Welcome back. No time to waste, let’s look at the second deadly sin.

Watch Out For Parochialisms

For those not in the know, the best way to understand these is to look at an example or two:

This 12-week series of seminars was specially developed for smaller and medium businesses under the guidance of Professor P J Harriman.

The problem? Who is Professor P J Harriman? Obviously this means something to the writer but it won't mean anything to a reader. If the professor was not introduced beforehand, no-one is even going to care.

People often use parochialism in shares, tweets, headlines for blog posts too, like this:

This is my latest Marketing Week post about copywriting for websites.

The writer is assuming that all readers will know who they are – why? Even if you did know the writer, you probably wouldn’t share it because most of your network doesn’t know. And the use of the phrase ‘copywriting for websites’ is a little too vague for most people.

In short, parochialisms are when you use information that only you know about, with no explanation for your readers about what or who it is.

Stop Using Acronyms and Initialisms

At least without spelling them out. They are both pretty much the same thing but with one difference:

With an acronym, the abbreviation is pronounced as though it were a word in its own right:

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus)

OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries)

Whereas, with an initialism, each letter is pronounced separately:

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

B2B (Business to Business)

ROI (Return on Investment)

These days, we seem to see both of these everywhere but you must not assume that a reader will know what they mean.

Whenever you use one of these, spell it out first and then put the abbreviated form in brackets. But do use a modicum of common sense – if you are writing about search engine optimization, you don’t need to spell it out every time you use SEO. And where you do need to use special terminology, generally you only spell it out the first time it is used. On occasion, you may even need to go one step further and explain what it means – spelling it out in full won't always do the trick.

Of course, this is going to cause interruptions to your writing flow but you can go down the route of using call-out boxes, hover-over text, and external links if needs be.

Being successful as a blogger, copywriter or any other type of writer is never going to be easy. There are plenty of obstacles in your way, not least the way you write. If you can learn to recognize when you are using these destructive habits, you can deal with them and nip things in the bud early. Leave it and your writing will a hot mess that nobody but you understands – and if you don’t understand it, you honestly can't expect anyone else to.