PRBreakfastClub

PR: The land of content and the home of the brevity.

I thought that perhaps it might be a good time to visit the subject of brevity in PR. We live in a world with increasingly strict space limitations and tightened engagement protocols to grab attention. From writing content to posting tweets to email media pitches to blog posts to writing news releases, the maturation and digitization of the Information Age has spawned an enormous number of people vying for attention and doing everything they can to be noticed. Read the rest of this entry »

Public relations, like many things in life, is 90 percent perspiration and 10 percent inspiration. Many people have a misconception of what we do (even our family). Writing is something that is a part of a PR pro’s daily hourly duty. PR isn’t about rubbing elbows with celebrities and throwing extravagant parties for clients. But, I’m speaking to the choir on this.

Any PR pro knows the importance of honing their writing skills. It’s a must. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be anywhere in the PR world. Not only do we have to craft the perfect pitch for media, we have to write compelling press releases and blog posts people find interesting.  Read the rest of this entry »

Did I lure you in with my snazzy headline? Yes? Okay great. Now I’m going to spend the first few sentences using buzz words so that you will keep reading my social media post. Then after you’ve gotten through the first couple of paragraphs, I’m going to provide you with these awesome bullet points packed with information that you already knew.  Lastly, I will summarize the topic which pretty much has nothing to do with my headline that I created for SEO purposes.

Does this situation sound familiar? Every day my inbox and RSS feeds pile up with articles about social media. The articles seem to always be about the same topic but recycled, rehashed, rewritten – they are offering me nothing of value. If you are like me, you’ve probably about had it. Read the rest of this entry »

This blog post begins on a personal note. I am legally obligated to tell you that in case you are a very important person who can’t be bothered with personal notes. You have been warned!

I’m currently dating quite the sweetie and life is pretty good, I guess! We have fun times, and we’re both wordy people. Ahhhhh, the joy of conversing with someone who knows what adverbs are! It’s quite nice.

But a spanner was thrown in the works, guys. We had our first fight. And it was about punctuation. Read the rest of this entry »

Alright All right folks – let’s try this again.  As a very late followup to part won of this post, presented below are some of you’re own pet peeves when it comes to proper word youse.  And if you haven’t noticed it yet – every underlined word so far is improperly yoused or completely nonexistent.  As a reminder, I’ll repeat the notes presented in the first post – Read the rest of this entry »

Purple is the color of a cloak which your words should never wear, treading on a barren stair in the dark to meet a woman whom they know is from a city they’ve never been and should not dare make haste toward.

Or, in other words, quit the #@$%ing purple prose already.

Purple prose means writing that is way too flowery, effusive, extravagant, or showy. It’s a phrase used to describe works or passages that are out of place or just plain stupid. The poet Horace coined the phrase (sort of) and the lesson is don’t ever, ever go overboard.

“Elaborate poetry?” you may ask. “Florid diatribes? Surely these never appear in my businesslike writing of business!”

Are you sure? Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, we here at the PRBC HQ received one of Cog‘s many passive-aggressive e-mails about meeting our deadlines. We don’t really mind those e-mails; we usually ignore them while our deadlines go whooshing by. But this one was more ingeniously manipulative than most. “For those of you without posts in the queue,” it said, “(and you two know who you are) this is a reminder to get your posts in on Sunday as early as you can.”

Obviously our internal e-mail thread devolved into lots of people apologizing for being one of those two. Which was weird, because at least 10 people came forward to claim their place of shame in those two slots. Waitacottonpickin’ minute, I said, clearly we are all slackers, not just two of us! You really made us scared, Cog, that we were only one of two deadbeats in the group. Cog tried to defend himself by saying that “you two” referred to the two goody-two-shoes that DID finish their posts under the deadline. Read the rest of this entry »

For 90% of us, writing is the bedrock of our business.  Having a good vocabulary, being able to structure a sentence properly and persuasively, and adding that special je ne sais quoi to a piece we’re working on is invaluable.  It’s not about using big words—it’s about using the right word.  Some of the most evocative pieces of literature use very few “big words.”  Orwell’s 1984 and Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass instantly come to mind. Read the rest of this entry »

Just admit it. ADMIT IT. You don’t know when to use “that” and when to use “which” in a sentence.

Don’t cry! Nobody does. Seriously, no one can remember the rules for that/which because they are so. Freakin’. Difficult to remember when you’re in the middle of writing. But some of you actually care about your writing, and for you, I will break it down. The rest of you can go, I don’t know, eat cheez doodles and watch the local news.

Here’s what the Chicago Manual of Style (praise be His name) has to say about that/which: Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s cut to the chase: you don’t understand irony. You think you do, because you’re A) a hipster or B) a cynic. Don’t beat yourself up; it’s a common mistake. So let’s break down what’s ironic, what’s unfortunate, and what’s just plain hilarious.

Irony sounds really complicated when you try to research it on Wikipedia. There are lots of different kinds: verbal irony (when you say something that’s the opposite of what you really mean) and dramatic irony (when one person is not aware of something that everyone else is). Read the rest of this entry »