I love it for its boldness and sense of humour. It would have been awful if it had been paired with a shmarmy image, but it wasn’t—the picture is romantic, soft,  and playfully suggestive.

Now on the other hand, I reacted negatively to Coke’s 2009 slogan: Open Happiness.

I don’t enjoy the contrived nostalgia, the nod to a “simpler” time (perhaps the 1950s). I don’t like the equation of drinking cola to happiness. I feel like they’re trying to con me in an arch sort of way. But I’m not the target audience.

Thoughts?

I’ve seen it, and I’ve entered it. More than once, since the ad made it clear on the second day it appeared on my Facebook Home—slightly modified to convey new content—that I could enter it once a day.

Here’s the thing: I NEVER, EVER pay attention to Facebook ads, nor to any online ad I come across. Not even subliminally, no matter what anyone says. It’s like my eyes are violently repelled, like I have a sixth sense that steers me away, keeps me safe from such irritation.

So why did I enter the MacBook Pro contest? First, because a trusted friend had done so. Word-of-mouth, unlike so many other marketing trends, will always be powerful.

But also because of the incredible copy and supporting design. The copy told me immediately that:

• It would take me 5 seconds to enter
• There were no apps, no forms to fill out, nothing to buy
• The prize was worth my entering
• The sponsor understood my resistance to heavy-handed marketing: “After you enter feel free to visit an advertiser to help us pay the bills but that step is OPTIONAL.”

These people—Big Prize Giveaways (a brand name that would normally send me running—know their stuff.

All I can say is WOW. No wait, I can say more. Beautiful pictures, perfect balance of spare (layout) and lush (photography), and small but clear invitation to read more about the project. The slim gold back and forward arrows are a nice touch, too.

We’re thinking about refreshing our portfolio. Any impressive examples you’ve seen lately? Send ‘em our way.

So today I’m going to cover two mistakes I see lots in my day-to-day work that some of you will find very basic and “duh.” If you fall into this camp, rest assured that you likely stumble over things that other people find amazingly easy. I certainly do. As we become more and more digital and involved in micro-format writing (e.g., Twitter and Facebook), our punctuation and usage skills can get rusty.

#1: It’s and its
There is only one reason to use it’s: to contract it is. Therefore:

• “It’s cold today.”
• “He told me that it’s the best restaurant he’s ever been to.”

Otherwise you want its.

• “Its teeth were jagged and it growled menacingly.”
• “There is no way its contents could have been leaked.”

This can be confusing because we’re so used to seeing ‘s indicate possession. If it’s any help, think of the apostrophe as standing in for the i of is. Otherwise, just keep coming back here!

#2: I.e., and E.g.,
These abbreviations truncate Latin words. I’m not going to go there because no one remembers the Latin. What you need to know is that i.e., and e.g., (and yes, they require the periods and commas) are not interchangeable; they stand for very different things.

• i.e., means that is.
• e.g., means for example.

So:

• “If you’ve never visited the area, consult a travel guide (e.g., Lonely Planet or Fodor’s).”
• “His heroes, i.e., Spiderman and Indiana Jones, occupied prime positions on his window sill.”

Grammar Girl provides some handy help on i.e., and e.g., so go there if you’re a tips and tricks kind of person.

Till next week (or the week after),

The Geek

The worst offender has to be “utilize.” If you use it, you’re not alone. It seems to be one of the most prolific words in business communications. But to me (and I’m not alone—see what Random House’s Media Maven has to say) it smacks of pretentiousness and insecurity. “Utilize” does have a valid meaning: “to turn to profitable use; to make a practical use for.” But in 99% of the cases I’ve seen, it replaces “use.” For that matter, a lot of people will write “employ” instead of “use.” Whatsa matta with “use”? It’s a lovely little word—just three letters that mean so much. 

Use “use”!

Other words I see too much or which otherwise and even irrationally make me cringe:

• Synergy (or synergistic)
• Actionable (used sometimes in marketing copy to mean “prompting a desired action” (e.g., “we produce actionable results”) ... “actionable” really means “giving sufficient reason to take legal action”!
• Important, efficient, and effective (they’re fine used sparingly, but it’s tempting to abuse them)
• Grow (as in “grow the business”—it’s inelegant to my ear, though I’m sure I’ve pulled it out from time to time)
• Impact (overused: try “effect” for a noun or “affect” or “influence” for verbs)
• Impactful (I liked what someone had to say on the Visual Thesaurus: “Apparently, ‘impactful’ is a word (and by this I mean it’s recognized by a handful of reasonably reputable sources). I think it sounds horrible, like an impacted wisdom tooth or, heaven forefend, an impacted bowel.”

For more ranting on horrible words, see this entry by a British guy. I like the quote he uses to starts his piece:

“Words that are horrible to one writer may not be horrible to another,” says John Grimond in The Economist Style Guide (Profile Books, 2005). “But if you are a writer for whom no words are horrible, you would do well to take up some other activity.”

Got any you want to share? It might feel good ...

Actually we’ve been here for a while, but as anyone who’s moved home + business + baby + neurotic, raccoon-ravaged cat across country can attest to, it takes a while to land in a new town. We’ve now come up for air: our office is mostly unpacked and we both have primo window vistas and official contact info.

391 Kenwood Avenue
Ottawa, ON K2A 0K3

Craig: 613-983-2644, craig@turner-riggs.com
Kiley: 613-875-7231, kiley@turner-riggs.com

Fax: 613-722-0835

As much as we miss Vancouver, we get a good feeling from the new ‘hood. Just down the street from us is a major scenic attraction: Dinosaur Lawn, where roughly 100 dinos of all shapes and inclinations congregate for the pleasure of passers-by. Every time we visit the creatures are up to something new—dangling from this or preying on that—thanks to the whims of the dozens of children who play with them every day. And the people responsible for The Lawn? A middle-aged couple with no kids. Just for fun. Love it. Love it a lot.

Library and Archives Canada has just published a study we did for them late last year on audiobook and eBook publishing in Canada. The study is online now in HTML and MP3 editions and soon to be available via accessible PDF.

As far as we know, this is the first comprehensive study of digital publishing in Canada. It explores the context for audiobook and eBook publishing, the current Canadian market, production of digital editions, and circulation of digital books in libraries.

The study’s main findings include:

Mainstream audiences are primed for digital: “Digital natives” (i.e., those who have grown up using computers and the Internet) are very at ease reading off a screen as opposed to the printed page and are ready consumers of digital content. At the other end of the demographic spectrum, Canada’s aging population means that an increasing number of consumers will prefer or require non-print formats that help them counter sight or other print-reading challenges.

Digital devices are on the rise: The mass market’s adoption of a new generation of Internet-enabled portable devices—e.g., cell phones, smart phones, and PDAs—has accelerated consumption of digital content, both online and via download. Similarly, the rapid adoption of purpose-built reading devices, especially the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle, has given eBooks real traction in consumer markets for the first time.

Digitization of book content is increasing rapidly: Thanks to increasingly digital production workflows, virtually all publishers can easily generate some level of eBook file from their native production files. As publishers accumulate a growing archive of digital production files, and as older backlist titles are scanned or otherwise converted into usable digital source files, the commercial output of digital books has naturally increased. To date, this has mainly been in the form of eBooks of various formats—especially PDF—and large multinational publishers have accounted for the majority of commercial releases.

There is relatively little Canadian content in sales channels for digital editions: The Canadian-owned publishing firms that account for the majority of Canadian-authored titles published each year have been relatively slow to publish digital editions of their books. Canadian-owned firms are small compared to their multinational competitors and generally have more limited staff and/or budget resources to invest in digitization programs.

Management of rights and copyright is a major market shaper: Many book publishers will have audio rights for their titles, but relatively few have historically acquired electronic rights. Therefore, a decision to publish electronic editions of one’s books is often accompanied by the need to revise contract language for new titles and to clear or acquire electronic rights for previously published work. The application of Digital Rights Management protections (DRM) is the other key rights issue in digital publishing. The goal of DRM is to limit piracy of copyrighted work, but these measures often also have the effect of locking content into a given sales channel. Consumer resistance to DRM restrictions on digital content, combined with publishers’ interest in breaking down platform monopolies has led to a weakening (or even abandoning) of DRM protections on an expanding range of digital titles.

You can find the complete study report on the LAC site, and please drop us a line anytime with questions or feedback.

A special thanks to the many industry experts in Canada and the US who contributed their ideas and data to the study, and also to the Initiative for Equitable Library Access team at Library and Archives Canada for their support of the project.

1. When you think en dash, think numbers in almost all cases.* Em dashes, by contrast, apply exclusively to words.
2. Think number ranges when it comes to the en dash—in other words, inclusive numbers (e.g., “See pages 40–42”). Non-inclusive numbers like phone numbers (e.g., 604-734-1896) demand hyphens. En dashes with numbers mean up to and including. With the example, then, I meant “See pages 40, 41, and 42.”
3. Finally, a direct and important quote from The Chicago Manual of Style: “For the sake of parallel construction the word to, never the en dash, should be used if the word from precedes the first element; similarly, and, never the en dash, should be used if between precedes the first element.” Therefore: “He was a member from 1998 to 2001,” and “Between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. there will be no power.”

*The main use of en dashes between words is when there is a to implied (e.g., “The Vancouver–Toronto train,” “The Canucks won 4–2 over the Leafs”). There is also a use for compound terms, but it occurs infrequently enough that I’m not getting into it here.

To read me waxing poetic about em dashes, please see “Writing That Sounds Like Speaking” on blogthecat.

Distribution is a part of the book business that is not easily visible to many of those involved in the book trade and certainly not to the average book reader in Canada. However, effective management of the supply chain—the process of getting books to where they need to be, when they need to be there, and as efficiently as possible—is a critical function in publishing. It is a process that increasingly touches virtually all other aspects of the Canadian book trade from editorial acquisitions to marketing to consumer behavior.

A special thanks to the many publishers, distributors, booksellers, and industry groups who contributed their time, expertise, and data to the study. And congratulations to our colleague Marcel Oullette whose complementary study on Canada’s French-language market was also published today.

In 1868, writer Mark Twain said

“Anybody can have ideas—the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”

In an age where attention spans are shrinking, and 140 character sound bites are all you are allowed on marketing vehicles like Twitter, it is once again time for writing less to become a valued marketing skill.

I couldn’t agree more. In The Power of Slow and Spare, I wrote:

When you’re excited about something your business is doing—a new initiative or product, for example—it’s tempting to want to include in your press release every one of the 34 reasons it’s so great. And explain each reason in depth. And quote all the people who were involved in the idea. And give background. And context. And related information.

But guess what?

Most people will abandon your press release unless you relinquish your dream of including everything you’d ideally like to say. Our society is time-starved as well as compelled to cram as many sources of information in as possible—we are news grazers, not gourmands.

What I love about Partner’s post is that she includes ten tips to apply to the way you describe your own business that will help you distill your message to its absolute core. Here’s Tip #7:

Count how many times you used your product or company name or the word “we.” If it’s more than once in every 500 words, ask yourself if you are writing about you or for your reader. For every statement you write, answer the question “what does this mean for my reader?”

I’m going to sit with those ten tips tomorrow and chew them over. I want to see where the exercise gets me. If nothing else it will be exercise, and exercise is the only way to become a better writer.