I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential.
Read, and enjoy!Tash
Keep ideas flowing
Have you ever read something and found a jump in ideas that distracts you?
I find it really annoying when the ideas don’t flow in a piece of writing – the change of topics or tense or perception may not seem major but if it makes me have to reread something to understand what happened, I tend to lose interest in the whole thing.
I came across the following example of this on a website where it is promoting cheap ‘reports’ to help small business people; the errors give me the impression of low quality pdfs rather than informative reports – what do you think from their description?
Too often I visit the site of a business mum to find there is only a contact form! The main reason I visit the site is to see where they are located as, where possible, I prefer supporting local business mums. There are a lot of different reasons for the lack of contact details.
This weeks *** report will look at five different contact methods you may want to put on you site as well as options for phone numbers, fax numbers, postal address and email address.
A range of contact options are available
Yes, there are various reasons for not including contact details but how is that relevant when you are telling me how annoyed you were at not seeing any contact details! It also has no relevance to the next paragraph so makes the whole thing very disjointed.
I suspect they are attempting to not offend people without contact details rather than standing strong with their own argument. However, it has backfired with poor writing and an indication of weakness that detracts from their ‘expert’ stand in the report.
Here’s an alternative version that won’t offend, sound weak or be hard to read*:
Too often I visit the site of a business mum to find there is only a contact form! I understand they may have their own reason for not including contact details, but the main reason I visit the site is to see where they are located as, where possible, I prefer supporting local business mums.
This weeks *** report will look at five different contact methods you may want to put on your site, as well as some low-risk options for showing phone numbers, fax numbers, postal address and email address.
Having said poor flow of ideas is distracting, my next blog post will include some tips on how to maintain the flow…
*My changes are in blue to improve the flow plus some necessary improvements to the second paragraph so it makes sense. I didn’t totally rewrite it as I would for myself or a client!
2010-11 is almost here!
Do you think it is time to prepare for a new financial year – or are you going to wait until July to work on your tax and accounting obligations?
I always plan to be organised so I can submit a tax return in early July, but it is never quite that smooth in reality. My bookkeeper needs time to enter all the data from June, I need my super fund to send me a deduction letter and so on.
However, I really do look at my accounts now so I can maximise this financial year – thinking of deductions in July won’t help much!
Here are some of my tips on keeping accounting issues under control in June/July:
- have regular data entry for expenses throughout the year- or get a bookkeeper!
- keep a document going all year to note down anything that may go into your annual report (i.e. note down any significant changes or events so you don’t have to remember them when you starting writing the report) This will also help a lot if you outsource the report writing
- if website pages/attachments need to be updated for 1 July (e.g. for legislation or price changes), prepare them in advance – even if data is unavailable until late June, you can have everything else ready to go
- book your accountant/tax agent early so you can choose a date that suits you
- get someone to help you if you are stuck entering a lot of data (e.g. for new depreciable items or household accounts if you are home-based) – it’s much quicker if one person reads out the data while the other types it
- check your online bank access – many will show the year’s interest instead of adding up each month’s or waiting for a printed statement
- review your payroll records now so you have all the information when sending out PAYG statements
- automate any regular payments – this can be useful all year, but taking the time in April/May to schedule payment of memberships and subscriptions due in June can save time and the stress of forgetting
- prepare communications in advance (blog posts, newsletter information) so those tasks are out of the way for a month or so
- have a good account filing system as well as your actual accounts – I use a display folder with a plastic envelope per month plus some extras (‘to be entered’, ‘pending’, etc) – and avoid changing it at this time of year
How else do you make your accounting and tax tasks quicker or easier?
Using apostrophes
Many people claim that they don’t understand apostrophes. At least, they don’t understand where to put them!
Basically, an apostrophe indicates that someone or something owns something else. For example, the boy’s dog – the boy owns the dog.
For a singular owner, it’s easy. The apostrophe and an s come after the word – boy’s, Mary’s and woman’s.
Its also easy if a plural term exists, such as men’s, crowd’s, children’s and management’s.
If the owner ends in s, the apostrophe comes after the s without an additional s. So the horses’ stable and the Smiths’ house are correct.
Apostrophes are also required in abbreviations to show letters are missing. For instance, are not becomes aren’t and do not becomes don’t.
The trickiest word is its…
It’s is the abbreviation of it is; the possessive term is its. So it’s raining today, but the horse lost its shoe.
So there are no apostrophes for decades, numbers, plural abbreviations or plural items – some correct examples are
– during the 60s
– she bought some CDs
– find all the As
– look at my photos
– he is in his 90s
– a list of URLs
– the babies are sleeping
– we will have three pizzas please.
Work like ours…
How would you react to a website like this?
“we treat the floor and work like ours. We are trying to keep it in cheapest price. If you online quotation we give you 5% discount.”
As key phrases about their benefits on the homepage of a website, the above statements really need some work.
What’s worse is the page title for their homepage includes ‘ploors’ instead of floors.
We came across this site as potential customers, and to be honest we’re reluctant to even get a quote after seeing such errors (trust me, there are many , many more with the site!) They are local and we’d prefer to use a local small business so it just proved to me again how big an impact bad writing can have on your business.
In this case, I suspect English is not their first language and I understand it isn’t an easy second language. At the end of the day, though, do they want people to accept their limitations in English or do they want more customers via an attractive website?
If you struggle with written English (because it is not your first language or any other reason), it really is worthwhile getting someone else to check your writing and edit it for you. An English speaking friend may not get it perfect, but will probably do better than the website I mentioned above. Then get some professional help as soon as you can afford it – even if you have to do it in stages.
Oh, the above sentences would be much more effective as “We treat your floors like our own. We keep our prices as cheap as possible. Get an online quotation for a 5% discount!”
So would you try this business based on their website, or would you go elsewhere?
Absolute words
Earlier in the week I wrote a post about products being exclusively available in one department store being a misleading statement (things are either exclusive or they aren’t!) and it reminded me of an article I wrote in my newsletter some time ago (it was my November 2004 newsletter to be precise!)
Here is what I wrote back then:
Don’t over qualify
There are a group of words that have very precise meanings – these words don’t need any qualifying to make them strong, and in fact it is grammatically wrong to attempt qualifying them.
For instance, the word unique means one of a kind so something is either unique or it isn’t – ‘very unique’, ‘particularly unique’, ‘most unique’ and similar combinations are unnecessary.
Other words that are commonly misused in this way are:
Electrocuted – the word actually means to be killed by electricity, not receive an electric shock.
Perfect – means there can be no improvement; adding ‘very’ to it doesn’t serve any purpose.
Fatal – means deadly. An accident is fatal or it isn’t, it can’t be ‘very fatal’ or ‘really fatal’.
In most of these examples, they can be qualified by using a word such as ‘almost’ or ‘nearly’; the word unique, however, can’t be qualified at all.
What other words can you think of that are absolute in their own right?
How not to start an email
I just received some spam which started with:
You are receiving this email becasue we wish you to use our Website Design Services.
Did someone really think that approach was going to win them any business? They went on to explain about their company and what they offer (so say their subheadings anyway – I didn’t read it!) but frankly who cares?
What’s wrong with this opening?
- there is no attempt to be polite or engage me as a human being, let alone being personal
- there is no attempt to gain my interest
- there is no attempt to show any understanding of my issues, let alone suggestions of how they can help solve them
- they didn’t even take enough time to check the spelling in the first line of their email! How can I trust their attention to detail?
- they attempt to further their importance by using capital letters when describing their services – unnecessary capitals of course
- and the big one – how does what they wish have any relevance to me or me receiving unwanted emails?
So when starting emails, remember it is a person reading it so write to them!
Exclusively present at how many places?
I recently saw a sign on the back of a bus that included “available exclusively at no other department stores”.
It left me wondering was it exclusive to the advertiser or not? It was the only department store stocking the product but it could well be available at other places which means it wasn’t exclusive at all!
Let’s look at what exclusive really means…
exclusive: entirely, not shared or including others
The reporter had an exclusive story as the witness spoke only to her.
Exclusive is an absolute term so it can’t be qualified – that is, something is exclusive or it isn’t, there is no middle option. “I’ll give you and the other TV stations an exclusive interview” and “the exclusive club is open to everyone” don’t make sense.
Adverse or averse?
With only one letter different and both words having a negative aspect, adverse and averse are easily conufsed if you aren’t careful.
adverse: not in your best interests, unfavourable
She had an adverse reaction to the new medicine.
averse: strongly against or opposed; turn away
He is averse to opening a new branch in Sydney.
verse: text with metre and rythym, such as in poetry or a section of a song
The second verse is my favourite part of the song.
Fewer uses of less?
Words with similar meanings can easily be used in the wrong context, which does not give a good impression of the writer and also doesn’t help to keep the specific meanings of words. Did you know that ‘fewer’ and ‘less’ are often used in the wrong way?
fewer: not as many items (i.e. relates to things you can count)
There are fewer tasks on my to do list now
less (or less than): not as much of something (i.e. relates to a collective noun)
Antibiotics resulted in less disease after WWII.
ANZAC remembrance
Yesterday was Anzac Day so I thought of how often I have seen remembrance misspelt. It is an important word that is part of common speech even though most of us don’t use it very often aside from near Anzac and Remembrance Days.
The other ‘word’ to be aware of is Anzac…
Anzac stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps so we would generally write it as the acronym ANZAC; however, we only capitalise the first letter as specified in The Protection of the Word “Anzac” Regulations (administered by the Minister for Veteran’s Affairs).
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