Facttactic's online journal

Simple, concise language, short sentences and plenty of sub-headings are key to making a website easy to read, according to all the research. But how can you tell if you’ve done a good job in writing your web content?

I’ve just come across this great tool to measure and rank the readability of your web content: The Readability Test tool.

I found it in this very useful article on best practice tips for improving web content.  I recommend this article as a good start to anyone wondering how to tidy up their website.

And how did this site rank?! The tool said it should be easily understood by 15 to 16 year olds. Not quite our target market! … but we think we need to get it down even lower to around the 12-13 years age  group. We want it to be quickly and very easily understood by very busy people.

Here’s a page of links to tons of high-quality papers and essays about how users read on the Web and how authors should write their web pages.

Some high-level information about web writing is here.

(0) Comments | Tags: Language, Writing

Getting your company’s stories and views in the news is one of the best ways to quickly and freely get a high and positive PR profile.

But chief reporters and news editors can be a fickle and gruff bunch especially with stories they see as ‘just a free ad’ or PR for your business.

So how do you get past the gatekeepers with ‘news’ stories that are essentially PR or advertising? …read more >>

(0) Comments | Tags: Advertising, PR, Public Relations

Alarm bells should have given Telecom bosses tinnitus ahead of the launch last week of the no-sex, Abstain for the Game campaign.

Let’s recap.

• Backing Black, the Telecom-backed, All Blacks supporters network, launched a campaign whereby fans could pledge support by promising to abstain from sex for the duration for the Rugby World Cup.
• In return they would get a pledge band (rubber ring) to signify their commitment.

 
While justification for World Cup abstinence wasn’t forthcoming, one can only assume participants were supposed to be developing empathy for the All Blacks in a World Cup love lockdown.

However, surely that was based on a false premise. There’s never been any suggestion the national team would be called on to abstain. (And was the unfortunate connection that rubber rings have with farmers docking their sheep ever considered?!) …read more >>

(0) Comments | Tags: Marketing

Can you say too much in your PR promotions or campaigns?

New research suggests that the less is more adage may not necessarily apply and letting your followers into a few secrets may be the way to get better buy-in or uptake. A study out of San Diego’s University of California suggests that spoilers and hidden hints in storylines don’t detract from the audience experience.

Researchers gave study groups two versions of three types of stories – ironic-twist, mystery and literary — by authors such as John Updike, Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie. One version contained spoilers, the other didn’t.

Readers of all three story types preferred spoiled versions of the stories to the unspoiled originals.

“I was quite surprised by the results,” researcher Nicholas Christenfeld told news agency Reuters. …read more >>

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Just a quick post to let people know that we have a client testimonial page on the site now to give more details of the work we do and the results we get. You can find it here: http://www.facttactic.co.nz/testimonials.html

(0) Comments | Tags: Customers, Marketing, PR

Ever struggled with how to best structure your writing? Here are some style guides that may be useful. Some are free online tools; some are available to purchase online …

For journalists and freelance writers:

• The Guardian has a detailed style guide on its website.
• The Economist has some good guidelines online here.
• The Chicago Manual of Style is online as a subscription service.
• The Associated Press Stylebook is a well known tool for journalists and can be purchased here.

For technical writers:

• Read Me First, an IT style guide from Sun: it’s been online for a while now and not all pages are online but it’s a great online resource if you don’t have ready access to a style guide.
• The 2011 IBM style guide comes out next month and at a reasonable price.
• Microsoft’s Manual of Style (3rd Edition) is worth consulting from time to time, but it’s 7 years old now and so not worth purchasing — and no word, that I’ve seen, about when Edition 4 (currently being written) comes out.

For legal writing, here is the New Zealand Law Foundation’s guide.

For academic writing, the APA style guide is often used. Waikato University has key APA guidelines on its site.

For business writing, the Gregg Reference Manual is well known in the United States and can be purchased here.

For scientific writing:

• The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing is an online searchable tool.
• Oxford University Press has a web page of styles
• NASA has 100 pages online about grammar, punctuation, and capitalisation!

(0) Comments | Tags: Education, Journalism, style guides, Technical writing, Writing

We have a new page up on the site highlighting Facttactic’s project management services; and in the next few days we’re publishing client testimonials on another new page on the site. Just some mid-winter site upgrades we hope will be of use to you.

(0) Comments | Tags: project management

Congrats to the organisers of the TCANZ conference for 2010 … great speakers, good turnout, comfy, well-serviced venue and interesting discussions.

Read a summary of each of the main talks here under ‘Recent Posts’.

The write-ups come from Sarah Maddox, a tech writer from Atlassian in Sydney and one of the speakers at the event, who blogged her way through the two days as the rest of us sat and listened to the speakers. Thanks, Sarah, for getting it all down for the record and for access to some really useful tech writer resources.

(Note: if you’re reading this post some time in the future [!], the posts will likely have moved on from ‘Recent Posts’ — search for “TCANZ” in Sarah’s blog ‘ffeathers’. All the conference posts are tagged.)

(1) Comment | Tags: Intranet, Technical writing, Wiki

A bit of light-hearted language nonsense here, but apparently the following is a real sentence!

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

Wikipedia explains.

(0) Comments | Tags: Language, Writing

Mamihlapinatapai … well, I guess you already know it’s a word from the Yaghan language (Tierra del Fuego), but what does it mean?! It’s a … “look shared by two people, each wishing the other would initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start.”

We won’t be squeezing it into a media release any time soon, but we like it and think it deserves its place in The Guinness Book of World Records as the “most succinct word” and its reputation as one of the hardest words to translate.

(0) Comments | Tags: Language, Writing