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Number
2: May 14, 2003
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This week in Katydid:
Giving Credit to Resources
This week, the news is abuzz with the New York Times reporter, Jayson
Blair, who for years systematically
plagiarized the work of other reporters. The Times' editors received
most of the criticism for not catching him earlier. However, the scandal
underscores the rising role of technology in reporting and the value of
original sources.
Jayson Blair used the Web to 'fill out' his filings. He pulled
content from geographically disparate sources. He viewed photographs the
moment they were available (using their details to make it appear he had
personally been at the location). He used his cell phone and his laptop
to disguise his location.
The Internet has had an open design from its inception. Its purpose
is to facilitate the sharing of information. It also makes it easy to
steal information.
The Web is rife with copyright infringement. Companies regularly
'borrow' marketing copy and rewrite it for their purposes. At one
company I worked for, a competitor stole large sections of copy. We
discovered it, in part, because our name was still in the copy. I bet you have
similar stories.
Aside from having integrity enough to avoid stealing, I think one
answer is to use the link more. Linking is the web equivalent of citing
your sources. Too often, companies become insular. They want so much to
trap visitors on their site, they forget the value of being a good
resource. If you can link customers to good information, you'll look all
the better for it. They will consider you a trusted source.
Of course, it couldn't hurt for all of us to take some responsibility
to question the things we read. This scandal shows the blurring of the
line between online and print content. Just as it's good policy to check
into that e-mail purporting that Al Gore questioned Col. Oliver North
about Osama bin Laden (it's
false), we should also have some skepticism about the motives of
mainstream journalists.
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Where Has All the Copy Gone?
Running my usual scan of web sites to see what's new or remarkable, I've
noticed a trend. There's a dearth of copy on the Web. Some sites leave
you adrift in their navigation, requiring ten to fifteen clicks to find
a product. Often there's not even a brand message.
Most of these sites violate principles of experience design by making
you scan through long lists of categories. Usability tests show that
lists of seven to ten items are as long as you want to go. Five to seven
items is the optimum range.
Not that I think copy rules the Web. When I work with clients on
their web sites, I focus on the information architecture first and the
volume of copy second.
What I look for is the right balance, and one site that has it is the Body
Shop. Their web site makes every word count. They have terrific
visual design, rich imagery, and just the right amount of copy.
The site pulls off a neat trick; it manages to deliver their value
messaging of corporate responsibility while encouraging customers to
indulge themselves.
One of their home page crosslinks reads, "Love Your Body, Fake
Your Tan! Girls play it safe in the sun this summer!" Now, that's
economy of language. It promotes health, beauty, and the sense of
treating oneself to a good time. That's pure clean fun with brand.
Read some of their pages. Body paragraphs run consistently 30-60
words in length. Promotions have about 10 to 12 words. It's a tight,
tight site.
Want to know their secret? They did their branding homework. This
company knows what they're all about; they know their target customer;
they've spent many years honing their value messaging. All of their
marketing promotes the same message and this buys them the ability to
use fewer words.
Take this to heart when you look at your own marketing (I know I
must). If you write too much or too little, then you probably don't know
what to say.
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Kicking the eHabit
Style guides collect editorial choices, and one each editor needs to
decide how to handle the 'e' prefix in web terminology.
I contend that we treat 'e' words such as e-commerce, e-mail, and
e-newsletter as new compound words. We should hyphenate and capitalize
them like compound words.
For example, I capitalize the 'e-' when it appears at the beginning
of a sentence:
E-mail recipients hate spam.
In title case, I also do not capitalize the word after the hyphen:
E-commerce Rules the Internet
If your company made the mistake of branding itself or its products
with a lowercase 'e' (and everyone did in the 90's), then you need to
avoid placing the proper noun at the beginning of a sentence:
eBread is the best product since sliced bread.
Becomes:
The best product since sliced bread, eBread blends wholesome
wheat with vitamin E.
It requires some dancing to avoid passive sentences, but there's
nothing more disconcerting to my editorial eye than to see the first
rule of grammar broken by having a lowercase letter at the beginning of
a sentence.
Now, the wired style guide argues
that since most hyphenated compound words
eventually lose their hyphen and become one word eventually (i.e.,
lower-case became lowercase), we should just settle there now (i.e.,
email, ecommerce).
However, because we pronounce the words with a long 'e' sound rather
than a short 'e' sound, the hyphen helps the reader hear the word
correctly. Therefore, I will keep the hyphen until we start pronouncing
the 'e' with a short vowel sound.
Finally, as tech stocks plummeted in value, so did the 'e'. It's rare
to coin new e-words and some words will lose their prefix in the next
few years. One case that supports this is 'e-marketing.' The word
'marketing' has begun to encompass all forms of marketing including
web-based marketing. Now, that's one e-trend I can get behind.
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Thanks for Reading
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If you have suggestions of web sites to review, writing that buzzes,
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Kind regards,
Kevin Troy Darling
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