Fast-forward several decades, and we find ourselves in a digital world where the calendar on our computer looks like an old desk planner, replete with faux leather borders and heavy stitching—even stray paper scraps left behind from the last month we’d torn off. Or where the notes app on our smartphone looks like a legal pad: yellow, lined, and with that handwritten font. Or where eBooks and digital magazines sit neatly on faux wooden bookshelves.

This practice is commonly referred to as skeuomorphism. Per Wikipedia, “A skeuomorph is a physical ornament or design on an object made to resemble another material or technique.” Skeuomorphs are typically used to make something new feel familiar, in an effort to speed acclimation. Often, though, they employ elements that—while essential to the original object—serve no purpose in the new system (think pretend binder rings).

If you’re old enough to remember the original objects, the comfort skeuomorphs can provide offers a reasonable argument for their existence. But what happens when the user has never used—or even seen—the artifact upon which a new interface is based? How many recent college grads have ever interacted with a Rolodex? Or a pocket appointment book? And skeuomorphs don’t need to be visual: How many teenagers have actually taken a picture on a camera with a mechanical shutter? How effective can a visual metaphor really be if it predates its audience?

Some users find skeuomorphs fun, if not always useful. But as the ornamentation becomes more excessive, it can actually hurt the overall user experience—and that’s when “real” becomes wrong.

Those book and magazine covers could be significantly larger (and actually readable) if there weren’t so much shelving in the way. And that contacts app on my tablet that looks just like a book would be a heck of a lot more usable if I could actually flip the pages by swiping (epic metaphor fail).

Taken as a whole, digital skeuomorphism inherently leads to inconsistency across applications, making the overall experience less intuitive. There’s even concern that making new things look too much like old ones will actually stifle innovation, with arbitrary visual accuracy unnecessarily perpetuating the physical limitations of knobs and switches.

Microsoft has all but abandoned skeuomorphic design with the flat style of Windows 8’s Metro UI. And Apple—historically one of the worst offenders of bad skeuomorphism—is rumored to be following suit with its upcoming mobile OS release.

Will users miss the kitschy realism? Or is fake wood just as wrong in the digital world as it is in the real one?

(Full disclosure: I’m making fun of Brown, but he’s still getting my money. I’ve downloaded Inferno onto my Kindle and am saving it for some long flights I’ve got coming up. And I thought The Da Vinci Code was a lot of fun.)

Maybe you’re not a Dan Brown fan, but you want to learn more about (and avoid) his style of wordsmithing. If so, you don’t need to suffer through one of his hero Robert Langdon’s adventures—you can read, “Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown,” a perfectly executed mimicry of the Dan Brown style by the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph. And check out our list of writing “don’ts” inspired by the author:

Echoes: When Brown latches onto a word he likes, he beats it to death. As the Telegraph points out, everyone in Brownland is “renowned.” And they “grin” and “wince,” wear “Harris Tweed,” and do things “gingerly.” In your own writing, you probably know the words you re-use frequently (we all do it—my list includes “transform” and “challenge”). Search for these words when you’re done with a document so you can eliminate the echoes. Or rely on a colleague, as we do at the Content Bureau, to surface the repetitive language that you may rely on too heavily.

Jargon: Brown likes to impress his readers with weird words. In the first pages of Inferno, I found a reference to a “machicolated battlement,” which, says Wikipedia, is “a floor opening between the supporting corbels of a battlement, through which stones, or other objects, could be dropped on attackers at the base of a defensive wall.” I suppose that obscure words are fun in an historical novel, but getting cutesy with overly technical or pretentious language in marketing documents is a no-no. Don’t force your audience to run to a dictionary.

Blather: Why use one adjective or adverb when five or six will do? Brown ladles on the descriptors, as in this snippet from Inferno: “… a powerfully built woman effortlessly unstraddled her BMW motorcycle and advanced with the intensity of a panther stalking its prey.” I know it’s a novel, but really, I get tired just reading all the extra words in Brown’s books. In your own writing, be a ruthless editor. Every word should serve a purpose, and if you can make an argument to cut, then do it. Tight copy encourages your audience to actually read what you wrote.

Now that you’ve learned your anti-Dan Brown lessons, you deserve a treat: Follow the “Dan Vinci’s Nunferno” Twitter feed for a hilarious send-up of Brown’s style, like this made-up line: “Langdon frowned as he stared at the painting. There was something wrong, but what? Wait, of course—dogs can’t play poker!”

Web projects are unique in that our clients often use different resources for copy and creative. There’s usually a search engine optimization (SEO) resource involved, as well. So who does what, when?

Typically, your web design firm or in-house web team handles the heavy lifting. In addition to its most glam and high-profile job, designing your new site or microsite, a full-service web design firm typically:

• Manages the schedule
• Creates the sitemap
• Oversees user experience (UX), SEO, and copywriting resources to ensure everyone is working in a coordinated fashion

It’s good to start shopping around for a web copywriting agency as soon as you realize you’ll need to write or update your web copy. Choose an experienced firm that excels at writing copy for your industry, has outstanding references, and will be organized and fun to work with. Above all, choose an agency that feels as passionate as (dare I say more passionate than?) you about writing copy that will compel your target readers to fall in love with your company’s products and services.

It’s best to secure a quote from the copywriting agency only after you have the following approved items, which your web design firm typically creates:

1. Your approved sitemap or number of pages you’d like the copywriting agency to write/rewrite/update. On updated pages, what percent of the content is likely to change?
2. An approved wireframe with estimated word count and any editorial guidelines (e.g., “We’d like a three-word headline and a 20-word sidebar on each page.”), so the copywriting agency can estimate how much work each page will require.
3. SEO guidelines (the Content Bureau can do a basic SEO exercise for you, if you’re not likely to have these guidelines in place before you need us to start writing).
4. A style guide or other editorial guidelines that you’ve been using in-house (or our team can create one for you).

Why yes! The Content Bureau would love to quote on your web copywriting project. Call me!

Stacy Crinks runs the Content Bureau, @contentbureau.

Commas are wonderful tools. They convey changes of direction, clarify sentences, indicate pauses, and flag upcoming dialogue. In marketing communications, where space is often at a premium, they can be especially useful. When you’re writing a list of things, for example, commas can replace all but the final instance of the word “and” or “or” in a series of like items, such as a product features or functions.

Some purists would say, “The serial comma is a highly functional piece of punctuation that lets you put like with like, while increasing clarity so you won’t have to make verbal contortions to avoid perfectly logical lists!” But other purists would counter, “If you feel you need a pesky excess comma to reduce ambiguity, why not just rewrite the sentence?”

Now which of these purists is right? Well, for us, it depends on which purist is a client.

When a client gives the Content Bureau their style guide, or tells us which style manual to follow—whether it’s The Associated Press Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style, or something else—we will naturally follow that guide’s rules, including its position on serial commas.

In fact, here at the Content Bureau we will cheerfully write and edit any white papers, case studies, blog posts, and brochures to include or exclude serial commas as desired. (That is … until the day a client announces, “Surprise! Our stance on serial commas has completely changed!” And this does happen.)

My confession: I like serial commas. When a client does not indicate a preference, or when friends—whether writing their first column or considering an initial style guide for their startups—have asked me for editing advice, I have come out in favor of the serial comma.

Why? Because, when used properly, a serial comma helps reduce ambiguity. Here’s the example I’ve used many times over the years to explain my point:

Imagine the transcript of a Grammy Awards speech, or someone writing a dedication in their book. If it read, “I’d like to thank my parents, God and Aretha Franklin,” the meaning could come across as quite different (due to that comma possibly reading as a replacement for a colon) from the intended meaning of—with serial comma, clearly showing that it’s a series—“I’d like to thank my parents, God, and Aretha Franklin.”

Yet despite my personal preference for serial commas, there are times and places where I would recommend against them. Namely, even if a company’s house style is to use serial commas, when it comes to corporate tweets and email campaign subject lines where space is limited and every character counts, I would join the chorus of those who say, “Take out that excess comma!”

If you aren’t constrained by rules of style but are unsure whether to use the serial comma, you can always—even at the risk of verbal contortions—solve the issue by making your words so concise yet clear that there is no room for ambiguity, misinterpretation, or doubt.

(And with that final serial comma, I, for now, sign out.)

Be clear about value delivered. Hiring managers want to know not only what you did for previous employers, but also what the results were. For team-oriented roles like marketing, individual contributions can be hard to tease apart from those of the agency or colleagues. Speak in terms of reaching goals and use numbers whenever possible. If metrics aren’t available, describe how your specific actions improved core marketing objectives like customer engagement or retention, or increased cross-selling.

Be relevant, not programmed. Choose your buzzwords carefully and put in the effort needed to customize every letter and resume to reflect the needs of a specific employer. There is a thin line between crafting your cover letter and resume content to capture the (digital) eye of search engine optimizers (SEOs) and “spiders” and sounding like a robot that regurgitates text on demand. The key is to do your own SEO homework, and include a few (read: three-ish for both resume and cover letter) must-have terms and surround them by simple but assertive everyday prose. 

Be up front. Detail how your perspective and goals square with the target company’s goals and/or reputation. Show that you have researched the company to understand its culture and competitive position. A recent graduate trolling for a Wall Street spot garnered a lot of press and a few interviews by confessing that “The truth is I have no unbelievably special skills or genius eccentricities … .” He then went on to promise to work really hard to learn the ropes and put in the requisite 80 hours a week. While brutally funny and a bit extreme, this candidate showed that he knew what was expected.

Be balanced. Yes, you need to promote yourself, but you need to balance the sell with the give. The hiring market is still favoring buyers, for the most part (experienced, tested digital marketing whizzes might be an exception). So scrutinize your cover letter and resume—better yet, have a trusted friend or colleague do it—to make sure both are mostly about what you can do for the company, not what the company can do for you (apologies to JFK).

If you’re between gigs, it’s especially tempting to press the send button early and often. Resist that urge: Slow down long enough to be thoughtful about the companies you’re applying to—for your sake and theirs—and reserve your energy for the marketing positions that are likely best for you.

Happy hunting!

I’m clued in enough to laugh at those parodies of over-the-top business jargon that periodically make the rounds… but I’m also quite aware of the need to keep my job fit in by embracing the specialized language of my professional peers. What’s an English major turned midlevel marketing manager to do?

My dear Subject,

I admire both your principles and your pragmatism. Do not suppose that my spectacular privilege entirely inures me from such concerns; in fact, just last week, I endured quite a few tense moments indeed in the runup to the Kensington-on-Cunsey-Beck Garden Club biannual jubilee. Worry not, however; in the end, I said all the right things and any possible rift was forgotten in the merriment.

But that, I suppose, is a story for another day. My point: Every business—indeed, every group—has its own specialized lingo. Such in-group language serves several important functions—as shorthand, as badge of allegiance, as means to communicate technical or otherwise highly complex concepts.

However, I suspect that you refer not to specialized terms such as tweening, enjambment, or interlingual homograph. Instead, the issue at hand is generic business jargon—the simulacra of business speech. Baudrillard: “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real.” Or, to put it in a way more palatable to the English speakers among us: The real problem is that when one thinks in jargon, one’s thoughts themselves are in danger of becoming weak and imprecise.

In an ideal world, we would do well to query each bit of jargon that appears before us, just as we investigate a Ming vase at auction for hairline cracks. But I understand, dear reader, that you live in the real world, where alas no vase is without blemish. And so I submit for your use the following brief list limning the most overused business jargon of our age. You would do well to minimize their use in your writing and speech, and—one hopes—to serve as an example for the business community at large.

best practices (and best-of-breed). Lesser offenders, but so common as to demand comment. The sin at hand is vagueness; do try to tell us why the subject is the best.

enable/empower. Enable is a fine word—but sadly overused in our time, and liable to inspire passive construction. Try allow, help, or even let. Empower, meanwhile, is just pompous.

impact. This is a powerful and useful noun. As a verb, however, it renders me migrainous. Please, try affect.

leverage. Another casualty of rampant verbification; often a signal that your sentence is treading water. To remedy the problem, think about the particular kind of leverage you wish to achieve. You might then substitute a simple use, or perhaps recast the sentence to focus on results with get the most from or benefit from.

out of the box. Alas, using this expression is a sign that you are very much in the box. With the lid taped shut.

utilize. Please, just say use. It’s a lovely word.

Yours precisely,
The Grammar Queen

Actually, it should take between one and three weeks, sometimes a little longer at organizations with bureaucratic structures (like universities, government entities, and huge companies). Unfortunately, sometimes approvals processes can take forever. And by forever, I mean as long as six months. You want to avoid that, and by getting the approval process off to a good start, you can.

A B2B marketing writer experienced with approvals can help by managing the process. At Content Bureau, we’re pretty good at keeping these things moving forward. But we do work with clients who prefer to handle the approval process themselves. If you find yourself having to manage an approval, don’t fret. There are several easy things you can do to keep case studies approvals from getting bogged down:

• Week zero: Ask the customer to agree to review the story quickly during the interview. As you review next steps with the customer, ask them if they will be able to review the copy within two weeks of receiving the draft. You should also try to get any release forms your organization requires signed in advance or as early in the process as possible.
• Week one: Suggest a review time frame when you send the case study. And then, ask if that time frame will work. (When you ask a question, you are more likely to receive an answer.)
• Week one: Call to see if the customer has any questions the day after you send the case study. I know it seems old-fashioned, but pick up the phone early in the process. This is the step that’s most likely to result in a very speedy approval—making all my subsequent tips irrelevant.
• Week two and beyond: Follow up frequently. If the customer doesn’t respond to you, contact them again. And again. You don’t want to seem like a complete nag (at first), so do give them a reasonable time to reply.
• Week three or four: Get the account manager to help. Reach out to the account manager, especially if the customer is unresponsive. The account manager may speak to the customer regularly, and may be able to move things along.
• Week four and beyond: Become a complete nag. Often, procrastinating customers will say they will review the copy by the end of the week. And then they won’t. When a customer says she will review the case study by Friday, follow up on Thursday to see if you can “help facilitate the review.”

Very rarely, you’ll have a customer who is responsive at first and then just seems to fall off the face of the earth. Who knows why? Perhaps a higher-up changed his mind about doing the case study, and the customer is too embarrassed to email you about it (I had that happen). Perhaps the customer got swept up in an exciting and mission-critical project that involved frequent trips to Dubai. You may never know, but if you follow the steps above, you can be confident that a lack of persistence was not to blame.

When he shared this tidbit of wisdom, I was a twenty-something American in Paris, aspiring (pushing! shoving!) to move from customer service to sales in the shipping container leasing industry. YES. (And now you know why, after five years of peddling 20- and 40-foot steel boxes—the same as our competitors’ boxes, mind you—it is my great joy in life to sell the Content Bureau’s truly unique and outstanding marketing copywriting services).

I was in the wrong job. And now I’m in the right one. Which brings me, naturellement, to Marissa Mayer (dear God, you knew I wasn’t going to be able to leave this issue alone!) and the point of this blog post: Earning money, while doing what you love when you love doing it where you love doing it, is not called “work.” It’s called “getting paid to do what you love, when you love doing it, where you love doing it.”

And I firmly believe that the Content Bureau is the very best copywriting agency you will find anywhere in the world, because …

• We hire the very best writers, editors, and graphic designers …
• Who are emotionally intelligent and experienced enough to recognize what they love doing, when and where they love doing it …
• And communicative enough to share this info with us …
• So we can offer them the kind of work they love doing, and that fits into the rest of their lives …
• And then these incredibly talented individuals work together to totally rock their projects …
• And our clients receive that work, and rave!!!!!, and call us again because they are happy with our work …
• Which we offer to the very best writers, editors, and graphic designers, who are thrilled with the raves and proud of their successful (virtual) collaboration …
• And this happens a gazillion times every year (actually, we had 518 unique “projects” in 2012—nearly triple our 2009 volume) …
• So we get smarter, and we know our clients better, and our work and service improve …
• And people—team, clients, me—are happy.

Flexibility leads to happiness. Happiness leads to quality. Quality leads to happiness. Happiness all around? It’s achievable. And now, Marissa Mayer, while we sit here in a big fat Content Bureau group hug, we invite you to go off and fight with your workforce and see how that goes for you (and Yahoo!’s clients).

Stacy, and support staff, being themselves at work (and loving it) at the Content Bureau.

Stacy Crinks runs the Content Bureau, @contentbureau.

Authentic brands are those that walk the walk. They keep their promises. According to the Authentic Brand Index, “At its heart, authenticity is about practicing what you preach; being totally clear about who you are and what you do best.”

Brands have always paid a price for breaking their promise, but in the old days, that price was usually limited to one or two fewer regular customers. In the digital era, by contrast, broken promises have the potential to destroy a brand. If you break your promise to them, customers will share their opinions around the world, instantly, with the click of a button or a tap on a screen, via blogs, vlogs, Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, and more.

The latest example: Maker’s Mark. The brand promise of Maker’s Mark is a distinctive, premium bourbon. Over the years, the brand has developed a significant base of loyal customers by delivering on that promise. Recently, though, the company announced that, for business reasons, it planned to dilute its bourbon. The announcement sent the message that money was more important to Maker’s Mark than maintaining the integrity of its signature product.

The response from the marketplace was outrage. The story was shared around the world on Facebook, and thousands of people tweeted about it. A Forbes article went so far as to ask, “Did Maker’s Mark commit brand suicide?”

It took a few days, but eventually Maker’s Mark realized that diluting its product could, in fact, destroy its brand. The company reversed its decision, announcing the change via a letter from the company’s chief operating officer, Rob Samuels, and chairman emeritus, Bill Samuels, Jr.

“You spoke. We listened. And we’re sincerely sorry we let you down,” the letter says. “We’ll set about getting back to bottling the handcrafted bourbon that our father/grandfather, Bill Samuels, Sr. created. Same recipe. Same production process. Same product.”

This is a strong response for a brand in crisis. It recognizes that, in the digital age, companies are no longer the sole authors of their brand stories—they now co-author brands with their customers. This straight-talk response from Maker’s Mark also highlights the company’s understanding of where its customers are coming from.

I’m more a Bulleit man, but I’d give Maker’s Mark a fighting chance.

The Académie’s latest pronouncement bans the word “hashtag” from government documents presumably referring to Twitter. The replacement: “mot-dièse” (“dièse” being the French word for the musical sharp symbol).

The Académie appears to be struggling to reconcile the barrage of new words, almost always originating in English, to describe technology and online trends and products. Hence its attempts to replace “cloud computing” with “informatique en nuage” and “startup” with “jeune pousse” (young shoot). These efforts have largely failed, and are generally cause for amusement in the French press: the news magazine Le Point described “mot-dièse” as “another word that risks a rapid death.” (I can’t wait until the Académie says it’s replacing “tweet” with the French word “pépiement.”)

Legislating language is generally a losing battle, and not just in France. Every community—a country, a region, or the professional audience you’re writing for—has a fluid vocabulary that’s constantly making room for new words and tossing off old ones. As a marketer, your job is to monitor the language your audience adopts. Using their words in your writing helps give your words greater credibility.

Of course, this is a constant balancing act. Be too formal and ignore accepted jargon, like the Académie Française suggests, and your writing will seem stuffy and out of touch. Pick up every slang word and acronym your audience uses and your writing may come off as unprofessional or overly chummy.

Technology product marketers might be starting to weave the cringe-worthy word “glocal” into their product marketing documents, but I don’t think it’s ready for wide use. On the other hand, terms like “crowdsourcing” and “big data” are recognizable enough that they don’t cause the reader to do an eye roll or think “wait, what??”

When in doubt, type the possibly offending word into the search box of NYTimes.com or WSJ.com. If you see numerous references to the term in general news articles, you’re probably safe. For the record, I tried this out with English-language terms like “startup,” “email,” and “tweet” on the website for French newspaper Le Monde, and got hundreds of results. So, Académie Française, you may want to throw in the serviette on the whole tech-language thing.