• Return on investment. An imaginary number that is equal to or greater than the cost of purchasing a solution.
• Best practices. don’t do as I do, do as I say.
• Case study. evidence that you have at least one customer with a pulse. Actually, pulse optional.
• Press release. PRs pretend to be excited. Journalist pretend to be interested. Quotes are made up.
• News conference. a cruel hoax played on journalists by the PR industry.
• Blog. A website written by people with nothing to say for people with nothing to do. (Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for this)
• Call to action. The mating cry of a salesman in written form.
• White paper. A vendor’s objective opinions or opinionated objections.
• Enterprise. Any company big enough that your CEO has to take their CEO out for lunch.
• SME. Any company too small to have a dedicated account manager.
• Midmarket. All the businesses in-between.
• End-to-end. A solution that connects all the IT systems in your business from A to Z, except B, C, D, E, F etc.
• Synergy. The mystery factor that will balance the books, make the solution work and get the project done on time. See Kryptonite, Philosopher’s Stone, Unobtainium and XYZZY. Alternative meaning: After the merger, we can get rid of some people. The whole is *less* than the some of its parts. (Pitarou)
• Web 2.0. A website where readers do most of the work for you and you don’t have to pay them a penny.
• Solution. A product plus an unlimited expense account.
• Vice president. The minimum qualification required to be quoted in a press release.
• Focus group. Feedback disguised as strategy.  For example, a Volvo is an Aston Martin designed by focus group. Here’s what they said: “I like the looks but it’s really expensive,” “It would be better if had a bigger boot and four seats.” “Wouldn’t it be dangerous to drive that fast?”
• Survey. A series of carefully crafted questions that generate the answers the PR company had in mind when they pitched the idea to their client.
• Best of breed. A mongrel, one part Dachshund, one part Alsatian.
• Managing Expectations. It’s going to be delayed. (Andrew Terry)
• Your call is important to us. But not enough to employ sufficient call handlers and anyway you might just go away and leave us alone, especially if you really want something. (Heather Yaxley)
• Consultation. “What I want is for people to do what I tell them after reasonable discussion” (Winston Churchill)
• Stakeholder. “What I want is more money and power and less shit from you people.” (Badge from 1997 Computer Game Developers’ Conference)
• Tipping point. The moment when a concept goes from being a conceit to a catchphrase.
• Paradigm shift. When everybody agrees with an idea that is about to be disproved.
• One word equity. Why estate agents in the UK produce magazines with stupid names like “The Square” or “The Green” or “Prestige.”  I was recently pitched a magazine idea with the name “Fuss.” 
• Visual oxygen. We don’t have enough copy or photos to fill the pages.
• Long tail. Pinocchio’s other guilty little secret.
• Social media.  Websites where people interact without ever meeting. See also anti-social media, such as pubs, coffee shops,clubs and restaurants.
• Key Performance Indicators. Targets that can only be achieved in an ideal world where everything works perfectly, customers pay on time (and never complain), and everyone knows what they’re doing. (Garry)
• People-ready business.  De-boned, gutted and plucked.  See also Vista Ready and Oven Ready. (Please don’t fire me, I’m only joking. We only tease the people we love.)
• Passion. Used by PRs and copywriters when they have their sincerity simulator dialled all the way up to 11. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” (The Second Coming by WB Yeats)

Kudos to Bruce Pilgrim for the following:

• Suitable for framing. You have to get your own frame.
• Some assembly required. You’ll need a degree in mechanical engineering to put it together.
• Quantities are limited, so act now. We’ve only got a couple of million still in stock.
• Operators are standing by. No one has called so far.
• Unforgettable. Um, what was the question?
• …and more. That’s all.
• 3 out of 4 doctors agree. We surveyed four doctors.
• Not available in stores. They didn’t want it.
• Your mileage my vary. We just made up these figures because they sounded good.
• No purchase necessary. Although we wouldn’t mind.
• All other trademarks or registered trademarks belong to their respective holders. We don’t have the time or the energy to keep track of all that crap.
• Our people are our most important assets. But, [if our stock price falls] we’ll lay them off so fast it will make your head spin.
• Don’t try this at home. Go ahead. You know you want to.

And then the commies came and took away their Cadillacs.

1. Go to the top. One reason to include a quotation is to add authority and credibility. Another is to include an opinion in a piece that is trying to be (or appear) objective. Either way, it pays to get the most senior person possible. A quote from a CEO is more credible and authoritative than one from some guy at the company’s PR firm. One exception to this rule is when writing about something inventive or techy – in this case it’s much better to get a quote from the top geek than the top suit. Finally, readers tend to believe people like themselves more than they believe journalists (at least in the UK) or PR people (anywhere) so a quote from someone who does something is better than a quote from someone who talks about it.
2. Don’t frankenquote. Don’t make up a quote for someone based on bits and pieces strung together in an epic hype-ridden cliché. This is  a frankenquote. PR companies do this all the time in their press releases and every journalist knows that these quotes are bogus and virtually unusable. Interviews matter. Talk to real people. A good interview is the best source of a good quote.
3. Cut out the boring bits. A quotation can be a big stumbling block for the reader. They involve a lot of extra punctuation which slows the eye down and a change of tone and voice which can trip up someone who isn’t reading with perfect attention. You can minimise these effects by only quoting the bits that are interesting. Pick the bits of an interview that illustrate the point you are making, add weight to your story or which encapsulate the interviewee’s opinion. Use as little of the quotation as possible, but not less. Use an ellipsis (…) to show where you have removed padding.
4. Micro-quote. Sometimes a very, very short quote can be the most effective. “They get you in the gut,” said Matthew.
5. Hansard rules. For newspapers and magazines, editing quotations so that they differ from a verbatim transcript of the interview can be a no-no. In this case, selection rather than editing is sometimes required to get a good quote. For corporate work, where the final result will be reviewed by the interviewee or their proxies, a little editing can help. I don’t like to make stuff up (see Frankenquoting above) so I focus on trying sharpen and clarify the points that the interviewee was making. It also means writing what they meant to say, free of grammatical mistakes, repetition, hesitation etc.
6. Quote first, attribute second. Don’t start sentences with the attribution and then the quote. (e.g. “Matthew Stibbe said ‘don’t do it.’”)  This is a warning sign to the reader that a quote is coming and they are likely to skip it. Instead, open with the quote and tack on the attribution afterwards. (e.g. “’Don’t do it,’ said Matthew Stibbe.”) Never use an adverb when reporting a quotation. (e.g. don’t say “… said Matthew Stibbe angrily.”) Said is usually better than warned, advised, commented etc.
7. Continuing quotations. Within the same paragraph, you don’t need to attribute subsequent quotations unless you quote from someone else. In subsequent paragraphs, you should add the person’s name if you quote them again. Whether you use Mr. Surname, Firstname plus Surname or just the Surname depends on your house style but be consistent. I prefer just the surname. You don’t need to repeat that tedious ten-word job title every time. (You know the one that goes ‘Global Vice-President for Administrative Affairs and Popcorn.’) If you quote several people in the same article you may need to give the reader a clue about who you are quoting, for example by adding the company name. (e.g. “This should help the reader,” said Articulate’s Matthew Stibbe.”)
8. Reported speech. Sometimes reported speech is easier to add than a quotation. It lets you maintain your own writing style. You can write it more concisely and make it fit your line of argument. It’s also a nice change of pace for the reader. Don’t be afraid of it. Especially for short quotations.
9. Quotes as kickers. It’s very common in magazines to use the interviewee’s money quote as the kicker (final sentences or paragraph) of the article. It relives you of the responsibility of writing something pithy and clever. It also lets you close with an opinion without editorialising and hence satisfies most editors. For an example, check out this randomly-chosen Wired article which has two quotes as a kicker, one in quotation marks and one reported. A double-whammy.
10. Quotes as ledes. You can also use quotes to open a story. (A lede is the first sentence or sentences of an article.) Here, however, the challenge is to create suspense rather than resolve it. Quotes as ledes are rarer but if you get a good one, use it.

Now, I have noticed a trend for restaurants to pack menus with words that no diner could possibly understand. In some cases, this is because they are using traditional foreign words and they provide a glossary. This is the case at Boca Di Lupo. It is part of the adventure and part of the fun and I enjoyed my meal there all the more because of it.

The other version is where chefs use language to deliberately obscure what they are cooking. Sometimes this is a faddy, fashionable thing, like the trend a while ago to serve everything with an ‘air’ of flavoured foam. If you didn’t know about the trend, you didn’t know what you were getting.

But earlier this year I ate at a restaurant called Ubuntu in Napa. It has a Michelin star, serves veggie food and has a name that means ‘Freedom’ in Swahili and will please geeks everywhere.

But the menu was so arcane that it was impossible to get any sense of what I was ordering. Even after the waitress patiently explained everything. It turns out that the chef actually made up a lot of words, Humpty-Dumpty style. One explanation stuck in my mind: “it’s a deconstructed borsht.” I really shouldn’t need a degree in post-modernism and Russian literature to order a meal. (And that was the explanation of the menu item!)

Here is the menu itself. Butis ‘Midnight moon’ an ingredient or an instruction or just a flight of fancy. Why is ‘gravy’ in inverted commas? What is ‘kraut ash’?

My view is that this is one short step away from being an amazing menu with poetry and delight. The missing step is the information that takes the reader on a journey from excitement to understanding. Instead, this menu is a thinly-disguised exercise in one-upmanship.

How do you communicate with your customers? Do you take them on a journey or do you leave them confused? What happens in restaurants also happens in marketing. Think about it.

I have had a *lot* of feedback. In this article, I want to distil lessons from that experience so that you, dear reader, can give great feedback and get better work.

1. Read like a reader. I’m not writing for your boss, I’m writing for a customer who doesn’t know much or anything about your company or its products. Forget what you know and think about them when you read copy for feedback. Does it answer their questions? Does it tell a story and flow from one point to the next? Does it include any company jargon that they might not understand? This mindset will help you give the best feedback.
2. Read the whole thing first. I can’t tell you how often I get feedback where people leave comments such as ‘don’t forget to mention feature x’ when, in fact, it’s covered in the following paragraph. Writers cannot include all the key points in the headline and the first paragraph. They have to prioritise and structure content. So your job is to read the whole thing before you say something is missing. But it’s absolutely fine to say ‘feature x is more important than feature y, so move it up the running order’. This is good feedback.
3. Read it again. I recommend reading everything three times. Once, quickly, as a reader. Second, more slowly, as a client, looking at brand police issues and key messages. Then, third, from the end backwards to the start, looking at the detail such as typos, grammar etc. (If you’re into that stuff.) This is the best way to give rounded, comprehensive feedback.
4. Give feedback, don’t rewrite. I have had a few clients who just change copy rather than explain what they didn’t like about the first draft. This doesn’t help me understand how to do it better next time. Also, I tend to view this kind of feedback as sacrosanct. I assume that my client has a good reason for wanting those words and I don’t change them or, if I have to correct some grammar or something, I feel I have to give a detailed explanation. So, my preference is to get comments explaining what you like or don’t like and then rewrite it myself. Of course, correcting product names or other details this way is absolutely fine.
5. Use Track Changes and Comments. The best way to edit text is with Word Track Changes and the best way to comment on something is with Word’s comments feature. That way I can go through the whole document and make sure that I look at every bit of feedback. If you prefer to write directly into the text, you can use a different colour or [square brackets] or the magic marker ‘TK’ to mark your changes, but really, it’s so much easier with Track Changes.
6. Explain yourself. Tell me why you want a change. Over time I will get a better understanding of what you like and how to write better for you. This is the purpose of good feedback. I call it ‘train the owner, not the dog’ (with a hat tip to Barbara Woodhouse).
7. Understand good and bad writing. Take a look at Seven types of bad writing.
8. Educate about the brand. Every company has different, sometimes obscure rules about product names, trademarks and so on. I really like to learn this stuff and to get it right in my text (although ultimately, of course, my clients have final responsibility for it). So good feedback starts by sharing your company guidelines and giving constructive explanations of changes in my copy.
9. Beware the Stockholm syndrome. Have a look at my article: Writers are from Mars, Clients are from Venus.
10. Remember the brief. It can be helpful if you look back at the brief before you give feedback. Remember what the piece was trying to achieve, who it is aimed at and so on and refer to the brief in your feedback. For example, if the piece was aimed at business people, you can legitimately challenge overly technical language.  (You do have a brief, right? Read Better briefs for writers and How to work with writers for more on this.)
11. Don’t edit by committee. Sometimes I get feedback from three or four people at the same time and, if it conflicts, I have to figure out whose feedback has priority. Eek! It’s much better for you, as a client, to review and collate everyone’s feedback so I get a single version of the truth. It’s also much more efficient for everyone if I get one round of feedback, instead of five or six rounds as each stakeholder sends in their comments. Many writers charge for additional rounds so this can get expensive. (I don’t, within reason)
12. Give praise and encouragement. I try to leave my ego at the door but good feedback also includes praising the stuff you liked and explaining why. This is a great way to encourage a writer to consistently deliver their best work for you. It’s free and highly effective.

Selection

• Look for writers with a track record of work in a similar format or subject but don’t get hung up if they haven’t done exactly the same thing elsewhere. A good writer should be able to research new topics effectively.
• Meet the writer (not just the account manager) and make sure there’s a good ‘chemistry.’ Do they talk your language? Understand your requirements? Give constructive input about ways they might carry out your brief?
• Look for a chameleon-like ability to write in different styles. A good writer should be able to follow a corporate style guide and adapt their work to the audience and client.
• Ask for references.
• Check that your writer has professional indemnity insurance.

Briefing

• A briefing document should explain who the work is for (the target audience), what its objectives are (why is it being written), what style guidelines and language will be used (for instance American English or British English), the length in words, what the deadline is, a high level outline of the contents and any supplementary contact information or additional resources the writer may need.
• You can reasonably expect a good writer to help with this process, even draft a briefing document for you based on your instructions.

Management

• Like most people, writers like to get positive feedback. If they’ve done a good job, tell them.
• When it comes to fact-checking, you should expect a writer to keep meticulous notes and voice recordings of any interviews they carry out.
• Similarly, they should be able to provide independent sources for any facts and statistics that they use in their work.
• Like anyone in business, writers will try to schedule their work. Last minute requests and short deadlines are okay (sometimes) but you are more likely to get a good job if you allow a reasonable deadline.
• Writers tend to think in terms of deadlines, drafts and word counts and chunk up their time in units of interviews, research, writing and editing. Understanding a little about how they work will help you understand what progress they are making

Editing and rewriting

• You may find writers reluctant to release work until it has reached a final draft form. At Articulate, work goes through a fact-checking and proof-reading stage before being released to clients.
• You should expect to receive work that is spelled correctly, grammatical and that makes sense. It should, naturally, meet the brief.
• It’s normal for the client to review the work from their company’s perspective to check, for example, that trademarks are properly written out or that job titles are correct. Minor tweaks like this are normal, especially when you start working with a new writer.
• In our experience, most major rework arises from a faulty brief or one that changes during the assignment.
• That said, you shouldn’t have to deal with a writer’s ego. If the work doesn’t do what you expected, explain why not and request changes. The more specific you are the more likely you are to get a satisfactory result.
• In our view, unpardonable sins include: missing a deadline, starting work without an agreed brief, clichés and making the same mistake twice.

We all learn to write at school but then society makes a distinction between ‘writers’ and ‘the rest of us.’ A writer sits in a garret and writes the great American novel. The rest of us write memos. It’s a false division.

Because everyone can write, people underestimate its importance and overestimate their own ability. Because they think that writers are creative weirdos they rarely think about hiring a specialist when they have something important to say.

I’m not talking about advertising copywriting. This is an artform at its best – business haikus. I’m talking about brochures, websites, case studies, press releases, reports, letters and the humdrum daily word torrent.

What comes out of most companies is bad. In my experience there are seven types of bad writing:

1. Thinks too much of itself. The UK satirical magazine, Private Eye runs a regular column lampooning the abuse of the word ‘solution.’ For example, Dow Corning’s “Innovative solutions for wound management,” which means “bandages.” This kind of word inflation devalues meaning and arouses the scepticism of readers.
2. Is too clever by half. For some reason, people are afraid to write how they speak. They want to sound big, grown-up and clever. So they use big words and long sentences. For example, I was presented with this beauty at a school board meeting once: “the Governing Body are agreeing this budget as the financial mechanism to support the education priorities of the school as identified in the School Development Plan and will adhere to the best value principles in spending its school funding allocation.” It meant, “We approve the budget.”
3. Gets hyped up. Press releases often include frankenquotes. These are made-up quotations that bear no resemblance to normal speech. For example: “Nortel has established a legacy in innovation and will continue to push the envelope…” Try saying that in a pub to your friends. See if they still listen to you afterwards. Or trust you.
4. Tells lies. In the UK, journalists score low in public trust. Somewhere near politicians and spin doctors. However, good journalists are obsessive about research, accuracy, good reporting, details and, yes, truth. What works for newspaper stories also works for business communication.
5. Ignores the reader. As a writer, the greatest skill is to think about what the reader needs to hear, not what you need to say. It takes an imaginative leap. For example, Google says “Please read this carefully, it’s not the usual yada, yada.” Microsoft says “This software is licensed under the agreement below.” Which one is more likely to be read?
6. Needs to go on a diet. Most writing can be improved by liposuction. Consider the Gettysburg Address. Antoine de Saint-Exupery said it best: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” This is especially true when writing for the web, when you need to cut the word count by about 50 percent.
7. Has no direction. My favourite tutor at Oxford told me that I had to take my essays and drive them like Ayrton Senna (a famous racing driver). Good writing has a strong purpose. Bad writing has either no direction or has too many.

1. Zap filler text. Pious throat clearing can go – just get straight to the point and delete the run up. For example, most press releases contain this kind of waffle: “In order to demonstrate our commitment to cutting-edge technology, innovation and customer service…” It’s what the delete key was invented for.
2. Cut paragraphs before you cut sentences. It’s better to change the structure of your piece by deleting low priority content than it is to try to make all your points but with fewer sentences. See my article: Optimise the algorithm not the code for more on this point. For example, this post started off with 20 tips and I deleted the ten worst ones. (Just kidding, but you get the point.)
3. Don’t lock down the word count before you start. A fixed word count is a guarantee of maximum verbosity (as the old Infocom games used to say). If you commission 500 words from a writer, that’s what you’ll get. Better to say ‘up to 500 words’ or ‘between 350-500’ and make sure that the writer focuses on the message and the quality of the writing. Similarly, ‘lorem ipsum’ copy on websites gives designers way too much influence over the copy length. Better to get a writer involved from day one, perhaps by using wireframes.
4. Delete hype words, clichés, adjectives and adverbs. Accurately chosen perfect words make this sentence the most beautiful one ever written. Or not. All readers have an inner cynic that discounts any hype word they read so using hyped-up words has the opposite result to the one you wanted. D’oh! See Words to avoid for more. They just sit around watching TV and eating your food like unwanted house guests. They don’t even do the washing up.
5. Shorter sentences. I often find that breaking down a long sentence into a series of short ones, sometimes even using the machine gun style to spit out a sequence of very short sentences, can make a paragraph much shorter. In other words, short sentences rule. Use readability tools to provide objective feedback on your sentences.
6. Use ‘you’. It’s fine to address your reader directly. It’s also okay to say ‘I’ or ‘we’ to describe the person or company who’s speaking. This gets you out of a world of pain when struggling to find the subject of a sentence and avoid the passive voice. It also leads to shorter, punchier copy.
7. Give instructions. ‘Don’t run with scissors’ is shorter than ‘surveys by leading analysts suggest that velocity and cutting implements don’t mix.’
8. Shorten or delete quotations. I’d love to research this (does anyone know a psychologist who could help – seriously?) but I reckon that most people skip quotations unless they are very short. The scaffolding around them takes up a lot of words and, in business writing, they are usually full of inhuman Frankenquotes. For more on effective use of quotes, see Surprise and Delight and How to use quotations in your writing.
9. Write with information. If a sentence doesn’t include a fact or make a strong, clear point, it’s a candidate for deletion. My history tutor at Oxford used to plead with me sometimes: “Matthew, do try to include at least one date in your essays.” It’s the same thing here.
10. Use a bigger font. Sounds daft, but it’s much harder to write lots of words if your screen fills up quicker.