Formality, flow and the subtleties that engage us as readers
Imagine that you’ve been asked to pick someone up at the reception desk of an office. You know their name is Sam but you’re not sure what they look like. There’s someone waiting and it could be them, but you’re not sure — nothing about this person screams ‘Sam’.
So there’s only one way to find out.
“Hi, are you Sam?”
You’ll know where you stand pretty quickly — there’s going to be a pretty definitive answer either way. Nobody is going to say that they’re not sure or to check with someone else. What’s more, they’re not going to be affronted by the question. If they’re not Sam, they’re not going to feel insecure about it. If they are Sam, well, they’ve been waiting for you, so they’re going to be relieved that you’ve turned up.
This is relatively simple and straightforward in English.
In another language, it’s a little more complex.
This office is in Frankfurt, and it’s the kind of place where you don’t wear shorts, even if it’s about 30 degrees outside. Sam looks around 38 and is well dressed.
Better to use ‘Sie’ — the polite form.
Let’s say the office is in Berlin, and it’s the kind of place where there are meetings scheduled after a round or two of table tennis and exercise balls instead of desk chairs.
In that case, ‘du’ will do for Sam.
In the Paris office, it might be different again. There might be additional yoga mats and beer taps, but ‘vous’ might be the way to go.
I know a little about this because I used to work in an advertising agency in Berlin. For one client, we developed a campaign for a pharmaceutical product that was targeted to 18–30 year olds in France, Germany and the UK. The key visual of the campaign was identical for all three countries and the headlines were all pretty much the same. All of them spoke directly to the customer, addressing them as ‘you’.
For the UK and Germany, this wasn’t a concern for the focus group participants. One Berlin participant noted the use of ‘du’, but it wasn’t a problem. For the 18–30 year olds in Paris, this was a big deal. Addressing the reader using the informal ‘tu’ while speaking about a pharmaceutical product? This was a no-no and completely dominated the focus group conversation. For them, the rest of the headline was irrelevant. They’d been spoken to in a way they’d found problematic and couldn’t see past it.
In English, the context and the tone of a phrase is everything. It’s more difficult to be affronted by the question, “Are you Sam?” But it’s not impossible. Ask someone if they’re Sam three times or with an accusing tone and you will not necessarily get an overly positive response.
However, politely asking but using the ‘impolite form’ in other languages can get things off to a stickier start with Sam than hoped. The use of the formal or informal ‘you’ does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to communicating with a customer and creating a particular impression.
In English, formality manifests itself in more subtle ways. ‘You’re welcome to try the product for 30 days’ is more warm and engaging than ‘You are welcome to try the product for 30 days’. There isn’t a big difference between the two, but there’s something there that creates a distance between the writer and the reader. The use of ‘you’re’ alludes to how we speak to one another, drawing the reader in.
The beauty of word choice, contractions and word ordering lies in these subtle differences, and they’re how copywriters justify their existence. These subtleties are the bedrock of all good writing and persuasive messaging in any and every language. If the words as they’re presented take you along in their flow, that’s three-quarters of the battle won. But when something sticks out or they don’t speak to you in the way you believe you should be spoken to, the spell is broken.
Until now it’s been unclear why you’re the one who has to pick Sam up and what you’ve to do when you find them.
But now that you’ve imagined the initial premise and read this far, I guess these details don’t really matter any more — Sam has left the building.
