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Be POSITIVE, Writers!

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thumbs upMonday morning, as I started to go through the ninety articles awaiting my perusal in Feedly, I was struck by the number of those telling me not to do something. If you’re like me, unless it’s a two-year-old about to grab a hot skillet off the stove top, we’re more inclined to put a positive spin on how we coach someone.

Here are some examples (and the fact these items were one right after another in my reader is what grabbed my attention):1

Curiously, two of the URLs—from Consumer Reports and Serious Eats—have more positively worded titles in them: “How to Avoid Tax-Identity Theft” and “Sugar Rush: Sofra Bakery’s Incredible Coffeecake,” respectively.

My reaction to “Don’t let tax-identity theft happen to you” is probably similar to yours: a (perhaps snarky) response of “Okay, I won’t,” and hit the “Next Post” button. Similarly, I’m sure “sugar rush” and “incredible coffeecake” make your mouth water just a wee bit more than “don’t miss the coffeecake.”

To be sure, my intent here isn’t to lambaste bloggers, in general or in particular. Rather, I want to encourage you, if you’re a writer (and if you aren’t, thanks for spending time with me!), to consider how you phrase your coaching. If you have (or had) teenagers, or if you are one, you probably realize that everything after don’t is simply white noise. That doesn’t change a lot as we grow older.3

Take, for instance, the second of my three examples: The first three words are “Don’t Take Promotions.” Do what? I realize money isn’t everything, but it tends to make almost everything easier. One way to get more money is to get promoted.4 Generally, promotions also give us more responsibility, authority, and prestige. (They also make us have to do more work, it seems, but that’s another topic.) So, when I read or hear “don’t take promotions,” it’s a pretty safe bet I’ve tuned out.

On the other hand, if I read, “Be sure promotions play to your main strengths,” or something along those more positive lines, my reaction is, “Well, that makes sense. Tell me how to do that.”

For the Consumer Reports article, in addition to the URL wording, the title could have been written as “Eight things you can do to avoid tax-identity theft” or “Eight ways to avoid a tax-identity scam.”

Consider your writing. If you’re a blogger, look at any number of your articles. If the entire article is a call to action, a how-to post, or intended to provide guidance, training, teaching, or coaching, how did you word your title? What about the copy itself? Is it couched in positive terms? Or do you recite a litany of “thou shalt nots”?

Before I retired, my last boss had a process when he reviewed anything I wrote for his signature. That process included circling every don’t, no, not, and conjunctions, then asked if I had considered more positive phrasing. It didn’t take long for me to get into the habit of writing positively, and if you do the same with your writing, I wager you’ll be writing more positively almost immediately.5

So, as an exercise in the comments, rewrite the Serious Eats hed (that’s newspaper-speak for “headline,” I learned, while working at a paper) to make the rest of us want to try that coffeecake.

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Notes:
  1. Interestingly, these were the only three admonishing posts out of the ninety in my reader.
  2. Incidentally, if you appreciate good food and drink, like finding all kinds of great recipes—especially for sweets and cocktails—and drool over food porn, Serious Eats is well worth your time. For those of you on restricted diets, they have quite a few vegan, gluten-free, and similar recipes.
  3. I read somewhere that dogs learn differently: they ignore the don’t and simply hear “get on the couch!” So, apparently, “No!” and “Get off the couch!” are considerably more effective. I don’t have a dog, so I don’t worry about that too much.
  4. At least, that’s how it worked for me, until I went to work for a company that went bankrupt.
  5. Originally, I wrote, ” . . . more positively in no time!” See what I did there?

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