Headline style, cliches, capitalization, it vs. they, all in a day’s work for the Better PR Writer.
n today’s story #prfail, @castingworkbook.com misses some key news release basics and also lets its own ego get in the way of a news story. Here are some edits:
Even Harry Potter’s people can write a news release with redundancies, unnecessary words and with flabby sentences.
In this press release, there are some textbook examples of basic mistakes, both in copy and emphasis, not to mention capitalization and headline style. The lead was reduced from 142 word to 109, around 23 per cent.
Word repetitions are easy to catch: don’t repeat the same word in the same sentence or in an adjacent phrase. Even avoid repeating a word elsewhere in a news release.
t always astonishes me that PR departments and agencies pay top dollar to release news electronically and make such basic mistakes. Here are a few from recent news releases.
In this story, from the world’s premier news release distributor, with basic attention to simple Better PR Writer techniques, more than 20 per cent of the copy can be removed from the headline, lead and second paragraph.
This news release from Nikon at first glance looked very well done and was a successful PR tool. It’s still effective. However, in studying it, the word repeats surprisingly made me re-think my original assumptions.
When 36 per cent – or from 75 to 48 words – can be removed from a news release, without changing the meaning, then Better PR Writer alarm bells ring, and the editing PR Tools must be deployed right away.
This PR Tools news release excellently illustrates the benefits of several important Better PR Writer lessons: avoid the passive voice, get rid of ‘of’ and edit out location words (in, located in).