Our guest speaker will be Julie Espinosa, a content strategist at ASU as well as a freelance writer. Her presentation, A Guide to Style Guides, will discuss the benefits of creating a style guide to control quality in all of your content creation. With a style guide, you won’t have to continually reevaluate if it’s Web site  or website, e-mail or email, or whether you use ampersands. Having a style guide where all these questions are decided saves copywriters, editors and clients time and headaches. This presentation is for anyone wanting style guide peace of mind, whether you’re starting a new project or working for the same client or company you’ve been with for years.

Come on our to see real examples of what a style guide is, what it commonly includes, points of grammatical contention and how to customize your own style guide.

Prior to Julie’s presentation, our CopyChat will be lead by Victor Moreno and it will discuss the pros, cons, and reasons designers use Lorem Ipsum as content placeholders. We will also be lead in an exercise by Lawrence Riddick about writing for companies experiencing negative PR.

So come on out to the March meeting of Commpose at 6pm, on Tuesday, March 16th at Terralever. The event is free and open to everyone, and this month’s food is being sponsored by Strong Design Studios.

Thanks again to everyone that came out and we hope to see lots of you out next month on March 16th!

Veteran copywriter and creative director, DD Kullman will be sharing significant changes that have impacted the craft of copywriting, as well as predictions for its place in the future of media. DD currently freelances for several local ad agencies, design firms and corporate clients, and teaches copywriting and scriptwriting to advertising and graphic design students as an adjunct faculty member of The Art Institute of Phoenix. DD also serves on the board of the American Marketing Association – Phoenix Chapter, and is a member of AAF Metro Phoenix. She was editor of Southwest Graphics magazine, a trade publication for the communications industry, from 2006-2009. Don’t miss her great blog discussing all aspects of copywriting!

We will also be featuring a CopyChat by Jennifer Halloran on the difference between using “e.g.” in your writing versus “i.e.” as well as an exercise in evoking emotion in your writing.

Food and refreshments will be provided along with our 100% enjoyment guarantee, so bring a pen, some paper, some friends, and get ready to delve into a night of copywriting fun. This event is free and open to everyone! If you’re a beginner, veteran, or completely clueless as to what copywriting even is, come on out–you’re bound to learn something new!

Free parking is available at the NE Corner of 5th and Ash. After 6pm, all metered parking is free as well.

Hyphens
A hyphen is the shortest of the dashes. On a keyboard it is implemented using the key directly to the left of the zero key. A hyphen is used within compound words or as part of a non-continuing numbers, such as phone numbers.

Examples: 555-123-1234, co-worker, editor-in-chief

En Dashes
An en-dash is about twice the width of a hyphen, or the width of a capital N—hence its name. An en-dash is also sometimes denoted as two hyphens without any spacing between them, and is therefore sometimes referred to as a double dash. An en-dash denotes a range, and is most often used with numbers such as dates or times. An en-dash should be typeset “tight”—meaning without any spaces before or after the dash. On a Macintosh computer, you can type an en-dash by holding option-hyphen.

Examples: 8:30am–10:00am, January 1–10

Em Dashes
An em-dash is about three times the width of a hyphen, or the width of a capital M—hence its name. It is sometimes denoted as three hyphens without any spacing between them. An em-dash denotes a pause in thought, a parenthetical statement, afterthought statement or is added for emphasis. It is traditionally set “tight”—meaning without any spaces before or after the dash. However, AP style specifies that a space should be used before and after the dash. Unless one must follow the formatting specified in a specific style guide, it seems that since either tight or spaced formatting seems excepted, consistent formatting is the most important thing. On a Macintosh computer, you can type an em-dash by holding shift-option-hyphen.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76283671@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

I wanted to follow up this discussion by stating why I believe it is important to review everything you send out on a public forum, regardless of the audience or how the tool you are in reference to was designed to be used.

Being transparent, honest, and open is not reflected in the typos you make. Sure, it adds a human element to something, but human error is probably not the human element you’re looking to get across. There are better ways to demonstrate transparency, and that’s in the content of what it is you’re saying. A typo-filled tweet consisting of valuable information that adequately portrays your company’s personality and brand might actually be saying something other than what you intended.

Typos do happen, but you can make it so they don’t. Yes, we’re all human and there are bound to be mistakes somewhere within our writing, but this shouldn’t negate the fact that you are posting on a public medium that potential clients, employers, suitors, friends, etc. can easily and readily see what you’ve written. Unlike many things in your life, this is one area that you actually can control. Reviewing before you post doesn’t mean you’re removing transparency from your information, it simply means you’re making certain that potential clients will feel safe knowing the “A” you received in 3rd grade English was actually deserved.

So do I think typos really matter? Certainly. Do they happen? Yep. Can you avoid them? Yep. Does it ruin the point of Twitter? Not in my opinion. How hard is it to make sure your perfectly crafted tweet that delicately balances information, snark, and wit is also, then, conveyed how you intended and spelled correctly?

Let’s play a game! Who can guess which company this copy belongs to? Ok, there’s no typos in here, but there certainly are glaring grammatical errors.

All of the built-in apps on XYZ Product were designed from the ground up to take advantage of the large Multi-Touch screen. And they work in any orientation. So you can do things with these apps that you can’t do on any other device.

Leave your answer below along with your thoughts on this post.

DD currently freelances for several local ad agencies, design firms and corporate clients, and teaches copywriting and scriptwriting to advertising and graphic design students as an adjunct faculty member of The Art Institute of Phoenix. DD also serves on the board of the American Marketing Association – Phoenix Chapter, and is a member of AAF Metro Phoenix. She was editor of Southwest Graphics magazine, a trade publication for the communications industry, from 2006-2009. Don’t miss her great blog discussing all aspects of copywriting!

The meetup will be held on Tuesday, February 16th at 6pm over at Terralever on Mill Ave. Additional information on our copywriting exercise and CopyChat will be posted soon.

Improv is a form of controlled chaos, and an excellent way to tap into spontaneity and creativity. This talk by Jeff will be an improvisational look at the techniques, games, and approaches of improv and how they can help in your writing.

So come on out January 19th at 6pm to Terralever for a night of copywriting madness! As always, please be sure to bring a pen, paper, an open mind, and an appetite (for both knowledge and food, of course.)

We are currently booking up the next quarter of meetings and we still have many months available, so please email melissa@commpose.com to get on the schedule. Don’t know what you’d like to present on? We can help with that too, just ask!

Come on out to Terralever in Tempe on December 15, 2009 at 6pm for a night of Copywriting Karaoke!  Curious what the heck Copywriting Karaoke is? Well then just come on out and see. It’s much more fun than anything that could be described here.

Meetings are free and open to anyone and everyone — so feel bring to bring someone you think would be interested. Remember to bring specific writing dilemmas you’re facing and be prepared to discuss them with the group.

Food and drinks will be provided so just come with a pen and paper and prepare for a night of copywriting shenanigans! Please RSVP or leave a comment below so we know how much food to grab.

Photo courtesy of Stuart Chalmer

Now, my mother is a very bright person and can understand almost anything she reads, but she’s also very much representative of almost every type of reader that exists. She needs clear, spelled out directions to complete the task asked of her in the copy. She needs every possible way to get in touch with a specific person or company, as she sometimes uses the phone, but sometimes email. She, *gasp*, skims what she reads most of the time, therefore, she needs the information to be presented quickly and easily. She has eyesight that’s…well…aging (sorry, Mom!) and she needs text that accommodates this fact. Every possible thing that should be considered when crafting copy can be explained by my mother’s behavior, so it only makes sense to craft everything I write to appeal to her and her needs.

Similar to personas, writing for a certain person makes it much easier to entice your audience as it gives your writing a face, a personality, and something to always be thinking about.

Another great reason to use your mother as a reference point in your writing? It gives you an easy way to justify your reasoning to a client. I mean, really, no one can argue with your mother.

Do you have any writing tricks of your own that help you to appeal to a broader audience?