Things That Make You Go Hmm #1

I recently wrote a stack of pieces for Stockholm University’s new international website. Seeing that they announced that the site is now available in Beta on the university homepage through their main news outlet, I clicked over to have a look.

Imagine my disappointment to see that that all the articles I wrote have been accredited to another author: Jan Löf!

Now I appreciate that this is a beta version and I’m assuming that my name will actually be visible on the site when it is no longer in beta; nevertheless, it would have been a nice courtesy to actually give credit where credit is due right from the outset. Especially as they’re publicising the beta from the university’s home page..

Stockholm University obviously needs to brush up on its netiquette.

Update:
I received the following in an e-mail from SU. I guess the moral of the story is, beware of beta versions when journalists scrutinise your every move.

At the moment the admin person who adds the text gets credited as ‘author’. Unfortunately this is not possible to change at the moment, though it is on the list of technical development and bugfixes. We are working on rectifying this.

Update 2: June 11.
Had an e-mail from the university. My name has been added to the pieces. I’m impressed SU acted so quickly once they were aware this was a problem.

Drop the Swinglish, Get Great English

Swedish companies trying to operate in English need to sharpen their act up. Too many times a day I come across the dreaded Swinglish: examples where Swedish has interfered with English to create something that a native English speaker wouldn’t say: e.g. “Thank you for the last time!”

In everyday life a bit of swinglish here and there might be charming; trouble is, in business you have to be able to communicate effectively and accurately.

Not all Swedish managers get this. I spoke to a corporate manager once who told me:

“Our English is fine. Our customers never complain about the mistakes in our copy or marketing materials.”

I told him: “That’s because they’re not your customers! They’ve quietly moved on to someone else.”

In my experience, when customers and clients stumble across bad writing they lose confidence in your ability. They don’t tell you this. They simply take their business elsewhere.

When a company’s English does not meet expectations, potential customers will say: “If they can’t communicate effectively in English, how can we rely on them to provide a professional business service?” They will seek out your competitors.

When readers (both inside and outside a company) cannot understand e-mails, websites and other communications, they will not get a clear understanding of your brand, your services or your message.

The bottom line is that if your company doesn’t communicate effectively in English, you won’t get the responses you need. Your recommendations, web pages, bids, requests, announcements, project proposals, procedures, processes, shopping cart instructions, contracts, you name it, will fall short.

Ultimately, if you’re a Swedish company working in English you need to take the steps to ensure your English skills are outstanding. Otherwise you risk appearing unprofessional.

Keep Web Writing Short (or Not)

Is 1000 words for an article on the Net too long? I’m not so sure.

Zainab Zakari, whose piece ”This article is 1,689 words long (That’s 689 words too many for the web, some editors say)” in the New York Review of Magazines, doesn’t have a problem with reading longer pieces online. Neither do I, as it happens. Although I tend to preach a mantra of “no more than 750 words” to clients and journalism students, I realise that there are times when longer pieces suffice.

And as Zakari points out, there is evidence to suggest that reading online is not as much of a chore as it once was.

However, I do think we have to make web-writing more direct and engaging. Otherwise we risk losing readers.

Cue:

• bulleted points,
• lists,
• hyperlinks
• and articles broken up over a couple of pages make things easier.

Still, if something is MUST READ on the Net, no matter how long it is, how badly laid out, I read it. But that probably says more about me than web-writing/reading trends.

For news features, I like 500 words max. But for commentary, tips or guidelines I’m happy to explore longer pieces of writing.

How about you?

Blogging Doesn’t Just Bring Business

Blogging can, indeed, bring you business. I’ve taken on two major projects this year as a direct result of my blog. Having seen how much traffic a blog generates when I ran this site at greynotebook.com back in 2000-2003, I returned to blogging for my company site with renewed momentum earlier this year.

Having witnessed the benefits of blogging, however, I’ve also seen some of the down sides too. It’s not all good. This week, for example, a school I’ve done some consulting work for had a student blog shut down. The blogger in question was basically using the site to lambast fellow students, illustrating her posts with pictures taken from sites like Facebook and MySpace, and being rather malicious.

In turn, the matter was reported to the police and the hosting company happily shut the blog down.

The school then asked me to further research how students were using blogs and it didn’t take long to find a variety of sites where students were openly bitching about each other, teachers and life at the school.

I don’t have a problem with students blogging. In fact, if channelled properly it would be a great way of sharing class notes, course discussions, etc. However, these kids evidently didn’t have a clue what was appropriate to put on the Net. A couple of relatively innocent posts had, in this case, upset students and suddenly the whole thing was a police matter.

What I’d like to see is schools taking blogging even more seriously. Students need to be made aware of the kind of trouble they can get into directly and indirectly by the things they write on the Net.

Having done a bit of teaching this year myself, I made my students aware, for example, of what happened to the Norwegian journalist who “borrowed” too much content from a British newspaper.

What else can we do to raise awareness about blogging responsibly?

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Journalist Pieces for Stockholm University Filed

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