Tag Archive for: writing

Q&A format for articles: Good or bad?

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The Q&A format has its uses. An FAQ section covering frequently asked questions belongs on many websites. However, this format should be used sparingly for articles.

Q&A format for articles good or bad infographic

 

FAQs work, so why not Q&A articles?

Unlike articles, FAQs are meant to be searched or skimmed for one question, not read word-for-word. Their readers seek answers to specific questions or solutions for problems, such as “How can I fix it when I get Error Message XYZ?” An FAQ may include many questions, but the reader is interested in one—or only a few—Q&A pairs.

Q&As make it hard to grasp an overall message

The Q&A format makes it harder for readers to grasp your overall message than with an article. A traditional article can offer an introduction, headings, and a skilled writer’s transition between topics.

Q&A interviewees may hold you hostage

The Q&A format works best when your interviewees know how to hit your readers’ hot buttons, and they’re articulate. You can’t count on finding that in every interviewee.

When you choose a Q&A format, you deny yourself the use of paraphrasing. As a reporter, I learned that only lazy reporters always use direct quotes. Paraphrases, which restate what your source said, can be more economical and effective. Plus, a colorful quote stands out better against a background of plain vanilla text.

Q&A format is okay when…

A Q&A format works well when you:

  1. Write FAQs
  2. Keep it short—My gut tells me three questions is a good length. A Q&A may work well as a blog post. I often discuss reader questions on my blog.
  3. Interview a famous person whose fans care about every word he or she utters—Think Taylor Swift and young girls or Warren Buffett and investors.
  4. Add headings—They’ll make it easier for the casual reader to find information that interests them.
  5. Edit the interview transcript—Word-for-word transcripts don’t make anyone look good. At a minimum, cut out the ums, uhs, incomplete sentences that don’t work, and irrelevant material. If you’re interviewing a corporate employee for your company’s newsletter, you can take more liberties, as long as you check with the employee to make sure you haven’t misrepresented him or her.

What do YOU think?

I’m curious to learn what you think about the pros and cons of the Q&A format. If you’ve used it effectively, feel free to share a link.

 

NOTE: Originally published April 9, 2013. Updated Jan. 14, 2024.

Automation to improve your writing

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Automated tools can improve your financial writing.

Proofreading

Some of my favorite tools are Speak, PerfectIt, and Grammarly, as I’ve discussed in “My three main software tools for proofreading.” They help me with proofreading. I’ve gone into more detail on one of these tools in “How I use Grammarly to improve my writing.”

If your organization uses Associated Press style, you may like AP StyleGuard, which I discuss in “AP StyleGuard: the answer to your proofreading prayers?” However, having a basic proficiency in AP style, and feeling annoyed by StyleGuard recommendations that didn’t suit my needs, I’ve switched to an online subscription to the AP Stylebook, which offers the ability to add entries customized to your needs, integrated with a subscription to Webster’s New World Dictionary.

If you follow The Chicago Manual of Style, there’s an online version of that. PerfectIt offers integration with that style guide if you subscribe to both services.

Writing more concisely

If you’re looking to write more precisely, check out the Hemingway app and website, which I discuss in “Free help for wordy writers!” Some readers have told me that the simple act of running their writing through Hemingway has significantly improved their writing.

The Writer’s Diet is another tool that tackles similar issues, as I discuss in “Editing tool: the Writer’s Diet.”

“Keep it short with the Fog Index!” includes links to tools that can calculate the Fog Index—a measure of wordiness—of your writing. Alternatively, you can run the readability statistics calculations in Microsoft Word.

None of these tools will make changes for you, but they’ll help you by letting you know that a problem exists.

Using AI to draft articles

ChatGPT, an AI writing tool, seemed to burst on the scene late in 2022. It may turn out to be a useful tool. Before experimenting with it, make sure you understand its limitations, some of which are explained in Brian X Chen’s “How to Use ChatGPT and Still Be a Good Person.”

Integrate automated tools into your writing process

Of course, you’ll enjoy a more productive automated proofreading and editing process if you include your tools as part of a well-developed writing process.

I walk you through every stage of the writing process in my book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients. Although the book focuses on blogging, its process applies to almost any kind of writing.

For a quick overview of how to integrate automated tools into rewriting, read my “12 steps to rewrite long articles.”

 

 

Note: I made a small change to this article on Sept. 30, 2022, and January 20,2023

Don’t be a monologophobe!

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“A monologophobe…is a writer who would rather walk naked in front of Saks Fifth Avenue than be caught using the same word more than once in three lines,” wrote Theodore M. Bernstein in The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage.

Bernstein admitted that “…avoidance of monotony caused by jarring repetition of a conspicuous word or phrase is desirable.” But, he said, “…mechanical substitution of synonyms may make a bad situation worse.”

Don’t overuse alternatives to “said”

I see this mechanical substitution most often when writers struggle to avoid using the word “said.” Bernstein illustrates this with a list of substitutes including “averred, asseverated, smiled, chuckled, grinned (plainly or mischievously), groaned, expostulated, ejaculated, declared, or asserted.”

But “said” is simple word that holds up well to repetition. Bernstein praised American writer Ernest Hemingway on this count. “If Hemingway did nothing else for American literature, he reestablished the virtue and dignity of say and exposed the folly of synonymomaniacs,” he said.

The investment world’s equivalent

In the investment world, the word “returned” is also subject to embellishment, as I discussed in “How to discuss index and portfolio returns: My case against synonyms for ‘return.’”

 

Don’t go overboard in introducing variety into your writing!

 

 

 

 

Brainstorm ideas for your publications

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Have you ever struggled to generate topics for your blog posts, white papers, and other publications? You are not alone. I have some solutions to help you brainstorm.

1. Write about your clients’ mistakes and problems

The most powerful brainstorming advice I can give you is to start “Blogging the mistakes your clients make.” My post on this topic gives you a template for writing this kind of blog post.

2. Blog the questions your clients ask you

This approach relates to my first suggestion because your clients’ questions often relate to their mistakes and problems. Moreover, if one client asks you a question, there are probably many more with the same question.

A bonus of answering questions is that it can improve your online search rankings. After all, many prospects do online searches to find answers to their most pressing questions. Moreover, your helpful, narrowly targeted answer can convince a prospect that you’d be a great advisor for them.

If the answer to a client question isn’t right for a blog post, consider adding it to a “frequently asked questions” section on your blog, as I discuss in “Turn questions into blog posts.”

3. Draw a mind map about your clients

As I describe in the first chapter of my book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients, you can generate many blog post topics by creating a mind map centered on your target readers. Create branches that lead to each of your readers’ main areas of concern. Then draw sub-branches to narrower topic areas. Again, as I suggest above, focus on your readers’ mistakes and problems.

For an “outside the box” approach to using mind maps to generate topics, read “Photo + Mind Map = Blog Inspiration,” in which a Barbie doll plays a central role.

4. Use one of 20 topics I suggest

Jump start your list with my “20 topics for your financial blog.”

5. Draw inspiration from your reading

You can write blog posts spurred by insights you find in books or articles. You can also argue with points made in those books or articles.

Learn more about how to do this in “4 tips for turning books into blog posts.”

6. Clone your successful blog posts

Revisit approaches that have worked before to generate new topics, as I discuss in “Clone your blog posts.”

7. Save your trash

“Save your trash to feed your blog,” as I’ve said on my blog.

Have you ever gone off on a tangent in a white paper or blog post, only to realize that you need to cut that idea to keep your publication focused?

Don’t leave that idea in the trash. Instead, make it the focus of its own blog post. Your initial enthusiasm about the topic suggests that you can generate reader interest in it if you make it the focus of a piece. Just make sure that your new piece includes the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) for your reader, as I discuss in “Focus on WIIFM, not the article.”

8. Look at the world around you

Things that you see in the world around you can inspire blog post ideas.

I’ve gotten quite a few ideas from museum visits, as I’ve discussed in “Museums can inspire your blog posts.” I think this works because art often provides analogies for problems that readers face.

I discuss a similar idea in “Photo + Mind Map = Blog Inspiration,” mentioned above.

What do sidebar and ESG have in common?

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Do you know the answer to the question I posed in the title of this blog post? Both “sidebar” and “ESG” are words that people in some fields immediately understand, but they perplex many other people. “Sidebar” refers to area of text, often placed in a box, to the side of an article. “ESG” is short for “environmental, social, and corporate governance.” Being aware of people’s limited comprehension should influence how you write.

My research on technical terms

When I ask people if they know the meaning of “sidebar” and “ESG,” the results are mixed.

My writer friends mostly understand “sidebar,” and my financial colleagues mostly understand “ESG.” But I’m not convinced that those two populations overlap a lot. At least not outside of financial writers, writers who believe in socially responsible investing, and financial folks who work closely with editors as they write for publication. I imagine that far fewer members of the general public understand both words.

What’s a writer to do?

I’m a big believer in briefly defining technical terms, as I’ve discussed in “Plain language: Let’s get parenthetical.” Thus, I write “environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG)” when using the term with any audience that may not be familiar with the term. Sure, many audience members may understand the abbreviation, but my short definition won’t hurt their reading experience. They’re probably used to glossing over the spelled-out version of ESG.

I could explain “sidebar,” but I’ve found a solution I like better. Instead, I now use a handy workaround. I replace “see sidebar” with “see ‘TITLE OF SIDEBAR ARTICLE’ below.” It’s easy for the reader to scan for the title, without wondering, “What the heck is a sidebar?”

Down with meaningless claims!

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Business BlatherThis blog post was inspired by a section in Business Blather: Stop Using Words That Sound Good but Say Nothing! by Jerry McTigue. As you know, I agree with the mission of this book.

Delete meaningless claims

In a section called “Enough with the platitudes already,” McTigue criticizes the “litanies of clichés and banalities writers believe exude a corporate luster simply because virtually every corporation proclaims them.” He adds, “Unverified off-the-shelf pronouncements are innumerable—as many bloated corporate documents attest to.”

In the world of financial advice, this means statements such as “We provide superior customer service.”

Turn meaningless claims into meaningful claims

What’s the solution for this kind of writing? McTigue says, “Prove it. Illustrate it. Support it.”

In the area of customer service, do you have a case study documenting how your firm’s service truly goes beyond the ordinary? That’s a good place to start.

As McTigue says, “Replace those threadbare boasts with real substance, solid evidence, credible endorsements.”

You may enjoy this book

Overall, McTigue’s book is an entertaining, easy-to-read book. It has many powerful before-and-after examples of bad writing transformed into effective writing.

 

Note: I received a free review copy of this book.

 

Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I provide links to books only when I believe they have value for my readers.

 

When to send an article to the expert, not an editor

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If you work in a marketing or editorial group, the pieces that you work on may get comments from many different people. Sometimes your next step should be to send the piece to an editor to clean up or proofread the writing. Other times, you need to send the piece back to the subject-matter expert—often called a SME in the marketing world.

When to send to the expert

Send the piece to the expert when reviewers raise questions that can only be answered by an expert. For example, “Which S&P 500 sectors does this technique apply to?” That’s not a question to which an editor is likely to know the answer.

The answer is less clear when one of the reviewers has written, “Please rewrite more simply.” Then it’s a judgment call whether expert knowledge is required to implement the reviewer’s request. If you’ve worked a long time at your company, you may know enough to make that call.

When to send to the editor

If reviewers have mainly made line edits to an article, you can send the piece to your editor. Cleaning up the grammar or word usage is unlikely to require a subject-matter expert.

When you’re not sure

When you’re not sure about the best next step, I suggest you ask your editor for advice. An editor to whom you’re important as an internal or external client is likely to respond more quickly than a subject-matter expert who views your work as tangential to their role. Also, smart editors will tell you when they lack the expertise to resolve an issue.

YOUR tips?

Do you have tips on how to handle this issue? Please share them.

3 times to use passive verbs in your writing

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I usually slash passive verbs in articles that I edit. (Don’t know what a passive verb is? Read this.) But sometimes I leave them in place. When? When the sentence should emphasize the person or thing that the verb is acting on. Or, when you don’t want to identify the person or thing that is taking an action.

Use the passive voice in the following three instances.

1. When you want to avoid identifying the actor

Imagine that you’re communicating with a client who mistakenly deposited money into the wrong account. Do you want to emphasize the client’s mistake, as if to say, “Hey, stupid, you put money in the wrong account”? No, it’s better to say, “Money was deposited in the wrong account,” and then describe how to fix the problem.

A classic example of failing to identify the actor is the sentence: “Mistakes were made.” Sentences like that make me want to shake the author. I want to yell, “Tell me who made the mistake!” I sometimes see such sentences in descriptions of investment underperformance. I don’t agree with that approach. I think it’s better to identify the reason for underperformance and say what you’re going to do about it. I discussed that in “Four lessons from Wasatch Funds on reporting underperformance.”

2. When you don’t know the identity of the actor

Sometimes the problem with active verbs isn’t that you don’t want to identify the actor. It’s that you don’t know what the heck caused the action. For example, “The price of PQR stock was depressed.”

Perhaps that’s a bad example because you can usually find a pundit to opine on the reason for a stock price movement. However, perhaps you want to be honest about your not really knowing the reason for the stock price decline.

3. When you want to highlight the topic over the actor

Sometimes the actor is less important than the subject that it’s acting on. For example: “The conditions are forming for a dramatic decline in stock prices.” In this case, the factors driving the decline are less important than the imminent decline.

Stay active most of the time

Despite the fact that passive verbs are sometimes appropriate, please go easy on using them. Active verbs are usually better.

 

Go from short to long!

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Rearranging elements of a sentence “from short to long, from simple to compound, increases the ability of the reader to understand them,” says Bruce Ross-Larson in Edit Yourself: A Manual for everyone who works with words, one of my favorite editing books.

Ross-Larson has three related rules.

  • First, count the syllables. This will let you identify shorter words to put first.
  • Then, “if the number of syllables is the same, count the letters.” That can be a tie-breaker.
  • Finally, “Put the compound elements last.” As an example, he suggests that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” reads better than “liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and life.” I guess that’s why the Declaration of Independence uses the suggested order.

Of course, these three rules don’t always apply. As Ross-Larson says, don’t follow the rules if that’ll:

  • Put elements out of chronological or sequential order
  • Create unintended modifiers
  • Upset a familiar or explicit order, such as “the birds and the bees” or going in order from more conservative to less conservative asset classes

Small changes like this can make your writing easier to read. That means you’re likely to convey your message more effectively.

 

 

Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I provide links to books only when I believe they have value for my readers.

Data are versus data is

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Should you write “data is” or “data are”? Whenever possible, I suggest writing to avoid the use of the term “data” by itself. Why? Because, as Garner’s Modern American Usage says, “Data is a SKUNKED term: whether you write data are or data is, you’re likely to make some readers raise their eyebrows.” I think Garner is right about that.

I just started a poll on LinkedIn asking if people see the word as plural or singular. There was no consensus, though respondents favored plural.

data singular or plural

Data are

There’s no question that the word “data” comes from Latin, in which “data” is plural and “datum” would be the singular form.

In favor of using plural verbs, Garner says:

  • “Technically a plural, data has, since the 1940s, been increasingly treated as a mass noun taking a singular verb. But in more or less formal contexts it is preferably treated as a plural.”
  • “In one particular use, data is rarely treated as singular: when it begins a clause and is not preceding by an article. E.g.: Data over the last two years suggest…”

Associated Press style agrees with Garner in one context, saying “In scientific and academic writing, plural verbs and pronouns are preferred.”

Should you write "data are" or "data is"?

Data is

However, times are changing. Associated Press style generally favors “data is.”

In favor of SINGULAR, Garner says: “One context in which the singular use of data might be allowed is in computing and allied disciplines…”

It depends

Some experts don’t use the same verb tense across all cases. I think Grammar Girl’s quote from Oxford Dictionaries in particularly useful in describing why one publication or editor might sometimes use singular verbs and sometimes use plural verbs. The Grammar Girl website says:

Oxford Dictionaries maintains that “data” has developed two separate meanings:

  1. the original plural meaning that conveys the idea of multiple data bits or pieces
  2. a singular meaning that acts as a mass noun roughly equivalent to the word “information.”

Grammar Girl also says:

Dictionaries and news sites including the Wall Street Journal and The Guardian, and style guides including The Chicago Manual of Style have updated their recommendations to allow that “data” can be singular or plural.

Along similar lines, The Copyeditor’s Handbook says: “…copyeditors in corporate communications departments are often expected to treat data as a singular noun.” It contrasts this with academic presses and scholarly journals using plural.

What should YOU do?

One way to deal with this issue is to avoid it by writing in a way that doesn’t make you choose between plural and singular verbs. A math writer friend uses “the set of data” for this purpose.

If you can’t avoid the need to choose, then I suggest you pick one style and stick with it. If everyone in your company knows that the corporate style is “data is” or “data are,” you’ll make everyone’s lives easier.