The PR Writer, and newswire scourage, is back at it again, after some absence critiquing misguided PR copy. A shout out and thanks to Abbey Hildred and my CDPR 211 “Strategic Storytelling” students at Toronto Metropolitan University who found these two gems in an assignment to find online news releases with CP Style mistakes.
#1
Original headline:
#ForYou: Cineplex and TikTok Bring the TikTok Experience to the Big Screen with World-First Opportunity for Advertisers (17 words)
PR Writer edit
#ForYou: Cineplex Brings the TikTok Experience to Big Screen with Premier Advertisting Opportunity (13 words)
Commentary
- Not necessary to repeat TikTok; if Cineplex is bringing the TikTok experience to the Big Screen, that demonstrates working with TikTok.
- Headline style allows for additional compression; instead of ‘to the Big Screen,’ just write ‘to Big Screen.
- ‘World-first’ is awkward and unwieldly. One would think a movie company would figure out how to use ‘premiere’ instead; it implies first ever and of course uses fewer words.
Original subhead
First-of-its-kind theatrical integration Kicks Off in November with DECIEM followed by Interac in December
Edit:
November Kicks off first-of-its-kind theatrical integration with DECIEM, then Interac in December (12 words)
Commentary
- Avoid passive voices and when words follow ‘in’ have them modify the a previous word or adjective; in this case, make November the subject.
Original lead
TORONTO, Nov. 2, 2022 /CNW/ – (TSX: CGX) – Cineplex, Canada’s leading entertainment and media company, has collaborated with TikTok, the leading destination for short-form mobile video, to leverage a new and innovative way to engage entertainment lovers in its theatres this Fall. (34 words)
PR Writer edit
TORONTO, Nov. 2, 2022 /CNW/ – (TSX: CGX) – Cineplex, Canada’s leading entertainment and media company, has collaborated with TikTok, the foremost or top destination for short-form mobile video, with a new and innovative way to engage movie-goers this fall. (31 words)
Commentary
- Repeating ‘leading’ twice in one lead is just careless. Always avoid word repeats.
- ‘Leverage’ has to be the biggest cliché in PR writing, next to ‘we are pleased to announce,’ (of course you are). Avoid that too. Since ‘collaborated’ has already been said, make that the verb and get rid of ‘leverage a new and innovative way…’
- ‘To engage entertainment lovers in its theatres’ can be easily improved. Try ‘to engage movie-goers this fall.’ ‘Movie-goers’ implies people in theatres and they are by definition entertainment lovers, also a cliché. Not necessary either to say ‘in its theatres’ as would they be promoting someone else’s?
See for yourself:
#2
This news release is so careless and awful, it’s not worth a rewrite. But as a point of CP Style there is something very important that I, as a self-styled CP Style expert, did not know. The headline states: ‘New 6-Year study.’ CP Style calls for spelling out numbers under 10, so I checked – the exception is headlines; ‘6-year study’ is correct, as would be a percentage in the headline, where it’s not correct in the lead.
Original headline and lead
MISSISSAUGA, ON, Oct. 31, 2022 /CNW/ — Ophthalmic lens technology leader HOYA Vision Care announced the critical results of a six-year follow-up study of 90 children wearing MiYOSMART ophthalmic lenses. The study demonstrated the myopia control effect was sustained over time1. Further, it confirmed that patients who stop wearing MiYOSMART show no rebound effect compared to initial rates of myopia progression during HOYA’s two-year trial or with the general population. MiYOSMART lenses are a non-invasive solution for myopia control proven to slow myopia progression by an average of 60% in a 2-yar clinical study2.
Apart from that, as one TMU student, pointed out. There is a hilarious misspelling ‘in a 2-yar’ clinical study.’ She also pointed out that the word Myopia was repeated 18 times in the whole story, including four times in the lead, and two repeats in one sentence. Wow – that’s awfully myopic.
See for yourself:
