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I love facts because they represent the way things are rather than some fanciful notion of the way things 
“ought to be.” And the way things “ought to be” is just another word for ”opinion” — which is a polite way of saying ‘it’s an idea with nothing backing it up other than a wish that it were true.’
Online usability expert Jakob Nielsen proves what copywriters like myself have know for years: because people online skim email and web pages, then to be effective and catch the eye — use numbers.
But every English teacher and ‘manual of someone else’s style’ tells you to spell out the word.
I say, “Nuts!” to that. So does Nielsen. Below is the clip and link to Nielsen’s full article. Worth the read.
When writing for the Web:
- Write numbers with digits, not letters (23, not twenty-three).
- Use numerals even when the number is the first word in a sentence or bullet point.
- Use numerals for big numbers up to one billion:
- 2,000,000 is better than two million.
- Two trillion is better than 2,000,000,000,000 because most people can’t interpret that many zeros.
- As a compromise, you can often use numerals for the significant digits and write out the magnitude as a word. For example, write 24 billion (not twenty-four billion or 24,000,000,000).
- Spell out numbers that don’t represent specific facts.
Link to Show Numbers as Numerals When Writing for Online Readers (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
Why I Use The Results Style Guide & Ignore The Rest
A couple of weeks ago a prospective client commented that they wanted someone ” . . . more familiar with the AP Style Guide.” I told her that while I understood her reasons (she had an opinion that if her company used perfect English, then it would enhance perception), I asked her to consider the “Results Style Guide” and Nielsen’s was one of the links I sent to her.
I didn’t hear back and wasn’t all that surprised because she was pretty ardent in the correctness of her opinion-masquerading-as-fact. Later heard that the gig went to a writer acquaintance who doesn’t have such a great track record. And that’s probably because he’s so new, he didn’t understand that writing to arrest attention and writing to please the voice of the someone’s schoolmarm produces very different results.
If it were my money, I’d want the copywriter who writes to produce results and I don’t care if he (or she) slightly bends the language to do it. If he nets me a 200% ROI, do I care whether punctuation is inside or outside the quotation marks of if he used a numeral when high school English demands the number written out? No I don’t. And neither should anyone else.
Results count and that should be all that matters. Anything other than that is someone else’s agenda and that may not be healthy to your bottom-line.
I’ll tell you the dirty little secret many copywriters know, but few want to tell their Marketing Manager/CMO clients and prospects — most of your market won’t know the difference on little matters such as correct punctuation placement and whether numbers are written with digits or letters.
See, they weren’t paying attention to that when they were supposed to be learning it in school. Coupled with the fact that unless they’re English majors, then so many years have gone by they don’t remember, not without digging out one of those little alphabet soup style guides.
Moreover, they don’t care. Since online people initially skim not read, they probalby didn’t even notice. They were looking for their WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) and could care less about grammar issues.
How about you? Do you have poorly converting websites, but hey — the grammar is flawless? If so, ”Here’s your sign.” Has your inner schoolmarm kept you from being effective? Have to deal with the inner schoolmarm of others?
Tell us all about it and no one will get detention.
Like what you read? Then click here to buy me a coffee.
By Walter |
Topics: Client Top Secret, Pet Peeves, Pro Analysis |
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Comments
“ought to be.” And the way things “ought to be” is just another word for ”opinion” — which is a polite way of saying ‘it’s an idea with nothing backing it up other than a wish that it were true.’