Speak: Our business is going through a paradigm shift. Translation: We have no idea what we’ve been doing, but in the future we shall do something completely different. ~anonymous Internet wag

  On occasion, I identify myself as a “communications consultant,” although I’ve been doing that less and less, preferring the more straightforward “trainer” (business writing, presentation skills and media relations). To me, the word consultant far too often equates with long meetings, dark suits and websites stuffed with phrases such as “paradigm shift.”

  It occurred to me some time ago that people who fancy themselves consultants are – deliberately or otherwise – using our mother tongue to exclude, when English can be a marvelous tool for including our readers in what we have to say. Have a look at this enticing paragraph from a management consulting site:

  “Projects are customized based on client needs. Due diligence services range from initial validation of targets to detailed on-site due diligence visits to the preparation of complete integration plans. Management consulting services, aimed at enhancing organizational effectiveness, are typically intensive studies that identify cost-saving opportunities and define appropriate actionable go-forward plans. Strict confidentiality is maintained for all engagements.”

  Really? That’s what you want me to pay for? My reaction:

• Where do I find the actual content you’ve so cleverly hidden behind mindless copycat phrases such as “due diligence?” Does deploying it twice in the same sentence mean you’re doubly due diligent?

• “…initial validation of targets”? What targets?

• Thank you for offering a “complete” integration plan. After all, so many other websites candidly warn me that their work is often incomplete.

• You’re going to “define appropriate actionable go-forward plans”? Yes, I hope they’re “appropriate.” In these tough times, I’d rather not spend my money on anything inappropriate. And the “actionable” part is particularly reassuring. I certainly don’t want a consultant who tells me to fold my business because I have absolutely no options. Thank you also for inventing words like actionable. The language is so much richer as a result.

  Then, defining your hoped-for plans as “go-forward” is just the sort of precision that makes me want to reach right out and hire you. It makes my choices so much clearer if I know that actually going back in time or staying right where I am in some sort of other-dimensional stasis won’t be included in your sage advice.

• Finally, your writing tells me that you’d be equally pompous and obtuse and unimaginative and just plain dull sitting across from me at a shiny conference table.

  I’m also seeing a word that ranks right down there with “due diligence” when it comes to shallow and rather stupid communicating. See if you can find it in this phrase from another website: “…to help formulate and deploy their business strategies and bring about transformational change to produce successful results.”

  Yes, of course, it’s “transformational,” isn’t it? Do you know of any other kind of change? Is there a change that falls short of transforming that which is being changed? If “change” and “transform” somehow differ in degree, who is the architect of such a shift, and why are the rest of us parroting him or her? More importantly, if “transformational” has more clout than “change,” aren’t we diluting its impact by repeating it every bloody time we have a chance to pose as thoughtful and authoritative?

  Reminds me of Jim Baker standing up right at the beginning of the protracted dispute over the 2000 presidential election results and telling us that the Bush side of the recount would be “transparent.” Ask yourself how many times you’ve heard that one. Then ask yourself how many times you’ve heard promises to be “opaque” in similarly sensitive investigations or analyses.

  That’s enough ranting. Just a couple more items.

  First, you can’t be the “most unique.” Unique is one of a kind. Making that distinction is the type of thing that separates scribblers from professional communicators who treat their readers with respect.

  Second:

Management: We have to leverage our resources. Translation: We’re working weekends.”

Technical Writing Should Adopt Business Communications Clarity

  “Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.” ~Anonymous high school essay.

  It’s impossible to know whether that young man or woman will ever make a dime at the craft of writing, but you have to appreciate the precision, don’t you? Pithy analogies clearly aren’t his or her strength, but details matter a lot.

  Those are the sorts of young minds I had the pleasure of working with recently at the Energy Department in Washington, D.C. As brand-new hires, six scientists and engineers spent two days with me on the basics of clear, concise writing. Not a one of them had had a writing class in college, but along the way they reinforced a valuable lesson when it comes to putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

  First, we had to get over a looming obstacle – what to write about. Writing skills exercises are most productive and least daunting when the topic is familiar to participants. At settings like the Energy Department’s Environmental Management Office, which supervised their business communications training, that would mean writing about cleaning up radioactive waste sites.

  The problem was that these recent college graduates knew virtually nothing about the specifics of the jobs that awaited them after leaving DC. All they had was a location, like Idaho Falls or Oak Ridge, Tennessee, or Cincinnati. So what, I asked myself, could I expect them to write about?

  My concerns were short-lived. College had filled their heads with so much useful knowledge that all I had to do was prompt them to view me, the reader, as a lay person (a congressional aide, perhaps) who’d asked a question about a matter with far-ranging policy implications. In other words, it was technical writing for a non-technical audience.

  As they began to develop that idea, I told them to fill in with details, following the “show don’t tell” precept that governs any worthwhile explanatory business writing: Don’t tell me that the groundwater has been contaminated by radioactive waste. Show me with details about type of waste, measurements that depict degree of damage, cause of damage – all of which set the stage for what environmental clean-up types love to call “remediation.”

  Framed by a four-stage organizational process – exploratory, draft(s), edit/revise and publish/send – the young professionals followed the three guidelines of successful writing, whether a project report, a technical writing evaluation, a follow-up sales pitch or a brief e-mail:

 • Writing is thinking. It should be viewed as an opportunity, a gift of time to show how smart you are.

 • Know and respect your readers. Good writers use inclusive language, not pompous, jargon-laden language that excludes. They write to edify, not to impress.

 • Edit/revise. The first two guidelines are meaningless if you don’t check your work carefully. Sloppy or nonexistent editing can make you look foolish.

  The result was a revelation to each of the students, who’d begun the first day telling each other that they found writing intimidating. Aided by one-on-one peer review, they came up with straightforward, concise, get-to-the-point-at-the-start writing that I, the lay person, understood.

  A Peruvian-born lady who had little faith in herself and her command of English did a bang-up job describing vitrification – turning nuclear waste into glass. A young engineer from Michigan wrote an unambiguous argument for an employee drug-testing program and described how a hypothetical small business dealing with potentially dangerous substances could put it in place. What lubricated the process for him was calling on details he’d picked up in a college class and putting himself in the place of the hypothetical reader – in this case a business owner who was skeptical about drug testing.

   ”The best style is the style you don’t notice.” That’s how the novelist Somerset Maugham described writing that works. The world of business communications is no different. Effective writers get their points across concisely without calling attention to the way they write. The reader understands what is being conveyed – questions, answers to questions, a call to action, a persuasive point – in one reading.

Language Hall of Shame, Part II

  I’ve gotten many comments on my inaugural entries in the Language Hall of Shame, for which I’m grateful. So herewith:

• Out of the box. I thought this sucker would be gone by now, consigned to some ash heap like “this particular point in time” subbing for “now,” but I’ve been hearing it far too often lately. If you’re really thinking outside the box, should you be using tired phrases like “outside the box?” And if everyone thinks outside that ubiquitous cardboard container, maybe the “most unique” course for you would be to climb back inside and hunker down in lonely, risk-free splendor.

• Taking it to the next level. Okay, I know this is a sports cliché, and I know we can blame it on a host of ex-jocks in broadcast booths across America. But I’ve been hearing it creep into consultantspeak and what passes for business communications. One thought: In the workplace, writing skills are most effective if they’re precise. So the “next level” doesn’t have to be a glorious ascension, does it? It could be a step downward, couldn’t it?

• Step up to the plate. Sports again. This one’s achieving critical mess (that’s not a typo). And it’s an absurd example of what occurs when copycat, mindless writing masquerades as effective business communication. Do you know what happens to the top 20 or 30 baseball hitters when they “step up to the plate?” Nearly seven times out of ten, they strike out, hit a grounder, a foul pop-up, an infield pop-up, a line drive to an infielder or a fly ball to an outfielder. In other words, they fail.

Presentation Skills And Ego Don’t Mix

“The brain can absorb only what the rear end can endure.” ~Mark Twain

   Think back to all the presentations or briefings you’ve attended. Have you ever heard anyone complain that they were too short? That they wanted the speaker to keep on going, piling PowerPoint slide on top of PowerPoint slide until nearly every head nodded in bored weariness or to look down at a watch without being too obvious? Not bloody likely.

   But then have you ever sat through a presentation that actually was too short? That left you thirsting for more information? I can’t think of one, and the reason is compellingly simple: A concise, pithy briefing works because those presenters care about informing and entertaining their audience, about getting to the point with a minimum of technological back-up and a few key points jotted on a whiteboard or flip chart.

   Just as importantly – as I keep insisting to participants in my business communications seminars — they want to turn the event into a conversation, not a lecture. They want to stimulate a lively Q&A where, if things really get revved up, the presenter pivots off the back-and-forth to bring out the best in the audience. The ones most adept at presentation skills leave room for what should be the high point of their time up there – you and your ideas and questions. Isn’t that more stimulating than a speaker viewing you as a passive receptacle for a look-at-me lecture?

  It’s a matter of respect. The best briefers don’t act as if they hold a monopoly on all the relevant wisdom in the room. At the same time, they keep ideas or information in reserve because they know at least some of you will ask the questions or make the points that transform one speaker and 30 or 40 listeners into a lively learning experience.

 One last thing, calling on Mark Twain above: pretend your audience is sitting on hard wooden pews. The best sermons, I’ve been told, rarely exceed 15 minutes.

News Media: Helpmates or Irritants

“Had there been a reporter along with Lieutenant Calley when he massacred those people in Vietnam, I think that probably wouldn’t have happened.” ~Bob Schieffer, CBS News

  Greetings once again. Coming across that quote about “Rusty” Calley struck a chord – actually a couple chords – for me. First, I too was an Army lieutenant in Vietnam. As executive officer of a battery of self-propelled 155mm howitzers, I had ultimate responsibility for the deaths of more than 100 Vietnamese, all of whom (I fervently hope) were enemy combatants.

  Second, Calley emerged just a couple weeks ago from whatever quiet existence he was leading to admit his own guilt in the My Lai massacre in an extraordinary speech before a service club somewhere in mid-America. Calley actually watched as his men dealt out more than 300 deaths. Most were women, children and the elderly, none of them armed. It was mass murder.

  Schieffer was right on the money, particularly when you think about My Lai’s place in America’s tragic Vietnam story. But the veteran CBS newsman’s remark also made me think about what it means to have a reporter hanging around. The sort of free publicity inherent in a journalist’s presence – far less dramatic than My Lai to be sure, but still relevant day to day — can be both a blessing and an impediment.

  What I’m referring to is a two-sided personal phenomenom. First, as a journalist (Kansas City Star, Business Week, Penn State faculty), I believed in full disclosure pushed as far as the law allowed: No secret meetings or hearings; couching “no comments” as an admission of malfeasance at worst, passive ignorance at the least; protection of confidential sources without whom investigative journalism would be well-nigh impossible (sounds a bit hypocritical, doesn’t it?); and detailed probes into the background of anyone seeking high-profile public office.

  But now I’m the chair of a school board in Maine, and that changes everything. I want to control what appears in the local newspaper. I can’t get all the way there, of course, but I have tried to manipulate the beat reporter by warning her ahead of time when I have something “newsworthy” to say.

  By the same token, I’m amazed at how many times I’ve tried to direct the board’s conversation onto safe, noncontroversial ground when a reporter is in the audience. Worse, on way too many occasions I’ve uttered something to the effect of, “I wouldn’t be saying this if that reporter were sitting here.” So it depends on which master you serve.

  But how does that apply for someone – perhaps you – who hopes to get the most out of any press encounter? When I run media relations seminars for government agencies, nonprofits and companies, the first topic I address is “agenda.” There’s a misonception out there that reporters routinely pursue political or personal agendas in the way they cover stories.

  Well, yes, there is an agenda. But in nearly all cases, the agenda is themselves. They seek recognition from peers, promotion, higher pay, a steady climb up the professional ladder to top editor, a job in DC, an international posting, etc. They love the limelight, the front-row seat on history and the front-page byline or 30-second “on camera” time.

  The best of them are obsessively curious about their fellow human beings, politics, science, natural disasters, technology, sports, you name it. As columnist Anna Quindlen puts it, “Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.”

  So please keep this in mind: Automatically distrusting reporters could be a lost opportunity. Welcoming them to your place of business or nonprofit and feeding their curiosity and professional pride by offering to act as a source (“on background,” perhaps) could be a lasting step in the right direction.

  Trust them until they give you a reason not to. If that happens, by all means fight back. Go directly to their editors or producers and tell them you’ve been wronged. That way, you’re going after their only real agenda – themselves and their future.

The Business Communications Hall of Shame

“From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.” ~anonymous high school essay

   Greetings. Thank you for indulging me in an example of analogies collected by high school English teachers. I do so because the language we all share is a treasure chest of words that in the odd combination can make us smile, chuckle, even laugh out loud. And, like Larry the Cat — whose house we share and whose antics are just plain goofy — the best humor is unintentional humor.

   Anyway, the gaffe above resulted from a sincere, albeit immature, effort to be original and evocative. Good for him or her, I say. At least the brain has been engaged. But what about the way us adults fall into shallow “copycatism” when we practice business communications in a professional setting? And how does that reflect on you and your business when you mindlessly insert those phrases in your website text or emails or any other business writing? Do you really want to sound like a faceless, unimaginative bureaucrat?

   Herewith some inaugural entries in my Language Hall of Shame:

• Negatively impact, as in “Our failure to fabricate even one paper clip that actually holds two sheets of paper together is negatively impacting our sales performance.” First of all, “impact” became a verb only about 30 years ago, even though the verbs “affect” or “influence” did the job quite nicely.

  But now that it’s here, as I tell my business writing skills students, why compound the damage by adding an awkward adverb (fellow Mainer Stephen King said in his book on writing, “The adverb is not your friend.”)? Why not rely instead on unambiguous, active, space-saving standbys such as “harm” or “hurt?” 

• Core competencies, as in “Our core competencies include a flexible attitude about quality control and a collective tendency to stretch the lunch hour beyond normal parameters because we adhere to the principle of saving personal energy.” Does anyone realize that by using the adjective “core” to define “competencies,” you’re implying that you have other “competencies” that might not be so “core?” And that a careful reader could deduce that those other competencies might actually be subpar, or at least rather pedestrian? Here’s a solution in plain English that makes business communications work: “What we do best is…” or “Our reputation rests on the way we…” or “We are known for…”

  I bring this up because I don’t doubt that your readers are critical thinkers (at least that’s what I tell my writing seminar students to expect), which means they will view phrases like “core competencies” as lazy, unproductive thinking.

• Skill sets, as in “Our employees can bring the most unique set of skill sets to finding a solution to your problem, which is why we consider ourselves a high-end firm that can justify overcharging you for our services.” First of all, you can’t be “most unique” because “unique” means one of a kind. I used to think that foolishness was restricted to the sports broadcast booth, but now I’m seeing it on websites, which was probably inevitable.

  Anyway, I ask you: What’s wrong with just using “skills?” How can adding “sets” possibly add anything beyond the useless appendage of another four-letter word? If you use “skills sets,” ask yourself: “Why? What have I gained beyond the obvious tendency to imitate others unthinkingly?”