DEC. NEWSLETTER: Banish “learnings” and take advantage of sale on my PDF e-books

Down with “learnings”!

I’m not a fan of pedantic expressions like “learnings,” so I was thrilled to read “An insightful alternative to the dreadful jargon ‘learnings’ ” by Josh Bernoff.

Bernoff says, “…a large proportion of your audience, when reading about ‘learnings,’ will tune out or resist. And that doesn’t accomplish your goal of communicating without generating an emotional backlash.” That’s so true!

He suggests “insights” as a good substitute for “learnings.” For example, instead of saying, “Please write up your learnings from the completion of the project in a memo,” he suggests saying, “Please write up your insights from the completion of the project in a memo.” I like it.

Another word that I hate is “mitigate,” as I’ve discussed in “BNY Mellon: I liked your ‘truth ad’ until you used that word” and “Can you make a case for ‘mitigate’?

If you’re struggling to convince someone about the value of plain language, read “Seven Ways to Talk Your Financial Execs Out of Jargon and Bad Writing,” my guest post that originally appeared on the MarketingProfs blog.

December sale on PDF e-books that will make you a better writer

Keep my practical writing tips handy with my two PDF e-books.

My 45-page Investment Commentary e-book gives you commentary-focused tips for organizing your thoughts, editing for the “big picture,” editing line by line, and getting more mileage out of your commentary.

One financial advisor writes, “Susan’s Investment Commentary book is a must-read. Anyone who writes investment commentary and financial reports should read—and reread this book—in order to avoid the dry, boring reports we see all too often.”

Regularly $9.99, the PDF is $4.99 during December 2024.

 

My 107-page book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients, takes you step-by-step through a powerful system for writing blog posts—or just about any communication you’d share with clients or prospects.

Financial planning expert Michael Kitces says, “A great read for advisors who want to blog better—or learn how to start!”

Blogger Mike Lipper says, “I wish I had read Susan’s Financial Blogging before I produced 300 weekly posts.”

Regularly $39, the PDF is only $27 during December 2024.

 

Winter soup recipe

My favorite new recipe is “Healing Curry Butternut Squash Lentil Soup (with a slow cooker option!)” I didn’t have the coconut milk called for in the recipe, but the soup still turned out great.

You can use any squash, pumpkin, or sweet potatoes in this recipe. I used tetsukabuto squash instead of butternut squash.

Happy holidays!

I hope you and all of the people in your circle enjoy a lovely holiday season. I’ll see you in 2025.


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).


Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

Seven ways to talk your financial execs out of jargon and bad writing

Marketing and communications professionals know how to write well. However, sometimes you struggle to get your firm’s executives to recognize the power of good writing. You edit their text, but the execs put the jargon and long-winded, indirect language back in. I have seven tips for how to win over your subject-matter experts.

Note: This post was originally published on Oct. 18, 2013, on the MarketingProfs blog, but it remains relevant today. I have made some updates and additions.

  1. Use the Oracle of Omaha

When I push for plain language, sometimes my asset manager clients say they’re worried they’ll be seen as “dumb.” That’s not justified.

I tell them to look at Warren Buffett. His annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders relies heavily on plain language. Yet the report is widely discussed by sophisticated financial professionals. I’ve never heard anyone call Warren Buffet dumb because of the way he writes.

Buffett writes like you imagine a trustworthy person would talk. For example, “A number of good things happened last year, but let’s first get the bad news out of the way,” he says on page 3 of his 2012 shareholder letter (PDF). He admits that the firm’s 2012 gains were “subpar.” He says it’s even possible that the firm may lose its record of consistently outperforming the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index over consecutive five-year periods.

It’s easy to imagine a different company burying the bad news at the bottom of the letter or even in the footnotes. Other companies surely would have used stuffier language to convey such news.

Buffett’s style works for various reasons:

  • A plainspoken style instills trust in investors. For example, its 2010 full-service investor survey spurred J.D. Power and Associates to recommend boosting investor trust with methods that include honest communication about investment performance and plain explanations for fees and commissions, according to “Study: Why focus on people, not profits, increases investor trust.” On a similar note, “investors are no longer impressed with jargon. They want to understand their investments without learning the definitions to unfamiliar words,” according to “New Word Order,” part of the Invesco White Paper Series (highlights available online). Moreover, “when Invesco tested the phrase ‘institutional-quality money management,’ one focus-group member asked why prison inmates were handling the money,” according to an article in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
  • The directness of Buffett’s writing saves time for readers. Everybody’s busy. They can save time by reading data-supported statements like this: “Our insurance operations shot the lights out last year. While giving Berkshire $73 billion of free money to invest, they also delivered a $1.6 billion underwriting gain, the tenth consecutive year of profitable underwriting.” Though a securities analyst and a portfolio manager might want to dig into the annual report for more details, these sentences give them a quick idea of what to seek.
  • It’s entertaining. Whether you’re an investor, an analyst, or a random reader, you’ll find something to make you smile in Buffett’s reports, which are regularly discussed in articles such as The Wall Street Journal‘s “Warren Buffett’s Annual Berkshire Letter: The Highlights” and, more recently, “I Read All 59 of Warren Buffett’s Annual Letters. These Are the Best Parts.” The author of the latter article says, “Buffett wrote in the voice of a friendly—and sometimes funny—teacher” and points to wording such as “Warning: It’s time to eat your broccoli.”

I imagine that some industry experts would read Buffett even if he wrote terribly; his investment insights are respected. However, weak writing would limit his reach.

  1. Remind them that longer sentences and paragraphs lose readers

Jargon isn’t the only problem. Research suggests that the longer your writing, the greater the probability that your readers will drop out. The average American starts to lose interest when pieces average more than 42 words per paragraph, 14 words per sentence, and two syllables per word, according to research cited by Ann Wylie of Wylie Communications in Portland, Oregon.

The 42-14-2 rule may be too strict for you, but the bottom line is clear: Longwinded writing is bad for readership. That should be intuitive: Everybody is bombarded with content; and they skim or skip pieces that run long, as the mutual fund prospectus research in the next section suggests.

Don’t believe the research? Here’s what Warren Buffett wrote about his experience reading corporate reports in his preface to A Plain English Handbook: How to create clear SEC disclosure documents: “I’ve studied the documents that public companies file. Too often, I’ve been unable to decipher what is being said or, worse yet, had to conclude that nothing was being said.”

The problem of bad writing is separate from the problem of jargon, because technical terms wouldn’t stump Buffett. It’s probably longwindedness and indirectness that derail him.

  1. Read out loud

When writers read their work out loud, they get a new perspective on it. I’ve seen that to be the case in my financial blogging class: Students recognize weaknesses they overlooked on a computer screen or printout.

Ask your experts to read their clunky sections out loud. Or, you can read it to them. Then ask, “How does that sound?” You can also suggest reading your edited version of that passage and comparing the “before” and “after.”

Here’s a “before” example:

Proposals from the German/French axis in the last few days have heartened risk markets under the assumption that fiscal union anchored by a smaller number of less debt-laden core countries will finally allow the ECB to cap yields in Italy and Spain and encourage private investors to once again reengage Euroland bond markets. To do so, the ECB would have to affirm its intent via language or stepped up daily purchases of peripheral debt on the order of five billion Euros or more. The next few days or weeks will shed more light on the possibility, but bondholders have imposed a “no trust zone” on policymaker flyovers recently. Any plan that involves an “all-in” commitment from the ECB will require a strong hand indeed.

Did you find it hard to grasp the main point of the “before” paragraph? Now consider the “after” paragraph:

Prices of riskier investments rose in response to recent proposals by German and French leaders, but we are skeptical that this will continue. Investors seem to believe that the proposals will strengthen the euro zone by capping bond yields. This would make euro-zone bonds more attractive to private investors. However, success would require the European Central Bank (ECB) to use strong language or to boost its daily purchases of the troubled countries’ debt by at least €5 billion. To convince distrustful investors will require strong action. That may be more than the ECB can achieve.

In addition to shortening and simplifying, I summarized the paragraph’s main point in the first sentence. Doing so is an easy way to boost reading comprehension. In fact, by simply making that one-sentence change to the “before” paragraph, the author can greatly improve the paragraph’s effectiveness.

By the way, the “before” example is written at the level of grade 16, while the “after” is grade 10, as calculated by Hemingway Editor, which I’ve written about in “Free help for wordy writers!” Think of grade level as a measure of how hard you are making your reader work to understand your message. The lower-grade-level “after” doesn’t sound “dumb.” Rather, it’s clear and confident.

  1. Plain English boosts results

Research shows that rewriting documents using plain English improves their effectiveness.

According to Joseph Kimble’s Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please, mutual fund buyers found a proposed plain-English “profile prospectus” more appealing than the traditional prospectus. He writes:

In every one of a series of comparisons—including how easy it was to find and understand several important items—the buyers rated the profile prospectus higher than the traditional prospectus. What’s more, most of the buyers had not even read the traditional prospectus before investing; but 61% of that group said they would be very likely to read the profile prospectus.

Respondents to an Investment Company Institute survey (PDF) on the profile prospectus revealed that “Investors overwhelmingly considered the writing style of the profile prospectus superior to that of the [traditional] prospectus.” They also liked the profile prospectus better for making purchase decisions, locating specific information, and comparing funds.

Profile prospectus research conducted by fund companies showed that financial advisers also liked the layout, length, and content of the profile prospectus and would use it with investors. Unfortunately, this simpler overview of funds was not adopted because of fund company concerns about costs and liability. However, a similar document, called a “summary prospectus,” was adopted in November 2008 with the mutual fund industry’s support.

  1. Show them you can work with the compliance department

Some bad writing results from fear of the firm’s compliance department. Under SEC and FINRA oversight, nobody wants to make a mistake. Here’s an example of the kind of clunkiness that results:

In the investment decision-making process, it has been demonstrated that the most important element affecting future portfolio performance is the asset mix.

I suspect that the use of “it has been demonstrated” comes from the desire to fend off a compliance officer’s complaint that there’s no proof that the asset mix is so important. The same may be true of the reference to “future” performance, because a hair-splitting compliance officer might point to the many times when factors other than asset mix play an outsized role in investment returns.

However, you may be pleasantly surprised by how open your compliance professionals are to your efforts to write well while also satisfying their concerns. After all, they benefit if readers understand what both of you are trying to say.

I suggest that first you write your message clearly. The sample sentence above might become “The investment decision that has the most impact on portfolio performance is the asset mix” or “A portfolio’s asset mix has the greatest impact on performance.” This could cut the sentence’s length from 23 words to as few as 10 words.

Next, consider ways to satisfy the compliance department’s concerns. It may be enough to document the importance of the asset mix by listing links to academic articles in the marketing department’s compliance files or in a footnote to the document. If your overseers demand more information in your publication, remember that you don’t need to jam it all into one sentence. A less prominent position in the same paragraph should work.

  1. Turn the tables

Your troublesome executive may be more open to recognizing problems in other people’s writing. That gives you an opening. Try showing them before-and-after examples of somebody else’s writing. You can use the examples given earlier in this article or something more relevant to your firm.

When an executive recognizes the value of streamlining someone else’s writing, you will have an opening to discuss the exec’s writing.

  1. Be tactful

Tread gently when you edit your subject-matter experts’ work. Suggest changes rather than offering criticism. That’s less threatening to fragile egos. Also, a wise writing coach talks about the writing, not the writer. It may also help to position your rewrite as “alternative” wording rather than a “better” approach.

It’s not easy for anyone to break a lifetime of bad writing habits. My tips could help you nudge someone in the right direction. As a starter, share this article and ask for your subject-matter experts’ advice on how to boost the effectiveness of your firm’s communications. Enlist them as your partners in better marketing.

“The pebble in the shoe”: The power of metaphor

Metaphors are powerful tools for communication. I couldn’t get the phrase “the pebble in the shoe” out of my mind after an advisor mentioned it to me at an annual conference of the Financial Planning Association of Massachusetts back in 2011.

Photo by Kaptain Kobold

Apparently, speaker Todd Fithian of the Legacy Companies suggested that advisors tackle whatever represents “the pebble in the shoe” for their clients.

I felt anxious just thinking about that pebble. This metaphor also sparked my curiosity about the presentation in which the term popped up.

Pebble vs. pressing problem

Which phrase is more memorable? “The pebble in the shoe” or “The pressing problem your client wants to address”?

For me, it’s clearly the first phrase. I’ll probably remember this phrase and perhaps even Todd Fithian long after I’ve forgotten the rest of the day’s sessions. This is true even though I didn’t attend Fithian’s presentation.

 

 

Note: This post was updated on October 15, 2024, following its original publication in 2011.

Improve your financial writing with these rules

Sometimes I find inspiration for my writing in unusual places. For example, it appeared in a newsletter from a professional organizer. Lorena Prime’s “7 Golden Rules of Organizing” made me think about how you can improve your financial writing skills.

rules from a professional organizer infographic

Rule 1. Be open to change

It’s not easy to change your financial writing style after putting your words together in the same way for many years.

However, the rules that you learned in school may no longer apply. For example, I learned in typing class to put two spaces after every period. Today, one space is the standard practice, as explained in Farhad Manjoo’s “Space Invaders: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.” Similarly, today a much more personal, casual style of writing prevails than when I entered the business world. For example, when I rewrote my website in 2015, I changed my biography from using “Susan Weiner” to “I.”

Also, there are always new areas where you can learn things. I try to take at least one writing-related class every year. I also read extensively and ask questions of the experts around me.

You’re a smart person who can learn. Take advantage of your curiosity and intelligence to try new approaches to your financial writing.

Rule 2. Purge

One of the biggest curses of financial writing is wordiness. Purge those excess words from your writing.

While you’re at it, replace multisyllabic jargon with simpler words that count as plain English. I mentioned one tool for identifying text that needs purging in my post on “Donald Trump, grade level, and your financial writing.”

Rule 3. Put like things together

Keep like with like, as I keep my sweaters together in one drawer

Keep like with like, as I keep my sweaters together in one drawer

Financial writing that’s well organized is easier to read than writing that hops from one topic to another and then goes back and forth again.

Divide whatever you write—especially longer pieces, such as white papers or quarterly letters—into distinct sections that each discuss one topic.

I describe an example of how to do this in “Key lesson for investment commentary writers from my professional organizer.”

Not sure if you’ve succeeded in putting like things together? You can outline or diagram the topics covered in each paragraph to check. The color coding used in Roy Peter Clark’s margin analysis technique may help.

Rule 4. Create homes

Your ideas for articles, blog posts, and longer pieces deserve homes. Creating a place where you store your ideas (and the data to support them) will help you to find them when you need them. There’s nothing worse than sitting down at your keyboard with no idea of what you want to write about.

You can house your ideas in a way that suits your style. Some people write notes by hand and cram paper copies of relevant articles into manila folders. Others have embraced virtual repositories, such as word-processing documents, Evernote folders, or online mind maps. I store my blog post ideas as Microsoft Outlook tasks.

Rule 5. Do it if it takes 2 or 3 minutes

I’m stretching to apply this rule to your financial writing. However, I’d like you take advantage of even small time slots to work on your writing.

For example, if you’re struggling to write a blog post, commit to spending 15 minutes on it. What you write doesn’t have to be great. It’ll get your mind thinking. You may develop momentum and keep going after your 15 minutes end. Even if you stop after 15 minutes, the ideas will continue marinating in your head.

Only have two or three minutes? Brainstorm ideas for future topics. Try my Barbie-inspired technique if you’re out of ideas.

Rule 6. Maintain it

You must write to improve your financial writing skills. Write regularly—daily, if possible.

Rule 7. Work with someone

I’m a big believer in classes—and getting feedback from others—as a way to improve one’s writer. Even non-financial writing classes can make you more aware of your writing’s strengths and areas where you need to improve. I took many writing classes through adult education programs while I was learning to write better. None of the classes had anything to do with investments or other financial topics.

If you’d like to focus on financial writing, I offer coaching and my financial blogging class, “How to Write Blog Posts People Will Read: A 5-Week Writing Class for Financial Advisors.” I also lead writing workshops on email and investment commentary for professional societies and corporate clients.

 

How are YOU working to improve your financial writing?

I’m always interested in learning from you. Tell me how you’re improving your financial writing.

By the way, if you need a professional organizer to help you get your office in shape, I recommend Lorena Prime, whose article sparked this post. She is a woman of many talents. She has also acted as facilitator for my annual investment commentary webinar.

Paper image courtesy of adamr/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

May newsletter: Better quarterly commentary

Want to do a better job on your next quarterly commentary?

You’ve finished your first-quarter commentary, but you have a nagging feeling you could have done a better job editing it. Check out the five-step process in my blog post on “5 steps for rewriting your investment commentary”!

Also, if you’re writing for an audience of individual investors, pay attention to my list of “Words to avoid in your investment communications with regular folks.

You might also enjoy “Investment commentary numbers: How to get them right.”

For a handy overview of my approach to investment commentary, you can buy my mini e-book.

Is that really a word?

I sometimes ask my clients to substitute a different word when they use a word that’s not in the dictionary. However, if you think that we ought to be more flexible about counting words as “real,” you’ll enjoy “What makes a word ‘real’?” a TED talk. I think she has a point when she says that usage should eventually affect correctness.

I admit that I’m one of those people the speaker discusses who complains about the incorrect use of the verb “impact.” See the MLA Style Center on “Impact as a verb” for an explanation. Also, see “affect/effect/impact.”

Pursue diversity for better investment results!

The CFA Institute attracted close to 800 registrants to its March 2024 conference, “Thrive: Enhancing Outcomes through Collective Intelligence,” which made a business case for why the organization and many of its leading members are committed to pursuing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Below are some ideas that interested me.

British neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow talked about how you can use “groups of brains” to balance out biases if the group is truly diverse in genes, experience, and age. You must also ensure that the diverse group can communicate freely so don’t get an echo chamber. To achieve that, she suggested techniques such as letting the junior person speak first (which I would find intimidating if I were on the spot like that) and letting people submit ideas anonymously.

It’s hard to prove the benefits of diverse teams for investment performance through a scientifically rigorous study. That’s because, as Wylie Tollette, head of client investment solutions at Franklin Templeton Multi-Asset Services, said, that would take 30 years and a double-blind study, but no one would want to be in the control group.

Daryn Dodson, managing director of Illumen Capital, shared the startling finding that as black fund managers outperform, they face more bias and misallocation. I believe he was referring to this study: “Race influences professional investors’ financial judgments,” which he coauthored. Here’s an excerpt from the summary:

Asset allocators favored the White-led, racially homogenous team when credentials were stronger, but the Black-led, racially diverse team when credentials were weaker. Moreover, asset allocators’ judgments of the team’s competence were more strongly correlated with predictions about future performance (e.g., money raised) for racially homogenous teams than for racially diverse teams. Despite the apparent preference for racially diverse teams at weaker performance levels, asset allocators did not express a high likelihood of investing in these teams. These results suggest first that underrepresentation of people of color in the realm of investing is not only a pipeline problem, and second, that funds led by people of color might paradoxically face the most barriers to advancement after they have established themselves as strong performers.

The conference was the first DEI-focused event I’ve attended to feature an Indigenous presenter, Geordie Hungerford, CFA, CEO of the First Nations Financial Management Board, who spoke on “Reshaping the Inclusion of Indigenous Communities in Investment.” He said that Indigenous people make up only 6% of the world’s population but are stewards of about 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. I thought about that when I read a Boston Globe article about an art exhibit that:

…asks you to imagine that “the future is Indigenous,” drawing on the collective knowledge of native peoples all over the world who managed their respective ecosystems very nicely before industrial-minded colonials came along and ruined everything. Or in its own words: “A Western lifestyle that relies on extraction and pollution has disconnected most of the global population from the rhythms and systems of the earth.”

Bookmark my blog, and visit it on the first Tuesday of every month!

If you’d like to keep up with my newsletter, please bookmark my blog and visit it on the first Tuesday of every month.


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).


Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

April Newsletter: This is where you’ll find my newsletter from now on!

Starting in May, this newsletter will be published on the first Tuesday of the month here instead of arriving in your email inbox via Constant Contact. I’ll also share it via social media.

Set a calendar reminder for the first Tuesday of every month, and follow me on LinkedIn to increase the likelihood that you’ll see the newsletter.

Thank you for being a loyal reader and for understanding my decision to migrate the newsletter here!

Once you define an abbreviation, should you skip the spelled-out term?

Once you’ve introduced GDP as the abbreviation for gross domestic product, should you only use GDP in your articles or other publications? Yes, you should. At least that’s the opinion of most of the writers with whom I checked.

I also lean toward defining an abbreviation once and then using only the abbreviation. However, in a long piece, I could see redefining the abbreviation after a big gap in its use. How long is a long piece? As soon as the reader can’t find an abbreviation on the same page, you might make a case for reintroducing the complete term. However, this depends on the frequency with which the term is used. It’s easier to remember a term that’s used often.

A writer friend suggested that you can remind readers of the full word or expression by spelling it out in headings. That’s a judgment call.

However, if the complete term is used in a quotation, don’t abbreviate it when you use the quotation in your article.

Whatever you decide about this issue, your organization should consider adding your preferred practices to a style guide to ensure consistency. Also, if you use many abbreviations, you may find it useful to “Help your readers by linking to definitions,” as I discuss on my blog.

Tool helps you distinguish between seemingly similar words

Check out the WikiDiff website if you want to compare the definitions of two words that seem similar.

For example, go to the site to compare different and diffident. The two words sound similar, but their meanings are unrelated. Sure, you could Google the two words separately, but it’s handy to compare the definitions on one page.

The future of investment management

Building a Future-Ready Investment Firm” is the focus of a research study released earlier this year by research partners including Deloitte. It touches on topics such as “How Digital Technology and AI Will Change Wealth Management.”

Your cooking and your microbiome

I was interested to learn that “Cooking dramatically increased the calories humans and mice got from food. Cooked meat yielded 10 to 15 percent more calories than raw. Cooked sweet potatoes were a whopping 30 percent more caloric than uncooked ones.” This is according to “You Are What (Your Microbes) Eat” in Harvard Magazine.

Speaking of cooking sweet potatoes, I enjoyed this sweet potato recipe using miso.


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).


Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

March Newsletter: Comma or colon before a quotation?

I instinctively choose between a comma and a colon before a quotation. But I wondered if there was a rule that I should know about.

I was happy to discover Grammar Monster’s “Comma or Colon before a Quotation?” The blog post features an easy-to-follow flow chart for picking a comma or a colon. The key is deciding whether what precedes the quotation is an independent clause (in other words, could it be a standalone sentence?).

Write a great “about” page

The 7 Questions Your ‘About’ Page Should Answer” by Andy Crestodina was highly recommended by my friend, the extraordinary copywriter Robyn Bradley, so I had to check it out. It features a nice template and practical tips.

I was interested to learn that Crestodina thinks conflict is an essential element of a good “about” page on your website. His explanation makes sense, but I’d never thought of the topic that way until I read his article.

Discounted paperbacks of Financial Bloggingbook cover: Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients

Buy a paperback copy of Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients for only $39 (regular price is $49) while the supply lasts. This offer is only for shipment within the U.S. Simply email me with your mailing address, pay the invoice I’ll email you, and I’ll send your book via priority mail.

I’m happy to sign the title page of your book. Just tell me to whom to inscribe it and what you’d like me to write.

Why there’s no apostrophe in writers room

My post on “Why there’s no apostrophe in writers room” inspired a piece of fan mail to me recently. Honestly, this topic continues to confuse me, so I circle back to this post occasionally.

As I proofread this newsletter, my software tells me that I need an apostrophe in “writers room.” This is an example of why you can’t rely solely on automated grammar and spelling checks.

Reminder: April will be my last month on Constant Contact

April will be the last month that I’ll email this newsletter to you via Constant Contact. After that, you’ll find it here on my blog. Visit my blog monthly and follow me on LinkedIn to ensure you keep up with the newsletter.

How AI affects evaluating student performance

With generative AI making it easier for everyone to write exam answers and essays, the role of written communications will become less important in academia, according to “AI in the Academy: Cautious embrace of a new technology” in Harvard Magazine. As a result, “The role of oral, live, public speaking assignments is going to increase,” says Professor Jeffrey Schnapp.

I wonder if this will also affect how companies interview writers and editors before hiring them. However, I think the best way to assess editorial skill is with a paid assignment. Even before AI, readers never really knew if a published article or editing sample was solely the work of one individual.


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).


Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

7 factors that affect reading ease

On this blog—and in my writing workshops—I’ve written about things that affect reading ease. I’ve focused on the average number of syllables per word, words per sentence, and sentences per paragraph. However, Harold Evans’ Do I Make Myself Clear? Why Writing Well Matters, introduced me to a seven-factor list from Robert Gunning, creator of the fog index.

Factors that affect reading ease

Some of the seven factors relate to length. They’re similar to the syllable, sentence, and paragraph measures. They also feed into the fog index. Evans describes the fog index as follows:

If you want to be clear, count the average number of words in your sentences, count the number of words of three syllables (the percentage of hard words), total the two, and multiply by 0.4. The lower ranking on the fog index, the easier the reading…

The seven factors include:

  1. Average sentence length in words
  2. Percentage of simple sentences
  3. Percentage of strong verb forms
  4. Proportion of familiar words
  5. Proportion of abstract words
  6. Percentage of personal references
  7. Percentage of long words

Why do the other factors matter? I like #3, the percentage of strong verbs, and #4, the proportion of familiar words, because they typically make the writer’s intent easier to grasp.

I’m puzzled by #6, percentage of personal references.

As I see it, personal references could cut both ways. Requiring detailed knowledge of your personal life will make your writing harder to understand. On the other hand, comprehension will improve when you use “you” and referring to things your readers care about.

The fog index isn’t infallible

Gunning’s seven factors can help you assess your content’s reader-friendliness. But they’re not infallible.

As Evans says,

Combine readability statistics with common sense. You can write illogical nonsense and get a good score of readability; the classic proof is that if you enter your sample from the last word to the first, you get the same score. Metaphor, analogy, and satire are unrecognized, wit unappreciated. The formulas have tin ears for the rhythm of sentence variety, for word choice, for the energy in the writing.

Test your reading ease online

You can run your text through an online version of the fog index.

 

Disclosure:  If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I only link to books in which I find some value for my blog’s readers.

Note: Updated March 24, 2024.

February newsletter: Do grammar errors affect your heart rate?

Have you ever felt as if your heart skipped a beat upon noticing a grammar error? It’s not just your imagination that bad grammar can affect your heart rate.

When people spot grammar errors, their heart rate variability declines, indicating that they’re stressed. That’s according to a University of Birmingham research study reported on in “Grammar Goofs Make Your Heart Skip: The Stressful Beat of Misused Language” in Neuroscience News.

Flash sale on Financial Blogging

I plan to run a flash sale on the PDF version of my book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients. Watch your email for details in the week of Feb. 19!

Here’s what advisors say about my book.

  • A great read for advisors who want to blog better—or learn how to start!
    Michael Kitces, Nerd’s Eye View
  • Susan’s words have helped me hone my message and become clearer in my explanations. Through my dedication to blogging, my business has grown as a result. I owe much of my success in business to Susan’s teaching and guidance.
    Dave Grant, Finance for Teachers
  • I wish I had read Susan’s Financial Blogging before I produced 300 weekly posts. There was a lot of practical advice in a slim 13- page guide to producing effective blogs. The blog preparation work sheets should be of particular value to an author who wishes to get smart people to do smart things with their money. My posts will be better for having read the book.
    A. Michael Lipper, Mike Lipper’s blog

Format your content effectively!

The Nielsen Norman Group highlights five techniques you can use to format your content effectively in “5 Formatting Techniques for Long-Form Content”:

  • Summary of key points
  • Text boxes, also known as callouts
  • Bullet points
  • Visual exhibits
  • Highlighting key points

These techniques help to break your content into easily digestible, visually appealing chunks of information.

Inflation calculator

Wondering how much overall U.S. inflation has increased over a specific period? Use the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator.

Shake up your brain!

My approach to using ChatGPT to explain a complex idea is the focus of “Jan. Metaphor Minute: Shake Up Your Brain” by Anne Miller. I was impressed by Anne’s analysis of what came to me instinctively.

This newsletter is moving from Constant Contact

I plan to migrate this newsletter from Constant Contact to my blog—where you are reading it now—and possibly LinkedIn by April 2024, so please bookmark my Investment Writing blog and follow me on LinkedIn. You’ll have fewer messages in your email inbox, and I’ll have fewer platforms to manage because of the change.

Thanks for your understanding!


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).


Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

Q&A format for articles: Good or bad?

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.