From PR Daily. Click below to read the full article.
PR pros write, edit, review and rewrite dozens of documents each day.
Sometimes, all that copy can blur together—and it can become challenging to make your prose fresh.
Here are four quick tips to help you keep your writing lively, interesting and inspired:
1. Get to the main event. “Too many pitches, blog posts, news releases and even emails back into the information and take too long to tell the reader what the central idea is,” says Ken O’Quinn, founder of Writing with Clarity. “If you feel it’s taking a long time to get to your point, your reader will feel the same way.”
- Annoy your high school teacher. “Interesting writing often breaks old-school grammar rules that make things harder on readers,” says Michael Smart, founder of MichaelSmartPR.
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Vary sentence structure and length. “Writers can also distinguish their prose by creating variety and emphasis in their sentences,” O’Quinn says. “This makes reading more fluent and moves readers along at a brisk pace.”
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Be maniacal about metrics. Verbosity is the antithesis of the concise, punchy writing that propels readers. Yet the former was ingrained in us through minimum word count requirements in high school and college writing assignments.
Brian Pittman is a Ragan Communications consultant and webinar manager for PR Daily’s PR University. Michael Smart (MichaelSmartPR), Erin Robinson-Lis (Ameriprise Financial), John Walls (Hilton Worldwide) Ken O’Quinn (Writing with Clarity) and Beth Nylund (StoryStudio Words for Work) will share more trends and pitching tips in PR University’s May 19 “ Powerful PR writing virtual summit: Craft riveting copy that achieves incredible reach and readership .”
