Verbatim » bit literacy

On choosing standards

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 21:04:48 +0000

The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.

Generally attributed to Rear Admirable Grace Hopper

an approach to style

Shanta Rohse — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 00:42:41 +0000

Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such separate entity; it is nondetachable, unfilterable. The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is an expression of self, and should turn resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style — all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.

William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 3rd edition, 1979, p.69.

the beauty of brevity

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 22:35:14 +0000

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

William Strunk, in Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, 3rd edition, 1979, p.xiv.

you should have meant

Shanta Rohse — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 20:03:33 +0000

‘Alway speak the truth–think before you speak–and write it down afterwards.’

‘I’m sure I didn’t mean–’Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen interrupted her impatiently.

‘That’s just what I complain of! You should have meant! What do you suppose is the use of child without any meaning? Evean a joke should have some meaning–and a child’s more important than a joke, I hope….’

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, 1992 (Folio Society; originally 1872), p. 110.

the marketing curriculum

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 17:28:50 +0000

Interruption Marketers spend all their time interrupting strangers, in an almost pitiful attempt to bolster popularity and capture attention. Permission Marketers spend as little time and money talking to strangers as they can. Instead they move as quickly as they can to turn strangers into prospects who choose to “opt in” to a series of communications….Since the prospect has agreed to pay attention, it’s much easier to teach him about your product. Instead of filling each ensuing message with entertainment …or with sizzle designed to attract the attention of strangers, the Permission Marketer is able to focus on product benefits – on specific, focused ways this product will help that prospect. Without question, this ability to talk freely over time is the most powerful element of this marketing approach.

Seth Godin, Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers, 1999, p. 46-7, on the value of teaching consumers about a product or service instead of interrupting their most coveted commodity – time.