Let’s dispense with weighty commercial writing matters for a moment and have a little comic relief. A few weeks back, an accomplished writer friend of mine sent me a link to an article, along with this note: “Holy crap, this is what passes for writing these days?!”
Here’s the link.
I read it, my jaw slowly dropping, then dashed off a note to the webmaster. I won’t bore you with my entire note, but here are a few snarky highlights:
As a professional copywriter for 16 years, I was appalled that a web site that appears to be a legitimate purveyor of information would actually post such breathtakingly bad, awkward and incoherent writing. Simply put, it makes your site look like a low-rent operation. Why you’d spend what was clearly a pretty penny to create a logo, brand, and attractive-looking site only to fill it with such crap is beyond me. Talk about sabotaging an investment. I’d wager good money you’re paying bad money (what? like $5 an article, perhaps?) for such content. Though, that said, if you’re paying any more than that, you’re getting ripped off.
I actually got a note back from the webmaster, who wrote:
Wow that was some email. But it does come as a reality check to us and I assure you we will try and put out better information in the future. Thanks for the honesty, really. I will review every article before it goes live from now on.
Well, guess what? He actually did revisit it. In fact, the link I sent you is the copy AFTER it was “revisited.” I know, it’s hard to get your arms around the idea that it was actually worse before, but trust me, it was. Here’s an excerpt, untouched. You ready? You sure? Okay, I warned you…
If you want to have a coffee table in your garden or you want to sit there at night then have a rightly sized corner specially designed with a small table and chairs or if you want to have a swing in your garden then have some creeping vines grow on the swing to make it look as if the swing grew there too.
Words fail (in more ways than one…).
My friend tells me sites like these are known as “blog networks” (not “content mills,” that’s something else, though these no doubt pay just as badly) and are largely – you ready for this? – self-edited. And as she put it, “As long as they’re getting the clicks, they’re happy. It’s all about page views in a networked blog.” I don’t even want to get to a point where I actually understand that particular kind of thinking.
One thing quickly becomes clear: what these people do and what we do may both involve quote-unquote writing, but it’s there the similarity ends. Sort of how racing could refer to both what kids do with Tonka Toys and, oh, say, Formula One?
I know, it’s not very nice of me to make fun of bad writers just trying to make a no-doubt bad living in an arena in which they’re a bad fit (or maybe not…). But, just remember this the next time you hear someone saying how hard it is to make a living as a writer with rates so pathetic for writers. No, not all writers making $5 an article are this bad, but when this is how low the bar is in so many places, a decent writer is truly throwing pearls before swine. But hey, they’ve got options. If they don’t choose to exercise them, not my problem.
Ever had any contact with this world in your travels? (Or is this about as foreign to you as Pluto?)
Have you come across some equally bad examples?
What might you tell someone who whines about not being able to make a living writing?
What might you have told the webmaster if you were writing a note?
Anne, I’m with Jenn (and sounds like your thriving business is proof positive that good clients that indeed appreciate the value of good writing are out there).
While it’s easy to see examples like mine and yours as evidence of a general decline in writing, and perhaps what’s considered “acceptable,” I don’t buy it. And I don’t buy it because the business models of these blog networks and the content mills is worlds apart from the one practiced by respectable business doing their level best to stay competitive in their respective industries.
Arguably, when all you care about is clicks, then, in a relative sense, content really doesn’t matter. Sure, you might earn more respect from readers if your content were better, but if the content you have, as crummy as it is, gets the job done, and keeps you profitable, then why do you need better? And by extension, why would you need to pay more to get better? You don’t and you won’t.
But a business trying to stay profitable selling a product or service simply doesn’t have the luxury of being able to settle for crummy marketing copy, especially when their competitors aren’t going down that road, because, they too, know how important good copy is to their overall marketing equation.
As for your COC, just because the newsletter is lousy doesn’t translate to members thinking THEY can get away with lousy copy for their businesses as well. Heck, they could be saying the same thing you are about their COC newsletter, and lamenting that the COC just doesn’t get it.
As for writers contacting those members (or NOT, in this case), no big surprise there. So many writers are mediocre marketers and I’d wager they’d get a good response if they indeed reached out to those members. But hey, that’s one of the most important cornerstones of this business: the opportunities that go unpursued by writers who chase the low-hanging (and low-paying) fruit. Our field pays more precisely because those clients who DO appreciate good writing have to be ferreted out and cultivated.
I totally agree with Jenn, and have seen the truth of this countless times in my career (as have you, no doubt…): when clients see the difference a professional writer makes, the light bulb goes on and suddenly they realize what they’ve been missing. Again, we need to be educating through our marketing. Sure, many prospects have poorly-written materials, but I’d bet good money that’s far more a function of them simply not knowing any better and not being exposed to the difference a good writer can make, than some conscious decision to NOT hire a writer.
My two cents… Okay, three… 😉
PB
Great post Peter. Which raises a question: Why don’t more people take advantage of two very effective writing tool that are, literally, right at their fingertips? I’m referring to the “Flesch Reading Ease (FRE)” and “Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL)” scores included with the “Spelling & Grammar” feature of MS Word.
For example, consider the following website content:
“Current activities include enabling leading Business Schools to develop new collaborative ways of working – these internationally recognised organisations will be helped by a process of us creating specific support packages built around progressive development learning paths for their faculty and students.”
The above copy has a “Flesch Reading Ease” score of 0.00 and a “Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level” of 25.1. For all practical purposes it’s incomprehensible. By comparison, a typical issue of “Reader’s Digest” magazine gets a readability score of around 65. “Time” magazine scores about 52.
I, like you, couldn’t resist offering my feedback to the writer, including offering up the FRE and FKGL scores. He acknowledged my input, opening his email to me with the line, “Trust me when I say, “I know.” More than two weeks later though, the content remains the same.
Here’s another example:
“Pipeline Coach’s services meet the expectations of business leaders who recognize the value of purposeful investments in human capital – often beginning with themselves – as a means of preparing and aligning people and systems in pursuit of growth.” This example comes in with FRE and FKGL scores of 13.7 and 20.5, respectively.
“Purposeful investments”? As opposed to what? Drunken spending? Oh, and of course, you want to be sure you work in good “corporatese” such as “human capital” (what a warm, fuzzy term; who among us does not enjoy being referred to as “human capital”) and “aligning people.”
I bet the folks who ran Enron and AIG (into the ground) were really good at “aligning people.”
All that said, FRE and FKGL scores are not a panacea for bad writing. Still, they are tools that, when properly applied, can make writing more readable. This is especially true for the vast majority of people writing today: Non-professionals who have never seriously studied the craft of writing and are never likely to do so. Unfortunately, this multitude includes a vast number of small business owners and other professionals.
I’m convinced that many of these small business owners and professionals, because they are well educated and have ready access to a word processor, delude themselves into thinking that they can write well enough to be effective in their business or career.
Yet, they don’t fully utilize the writing tools their word processor gives them.
Why not?
Ernest… great question. Until I started working with Scribe, the newish keyword tool (I review it here https://bit.ly/bsqIJT) I’d never seen an FRE score and had only a vague idea that there are tools like it out there.
And, although I’ve been using one version of word or another since we lost wordstar, I didn’t know it had the same capability… why? Well , although the scores are interesting they mostly tell me I’m writing at the level I want to and there is so much in Word I don’t need I’d never dug that out.
Now that you’ve taught me something I’ll give it a try. Thanks.
You guys should see the Chinglish I need to edit and polish (I live in Beijing and work as a freelance copywriter). Now that’s bad writing. What it’s taught me though, is that there’s a direct correlation between clear thinking and clear, effective writing.
Maybe I’ve been affected too much by my year and a half in China, but I just can’t get too worked up over the bad writing in a 4th-rate blog. I get a little worked up by the bad writing/thinking on China Daily (https://chinadaily.com.cn ) since, after all, this paper wishes to be considered a credible news source, and hires native-English speakers to write and edit the articles. But even that doesn’t bother me much anymore; such ham-handed propaganda is not worth more than a snicker. What really bothers me is bad writing and poor proofreading in American books and magazines. The blog format is casual, quick, and informal in nature — like an email to a friend. But books are supposed to last.
One last thought: Hasn’t bad writing been around as long as there has been writing? Maybe we should celebrate the bad writing, since without it, we’d be out of work. As professional copywriters, we’re in a great position now to learn SEO and combine it with our writing and marketing ability. Solid SEO combined with solid writing, will help our clients be more successful and ensure that we are valued for what we do best.
Thanks Ernest, Anne, and Carl,
Cool tool, Ernest! I’ll check it out. And Carl, you’re right – bad writing HAS around forever. It’s just more visible now, since, well, it’s more visible now…;) Connect to the Web, and you connect, by definition, to a mother lode of writing – some really good, plenty really bad. And I say what you said all the time: thank goodness for all the bad writing – or we wouldn’t have jobs. But it’s still fun to have a few laughs at the particularly bad examples…
And SEO writing is a great way to prove our value to our clients. And it’s not as hard as it may seem. Visit Katherine Andes’ site (she wrote a two-parter for the ezine, in the March and April issues about the importance for clients to hire the writer first). She’s a great resource for anyone looking to learn more about the craft.
PB
I just want to point out that “spinning” articles is commonplace and there are a number of pieces of software available that churn out exactly this sort of garbage. It might have actually been a good article at one point, and then someone spun it 100 times and came out with that. Plop.
By the way, Peter, thank you for The Well-Fed Writer. It’s my new bible.
I am clearly late at finding this site but the link came via a fellow garden writer this morning.
As an article, online or otherwise, it is pathetic. As a rewrite – it looks like the first was a non-English speaker being paid poorly, and the second was a poorly paid, but slightly better, rewrite(rewrites are cheaper than articles to buy). The cheap online writer uses the top three sites to get the information and makes an ‘article’ from that – the how-to for this is all over the internet giving tips for an article in 15 minutes flat. The calibre of the site was set by the header which linked to a porn on my visit. Did I mention that the writer did not have a web page, no info page, no about me page, nothing. That smells wrong.
How many times do we have to say ‘you get what you pay for’?
Sadly the internet has found a thousand and one people who think they can write, and with so many web pages that need content the marketplace is swamped. Which in turn, due to supply and demand, drives down prices.
Major sites such as How-To etc use article mills such as Demand to supply their content. Demand has editors that throw back badly written articles, but for decent material for these major sites they pay $15!!!!
At some stage the reality that quality content is king will sink into the brain of those who need decent web site content to drive customer to the site, but with so many decent, but cheap writers I am not sure that the cream will ever rise to the top – kinda like the 2%milk we now drink which has no cream.
But you see the problem today is the reader. I think perhaps most people have no idea what good writing is. Or, my biggest fear, bad writing is seen as good, and good writing is seen as bad. Perhaps we can blame reality TV and the general mediocrity that is so celebrated in our society today. Or maybe it’s social media, with instant messages with little forethought an editing. In any case, it’s amazing how much horrible writing today is passed off as good.
I just checked the link (today is November 21, 2011) – and apparently the site no longer exists. Poor writing indeed to bring down a site – or poor business practices. We’ll probably never know.
Leaving aside the abysmal quality of the writing, I just love the idea of encouraging vines to grow all over your garden swing. How, pray, are you expected to use it with stuff growing over it? Do you wait until the vines are good and dense, then leap on and burst Tarzan-like through the foliage going ‘Aye…ayeyiyaiaya…ayeiyahiya!’?
(How is Tarzan’s call spelled by the way?)
I smile every time I hear that “unclog my drain over the phone” line on the radio.