pjwalkercommunications

Just how savvy are U.S. investors?  Not as smart as most investment companies would like to think, says the  Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  According to their Financial Literacy Report, released this summer as part of the Dodd-Frank Act:

• Investors do not understand the most elementary financial concepts, such as compound interest and inflation, diversification or the differences between stocks and bonds.
• They are not fully aware of investment costs and their impact on investment returns.
• They also lack critical knowledge of ways to avoid investment fraud.

Troublesome conclusions to be sure, especially today as the demise of defined benefit pension plans and uncertainty about Social Security means that successful investing for retirement depends on individual initiative and informed decision-making.

The goal of the SEC Study  was to  “identify the existing level of financial literacy among retail investors” and  explore ways to increase it. The SEC used input from online surveys of several thousand investors and comments from more than 80 individuals, financial professionals, industry groups, academics, not-for-profit organizations, and other regulators.

Its conclusions confirm what most of us who write about investing and finance have known for a very long time: individual investors need more education and better information — and they need it in a readily accessible format and plain language.

As author and editor Susan Weiner, CFA, reminded us recently:  “Keep it simple.”

Susan, who is an accomplished writer (and ghost writer) on financial topics, also offered an eye-popping statistic she had seen in a recent New York Times piece by speechwriter Roger Lehrman:  Americans read at a seventh-grade level.

If you want to reach them, you must write at their level, says Lehrman, “You can’t hand your boss a speech saying, ‘It’s got all of your ideas. But 40 percent of your audience won’t know what you’re talking about.’”

If you’re writing for a general audience, use plain English and keep it short. Short sentences also tend to be easier to understand.

But what if your clients are all college-educated. Do you still need to keep it simple?

Yes, Lehrman says.  ”Your writing’s grade level is a measure of how hard you’re making your readers work to understand you. If you make their lives easier, they’re more likely to stick with you.”

Editing a particularly difficult document this past week — full of extra words and turgid, academic prose — I was reminded of Elizabeth Swann’s priceless line from the Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.  Using the most pretentious dialogue she can muster to confound Jack Sparrow, Swann says, “I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request.”

In other words, “No.”

Which brings me to the topic, once again, of plain language, and to Joseph Kimble’s excellent reminder that the goal of good writing is NOT to showcase how brilliant you are (or by proxy, your client is), but rather to have your reader feel smarter.

With that in mind, what words work better than others?  The simpler the better, I say. “Eschew obfuscation,” William Safire would offer, if he were still here to advise us.

Of course, there are always exceptions for emphasis or cadence, but in pursuit of clarity and simplicity,  I offer a list below of alternatives that are easier to digest. (I’m sure you have your own to add.  If so, let me know!)

This post from financial writer/editor Art McPherson was written as a follow up to our recent discussion about the virtues and pitfalls of today’s “virtual” meetings and the value of meeting face-to-face with real people.  Perhaps his most cogent point:  ”A virtual beer just doesn’t taste the same.” What do you think? –PJW  (Thanks, Art!)

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By Arthur MacPherson [amacpherson01@gmail.com]

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’” — Dave Barry

Admit it. You cringe at the mention of “meetings.” Even if well-planned and tightly run, they eat up your time, taking you away from the work you already have and creating more work. But they’re an integral part of business life.

When I started my business career, a meeting always involved people gathering in a conference room or convention hall, coffee mug in one hand, and pen and paper in the other. But today we live in an age of “virtual” meetings — teleconferences, video conferences, online presentations, Webinars.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that companies are increasingly turning to electronic gatherings, particularly when budgets are tight. For a convention or company sales conference, virtual meetings can mean significant savings (50%-80% by one estimate) on travel and hotel expenses, and creating and shipping displays and boxes of brochures and trinkets.

In a company setting, meeting virtually allows you to sit at your desk instead of being held hostage for an hour in a conference room. You can even “attend” a meeting sitting at home in jeans and a t-shirt. There’s another advantage, discussed with a wink and a smile, if at all; you can multi-task. (Don’t deny it — you’ve done it, too.)

Cheaper, more convenient and less demanding on your time. Virtual meetings are clearly better than face-to-face in a conference room. Then again, maybe not, for a couple of reasons.

First, going “virtual” lacks the personal contact and connections that can make a meeting productive and worth the effort. Getting together in person lets you chat with others before and maybe go out for a drink afterwards (a virtual beer just doesn’t taste the same), building a sense of “team” and stronger relationships with co-workers. A glance across the table or someone’s body language can give you an insight into the dynamics of a project and the people on it. It’s human interaction that even the most sophisticated technology can’t replicate.

The second reason that some question the value of virtual meetings is the very thing that many of us value. Multi-tasking may seem more productive, but that email you’re reading (while listening in to make sure nobody asks you a direct question) is a distraction and you may miss an important detail or two. In fact, multi-tasking can prevent information from being retained in long-term memory, according to a widely quoted 2010 white paper by Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and marketing services company Maritz.

I dislike having my calendar clogged with meetings as much as the next person (especially the day last year when I had eight of them). But as Victor Torregroza, event marketing manager at Intel Corp., said in a 2011 article on BtoBonline.com, “The impact of people coming together for a common cause is extremely powerful. The quality is much more everlasting and impactful.”

 ”Collaboration is in.  But it may not be conducive to creativity.”

That was the teaser for a recent (Jan. 15) New York Times article on “Groupthink.”  And it got me thinking about whether collaboration truly is the enemy of creativity. 

I suppose it depends on how you choose to define collaboration and what your  objectives are.  But if you’re talking about sharing ideas to create better communications, then I believe getting together as a group with the people who know the subject matter and the audience is a critical exercise – especially if you want to engage and delight your readers.

Here are the three essential activities that writers, editors, and communications professionals must pursue to create successful messages for your audience:

1. A ”discovery” session. This is the “client briefing” where you and your technical experts talk about your message and your audience in detail, what you want to achieve, what your thoughts are on how to achieve it, and what documentation you have to support your arguments. (This is akin to “groupthink,” I suppose, but it can help you get everything out on the table and it gives everyone lots of information to fuel #2 below.)

2. Interviews and exploration. After the brief, the writers and/or editors for the project will typically retreat to their offices (or cubes) to review the data they’ve been given and call the experts for their views (taking copious notes and/or recording the interviews).  They’ll also take a look at what’s available on the Internet from others — including any similar information from your competitors. These activities often uncover promising new insights about a complex issue or a hard to explain topic. 

3.  Check-in on possible approaches.  After processing the information gathered  in Steps 1 and 2, the writer will be prepared to share new ideas and possible approaches with you  so you can agree on objectives, tone, style, and overall direction before beginning the creative writing process.

Just ran across a recent blog post from writing expert/instructor L Michelle Baker, PhD on active vs. passive sentence construction.

Like most versatile, creative writers, she advocates using both the active and the passive voice, depending on what you need to make the information clear, and the cadence and rhythm engaging.  But she also suggests that passive sentences can be a deliberate way to evade responsibility. 

We’ve all seen it in the corporate-speak memos from HR where such phrases as, “Employees are now expected to,” or “The new policy is designed to …”  No one really wants to identify the bad guy here — which is, obviously, “we, the company management”.

Or as Ms. Baker puts it in her post: “When the passive becomes problematic it is because the agent disappears in some way that feels uncomfortable to the reader.” She offers two example sentences derived from the many “beasts” she had a hand in creating as an accountant during the dot.com bubble. (That was before she went to graduate school to study English.) To wit:

–Contracts with key employees have not been signed.

–Cash is hemorrhaging at an alarming rate.

Commenting on the above, she explains how writers use passive sentence structures to side step responsibility:

“The first of those sentences is indeed in the passive voice. The agent of the action – whoever should have been signing those contracts – is not in the sentence. And the reason is obvious. Why didn’t we say “we”? Well because then someone would have to take responsibility for this omission …”

“But the second sentence – that’s written in the present progressive. The agent of that action is cash. Still, the sentence is elusive, because someone is allowing that to happen, and that someone has not been named.”

Baker’s conclusion: “… there are all kinds of ways to evade responsibility. The passive voice is just one of them.”  So, she says, “Let’s keep all of what we write responsible. We do that by using the active voice … and by keeping subjects and verbs close together. When we know the agent of the action, and when that agent matters, name it. Employ the active or the passive in a way that lends rhythm, passion, and purpose to your language.”

Thanks L. Michelle.  I couldn’t have said it better!

Among the many observations that language expert Joe Kimble[1] shared with the corporate lawyers at his “Sure Fire Ways to Improve Your Writing” workshop last week, three in particular stuck with me:

1)      Plain language is not about “dumbing down.”  It is about writing more clearly and effectively for your audience.  For lawyers, in particular, he cautioned, “It is the opposite of the jumbled, dense, verbose, archaic style that has come to be called legalese.”

2)      Writing in plain language can be “devilishly” difficult.  Good writers just make it look easy in the same way that a good athlete makes a tough play look effortless.

3)      Finally, said Kimble:  “Good writers make their readers feel smart. “ 

The last point resonated with me again today when a client suggested that I needed to make the language in a financial information brochure “more highfalutin[2] and intellectual” so the readers would know “how smart the company is.” 

Catching – and keeping – the reader’s attention

I agree that it’s absolutely essential for a company to let customers and shareholders know “how smart it is” and to remind them in myriad ways that it remains fiscally sound, socially responsible, and prudent about managing investment risk.  But that doesn’t require that the content to support those points be labored, pretentious, or difficult to digest.  On the contrary, the idea is to communicate the company’s strength clearly and convincingly, with factual, direct statements that engage readers, make them feel smart — and keep them wanting more. (“So how do you manage market risk?”)

Of course, you don’t want to get too folksy and risk diminishing the value of the message.  But neither do you want to give your reader any excuse to stop reading, skimming, scrolling, or clicking through. In the 24-7 information age, it’s hard enough to capture someone’s attention, much less hold on for more than 51 seconds. [See my blog: Can you tell your story in less than a minute?]

Top 10 ideas for clear, concise content

So what are some of the rules to follow as a plain language advocate?  At a recent client seminar, I offered these top 10 best practices for plain language:

1. Write it the way you say it.
2. Talk to real people about real situations.
3. Use the active voice.
4. Be precise, concrete, and specific.
5. Follow a logical structure.
6. Don’t be wordy.
7. Use acronyms sparingly.
8. Think visually.
9. Avoid industry and legal jargon.
10. Test your documents on typical readers.

More observations on plain language in my next post.

[1] Professor Joseph Kimble, Thomas Cooley Law School, Lansing, MI

[2] from the Dutch word verlooten, meaning stilted