The Web Content Recipe Book

"When an editor asks me include plenty of color in an article, they are asking for descriptive, emotional language. So, I use plenty of adjectives, or describing words."
-- The Web Content Recipe Book, Rachelle Money, Ken McGaffin and Mark Nunney, p. 64,

The authors of this latest color-by-the-numbers book about writing should take their own advice when they say, as they do on page 86, "Mistakes make people think you're sloppy and likely to get things wrong."

Besides leaving out the odd word here and there, an occasional misspelling, and incorrectly punctuating several statements as questions, other examples of where the authors violate their own rules include use of jargon -- sometimes both cultural and professional. At least now I know what an "advert" is. In the colloquial category, my personal favorite is:

"Your readers won't want to know every cough and spit of an installation process but they may appreciate a screenshot." (P. 68)

Speaking of screenshots, who checked to see if the ones in the book match the captions? The image on page 76 that allegedly shows Toptenz (a site of top 10 lists) actually shows a page on a completely different site: ProblemPresents.com.

Other problems go deeper. For example, several times the authors use the word "story," as on page 72: "Tell the real story." But they never define the word and thus miss a great opportunity to show readers the common elements that distinguish a "story" in the various contexts that the word is used here and straight narrative prose. On the other hand, they do feel compelled to define the word "adjective" -- a word taught in primary school.

The real problem with these kinds of books is that they make my profession, marketing writing, seem simpleminded. If you can learn in just a few pages everything you need to do all the things the books say you can, how hard can it be?

But to critique this book at that level would be to take it more seriously than the authors did.

In talking about the importance of observing details when writing, they quote marketing guru Seth Godin and his blog post about the Apple Store in New York's Meatpacking District. Evidently the front doors of this palace on 14th Street did not close automatically -- a fact that Godin admits few people would notice except those who care the most. However, "It's the customers that care who actually have a huge impact on your business."

So if you don't care how you write, why should your readers?