grammar Archives - Clapperton Media

If your client wants to distance themselves from something it might seem worth using the passive rather than the active voice. For example, instead of telling you we let a typo through in a blog entry we might say “A typo was not corrected”. It makes it sound as if it wasn’t actually us failing to spot it (we could blame the cat but basically everything you read from me is actually our own work). Technically there’s nothing wrong with it.

Gramatically it’s when someone diverges from the standard subject, verb, object sentence construction and move to object, verb, subject. The primary school example is “The cat [subject] sat on [verb and OK, preposition but basically the verb] the mat [object].” Switch that around and you get “The mat was sat on by the cat” which is awkward, take the subject away and you get “The mat was sat on” and nobody knows who by. It’s been tried at high levels.

It’s a trick President Reagan used to use when saying “mistakes were made” instead of “I/we made mistakes” and the reason we’ve recently been reminded of that is the kerfuffle (technical term) over Raynor Winn’s book, “The Salt Path”. The Observer newspaper has made several allegations, We’re not visiting those specifically because Winn is taking legal advice so they may well be disproved but in terms of how she and her husband lost their home and the financial process behind that, she has said “mistakes were made”. But by whom?

We’re calling it: if you’re in PR you need to tell your clients that this approach doesn’t get you off the hook. It sounds as if you’re deliberately trying to make it sound as if you weren’t part of this process. It’s frankly as ineffectual as “No comment” which is almost always an evasion.

Monzo had a really good guide to this in its writing guidelines a while back (they’re still worth reading but they’ve taken our favourite part off); to detect a passive or just inclarity, just ask yourself whether you could add “by a monkey” and end up with something that makes sense even if it’s rubbish. So “I made a mistake” is clear. “Mistakes were made” is something to which you could add “by a monkey” so you’re leaving the reader to work out who made the mistake.

It doesn’t do much except make your client sound as if they’re wriggling out of responsibility. Journalists have been wise to it for decades – the best advice is either to make a full declaration or none at all.

Now if you’ll excuse us, more coffee must be made and drunk.

Press releases have been very much on lead trainer Guy‘s mind as he is about to help a communications company with writing them. There will be elements in the course on targeting of course, and making sure you know who you’re talking to. There will also be a little bit on language and some of the rules.

Many of these are utter baloney. Let’s have a look at a few.

I before E except after C

Press releases need accurate spelling but is this one really a rule? We’ll be asking the younger delegates whether they still have to learn this nonsense. It was drummed into previous generations as a rule of spelling. Guy’s own teacher in the 1970s tried adding “I before E except after C and when the sound is ‘ee'” because some bright spark aged eight had pointed to the word “weird”.

Nobody should blame the teacher for trying to rearrange reality so that the rule still worked. There are indeed examples in which an “ei” construction is there and sounds like “ee”. The difficulty is that there are also words like “neighbour” and “feint”, and we are now (in the UK) living during Charless III’s “reign”.

There are too many exceptions to this rule for it to make sense. It’s suitable for the bin only.

-ize is an Americanism

A lot of press releases come from America and it’s reasonable that they have American spellings. The popular conception is that if a word finishes “ize” when it could finish “ise” then it’s an Americanism and should be changed.

Now check the Oxford English Dictionary. Both are acceptable. The trick is to be consistent. Also if your client has a particular take on this (and they should) then make it consistent. It’s technically wrong to suggest “-ize” is American only but it’s so ingrained by now it doesn’t matter, we just do what the client says.

You should never use a preposition to start or finish a sentence

Press releases need clarity. And that means listening rather than picking at every archaism. OK, you knew we were going to start a sentence with an “and” or “but” immediately you saw the sub-heading. But it works and makes sense. You knew we were going to start a sentence with “but”, too, didn’t you.

Companies are always referred to in the singular

In most cases this is true, although at the time Guy became a journalist the Wall Street journal would refer to IBM and others as “they”. That’s stopped now but it really doesn’t matter whether you refer to companies as singular or plural as long as you stick to a house style; the fact that we haven’t been able to find a major source that uses plural suggests you’re safer with singular.

EXCEPT when you’re referring to a sports team. Football commentators and journalists will always, at least in the UK, refer to “they” when talking about a team.

Never split an infinitive

That’s the “to do” bit of a verb. Of course you can, as Star Trek proved all those years ago – “To boldly go…” might have sounded neater as “To go boldly” but the writers wanted “boldly” closer to the beginning and it made the right impact. The trick is to ensure you don’t put too many words between the “to” and the “go” bit. “To boldly go” is fine; “To boldly, but not so urgently that you haven’t got time for a cheese sandwich to take the edge off, go” is deliberately terrible but you get the idea. The reader will have forgotten the “to” bit by the time they get to the main point of the sentence.

There are other examples of course. But those are a few Guy will be pointing to this afternoon.

Does your team need help with press release writing? We are available – drop Lindsay a note by clicking here and she’ll set up a time for an initial no-obligation conversation.