{"id":804,"date":"2013-04-30T15:31:12","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T03:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=804"},"modified":"2013-04-30T20:24:58","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T08:24:58","slug":"the-sound-of-good-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=804","title":{"rendered":"The sound of good writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ear\"<\/a>\u2018People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.\u2019<\/i> \u2013 William Zinsser<\/p>\n

Some years ago now, I was hired to coach a small team of people whose job it was to handle the \u2018difficult\u2019 customer service issues for a large utility provider.<\/p>\n

The utility\u2019s policy was, wherever possible, to deal with the customer service issue by phone, and then to follow up with a brief letter or email confirming what had happened and outlining what would happen next.\u00a0 The people I was to coach were the people who would be drafting those letters and emails.<\/p>\n

We spent our first session discussing the purpose of the letters and looking at some of the things that should be included as well as some of the things that might usefully be excluded.\u00a0 I am pleased to report that the participants quickly grasped the concepts and I went home that night feeling that the assignment was going to be a doddle.<\/p>\n

But then came the second session.<\/p>\n

The second session was where the participants got to put pen to paper \u2013 or, more correctly, they got to put their fingers to their keyboards.\u00a0 And the results were not great.\u00a0 Yes, they generally managed to cover off the key points.\u00a0 But the style and tone of their missives was almost universally ugly.\u00a0 Any goodwill and rapport that the agents may have managed to establish in the course of their telephone conversations was likely to be quickly undone once the customer received the follow-up letter or email.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not easy to explain style and tone to someone who has only ever thought of style as something to do with hair and tone as one of the knobs on a hi-fi system.\u00a0 Eventually, I asked one of the chaps (Brian, as I recall) to stand in front of another of the participants, Dorothy, and read her what he had written.\u00a0 And, after some hesitation and much frowning, he did.\u00a0 Or at least he tried to.\u00a0 It was a lumpy performance at best.<\/p>\n

\u2018Now, on the basis of what you have just heard, what do you think of Brian?\u2019 I asked Dorothy.<\/p>\n

\u2018That he\u2019s a smart-arsed prat who doesn\u2019t even slightly care about my problem,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

Brian protested.\u00a0 \u2018That\u2019s not fair,\u2019 he said.\u00a0 \u2018OK, it may not have sounded<\/i> very good, but the customer isn\u2019t going to be listening<\/i> to it, she\u2019s going to be reading<\/i> it\u2019<\/p>\n

However, as Mr Zinsser observed, people read with their ears.\u00a0 What they \u2018hear\u2019 inside their heads is a very important part of the communication.<\/p>\n

I think it is always a good idea to read what you have written \u2013 aloud<\/i> \u2013 before you send it.\u00a0 If what you have written doesn\u2019t sound good to you, then it\u2019s unlikely that it will \u2018sound\u2019 good to your reader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.\u2019 \u2013 William Zinsser Some years ago now, I was hired to coach a small team of people whose job it was to handle the \u2018difficult\u2019 customer service issues for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804"}],"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=804"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804\/revisions\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}