Four Areas to Focus On to Be a Better Writer

Joseph Priest
Sep 3, 2018 · 4 min read

This article by Joseph Priest was originally published in the February 2018 issue of the Public Relations Society of America’s newsletter, Strategies & Tactics.

“Mary tweeted her status,” or “Mary Tweeted her status”? “Bart wrote a blog about the movie,” or “Bart wrote a blog entry about the movie”? And “Paula developed FAQs,” or “Paula developed FAQ’s”?

In today’s fast-moving, social-media-driven world, new vocabularies and usages are evolving at breakneck speed, and making it more important than ever to keep up with new language developments as well as those oldies but goodies that continue to confound.

In my role as writer for over 15 years, I’ve identified four areas among others in PR writing in which I continue to come across errors that prevent communications from being correct, clear and consistent. To help PR pros be on guard against these in 2018, I’ve compiled my own “greatest hits” list to shed light on the most frequent pitfalls.

See how many of these have caused problems for you, and let me know if you would add any. All guidance for these is based on the 2017 AP Stylebook.

1. Spelling
Being a good PR writer means being familiar with new, changing and hard-to-spell words. Here are some of the most commonly confused to keep in mind, with a special focus on technology terms, which can be particularly troublesome because they evolve so rapidly.

Tech Terms
• cyber-Most words formed with this don’t get a hyphen — like “cyberattack,” “cybersecurity” and “cyberspace” — but “Cyber Monday” is two words.
• Googled, tweet, snap-Although “Googled” is capitalized because it’s directly derived from a trademark, this trademark convention doesn’t extend to “tweet” and “snap,” which are considered different parts of speech.
• home page-Still two words.
• internet, internet of things-The AP announced a lowercase spelling in 2016, and the increasingly used “internet of things” also is not capped.
• web-The “web” similarly got the lowercase treatment by AP in 2016, but the full name “World Wide Web” retains caps. Also, “website,” “webpage” and “webcast” are one word, but “web browser” and “web address” remain two.

Non-tech Terms
• acknowledgment-As with “judgment,” no “e” after “g.”
• canceled-Not “cancelled,” which is the British spelling, but “cancellation” does have two “l’s.”
• Super Bowl -“Superbowl” is a biggie among misspellings, so remember this name is two words.
• theater- Use this spelling, which is the American spelling, unless a proper name uses the British spelling, “theatre.”

2. Word Usage
Don’t get tripped up on these frequently misused words.

• blog-It refers to an entire “web log,” or online journal, and shouldn’t be used to mean a “blog post,” or single entry within a journal. A book isn’t made up of books, and a blog isn’t made up of blogs.
• verbal, oral-“Verbal” properly refers to anything expressed in words, whether written or spoken. So “oral,” which exclusively refers to something expressed by spoken word, is more accurate to use when describing something spoken.
• showstopper -It’s something spectacular — like a musical number that brings audience members to their feet in applause and stops the show — but not something that halts a project.

3. Abbreviations
One area where abbreviations commonly derail PR writing is with initialisms (abbreviations consisting of the first letters of a series of words and pronounced by spelling out each letter, like DNA) and acronyms (words formed from the first letters of a series of words and pronounced as one word, like NASA). Here are some rules for the road.

• use-Initialisms and acronyms should be used only in contexts where they are standard in use, have some history of usage, and are able to be easily recognized. New or less familiar ones should be used only if they occur more than several times, and should be spelled out on first use.
• plurals-Add an “s,” with no apostrophe: She sent the PDFs. However, for plurals of single letters, use an apostrophe to prevent the abbreviation from being read as a word: He caught some z’s.
• periods-Omit periods in acronyms, and in initialisms of more than two letters, like MBA. AP style calls for periods in some two-letter abbreviations, like “U.N.,” “U.S.,” “a.m.,” and “p.m.,” but many others rarely get periods, like “HR,” “IT,” and, of course, “PR.”

4. Pronunciation
How we say our words can matter just as much as the words we write, so know these commonly mispronounced words and how to speak them.

• homogeneous-It’s properly pronounced “hoh-muh-jeen-ee-us,” not “huh-mah-juh-nus.” The latter pronunciation results from confusion with “homogenous,” a word with a slightly different meaning.
• niche-The preferred pronunciation rhymes with “ditch” — not the French-pronounced form rhyming with “leash.”
• primer-The word for a document covering the basics of a subject is “prim-ur” in American English.
• short-lived-Easily one of the most mispronounced and least understood words in English. The “live” in this word is formed from the noun “life” — not the verb “live” — so it’s properly pronounced with a long “i.”

Joseph Priest

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PR editor and writer for 20+ years. Uses serial commas; detests the word “issue”; abbreviates “microphone” as “mike.” Got a language question? Bring it on.