Writing and editing

Create a friendly writing structure

Want your brand to seem more personable?

Brands that run more feature-style stories are seen as being more:

Honest
Fun
Neighborly
Intelligent
Personable
Thought-provoking
In the know
In touch with reader values

That’s according to “Impact,” a 2001 study led by the Readership Institute at Northwestern University and sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.… Read the full article

‘They laughed when I sat down at the piano …’

Adapt proven benefits headlines

Here’s one secret of successful marketing copywriters: They steal.

Especially headlines. If a headline’s been proven to work in the past, good direct mail copywriters will use it again and again.… Read the full article

Sell a story, not a product

The media’s not shopping for a commercial

Journalists aren’t looking for commercials. They’re seeking stories. So pitch a story, not a product.

That means focusing your pitch on a benefit to the media’s audience, timely news or entertaining information.… Read the full article

‘Dear Mother’

Write a letter to make your copy conversational

“Good writers are visible just behind their words.”

— William Zinsser, author, On Writing Well

Eliot Fette Noyes was a Harvard-trained architect and industrial designer.… Read the full article

What happened? Why?

News in the headline, the reasons behind it in the deck

One way to avoid repeating yourself in your news headline and deck: Answer “What happened?”… Read the full article

Promises, promises

We want to act consistently with our commitments and values

Social scientist Anthony Greenwald and his colleagues asked potential voters on the eve of an election to predict whether they would vote and why.… Read the full article

Choose a writing structure that’s more likely to get shared

Features go viral more often, says Reuters Institute

While news stories make up the bulk of the content on three European news sites, most of the most-shared stories are features.… Read the full article

A way around the pyramid

Lift ideas off the page with display copy

There is one great thing about the inverted pyramid lead.

“The only benefit of the inverted pyramid lead was that it put a lot of valuable information high in the story,” write Mario R.… Read the full article

Don’t let your writing structure create combat fatigue

Are you using a 150-year-old story format?

At about the time this Union soldier marched off to war, journalists invented the traditional news structure that you use every day.… Read the full article

Less is more

The longer your piece, the less readers will read

Size does matter.

The longer your story, the less of it your readers will read — and the less likely they are to understand and act on it.… Read the full article

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