AWC Des Moines

Composition of a Communicator

According to The Association for Women in Communications, communicators can be found among a wide spectrum of disciplines.

The results of an AWC member survey revealed the following demographics:

• Age: Range from 18 to 90-plus with an average age of 41
• Gender: Majority women
• Education: 94% hold an undergraduate degree; 47% hold graduate degrees or higher
• Occupation Sector: 55% for-profit companies
• Employer Size: Majority work in companies with fewer than 100 employees and are salaried, full-time employees
• Occupation Type: 50% work in public relations, marketing or communications management; others work in fields including journalism, graphic design, photography, web development and publishing
• Position: Approximately 40% are in the executive or management roles

Does this sound like you? Let us know by responding in the Comment section below.

-- Brenda Friedrich, Independent Communications Consultant and Des Moines Alliance Co-Webmaster

Email Errors

Is your email communication in trouble? Des Moines Alliance member Kathy Towner says there are “ten dead giveaways that tell me a company needs help with their email campaign.” In a recent blog posting she outlines each and gives readers the chance to add their own email peeves. See if your organization falls into any of these email traps at http://winblogger.typepad.com/winblogger/2007/09/best-practices-.html.

For more great email advice, you'll also want to check out member Cecelia Munzenmaier's presentation on email etiquette, “Keeping Your Foot Out of Your Virtual Mouth” at http://word-crafter.net/EmailEtiquette.ppt

-- Brenda Friedrich, Independent Communications Consultant and Des Moines Alliance Co-Webmaster

 

Another Set of Eyes

What's the best tool a communicator can have? I was asking myself that question the other day when a typo leapt from the page.

I had been proofreading a commissioned article when I spotted my error. Immediately I froze in panic. Not because I never make mistakes. But because of a deep realization that I'd made this mistake before. In writing a series of posts for a wine blog, I'd frequently used the word “pallette” (as in color selection) when I'd meant to say “palate” (referring to the sense of taste).

I'm a designer as well as a writer so perhaps my error was inevitable. That didn't, however, make it forgivable. How did this misspelling get past me? And why does it take multiple proofs before I catch every double “the” and omitted “of.”

I knew the answer. Authors become so intimate with their message that, ultimately, they see what they expect to see.

Luckily for me, Des Moines Alliance member Kim Coulter had warned me of this phenomenon years earlier. Which is why I almost always have a second set of eyes review my work. In this case another AWC member, Sandy Renshaw, was my safety net. I shot off an email alerting her to my mistake only to learn that she had caught it a week earlier along with an odd assortment of other errors.

Which is why I've come to prize proofreaders as the best asset a communicator can have. And why Sandy is also proofing this posting.

What do you think? What's the best tool a communicator can have?

-- Brenda Friedrich, Independent Communications Consultant and Des Moines Alliance Co-Webmaster

Playing by New Rules

I threw my old textbooks out years ago. As much as I'd like to please my high school English teacher (the one who taught that my very life depended upon a correctly placed semi-colon), I've had to face facts: the rules have changed. The world has changed.

Today the reality is quick communication. We need to deliver messages rapidly. Directly. And that's true whether we're writing for direct mail or multi-page brochures. Why? We're a society pressed for time.

So when I'm asked why I don't always write in complete sentences, my answer is simple, “Succinct copy scores. Wordiness snores.” When I take up my pen, I can't afford to ask, “What would Shakespeare do?” And neither can you.

What are your thoughts? Can the old rules still apply in a busy world?

-- Brenda Friedrich, Independent Communications Consultant and Des Moines Alliance Co-Webmaster