Now that the holidays are officially upon us, what with the floodgates of Thanksgiving fully opened and allowing us to be excessive in all things related to familial celebrations, it seems a good time to unwrap the gift of a good word that doesn’t get to trot its stuff as often as it should.

We’re speaking, of course, of that wobbly kneed adjective born of the less-popular middle-English transitive verb, “Besotted.”

Yes, perhaps your head is saying to you, “Oh. That. We remember that, don’t we? Ouch.” Or, perhaps your don’t remember due to an excess of besotment. UFO conspiracy theorists call it “lost time” and blame it on abduction by aliens. It can happen this time of year. (Besotment, that is. Alien abductions, less so.) Somewhere between the turkey and the football, somewhat more alcohol is served than is advisable, and someone among your party not you weaves across the floor to your position, grabs you around the neck with his arm and begins blubbering into your shoulder, “Love ya, man!”

Here's the enjoyable irony of that little vignette. “Besotted,” which is commonly construed to mean alcohol intoxication, comes from a different etymological root: it means “infatuated” or being made to appear foolish or stupid because of infatuation. The prefix “be-” represents being caused to be something, and the wet, heavy root word “sot” lands with splat, coming from the equally heavy and wet sounding middle-English noun “sott,” meaning “fool.”

So, the inebriant who is besotted by drink and hooks you around the neck to serve a heaping helping of “Love ya, man!” upon your person is also besotted by his love for you despite the fact that you married his sister and owe him money. (Though, not for marrying his sister. The money was for an altogether different transaction.)

In fact, the earliest known use of the word “besotted” is in a poem from 1597 in which the narrator is head over heels infatuated with a stranger and describes himself as so foolishly “besotted” that he’s like the guy who was cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs enough to get busy with Clytemnestra while Agamemnon was at war.

Sorry, was that too arcane? Forgive me. I’m no scholar of Greek literature. I merely know enough classical references to appear boorish at cocktail parties whilst upon the road to besotment.

Anyway!

As the post-pandemic holiday season gets into full swing and the fools among us continue to get themselves thrown off of commercial airliners for violations of decorum that bring into question their mental health, enjoy your favorite intoxicant in moderation, whether it be sugar, sweet emotion, or that fallback beverage of the classical texts, wine. And please do so in moderation so that when you’re asked how the office holiday party was, you can cheerfully reply, “They were a besotted lot” with no reference to yourself, either as an inebriant or as an overly emotive fool for the holiday.

Gobble. 
Cheers,

Blaine Parker
Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City

LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON
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Careful. Copy.

Words fail me. I don’t know what to say. So I’m just going to blurt it out.

“Avoid diabetic amputations without surgery.”

That is what the copy says.

On a billboard.

A giant billboard along an interstate highway.

How did that headline get past everyone involved in a multi-thousand dollar media purchase?


“Avoid life-changing disfigurement without cutting off your leg!”

“Avoid doing without doing!”

It’s so bad, it’s almost like a Zen koan.

If a tree surgeon is amputating in the woods and no patient is there to be cut, does the limb make a sound?

And what is the sound of one hand slapping the advertiser?


Here’s the problem: there IS something important in the thinking behind the headline.

But you wouldn’t know it from the inept wording.

If you’re going to lose a foot or a leg to diabetes, you might already know there are surgical alternatives to amputation.

There’s also a NON-surgical alternative to amputation.

But to say, “Avoid doing by not doing” is a construct destined to fail because it spins the head around.


How about, “No amputation AND no surgery!”

That’s not great, but it’s better.

“The non-surgical alternative to diabetic amputation.” That’s more clear, though not catchy.

“Can a simple injection save you from diabetic amputation?”

For the moment, that’s the headline I’m choosing.

If I think more about it, maybe I can make it better.


Backstory: I’ve been thinking about this on and off for a couple of months.

I saw that billboard somewhere in Virginia about 10 weeks ago.

It’s been nagging at me ever since.

I tried googling the headline to no avail.

Then, I thought about what the headline was really trying to say.

If I’m avoiding without doing, what is it that I’m NOT doing?


I finally searched for “surgical alternatives to amputation.”

Lo and behold: there are surgical alternatives to diabetic amputation.

They’re also often ineffective and problematic.

Which is why some guy with a biomedical engineering background came up with an injection treatment as an alternative.

That alternative treatment works better than surgery.

It also helps avoid amputation.

(Yes, I "researched" in all of three minutes. Peer reviewed by me!)


Is that injection procedure what we’re selling here? I dunno.

But it makes sense.

Because it represents the right form of avoiding without doing.

Is it possible the prospect will understand the original headline on the billboard?

Yes.

Is it more likely the prospect will be as confused as I was?

Yes.

When you’re driving past a billboard at 70 miles an hour and are told to avoid something without doing something else, you don’t have time to process that message and figure it out.

It’s a complicated and unclear construction.


A billboard needs words good and simple.

Heck, not just billboards. Most written thoughts can benefit from good and simple.

Gymnastics are not conducive to clarity.

Clear up what you’re saying and you’ll sell more.

Maybe an easier way to think of this is: your writing is entering into a conversation the prospect is already having.

Speak to that prospect in words that sound like his or her conversation.

All it takes is the time required to make it shorter, make it sweeter, and make it sing.

Words good. And simple. 
Cheers,

Blaine Parker
Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City

LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON
The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the REDUCED bargain price of $9.95
 
For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!)

Period! Bam!

So glad that folks were enjoying last week’s screeding about activating your wording by getting it singing with the -ing ending. (Is that sentence ridiculousing enough?)

If you missed that tale, your relentless scribe was in Mexico, consulting with a craft brewer. We’ve been talking with them about branding and marketing, which includes reviewing their business plan.

Last week, we talked about giving business writing more zip by giving the words more action. (Actionizing them?)

Today, we’re going to be decomplexing things. It sounds a little like decomposing, doesn’t it? Maybe it is. If one is composing sentences, and we’re talking about making them shorter, maybe we can talk about decomposing them. But I’m not going to go there.

The bottom line here is that periods are your friend.


Are you making your reader climb a mountain? Or are you putting the reader on greased rails?

One of the most common challenges in business writing is complex sentences that need not be complex. They can slow things down.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Complex sentences have their place.

But here, we’re selling.

Simplicity is one key to keeping the reader engaged. We need to keep the pace brisk. We should be developing an appropriate level of excitement or energy with no speed bumps.

(By the way, before editing it, the preceding four sentences was one single sentence of 30 words. Doctor heal thyself. Word!)

When we require action, sentences that are unnecessarily complex get in the way.


Run!

Gosh, that is one of my favorite sentences.

On the face of it, it seems incomplete.

But it has a subject: you, implied.

And it has a predicate, the part of the sentence containing a verb and saying something about the subject.

Yes, predicates are something that we all forgot about the second we closed our grammar books in grade school.

And knowing what they’re called really doesn’t matter so much here.

The point here is efficiency.


And that simple, one-word sentence says so much and suggests so much more.

Rarely will we get such a simple sentence in business writing.

But allowing the reader to run with your words is a matter of following a simple rule.

The rule was best laid down by David Ogilvy: write no sentence longer than 13 words.  


Once you get longer and more complex, the reader has to think too hard.

Here’s an example of a complex sentence in the business plan.

And again, I remind you that the man who wrote this is a good writer and smarter than I ever will be.

(His freshman year in college, he was reading The Odyssey in Greek. My freshman year, I was watching TV.)


The original sentence…

“Craft brewers among themselves are generally more collaborative than competitive, so the only real competitors for the craft brewer in Mexico are the brewery duopoly of Cuautémoc Moctezuma (now owned by Heineken) and Grupo Modelo (owned by AB InBev).”

It’s actually a good sentence. But it’s complex.


And I’m conditioned to bring a big box of periods to every encounter.

“Craft brewers among themselves are generally more collaborative than competitive. [PERIOD] The only real competitors for the craft brewer in Mexico are the brewery duopoly of Cuautémoc Moctezuma (now owned by Heineken) and Grupo Modelo (owned by AB InBev).”


That’s better. But it feels like we can give it more grease.

Ready?

“Craft brewers among themselves are generally more collaborative than competitive. The real competitor for the craft brewer in Mexico is a giant duopoly: Cuautémoc Moctezuma (owned by Heineken) and Grupo Modelo (owned by AB inBev).”

We got rid of some qualifiers. “Real” modifying “competitors” has said goodbye.

The word “now” explaining Heineken’s ownership seems to be along for the ride. Either Heineken owns it or they don’t.

We’ve also put the word “giant” in place of “brewery” when describing the duopoly. Brewing is implicit in the concept of competition, and gaintism makes them feel more intimidating.


And we’ve added a mark that puts the punch in punctuation: the colon.

(See what I did there?)

The colon doesn’t create a new sentence, but it feels like one.

The colon says, “Note what follows!”

So you get the effect of a full stop, and you also get the bonus of pointing to the next clause without actually standing there with your finger out.

And instead of one long sentence with 39 words? We get 34 words that read like three quick sentences.

This works everywhere, even in writing radio copy. The quicker the sentences, the more punch you can put in your sell.

Greased rails for your reader--even when your reader is speaking the words aloud.

Words good. Grease ‘em up. 
Cheers,

Blaine Parker
Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City

LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON
The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the REDUCED bargain price of $9.95
 
For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!)