Quotes are a great way to add oomph to your writing. This is true whether it’s a short piece, such as a blog post, or a long white paper for your investment or wealth management firm. But what if you’re quoting lousy writers or interviewees who haven’t expressed themselves well?

Quote fix 1. Rewrite the quotes

Rewriting can be controversial.

Sure, no one will protest if you add or delete a comma in a sentence. No one will even notice the difference between the mispunctuated “He said ‘Thank you’ ” and the correct “He said, ‘Thank you.’ ” You can even change “average annualized returns” to “annualized returns,” removing the redundant “average.” I think most people are fine with small tweaks that don’t change the meaning of the person who wrote or spoke the words.

However, purists would say that you should reproduce written materials word for word or note changes, for example, by inserting ellipsis (…) to show where you’ve deleted even one word. “Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author,” says the Purdue Online Writing Lab.

People also agree that you can’t make radical changes and still call something a quote. Here’s a before-and-after example where no one would call the “after” a quote. This example originally appeared in “Seven Ways to Talk Your Financial Execs Out of Jargon and Bad Writing, ” my guest post on MarketingProfs (registration required):

BEFORE:

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.

AFTER:

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.

Things get murky in the middle ground between tiny tweaks and massive rewrites. Many of my writer friends say that it’s fine to smooth out quotes when your interviewees express themselves poorly in a live interview. However, reporters have gotten into trouble for taking this too far. Have you noticed how some question-and answer stories now come with disclaimers? For example, the “Talk” column in the magazine section of The New York Times says, “Interview has been condensed and edited.”

Edits are particularly risky when the editors don’t know the topic well. They may unwittingly change the speaker’s meaning.

Edits are less risky when they will be checked for accuracy by the speaker or author. This tends to happen more when a company interviews or uses source materials from an employee.

Quote fix 2. Paraphrase the quotes

Paraphrasing is an underutilized tool, in my opinion. Paraphrasing means taking the words of the speaker or author and summarizing or rewording them without quotation marks, but still attributing them to the source. This is a great way to streamline sentences so they focus on the expert’s main message.

I’ve seen too many writers string together quotes to form an article. These articles are held hostage by their experts’ wording. As a result, they often lack the connective tissue that makes an article flow well.

“If you can say it better as a paraphrase, the quotes are probably not that strong,” as The Associated Press Guide to News Writing notes.

Quote fix 3. Delete the quotes

Some information doesn’t deserve quotation marks and a source. Do you need a sentence along the lines of ” ‘There are 50 states in the United States of America,’ says Jane Doe”?

You can share common knowledge without attributing it to anyone.

What’s YOUR take on fixing quotes?

I’m always interested in what you think about the writing questions that I pose on this blog. Please chime in.

Image courtesy of kibsri/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Note: This post was updated in December 2022.

Many people struggle to write as much as they’d like. This is especially true if the writing isn’t a core part of your job. I found some rules that may help you when I read Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport.

What is “deep work”?

Here’s how the author defines “deep work”:

Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skills, and are hard to replicate.

It’s clear to me that writers will benefit from this kind of concentration. How do you achieve it? One way is to develop rituals that signal to you that it’s time to focus.

I suggest that you create rules to answer the questions that Newport says must be addressed by an effective deep work ritual.

Rule 1. Pick a location for your deep work

Newport asks you to pick a location for your deep work. As he says, “If it’s possible to identify a location used only for depth—for instance, a conference room or quiet library—the positive effect can be even greater.” But you might be able to get away with working in your usual work place if you can set other rules to help you focus.

I think that being in a different location is one reason why I’ve been so successful with blogging on vacation, as I discussed in “No batteries required: My favorite blogging technique.”  When I’m not on vacation, I do most of my blog post writing either on steno pads, which I can use anywhere, or at my PC, which plunks me down in my office.

Rule 2. Pick a length of time for your deep work

“…give yourself a specific time frame to keep the session a discrete challenge and not an open-ended slog,” says Newport.

I have tried a variation on this by committing to work for a minimum of 15 minutes, as I discussed in “15 minutes to busting your writer’s block.” I haven’t tried putting a limit on how long I can work. That simply hasn’t been a problem for me. However, I can see how it would help some people to know that they need not continue working beyond their predetermined limit.

Rule 3. Limit distractions during your deep work

For example, this could mean closing email and blocking social media during your deep work.

Rule 4. Support yourself

Newport says this could mean you “start with a good cup of coffee.” It also means creating an environment that supports your work by keeping necessary supplies handy. Newport says, “…this support needs to be systematized so that you don’t waste mental energy figuring out what you need in the moment.”

I love Newport’s line about “…don’t waste mental energy figuring out what you need in the moment.” I think that’s one of the biggest benefits of any rituals or systems that help you to write.

For me, the support for my blogging means having a handy list of potential blog post topics so I never have to start from scratch.

For some writers, it might mean always starting from the most recent stopping point in your work, as I discussed in “Break your writer’s block with Robert Benson and Eric Maisel.”

What rules help you to do deep work?

If you’re achieving deep work, what rules work for you?

Do you struggle to write as much as you would like? I sometimes have that problem, too. When I was in a slump last year, I found a solution in a daily writing challenge on Facebook. To help me keep up my writing, I’m inviting you to join me in a daily writing challenge during the month of April.

Daily Writing Challenge rules

Here’s how it works:

• You set a goal of averaging X words/day during the month. Note: it’s an average. You don’t have to write that amount every single day.
• You check in daily on the Investment Writing Facebook page for accountability and encouragement.
• People who reach their goal for April get the right to brag. I’ll trust you to report your success honestly.

What to share when you check in

What do you write in your daily check-in? You can

• Share your word count for the day
• Post your intention for the next day
• Share a tip for writing despite leading a busy life
• Ask for encouragement or helping in cracking a writing challenge
• Encourage others

It’s up to you to choose what you share. I don’t want to ensnare you in complicated rules. I’d like this challenge to work for you.

If it works for me, it might work for you

I find that accountability to an individual or group is very motivating for me. As I mentioned in “How a blogging buddy can help your financial planning or investment blog,” I have a goal buddy with whom I check in weekly by phone. That has been invaluable.

I’ve been working with a goal of averaging 300 words daily on my blog and other non-routine, non-client writing. I hit my goal in December, January, and February. I’m not sure that I’m going to make it in March. That’s partly why I’m recruiting you to join me in my April challenge. I also figure it’s a good way to encourage the students who recently completed my financial blogging class to keep on writing.

I find that setting my intention—for example, a word count goal or planning to work on a specific blog post—the evening before my work day helps me to deliver. Also, it means that I don’t approach my computer with a blank mind. My first step is clear when it’s time for me to tackle my daily word count.

My partial date and word count record from Feb. 2016

When it’s time to pick a topic to write about, I can go to the Microsoft Outlook task list where I keep a list of potential blog post topics.

I also appreciate the support of others who struggle with keeping up the writing despite the demands of our work and personal lives.

To help me track my word count, I enter my word count daily in an Excel spreadsheet. I mostly write on a computer, so it’s easy for me to generate an accurate word count. If I were writing longhand, I’d use the old-fashioned trick of counting the number of words on three lines, calculating the average number of works per line, and the multiplying the number of lines times the average word count per line. It’s less time-consuming than counting word by handwritten word.

Declare your intention to participate in the Daily Writing Challenge!

If you’d like to participate, go to the Investment Writing Facebook page and declare your intention on this post.

Then, on April 1, post what you achieve for the day. Although April 1 is April Fool’s Day, this is no joke. I hope you’ll join me.

Note: I edited this post on Nov. 28, 2016, when I tweaked the rules of the challenge.

“How can I talk my boss out of using financial jargon?” I hear variations on this question from my clients and blog readers. I’ve already written “Seven Ways to Talk Your Financial Execs Out of Jargon and Bad Writing” (registration required) for MarketingProfs. But recently I thought of a new idea to help you rein in the worst offenses by your firm’s lovers of complex language.

Here’s my idea. Ask “What would The Wall Street Journal do?” We can call this technique WWTWSJD for short, in a nod to other “What would ____ do?” strategies.

I suggest that you use WWTWSJD because most financial professionals read The Wall Street Journal. More importantly, they respect the newspaper. They don’t feel that it treats them as stupid. Thus, if you show them that the Journal wouldn’t use a piece of financial jargon, they might listen to you.

Step 1. Identify financial jargon for review

Search results for “smart beta” in The Wall Street Journal

Identify the piece of jargon that you’d like to eliminate from your firm’s publications. Then search to see if The Wall Street Journal uses it.

Take a technical term like “convexity,” which is used in the world of fixed income. When I searched it on the newspaper’s website, I discovered that “No articles or videos have been found.”

How about “smart beta”? I found only three results. That result also suggests that the term isn’t widely understood.

Step 2. Dig deeper into the jargon’s usage

Let’s look more closely at the newspaper’s use of “smart beta.”

It uses the term, but quickly defines it. For example, here’s how Ari Weinberg treats the term in the first two results (emphasis added):

• Even the more-complex “smart beta” or factor-based ETFs, which weight holdings according to an investment factor such as volatility or value instead of market capitalization, are able to manage constituent changes to minimize capital gains.
• “ ‘Smart beta,’ in particular, creates real due-diligence problems,” Mr. Nadig says, referring to the growth in index products that shun traditional market-cap weightings and instead weight holdings according to an investment factor such as volatility, value, quality or momentum.

The third article using “smart beta” was written by one of the outside contributors to the newspaper’s “Ask the Experts” section. It seems to be considered as a blog post, based on a disclaimer on the comments page. I imagine that those pieces aren’t edited as rigorously for jargon as the pieces written by staffers. The editors let the outside contributors write in their own style.

Step 2a. Cross-test jargon with The New York Times

While I like the idea of using The Wall Street Journal to talk senior execs out of financial jargon, I’m a bit concerned about the shallowness of the archive that’s easily accessible online. The newspaper’s online search doesn’t appear to go back more than about three months. Thus, I’m checking The New York Times, another reasonably literate newspaper, because I can go back further in my search.

Here are my results for a twelve-month period:

• Only one article used the term “convexity,” but it wasn’t used in a financial context. The article discussed the shape of a bowl scraper.
• Four articles used “smart beta.” As you can see from the excerpts in my screenshot below, each article makes an attempt to define the term, rather than assuming the reader will understand it.

“Smart beta” results in 12-month search of The New York Times

Step 3. Define financial jargon

If you must use financial jargon, then define it.

Need ideas about how to explain technical terms? The Wall Street Journal is a good source for explanations at a fairly sophisticated level. WWTSWJD?

For more examples of how to incorporate definitions into your writing, see “Plain language: Let’s get parenthetical.”

Caveat: Sometimes financial jargon is okay

I’m a big believer in writing using plain language. Ideally, I’d like to write more plainly than The Wall Street Journal when addressing an audience outside the financial world. Even when you’re writing for institutional investors, you may encounter readers with less knowledge than you of financial vocabulary.

However, sometimes multisyllabic vocabulary and financial jargon are more precise or make for easier communication. This is true only when you’re communicating with other highly knowledgeable professionals. For example, saying something increased by 200 basis points is more precise than saying it rose two percent. And if your readers care about measures like Sharpe ratios, there’s no substitute for using those terms.