Important to keep in mind but easy to forget, I gotta keep my audience in mind – at the forefront, in fact. What constitutes acceptable tone certainly depends on the business and the company BUT when writing for a company newsletter it is AOK and, for that matter, a very good thing to rock an informal tone and bring a side of wit to the table.
Is the newsletter just a prop – an HR sop to the worker bees though? Are the Powers That Be trying to give the impression, on the cheap, that they care? If that's the case, engaging writing is unimportant. You can be as dry as crisp bread – doesn't matter, no ones gonna be reading it, not even on the can.Now, I’d gotten the husband of a dear friend a job at the large printing company where I’d been working for, at that point 15 years. He’d been unemployed for a long time despite multiple degrees (liberal arts). He was to be a proofreader – a new position. Before the morale boosting newsletter was set to print, I asked Newbie Boy to proof my columns. My thought was, he’d catch spelling and grammatical errors, possibly suggest better, more interesting words here or there.
Nope. N.B went full metal scold. He tore the piece apart, taking out even the faintest whiff of wit. His rewrite was as engaging and readable as a licensing agreement. You know, the long lists of terms and conditions that you need to agree to before buying/using but, like the rest of us, you just check the Yes-I’ve-Read-And-Agree and move on? Yeah, that. N.B. had just started with the company, knew nothing of the environment, the milieu. He didn’t know that this was a place where creativity was appreciated and applauded (at least on the personal level). Nope, apparently he’d somehow, strangely, mistaken us for some uptight, suit and tie, banal State Street financial company. Yep, I binned his piece and put my own back in.When critiquing another’s work, keep the intended audience in mind!
Bast knows, I’m guilty of forgetting this. For example, I was asked to write my mother’s obituary. I left out the humor (though amusing obits are THE best) since that wasn’t really who my mother was but I wrote in my general style (sans swears of course!). This wasn’t some boring ass death notice and curriculum vitae BUT it was also not a rollicking, fluorescent retelling of mia madre’s life.
So then, I liked the eulogy I’d written but failed to keep in mind the audience. My mother’s friends were a conservative bunch. Maybe they would’ve appreciated my offering, maybe not. They never had the chance to read it though as the proofreader took it upon himself to completely rewrite and submit his own writing. Instead of sending me back the marked up copy with suggestions, he submitted his own obit for MY mother!
Yup. Catastrophically clueless, no?
Still, the first rule for writing a given piece AS WELL AS critiquing another person’s work – know and understand your target audience.
