Avoid Cliches By Hook or By Crook
Whether you want to create a newsletter or the latest page-turner topping the bestseller charts, people prefer reading something fresh and inventive. In Patricia O’Conner’s grammar guide for the grammarphobic, “Woe Is I,” the author writes: ‘Tallulah Bankhead once described herself as ‘pure as the driven slush.’ And bankruptcy has been called ‘a fate worse than debt.’ We smile at expressions like these because we’re braced for the numbing cliché that fails to arrive.”
Writers of newsletter articles face additional obstacles with industry–specific jargon that tends to pepper the prose of corporate communications. Which is fine if you’re writing to other like–minded eggheads in a story that’s all “wires and pliers,” but sometimes newsletters target readers of all experience levels and even of different industries.
Newsletters often serve specific business purposes, but they can and should still be “good reads.“ Keeping the “moving forwards,” “value–addeds,” and “ramping–ups” to a minimum will freshen up your copy and pay a compliment to the intelligence of your readers. Although it’s difficult, try to imagine new ways to say the things your boss has been telling you for years.
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