Fourth National IPM Symposium

Fourth National IPM
Symposium/Workshop
2003

Session: Marketing IPM
Tuesday 1:45 PM - 5:00 PM
Organizer(s):
Bill Hutchison (hutch002@maroon.tc.umn.edu)
Mary Woodsen (mm95@cornell.edu)

The following presentations are in this session:

1:45 PM - 1:50 PM Introduction to the Workshop: Who’s the Audience? Presenting IPM to Unique Clientele Groups: Transition from Theory to Practice Bill Hutchison

1:50 PM - 2:20 PM Connecting Growers & Customers: Eco and IPM Labels as a New Link in the Production-Grocer-Customer Chain Rochelle Kelvin [Download Presentation/Summary ]

2:20 PM - 2:50 PM Connecting with Growers & Crop Consultants: Communicating Economic Risks and Value of IPM Jeff Gunsolus

2:50 PM - 3:20 PM Connecting with the Media/Press Tammy Webber

3:30 PM - 4:00 PM Connecting with Policy Makers Carolyn Brickey [Download Presentation/Summary ]

4:00 PM - 4:30 PM Improving your Marketing Skills: Snappy Prose for Dynamic Brochures: How to Write so People will Want to Read It Mary Woodsen [Download Presentation/Summary ]

Note: this text accompanies the PowerPoint presentation "Snappy prose." Snappy prose. (introduction) White space You’re through the gate and it’s still two hours till flight time. You’re bored. But you’re in luck—there’s a brochure rack nearby. "What is IPM" (hold up) "Get the bugs out" (hold up) Which one do you pick up? You’ve probably all heard of ‘white space.’ "What is IPM" (open and hold up). "Get the bugs out" This (Bugs) is the one you can read without fatigue. AND without struggling to remember where you’re at while keeping an eye on the big picture. Arrival / departure screen White space at the micro level White space. It’s a design concept. Why are we talking about design in a slot devoted to writing? When you subtract text and graphics from the page, white space is what’s left. It’s attractive to readers because it provides contrast and a resting spot for the eye--even as it helps reduce line length. This gives the illusion that your text is easier to read. Even the text itself—how you write it—is a design element. White space. Not in design only, but in the writing. Periods, for example, provide white space on the micro level. Use them often. Short sentences, and the piece gets read. Long ones, and it gets put away for later. If ever. White space can help you move from illusion to substance. Think "white space" at the micro level and you’re well on your way to writing snappy prose. Think newspaper (feature) style. Short sentences. Brisk writing. (NYTs scitimes piece) That’s why the return key is your friend. Use it about every second or third sentence. You want short paragraphs. After all, once you skwunch your text into a narrow column, even two sentences take up a fair bit of vertical space. The longest paragraph in this piece has four sentences. And there’s only one of ’em. Meanwhile, seven paragraphs contain just one sentence. Six are composed of two sentences. Four are composed of three sentences. If the eye gets distracted or lost, at least it can scan easily to get back to the beginning or end of the paragraph it was on. Hitting the return key often may take some getting used to. But you’ll be glad you did. Dense text, long paragraphs—peoples’ eyes glaze over. Think newspaper style. Short sentences. Brisk writing. Moving right along… Gettysburg to Indy, one syllable at a time The … … Gettysburg Address contains 267 words. 20 of those are three- or four-syllable words. 54 are two-syllable words. Let’s … … do the math. How many one-syllable word are there in the Gettysburg Address? 193 one-syllable words. I put my writing to… … the Gettysburg test. (IJ column, houseplants) Actually, I was shocked when I passed. After all, I had to include words like "Integrated Pest Management" and "Cornell University" that I thought would do me in. But my stats stacked up. We’ve been so conditioned to think that multisyllabic words are somehow better that it seems counterintuitive to us, at first, to favor short words. But it’s short words, by and large, that are more expressive, more vivid—and way clearer. Write for the ear. Edit for the mind. Your print audience is reader and listener both. When people read, there’s a voice in their heads. Write for the ear even though it’s the eye that does the reading. Anticipate questions, then answer them. Directly. Read what you've written out loud. If it sounds stiff, it is. Rewrite it. Look it over again. Does it really make sense? One thing’s sure—if you break long sentences into short, you’ll more easily spot the troublemakers. So—how to write accessible prose, prose that people will actually read? First let’s consider… How not to write. The big secret: academic prose, the stuff many of us were trained to write, to pretend to comprehend, is an artifact. It’s medieval. ipsum dolor text, plus Lorem ipsum dolor impacting diverse audiences sit amet, enhanced implementation outcomes consetetur appropriate deliverables facilitation methodologies sadipscing elitr, multi-tactic cutting edge profiling modalities sed diam maximize effective organizational impacts nonumy eirmod tempor experience significant weather events invidunt ut labore advanced functionality et dolore magna evaluate systems input management aliquyam erat, sed effective teaching models diam voluptua. It’s an embarrassment. I’m serious, guys. This is dull stuff. You can break free. Be real. Don’t use the words everyone else uses. Edu-speak (corporate-speak, really) builds barriers instead of opening doors. I challenge the notion that it’s required even for political ends. It’s nuts to use it in speaking to the common folk—and that’s pretty much all of us. Working vocabulary I remember reading a rant a few years back where someone lamented that in the 1950s, schoolkids had working vocabularies of 25,000 words—but now they have working vocabularies of half that. Well, a little research showed me that such estimates range widely. Depending on who’s talking, kids’ vocabularies range from 5,000 to 45,000 words. Even so: take a look at this screen again: (back to Ipsum dolor text) Think about how often we use these same tired old polysyllabic words, over and over. They’re dross. Using them, we think we sound important, but we merely sound dull. Don’t begin your piece with useless words. (The purpose of this article is to effectively inform diverse audiences in the public sector about enhanced data, utilized by operatives throughout the private sector, that confirm the results which follow…) Or put them in the middle of the piece. (Thus it can be seen that, according to this data, targeted audiences serve as multipliers of unique deliverables which have been ascertained to…) Or at the end. (In summary, it can stated that according to the data, the multiplier effect has the unique property of providing targeted deliverables and expected outcomes to diverse audiences in the public sector…) Ponderous, pontificating, pedantic stuff. You’ve surely heard colleagues complain that they have to dumb things down for the public. As if this 7th-grade reading level that most blokes are stuck at reflects mental incapacity. But I don’t get how some authority can claim that straightforward writing—using short sentences wherever possible, and brisk, strong words—is "dumb." Yet that’s what’s defined as this so-called 7th-grade reading level. I am absolutely defiant on this issue. THIS (point at the slide) is what’s dumb. So how to lighten up? Learn from great writers. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. – Abraham Lincoln) Abe’s no aberration. Good grammar isn’t what you learned at your English teacher’s knee. We aren’t schoolmarms and shouldn’t aspire to be English teachers and most real writers inhabit diverging universes. Alas, the universe of the schoolteacher and the academic are far more in sync. It’s too bad the last contact, however remote, that most researchers have with the writerly life comes from well-meaning schoolteachers or their collegial equivalents. I could give you long lists of encouragements and examples. Instead, by way of illustration let’s look at just one so-called grammatical convention. Never begin a sentence with "and" or "but." Here’s what the usage experts have to say: Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with "but". If that’s what you learned, then unlearn it–there’s no stronger word at the start. -- Zinsser, On Writing Well NOTE: I deleted the comma after "but" in that Lincoln quote. We’re not in the Victorian era anymore, when people scattered commas lavishly about. You still see people doing it, though, and I don’t want to encourage you to. That it is a solecism to begin a sentence with and is a faintly lingering superstition. The Oxford English Dictionary gives examples ranging from the 10th to the 19th centuries; the Bible is full of them. -- Fowler, edited by Gowers, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage A prejudice lingers from the days of schoolmarmish rhetoric that a sentence should not begin with and. The supposed rule is without foundation in grammar, logic, or art. Follett, Modern American Usage. Most of the prescriptive rules of the language mavens make no sense on any level. They are bits of folklore that originated for screwball reasons several hundred years ago and have perpetuated themselves ever since. The rules conform neither to logic nor to tradition, and if they were ever followed they would force writers into fuzzy, clumsy, wordy, ambiguous, incomprehensible prose. (Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language) … as you gingerly tiptoe around the landmines that dot the prescriptive-descriptive battlefield, you will encounter dozens of "rules" that were never really rules, just the … prejudices of someone bold enough to proclaim them to be rules. -- Einsohn, The Copyeditor’s Handbook. A couple more tips Contractions are good. Use contractions freely. It’s that conversational touch. Only the most hidebound academic editors eschew them. (Those editors are a minority in the trade.) Rhetorical fragments are good—in moderation. And don’t flinch at "rhetorical fragments." Their short, conversational staccato helps vary the rhythm of your long and longer sentences. Watch those prepositional phrases. Watch those prepositional phrases, and eliminate every one you can. How? By turning NOUNS into VERBS. Verbs into nouns… In academia, we excel in turning verbs into nouns. It’s time to reverse the trend. …and visa versa So… let’s write. Or rather, rewrite. (I made this up.) The current estimate is of a 50 percent reduction in the manufacture, availability, and usage of currently registered pesticides to the agricultural industry through the completion of the process of reviewing said pesticides under FQPA protocols and complying with those protocols. Note the prepositional phrases—all 9 of ’em. (Move to flip chart.) Name the subject: the characters. Who are they? Your prose will seem most clear and direct if the subject names the cast. Now find the nouns. Now change them to verbs, and simplify every one you can. (Suggested result:) We estimate that farmers will lose half the pesticides they now use once the EPA completes FQPA-mandated reviews. Note: now we’ve got only one prepositional phrase. So here you have, actually, the essence of good storytelling. Something like this would pass muster in a newsletter or news release. (BTW: It’s no accident that in newspaper-speak, an article is a STORY. Because it speaks to people; it pulls them in.) How might you work similar magic in a brochure? Hiring process to change with addition of on-line capabilities (Move to flip chart: have it already inscribed.) You need to make a brochure. (This is just as relevant for newsletter writing.) How many prepositional phrases do you see in this headline? (3) What words don’t we need? (Delete most.) Who is our audience—my boss, who wants to replace me, or me, because I’m looking for a cushier job? (I had to read the text to find out who the audience was, but shouldn’t have needed to—it should have been implicit.) Let’s rewrite: Find jobs online // looking for work? look online! // NEW: find jobs online // Snappy prose. You’re on your way. That’s all, folks.

4:30 PM - 5:00 PM Specific Steps to Improve Marketability of IPM Lois Levitan

Fourth National IPM Symposium/Workshop2003

Fourth National IPM
Symposium/Workshop
2003