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Mon, Jan 29

Capital (and Other) Crimes: Writing Errors That May Plague Your Utility’s PR Department

Is it my imagination or is writing worse than ever?

As everyone knows, print journalism is on life support – a game of music chairs where the number of chairs is dropping rapidly.

But it goes beyond that.

The rise of texting has made short-form writing an art – a terrible art of abbreviations, Prince-inspired things like B4U and emojis.

Things aren’t a whole lot better on social media.

In college, students often think that the more they write, the better, especially when they have to turn in a paper of a certain length.

And don’t get me started on lawyers.

An especially unfortunate trend has surfaced in recent years: the unneeded capitalization of literally anything and everything. Maybe people think that capitalizing a word adds importance, but it really only makes you look foolish. So, when it comes to pitching journalists (who tend to be grammar nerds), be on your best writing behavior -- unless you want your pitch dismissed.

Let’s hearken back to the days of fifth grade, as I play teacher and offer you a few basic capitalization guidelines.

•             Proper names and proper nouns are always capitalized, such as Tayor Swift and Buffalo Wild Wings.

•             Capitalize a sentence’s first word, although if you don’t know that already you may be in the wrong profession.

•             Don’t capitalize academic degrees unless a language is involved. You can have a bachelor’s degree in Spanish but not in political science.

•             Product names are capitalized, such as Mazda CX-30. There are exceptions to the rule, as product names are now less likely to follow conventions these days. In that case, go with whatever the company uses, whether it’s all capital letters, all lowercase or a mixture. Some examples would be VISA, eBay and adidas.

•             For titles, capitalize them when they appear before the name, such as XYZ Electric Chairman and CEO Eustace J. Pevely. If the title is used after the name, lowercase it, such as Eustace J. Pevely, XYZ Electric chairman and CEO. Do note: CEO is always acceptable usage, even on a first reference. For other titles, such as chief marketing officer, write it out on the first reference.

             Rules related to a utility’s services generally should be lowercase, although there are exceptions. For example, this is wrong:  ABC Light & Power provides Electric Service, Natural Gas and Solar Power Solutions. None of the words after “Power” should be capitalized.

•            Acronyms should be capitalized, such as "FBI," which is short for Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Now let’s talk about some other bad things your PR department may be doing in its communications with the public and press.

There’s a good chance you’re submitting terrible photos and videos. At one journalistic stop, we created a “hall of fame” of terrible photos we received. Some were out of focus, had heads cut off or were shot from so far away that you couldn’t tell what was going on. Others had people not looking at the camera or were dressed in ridiculous outfits (clearly, these were candid shots that never should have seen the light of day).

Today, a common problem is submitting a video in a weird format or sending a JPEG photo that is too small or is of low resolution. We can do some editing magic on material, but many simply aren’t usable.

And if you’re submitting bad visual materials, you may well be submitting poor press releases, too.

A press release is not supposed to be a be-all, end-all for information. Too many releases are overly long and seem designed more to pump up the ego of C-level executives than impart information.

One common failure with many releases is with quotes. Often, there are too many of them that either say the same thing or echo the information in the previous paragraph. And many quotes aren’t quotes at all but heavily massaged statements cobbled together by the PR staff.

Note: Good reporters aren’t likely to use canned quotes anyway and will seek to interview the subject to come up with something better.

Try to keep a press release to a page or a page and a half.

Keep the sentences short. (See what I did there?) Keep the paragraphs short, too.

Avoid jargon. Remember that the average reader comprehends at a seventh-grade level -- or something of that ilk.

Above all, keep everything as simple as possible. The KISS principle applies, and I don’t mean rock ‘n’ roll all night and party every day.