Here’s what I do.

First, write as tight as possible. Make it terse and curt.
Then, add words that soften your tone. Articles help a lot here. Throw in an editorial comment like you would if you were talking to a friend.
Read it over and see how it flows. Would adding any words make it clearer or friendlier?

No? Well then, it’s done!

He uses 25 verbs to give the brook some muscle and make it an active participant in its fate, not just a passively moving body of water. Or 26, if you count chatter twice because it has 2 meanings in the poem — one to represent the sound of human speech and the other to indicate shivering.

Here is the poem The Brook by Alfred Lord Tennyson, followed by the 25 verbs.

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip’s farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

The 25 verbs:

1. come
2. make
3. sparkle
4. bicker
5. hurry
6. slip
7. flow
8. join
9. go
10. chatter
11. bubble
12. babble
13. fret
14. wind
15. travel
16. draw
17. steal
18. slide
19. move
20. gloom
21. glance
22. murmur
23. linger
24. loiter
25. curve

To read the full version of The Brook, click here.

The main countywide yellow pages tumbled from 1,015 pages in 2007 to 751 in 2009, a decrease of 26%. (For some reason, I didn’t keep the 2008 book.)

The yellow pages companion volume, the smaller and more portable version of the big book, shrank in thickness as well — from 636 pages in 2008 to 551 in 2009, a drop of 13%.

White pages were trimmer by a few ounces too. My city had 6% fewer listings than it did a year ago. The largest city in the county, Bridgeport, lost 5% of its listings.

Do I use the yellow pages? Yes, I do. Though not a whole lot, but that may be because after living here all these years, I mostly know where to go for pizza, eating out, and shopping, and whom to ask for referrals to electricians, dentists, or lawyers.

I paused for half a second. “Yes.”

And thus did Burger King make another 40 cents off me.

The cashier had used one of Elmer Wheeler’s 5 “Wheelerpoints” on me: “Don’t ask if — ask which.” Wheeler published his Wheelerpoints in his book Tested Sentences That Sell in 1937. They worked then, making Wheeler and his clients rich, and they work today.

This Wheelerpoint had helped Abraham & Strauss sell more eggs in their soda fountains. The soda fountain clerk was told not to ask “Would you like an egg with that?” but “One egg or two?”

You can guess the result: customers who had probably never intended to buy eggs told the clerk how many to add.

On the same principle, the Burger King cashier didn’t ask me, “Would you like that with or without cheese?” but “With cheese?”

And of course I fell for it.

Since there’s nothing new under the sun, the origins of this tactic are probably lost in antiquity. Surely millions of people have fallen for its spell, and millions more will continue to fall.

Except me. I’m on alert. The next time they try a Wheelerpoint on me, I’ll just say, “No.”

And I’ll keep my 40 cents.

Lately, I’ve been noticing how he gets in a one- or two-word follow-up question and draws out more insights from a source. Anyone who has conducted interviews will appreciate the beauty of questions like:

• “What else?”
• “Any others?”
• “How?”

Because it’s questions like these that take a source to places they weren’t expecting. And the interviewer uncovers new layers to a previous answer.

Read a few of Adam Bryant’s interviews; watch a master at work.

A marcom document created abroad and used in the U.S. without change may still work. For example, an American reading a website written in British English may stumble a bit at certain words and phrases, but he’ll understand what the writer intended.

Even if  he reads a halfway-decent translation from a foreign language, he’ll get the gist of the piece.

But if the marketer wants the communication to have an impact, the translation must be perfect. Here’s why:

In any writing, you want the words to be “invisible.” By that I mean, you want the reader to get the effect of the words rather than have him or her think, “This is a wonderful/terrible piece of writing.”

Non-standard English on a website or brochure draws attention to the words. Instead of absorbing the meaning of the words, the reader gets distracted by thoughts like, “Ah, this seems to be written by someone whose first language isn’t American English.” That adds an extra, unnecessary step between your text and its comprehension.

For best results, the translation should be done by someone who is more fluent in the language being translated into.

To be sure, many foreign companies with badly-written marketing materials sell their goods and services in America every day. It may be that when we know we’re dealing with a seller whose first language is not English, we make allowances.

But everything else being equal, the company with the brochure that has fewer language mistakes will get the business first.

But will decision engine take?

No. For many reasons.

One, it’s usually futile to try to change entrenched nomenclature. For instance, try getting people to say table tennis instead of Ping Pong.

Though if anyone has a chance of bringing about a name change, it’s Microsoft. But not if they keep running ads like the one below.

Two, search is a verb, decision an abstract noun. You can visualize someone searching for something; it’s hard to imagine a decision. Search is a more appealing term.

Search engine more closely expresses a user’s interaction with the software. Search is what a user does when he types keywords into a box. A decision is what he makes from the search results. Without search, there is no decision. Without the journey, there is no destination.

Ultimately, no matter what Microsoft calls it, users will treat Bing as a search engine. And compare it to you-know-what.