From a recent flyer:

An Australian study has found that txtngs fstr till sum1 trys 2 rd it. Um, I think they mean that using abbreviations and shorthand makes it much faster to write text messages — but twice as long for the poor recipient to read and understand them.

Writing can be a lot of fun. That’s why texting and Twitter and blogs are so popular. Everyone feels a natural human urge to communicate. It’s especially easy and fun when you’re just messing around, if it doesn’t really matter whether anyone actually reads and understands what you’re trying to say. In other words, writing is fun when results don’t matter.

But when something important is on the line, when your writing has to explain, entertain or persuade, when it has to deliver a return on your investment of time and money, writing is a lot harder. That’s why clients pay thousands of dollars for a good sales letter (or its online equivalent, a landing page). If the sales message is well-written and persuasive, the client stands to make many times that amount.

“Easy writing means hard reading,” said Samuel Johnson. In other words, getting and holding the attention of an overworked, multi-tasking, distracted reader is a wee bit tougher than knocking out another quick tweet. Trying to persuade someone to actually do what you want them to do? Now you’re into some really tough terrain.

Don’t believe me? Try writing a note that will convince your kids to go to bed on time when you’re not home. Try explaining to a co-worker how to perform a semi-complex process. Try convincing someone to vote for you, or why they should buy from you rather than your competitor. Then see how easy writing is.

Believe me, I’m not trying to discourage anyone from writing. Quite the opposite. The problem is, good writing fools us. It seduces us all. Good writing makes it look easy. How many times have you thought as you’re reading a book, article or ad, “That’s the perfect way to express it. But it’s so obvious. How else could you possibly say it?”

What most people don’t realize is how long the writer might have sweated and struggled to get it to that point. How many drafts and revisions she might have written and rejected before the work evolved to that “so perfect it’s obvious” status.

Next time someone tells you it’s easy and fun to write, ask to read something they’ve written. See how easy and fun it is to read.

We all do it. We spout shopworn cliches and mindless crutch phrases that make our victims listeners roll their eyes and grind their teeth. Cliches are just as bad in the written word, of course. But at least a reader can turn the page and skip over them. But when you’re in a business meeting or presentation, you’re trapped.

BBC News Magazine has compiled a list of its readers’ twenty most-hated phrases. Nothing new there — you’ll recognize them immediately. Yes indeed, you’ll see old friends like:

• “touch base” (and most other tiresome sports analogies)
• “110 percent”
• “24/7″
• “going forward”
• “in the pipeline”
• “roll out
• “can’t get my head around it” and many more

The worst thing is, the more you notice someone using these grating phrases, the more you notice them. Like, they’re all you can hear — which makes them even more exasperating. So, going forward, let’s try and keep stupid cliches out of the pipeline and maybe roll out some new ones — okay, team? If everyone works 24/7 and gives 110%, by the end of the day we’ll… oh, never mind.

via Lifehacker photo credit: erinEG6

Is information marketing effective? Does it really work to attract clients and income? Let’s look at Steve Pavlina, one of my favorite bloggers.

For almost four years, Steve has been writing about “personal development for smart people” and posting the articles on his blog. Today, his first book is among Amazon’s Top 100 in sales — three months before its release!

“It currently has a sales rank of 94. It also sits at #13 in the self-help category, #4 in the personal transformation category, and #5 in the motivational category. Those rankings are adjusted hourly, so they may be different by the time you read this.”

Steve has posted about 700 articles. That’s it. No outside promotion or advertising. Just quality content and word of mouth buzz, which have generated an incredible number of incoming links. Even his Google pagerank is a modest 4.

Not only has his writing attracted a publisher, Hay House, (yes, they came to him), but Steve claims the advertising and affiliate links on his blog earn him over $10,000 a month income.

It’s not the mere fact that he’s writing that has brought him this success. It’s the quality of his material.

Just do it. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Most wanna-be writers think they have to save up a year’s salary, quit their jobs and flee to Tahiti to write their novel (or move to Nashville to become a songwriter). Not true. Here’s all you have to do: write a little every day. Maybe a half-hour, or an hour, even two hours.

Writing, especially creative writing, is not the kind of thing you can do all day, every day. Most fiction writers have a daily word count (or page count) they try to hit, then they take a break and do other things. Most need to get “out of their heads” for a while to let the embers of their creativity cool.

Singer-songwriter Natasha Bedingfield recently told the NY Times’ Measure for Measure blog how she writes little-by-little.

“(A)ll you really have to do is write a little bit every day. Even if it is rubbish, even if it’s really bad, just set aside a half hour every day to write. Write something, anything, and don’t worry about whether it’s perfect. So when you’re songwriting and you’re staring at a blank page before you — I’m talking about when you’re feeling daunted about the future and afraid to make any step, afraid that the bad stuff is going to get embarrassing — just let the bad stuff come out!

“I found out it that it doesn’t even matter if I fall because even if I fall, that gives me another good story to write… Learning all of that really freed me.”

So what are you waiting for?

When is a complaint letter like a sales letter? When it gets the immediate, affirmative response you’re looking for. Take the letter “professional complaint letter writer” Bruce Silverman wrote to the Ritz-Carlton that ended up getting him a week, totally comped, at the company’s Kapalua in Hawaii.

As today’s Consumerist detailed, Silverman has been amazingly successful in getting companies to give him all sorts of free stuff: First class upgrades, hotel room upgrades (how does a free week in the Presidential Suite sound?), hundreds of dollars in cash — all from his way with words.

Silverman has now written a book filled with advice for complaining. The basic technique isn’t too far off from the way to write an effective sales letter. Basically his advice is:

1. Make the opening of your complaint letter personable and personal. Hook their interest.
2. Praise first before you explain why you’re dissatisfied.
3. Keep it brief. The reader is busy and easily distracted.
4. Be reasonable — don’t ask for the moon.
5. Make it clear you haven’t written them off, that you pl;an to be customers again in the future, and that you would welcome some sort of compensation.

As the Consumerist put it, “It’s really just an artful way of demonstrating the basic principle of “it will cost more to ignore me than to take care of my problem.”

Check it out. It’s a fun read. And it may get you what you want next time you’re wronged.

Lawyers are the latest professionals to use their written work as marketing tools to attract clients.

JD Supra is a Web site that gives consumers legal information while helping lawyers raise their profile. The site hosts its members’ articles, court papers, legal briefs and other tidbits of their craft. Along with each document is a profile of the lawyer who wrote it. Thus, if you have a legal problem and want to do some online research, you’ll presumably find not only the information you want — but a lawyer who can help.

Says the New York Times:

Contributing lawyers get publicity and credit for the socially useful act of adding to a public database, and visitors get free information, said Aviva Cuyler, a former litigator in Marshall, Calif., who founded the business. “People will still need attorneys,” Ms. Cuyler said. “We are not encouraging people to do it themselves, but to find the right people to help them.”

It also levels the playing field in a competitive field. “The site puts solo practitioners like me on an equal footing with huge law firms, providing exposure that would otherwise be nearly impossible to get,” said Mitchell J. Matorin, a lawyer in Needham, MA, who launched his own practice last summer.