{"id":1167,"date":"2016-06-06T15:27:42","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T03:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1167"},"modified":"2016-06-06T15:27:42","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T03:27:42","slug":"please-be-advised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1167","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Please be advised \u2026\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"megaphone\"<\/a>\u2018Please be advised.\u2019\u00a0 Those were the first three words of an email that greeted me when I sat down at my desk with my first coffee of the day on a recent sunny morning.\u00a0 What came next, I almost didn\u2019t find out.\u00a0 Anyone who tries to crash the start of my day with the words \u2018Please be advised\u2019 is just asking to be ignored.\u00a0 And the chances of me being advised are greatly diminished.<\/p>\n

Many years ago, I got a job with a small but very successful advertising agency.<\/p>\n

I had applied for a position as a junior art director, but after a long conversation with the head of the creative department I found myself being offered a job as a writer.\u00a0 \u2018Look, if it doesn\u2019t work out,\u2019 the creative director said, \u2018we\u2019ll see if we can find you something in the art department.\u00a0 But I think you\u2019re a writer.\u00a0 In fact, I\u2019m sure that you\u2019re a writer.\u2019<\/p>\n

To be honest, I didn\u2019t really have any idea what a writer did \u2013 not in an advertising agency anyway.\u00a0 I\u2019d been planning on a long and successful career as an art director.\u00a0 But being a writer would at least get me \u2018in the door\u2019, so I said yes.<\/p>\n

The first thing I learned was that good writers don\u2019t really write; they converse on paper (or, more and more often these days, on screen).\u00a0 Good writers aren\u2019t really copywriters<\/em>; they\u2019re copychatters<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2018Just imagine that your reader is sitting across the desk from you \u2013 maybe with a cup of coffee or something stronger.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need to shout at them, because they are right there.\u00a0 And you certainly don\u2019t want to lecture them, because they are likely to just get up and walk off,\u2019 Don said.<\/p>\n

The second thing I learned was that good writers make promises on behalf of their clients \u2013 but they never over-promise.\u00a0 \u2018If you promise something that your client can\u2019t deliver, then everyone loses.\u2019<\/p>\n

Don\u2019s third \u2018rule\u2019 was that good writers never show off.\u00a0 \u2018It is likely that your vocabulary has twice the number of words as the vocabulary of your average reader.\u00a0 But there\u2019s little point in speaking to your reader in a language that he or she doesn\u2019t understand.\u00a0 Keep it simple.\u00a0 Keep it real.\u2019<\/p>\n

I was telling a friend about the \u2018please be advised\u2019 email.\u00a0 \u2018Oh well,\u2019 he said, \u2018that\u2019s what happens when you let amateurs loose on a keyboard.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Amateurs?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, the people who write these things are not being paid to write, are they?\u2019<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where I had to disagree.\u00a0 If your job involves writing \u2013 in any form \u2013 then you\u2019re being paid to write.\u00a0 And you owe it to your paymaster to try to write like a professional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Please be advised.\u2019\u00a0 Those were the first three words of an email that greeted me when I sat down at my desk with my first coffee of the day on a recent sunny morning.\u00a0 What came next, I almost didn\u2019t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1168,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions\/1168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}