Plucked from this week’s news release bin. . .  

Earlier this week a big hotel re-opened after a year of construction. It might be a stellar property, but the news release reveals the trap so many PR people step into when we try to promote something. Do we choose the words we use for ourselves or for our readers?  

Writing is all about word choices, so why do we PR people throw useless fluff words into our copy? Take a look at the lead of this news release issued Monday (3/16/09). Is it reader friendly? That depends on whom you want to read it. It's just right for the typical reader of the Harvard Law Review. I doubt that’s the target market.  

Read this lead and then I'll give you a couple nuggets to digest on the other side.  

Hyatt Regency Woodfield celebrates the completion of its recent 12-month long, $32 million renovation featuring a fresh, modern redesign and upscale services and amenities. The newly refurbished hotel is conveniently located at the epicenter of Schaumburg-area businesses and well-known Woodfield shopping centers, just 25 miles from downtown Chicago.  "

The recently completed renovations exemplify our goal of creating truly home-like experiences for our guests," said Hyatt Regency Woodfield General Manager James Gould. "We are committed to listening to our guests needs and are excited for them to experience the new Hyatt Regency Woodfield." 

This lead is a great example of how common words can derail your writing. There is not a single word in the above lead that by itself is a problem. And that quick little test – asking yourself if most people know all these words - is where so many PR writers go astray. It's totally the wrong test.  

If you want to make something easy to read and understand then pay as much attention to the size of the words you use as you do the actual content of the words. We tend to think of good writing as the content, but the way you choose and put the words together is just as important. Nowhere is this truer than the first few paragraphs. 

Reread the paragraph and tell me what the key message is. We’re paid to deliver key messages. To do that well, we have to strip away the needless and useless words so that the essence of what we need to get across is clear and concise. In this example, there is way too much crammed into the lead. That’s especially true when you add the second paragraph quoting the hotel’s GM. (I’ll do a piece soon on how to build quotes that connect your message to the reader. Here’s a hint: The original one above is NOT how to do it.) 

Here’s a rewrite of the above lead that clarifies the key message. 

Guests once more fill the rooms at the Hyatt Regency Woodfield after a year of work that shows how far a hotel can go to provide what travelers want. Signs of the $32-million spent on the project are everywhere. 

"We want our guests to feel the same secure comfort here that they feel at home," said James Gould, the hotel's general manager. "A great hotel makes sure that everything about staying there is restful and easy." 

For those of you who track such things, the Flesch score for the original was a sad 36.7, which means that only about a third of the potential readers would get 75 percent of the content on one read. It simply wouldn’t register with most people. The rewrite scores a 78.4, which puts its key message easily within reach of more than three-quarters of the potential readers. A telling difference in the two versions is average word size. In the first, the typical word has 1.78 syllables. In the rewrite, that ratio falls to 1.33. That’s where you need to be for this kind of document.

When you write something, whether it's an email, a pitch, a plan or a new release, use the Writing Tool on this site to measure its clarity. It's a quick, simple way to gauge if you should spend a little more time on whatever it is you're writing.