I survived H1N1–no big risk

I’m in the final throes of what I assume is the dreaded H1N1 virus, my brain sufficiently recovered to write, my body grateful I can work from home.

Like millions of people, I suffered through a mild flu strain. I caught it from my teenaged daughter, who likely got it from sharing joints with her friends, who all came down with it.

Sharing joints makes little sense at the best of times. But apparently the risk assessment synapses of the teenaged brain remain undeveloped, which explains why so many end up in the hospital because of drugs, drinking, driving and the daredevil acts they film for YouTube. No wonder we parents worry. And catch their bugs.

I am not at all concerned about the sudden related pneumonia that sends people to intensive care. This is definitely not my worst flu experience.

I made the best of it, revisiting all that’s good on daytime TV: Ellen’s monologue, hot topics on The View and the soap opera I’ve watched when I’m sick since I was little girl. Then there was all the news coverage about clinic lineups and people ranting about their right to the vaccine.

Here in Toronto, the tipping point for H1N1 panic came with the death of 13-year-old with no known underlying health conditions. Since then people have stampeded the vaccine clinics, which are now rationed for high-risk people.

Next week, they are planning to inoculate school-aged children, which has left many people in my low-risk group frothing at the mouth.

Given their funding cuts, the public health clinics have coped as best they could. I would even cut some slack for big pharma, GlaxoSmithKline, which delivered less than expected because production was interrupted to cook up a special batch for high-risk pregnant women. Good call.

Once the pandemic is over, officials will study what went wrong and what they should do better next time. For now, everyone involved is too busy taking care of high-risk people.

They don’t have time for the drama of low-risk people who don’t normally opt for the free seasonal flu shot. So let’s spend less time getting angry and face the fact that H1N1 will be a mild virus for most of us.

In Freakonomics, Steven Levitt sifted through many studies to determine what our real risks are. He found that parents of young children should worry far more about backyard swimming pools and far less about car seats. Normally parents of teens are supposed to worry more about teenaged boys driving cars than they are about their kids sharing joints.

Fortunately, we have great public transit here so teenaged boys driving is not a concern. Yes, I wish my daughter wouldn’t smoke dope, let alone share joints. To enforce that, I would have to stand watch 24 hours a day, which would make us both crazier than mad cow disease.

But I am relieved she isn’t driving with boys, just as I always made sure my kids couldn’t sneak into my mother-in-law’s backyard pool and just as I’m so relieved that her asthmatic friend has fully recovered.

If I hadn’t already had the flu, I would probably line up for a shot when it becomes widely available. The risk of Guillain Barre syndrome and other rare side effects outweighs the risk of not getting the vaccine. But I am pleased that I don’t have to bother. Maybe Bill Maher has a point. Probably not.

My suspicion is that the numbers for H1N1 are under-reported. I’d love to see the media report more on attendance rates at workplaces and schools. Like me, most sick people are too tired to drag themselves to the doctor’s office and know better than to spread our germs that way.

Most of us get better by following the advice that I’ve parroted for clients, in pandemic plans, earlier swine flu advisories and just last week in H1N1 updates. Stay home. Rest. Call 9-1-1 if you have trouble breathing. And don’t waste time on fantasy risks.

From my experience, however, I would like to add one piece of advice: don’t share joints. Not that the teens will listen

Why is selling so difficult?

I spend a lot of the time on the phone every day interviewing people for articles I write. So why is it so difficult to pick up the phone and make a sales call?

I’m not talking about cold calls, which only the most fearless or foolish enjoy. I mean calls to very qualified leads.

I met with a new business adviser last week who practically ordered me to get on the phone. Rather than bitch about the recession or blame all the time this blog and my book is consuming, why don’t I simply call my top prospects?

Let me point out that I am not a shy person. I love to talk. Too much, some would say.

Still, I want people to come to me and beg me to work for them.

I know that referrals are the best marketing. But I also realize that sometimes they are not enough.

Something about sales has never sat well with me. Although I’ve put in my time writing marketing copy, I much prefer content that educates, enlightens and entertains.

That’s why I’m thrilled with the growth of content marketing. No creating needs or exploiting weaknesses. Even the Dalai Lama would approve.

What amazed me were the results I’ve achieved from my first few calls. The first insisted God was answering her prayers. We’ve met, I’ve prepared a proposal and we’re raring to go. The second said my timing couldn’t have been better and we’re going to talk more next week. The third asked me to send more information about my “great” idea.

Despite this, I am still procrastinating. Suddenly I am finding too much billable work and volunteer commitments. I am even paying taxes, the one task I procrastinate on more than sales.

Why does this happen? Was I scarred as a child when I didn’t sell as many fundraising chocolate bars as my rival? Was I a wicked used car salesman in a past life? I don’t know.

Will selling get easier? I hope so.

After all, I can delegate the financial and tech stuff I dread. But I can’t delegate myself. That’s what I’m selling.

Standing up for TV news

It was like a punch to the stomach when I walked into the CBC newsroom many years ago, before business casual, to see my beloved news anchors and reporters, groomed and suited from the waist up, but scruffy blue jeans and running shoes where the cameras didn’t go.

That visit drove home how artificial television news is. Pretend-live interviews recorded many hours earlier. Multiple cameras and takes. Fake reaction shots. Computer graphics that rival rock concerts.

When Canadian taxpayer-supported CBC unveiled its new set and format last night, I noticed that on-air journalists are now forced to wear entire outfits and are probably toning up at the gym. That’s because much of the news is now delivered standing up.

Even anchor Peter Mansbridge, no spring chicken, was forced to stand, though I suspect there’s a comfy chair hidden just off camera.

I first noticed this standing trend a while ago on competitor CTV. Although the anchors continue to luxuriate in chairs, the camera often swings to specialty health or entertainment reporters, rigidly planted on some lonely island elsewhere in the pretend-newsroom set.

At least Peter’s colleagues stand near him, though across a glass table, bantering and introducing their clips.

This leads me to wonder: do they believe that successful standup comedy evolved from talking head comedy? Of course not.

Standup news is simply one more way television is trying to adapt to the new world of digital media. Every news provider is frantically searching for the elusive alchemy.

Just recently my regular newspaper, the Globe and Mail, began promoting heavily what’s coming up.

I don’t get it. When I discover a new newspaper, it’s usually through a search engine, which is how many quality newspapers are expanding their audience.

But my morning read still hinges on a mug of coffee and a couch. The only advantage of all the promos is that I get to work faster because there’s less to read.

Yet I love many of the Globe’s innovations, from the reporter who tweets incessantly to insightful video interviews of women behind veils.

CBC news is evolving too, with podcasts, online commentary and satellite radio broadening its reach.

All this experimenting is prompted by news executives trying to figure out the precise formula for making money.

In the November issue of Vanity Fair Michael Wolf talks about how Rupert Murdoch is stubbornly insisting on pay walls to monetize the news. The fall of a grand titan, I predict.

Then there are the millions of bloggers valiantly trying to make money from their sites. Although some new voices will break through the racket, it’s unlikely that most of us will ever use our sites for more than promoting our businesses or having fun.

I don’t think standing up is going to attract more viewers to TV news, any more than a poorly produced video, the blogging trend du jour, would make me a six-figure blogger much faster.

But I do know that some day someone will figure it out. That someone could be a well-oiled but slow-moving convergence conglomerate. Or it could be fleet-footed bloggers like us.

Only two months today until Christmas

Time to plan holiday email greetings for clients, colleagues and prospects.

If you’re too busy for card signing and stuffing but want to be more personal and professional than those holiday e-cards with the animated snow, check out our easy solution. We’ll help you pen a warm holiday message, embody the spirit of giving through a link to your favorite charity and place your copy, images and list in your customized template. Check it out.

Holiday cards are a great way to stay in touch with clients, colleagues and the people you’ve met over the past year. Don’t miss out on this once-in-a-year opportunity to build relationships and foster good will.

Mind your Ps and Qs, not your P’s and Q’s

Imagine I’m on my soap box again, megaphone in hand, yelling: “Approach apostrophes with extreme caution.”

Apostrophes are the most commonly misused punctuation mark.

It’s bad enough that so many people get mixed up with possessives and contractions, as in “its” and “it’s.” Cease and desist. Please.

But even grammatically minded people put the apostrophe at further risk by condoning its use with plurals in some cases.

That includes Grammar Girl and Grammar Monster.

These writers are simply repeating what’s in the rule books. But it’s time to take a stand against rules that add more confusion than clarity to language.

Take the example in this post’s head of Ps and Qs. Alternatively, I could have written “P”s and “Q”s or Ps and Qs. You would have understood me, right?

Grammar Monster provides these examples, which I have followed an example with how I would get around the apostrophe.

He sent 3 SOS’s
He sent 3 SOSs

Your 2’s look like your 7’s.
Your 2s look like your 7s.

1000’s of bargains
thousands of bargains

I’m not going to insist that you never, ever use an apostrophe in a plural. But I am going to hiss the next time I see one when there was a perfectly understandable alternative.

The more apostrophes on plurals we allow to creep in, the more often we will be unsettled by flyers that proclaim “banana’s on sale.”

Apostrophes are the nuclear energy of punctuation. They can be used for the peaceful, practical purposes of indicating possessives and contractions. Even then they are tricky and must be handled with extreme care.

Unleashed as possible ways to indicate plurals, they can be a force of evil. By allowing them, we are opening the door to abuse and proliferation.

Let’s persuade the English writers of the world, which includes anyone who has written an email this year, to use them correctly with contractions and possessives before we mention that they might sometimes be allowed with plurals.

As I said in my post on minimalist punctuation: Use only punctuation that helps your reader understand. That’s the most important rule to remember.

Don’t play god with capital letters

The single largest ongoing debate I’ve had with clients over the years revolves around when they should capitalize words. My two big pieces of advice:
1. Capitalize sparingly, as it’s more difficult to read and can appear intimidating. Worse, it can lead down a slippery slope.
2. Be consistent. Pick a style guide and use it all the time.

Capitalize sparingly
In Canada, most writers and editors use the Canadian Press Stylebook, which keep capitals to a minimum, even in titles and headlines. Some other guides use caps in the main words of headlines. Take your pick.

I prefer to reserve capital letters for the first letter in a sentence and proper names. Zealous capitalization can imply a God-like status, or should I say god-like.

What irks me most is the Slippery Slope of Capitalization, irony intended. This happens when people, often executives, try to bestow significance on their ideas by capitalizing them.

If their ideas become a project worthy of a proper name, that’s okay. But if they keep writing about Business Transformation, Structural Reinvention, Systems Synergy and Product Innovation, their caps become less meaningful. Even worse, they don’t help regular people understand what the heck they’re talking about. In fact, they can scare them.

If they want to inject gravitas, a better approach would be to clearly explain what they mean and how it benefits the reader. Important though these concepts may be to leaders, capitalizing is a lazy and ineffective way of helping their audience appreciate what they mean, let alone its significance.

Capitalize consistently
Another ongoing debate is the need to capitalize job titles and departments, treating them like proper names.

Although I prefer lower case, I’m fine with people who insist on the capitalization, as long as they’re consistent and drop the capital when they’re using plurals, as in “Director, IT” but “The directors attended the meeting.”

I know I’m not the only one dealing with the issue of when to capitalize. Recently it came up on a discussion on my IABC Linkedin group about my posts on the biggest grammar mistakes to avoid.

Because of strong personal preference and varying standards, the debate is bound to continue. But I know my tired eyes would like more people to use capitals sparingly and consistently.

Are you posting too often?

It’s commonly accepted wisdom that bloggers and other social media participants need to post frequently. But research from Jakob Nielsen seems to relieve some of the pressure.

In a recent user study on social media and RSS feeds, Jakob found that too-frequent posting was the biggest complaint. “If you post too much, you’ll crowd out other messages,” he wrote.

The need to avoid this crowding was also confirmed by Jakob’s research on email, another popular delivery mechanism for blog posts.

These findings don’t mean that we need to post only on special occasions. As Jakob advised, “If you post too rarely, your material will drift out of users’ active timestreams before they visit again.”

Often daily posters insist that quantity is more important than quality. But, as Jakob confirmed, quality does matter. You are eroding your brand if you post for the sake of posting. You need to have something to say and to say it well.

What a relief to find out that readers don’t insist on daily feeding. I can shrug off all that unsubstantiated advice. Large sites supported by ad revenue and sponsorship and fueled by a pool of writers have the resources to post daily. But most of us don’t.

On a good week, I can manage three posts. I update on Twitter and Facebook when I’m inspired or feel they’re an appropriate forum to promote a longer post.

But there are crazy deadline days when I can’t be distracted by social media. Then there are holidays and sick days when my brain needs the rest.

I write for readers. So it’s a question of finding a rhythm that not only works with my uneven schedule, but also my readers.

Thanks you for that insight on readers, Jakob. Now let’s hear what my readers have to say. Should I post more frequently or less frequently? How often do you think business people should update on Twitter, Facebook and other microblogging sites?

What Letterman left out

On the mom scale, I give David Letterman’s apology a three out of four. He gets one point for fessing up and another for resisting the temptation to justify his actions, which you know your kids are doing as soon as they say “but.”

I give him a third point for persuading me that he is not going to screw around again. A kid may apologize for hitting his sister, then do it again as soon as he thinks you’re not looking.

But David loses a critical point for not telling us everything. He implies that the shenanigans took place while he was married. But he has not been specific. And what about all the extracurricular sex during the many years he and wife Regina were in the relationship that preceded the marriage? I think he’s hiding a lot of naked skeletons in his closet.

When my kids were little, it was always important to know just what they were apologizing for. There was no point in forgiving someone for making a mess in the living room if they had actually smashed the television screen.

I know you would like to move on, David. But you’re not off the hook, at least with us moms.

He/she/it/they drives/drive me crazy: my last grammar target

I’ve left he/she/it/they to the last of my three-pronged attack on bad grammar because it’s more difficult.

Even so, I have come up with an easy tip: Use “they” when you’re referring to a singular subject if you are referring to a general subject, such as the team, the client or the user, but only if it’s easier for the reader to understand and doesn’t offend any grammar-stickler target readers and especially if it lets you avoid being sexist.

Okay, so it’s not as brief as my earlier tips on contractions and sound-alikes and me, myself and I and that, who, which. But this is trickier. Let me explain.

Most people are fine with this example: “The team won the award because they are so good at customer service.” Although “team” is singular, they know that the term refers to more than one person.

However, this may not be the best solution if you are writing for people who care about grammar. For them, you’re wise to turn “team” into a plural, as in “The team members won because they… ” You could refer to the team as “it” but that would be dehumanizing.

Turning a singular into a plural also lets you side step the awkward “he or she.”

Sadly, sometimes you can’t simply tack on a word like “members” to make the subject plural. For example, “The client sent their best regards.” Let’s assume the client refers to a company, not an individual. “Their” works. Besides, unless I was referring to a specific individual, “sent his (or her) best regards,” would be sexist.

A year ago, I would have balked at writing “the client sends their best regards.” After years of resistance and too many awkward “he or she”s, I’ve slacked off. I was relieved to see in the comments on the recent Copyblogger grammar post that many people agree it’s time to move on.

Like society, language evolves. As long the changes don’t impair our ability to understand each other, it’s all good. Don’t you agree?

The war on bad grammar: the next big targets

Yesterday, I urged people to take aim at the two biggest grammar errors: confusing possessives and contractions, as in its and it’s, and mixing up other sound-alike words, such as then and then.

Today I’m gunning for the third and fourth largest targets in Operation Bad Grammar: me, myself and I plus that, which and who..

I don’t enjoy seeing the hornet’s nest stirred when word nerds debate pronouns. Yes, they frequently don’t meet the standards of the grammar gurus.

But most of the time, I just don’t care. Whether you say “It is he” or “It is him” does not make any difference. In both instances, anyone knows immediately what you mean.

Me, myself and I
What does get me going, however, is the me, myself and I debate. That’s because the misuse can make people sound pretentious, like they’re trying too hard.

As children, most of us were taught to avoid saying “me and David went to school.” But somehow many of us ended up thinking there’s something terribly evil and self-centred with “me,” even when it’s correct. Besides, the right way is easy to remember.

Easy tip: Use “myself “only when you’re referring to something you did, as in I did it myself.

Easy tip: Use “I” in the subject of the sentence only. So “David and I walked to school,” is correct “The dog followed David and I” is not.

That, which, who
My point about “that” relates to brevity in writing, not grammatical correctness. But I’m sneaking it in because it’s such a simple editing trick. It comes from our tendency to use the word “that” more in conversation than we need to writing.

Easy tip: When you’re checking over what you’ve written, try to delete as many “that”s as you can.

Back to grammar, with the distinction between “that” and “which.”

Easy tip: If you can’t decide whether to use “that” or “which” ask yourself if you could be saying “which one.” Or just think of “which witch is which.”

Finally, my tip about “who,” which is not only about grammar, but also about making your writing friendlier.

Easy tip: Use “who” instead of “that” when you are writing about a person, as in “Tiffany, the girl who sits beside me.” The use of “that” with a person is dehumanizing.

Quick summary
*Use “myself” only when you did something yourself and “I” when it’s the subject of your sentence.
*Delete as many “that”s as you can can, think of which witch is which and remember it’s people “who,” not people “that.”

Avoid the big grammar traps and you’ll see an immediate improvement in how well people understand and respect you.

Come back tomorrow for my final installation on Operation Bad Grammar: subject-predicate agreement, an explosive device that’s easier to side step than you might think.

And let me know if I’ve missed any big targets–the mistakes that undermine our ability to communicate, not the pet peeves that irk you for no significant reason.