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Ampersands OK in Blog Titles, But Not in Content

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“Use and, not ampersands, in business writing, even for emails. It is more professional,” Mary Morel advises in onlinewritintraining.com. Ampersands are for titles, signage, and where they are part of an organization’s branding, she adds.

Historical trivia bit – The ampersand was once the 27th letter of the alphabet In the early 18th century. Roman scribes, writing the Latin word “et” (meaning “and”) would link the E and the T. creating the shape of the ampersand. Centuries later, children reciting their ABCs found it confusing to say X,Y,Z, and”, so instead they would say “and, per se, ‘and'”, clarifying that the
ampersand was a separate letter.

The ampersand “adheres to a modern ethos of speed and brevity,” grammarbook.com explains. The ampersand helps save space, and fits in with other letters’ heights. “Still,” the authors conclude, “the more sparing you are with ampersands in formal writing, the better,”

Ampersand usage is a style detail many people don’t think important enough to merit attention, the probizwriters.com blog observes. “After all, if most people don’t know the rules, who will notice if you screw it up, right? Unfortunately, it’s little details like proper ampersand use that can make your writing look or feel clunky or dumb, even to readers who don’t know exactly why.”

Worst of all, speaker Todd Hunt believes, is inconsistent use, mixing “and” and “&” in the same writing piece.

As a blog content writing trainer, I think the most compelling reason to avoid ampersands in blog content was explained by Rebekah Wolf in medium.com: Copy devoid of characters is easier to skim and even easier to understand. As readers scan your blog post, their eyes are likely to be drawn to the character instead of to the most important words.

Of course, blog content writing should be more informal in tone than academic pieces, as we stress at Say It For You. Blogs are meant to be more conversational, more personal, and tend to be most effective using an “I-you”, author-to-reader tone. There’s an invisible line, however. Could the ampersand represent one of those subtle dividing points between casual and careless? Hmmm….

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Blog Titles to Tell “The Truth”

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Late last year, journalists at National Geographic Magazine teamed up with AARP to explore “how Americans perceive aging as we emerge from the COVID pandemic”. There were a number of great articles in the AARP Bulletin issue, but what was so interesting to me as a blog content writer was the way the word “truth” kept appearing in some of the titles: “The New Truth About Aging”,”The New Truth About Voting Laws.”

“Your blog headline is the first impression a reader will have with your content. It can be their reason for clicking or their reason for brushing your post aside.,” observes the createmytherapist website.com. “A catchy headline could cause someone to pause, pique their interest and make them hungry for more of the content they’ll find in your blog post. It’s also one of the most important factors for your search engine optimization (SEO)”.

For me as a blog content writer, Truth-Abouts make for compelling titles. There’s a hint of mystery, a promise an expose, perhaps – as a reader, I feel as if I am going to be given the “real scoop” There’s something enticing about a title promising to “bare the truth”, especially when it concerns a topic on which we didn’t expect there to be any secrets to speak of.

At Say It For You, we use “Truth-About’ blog posts with three basic purposes in mind:

1. To de-mystify a subject.
2. To myth-bust, addressing misunderstandings about a product or service
3. To offer actionable steps readers can take

Helping readers sort truth from myth is one important use for business blogs.  In the natural order of business, many misunderstandings about a product or service present themselves, and shining the light of day on misinformation shines light on your own expertise in your field.

Even when there is no final answer, blog content writers can summarize the different schools of thought and recap the research that is being done in the field. That in itself can go a long way towards making your blog a “go-to” place for readers seeking information relating to your industry or profession.

Blog titles “to tell the truth” can be a very useful content writing idea!

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Blogging for Business with Sympathy and Service: 4 “Amens”

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“Instead of selfish mass marketing, effective marketing now relies on sympathy and service,” Seth Godin posits in the book This is Marketing. What marketing is, the author explains. “the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem.” “Getting discovered”, “getting found”, and “getting the word out” are no longer the first things to consider, but come last. As marketers, Godin is firm, it’s our job to watch people, figure out what they dream of, than create a transaction that can deliver that feeling.

In planning how to market your product or service, Godin suggests, start by filling in the blanks in this sentence: “My _________ will be exactly the right choice for people who believe that_______ and who want to feel_________.”

Four Say It For You “Amens”:

  1. Belief and trust, we have found at Say It For You, are in large part a function of familiarity Precisely because blogs are not one-time articles, but conveyers of messages over long periods of time, they serve as unique tools for building a sense of familiarity (and ultimately trust) in readers.
  2. In blog content writing, ask yourself: Which psychological fulfillment does your brand support most? Exactly as Godin is expressing, blog readers will self select and become buyers only to the extent your content has focused on creating experiences that align with their values. Business blogs should never be rated “E” (intended for everyone).
  3. As content writers, we’ve also come to understand over the years that face-to-screen is the closest we will come to the prospective buyers of our clients’ products and services. Even when it comes to B2B marketing, we know that behind every decision, there is always a person, a being with feelings they have and feelings they want to have.
  4. Through the pandemic we became familiar with the phrase “social distancing”, which is the precise opposite of what we must try to do in blog marketing, which is to create connections with our audience and make them feel supported and in turn receptive to our message. As writers, we must present the business or practice as very personal rather than transactional.

In blog marketing, aim for sympathy and service!

 

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Advice-Column Blogging for Business

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You wouldn’t imagine consulting the Farmer’s Almanac for tips on blogging for business, but, hey, ideas are everywhere, as we assure readers of Say It For You. In fact, the two articles “7 Ways to Water Wisely” and “8 Top Water-Saving Tips” might serve as perfect models for what I call “advice-column blogging”.

  1.  Both these articles are in “listicle” format, with titles heading up paragraphs explaining how to use that tip. The listicle visually organizes the page, making the information easy to digest. Under the heading “Create a sprinkler-friendly lawn”, for example, the author advises adjusting the lawn’s shape so the sprinkler waters the lawn without dampening the driveway, porch of bare ground.
  2. An odd number of tips is presented. As Blue Orchid Marketing explains, studies have shown that odd-numbered lists trigger better responses from readers, perhaps because they’re perceived as more ‘decisive”.
  3. The tips are practical and doable by readers, with no direct tie to product “pitches”.
    There’s a reason “how-to” blog post titles work, marketing gurus Guy Kawaski and Peg Fitzpatrick show in the Art of Social Media. The best “How-to’s, they explain, are neither too broad nor too limited. They have a “news-you-can-use” feel. At Say It For You, we sometimes encounter resistance from business owners when it comes to starting a blog. Owners of personal service businesses, in particular, voice fears of giving away valuable information “for free”. (What happens in the real world is that readers don’t want to do it all themselves and turn to the source of the advice they’ve been offered.).
  4. The language is personal and direct: “You can….” “Your garden… “Select hoses for your needs.” “Good soil is your partner….”
  5. Both articles are compact, with well-organized information confined to a single page.
    Opinions differ on the optimal size for a blog post, with one “rule” I have read being to keep the post short enough so that the reader needn’t scroll down the page. Unlike purchasers of Farmer’s Almanac issues, online searchers tend to be scanners more than readers, and it’s important to engage attention quickly.

In creating advice-column blog posts, you might want to start with the Farmer’s Almanac!

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Should Blog Titles Tell All?

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Besides being an absolutely fascinating read, Popular Science Magazine‘s special collector’s edition “Journey to the Future” offers a course in creating interesting titles (a topic of extreme interest, as you may imagine, to any blog content writer).

Of course, when it comes to blogs, the very first piece of information readers are going to receive is the title of the post. We want the searcher to click on the link, and of course we want search engines to offer our content as a match for readers seeking information and guidance on our topic. More than that, though, a blog post title in itself constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors. In essence, you’re saying, “If you click here, you’ll be led to a post that in fact discussing the topic mentioned in the title.

Here are some very straightforward titles from Popular Science Magazine:

  • Quantum Computing: the Future of AI
  • Will Robots Help or Harm? That’s Up to Humans
  • The Future of Transplants
  • Boosting Memory

    In blogs, as we teach at Say It For You, even the tone of the title constitutes a promise of sorts, telling the searcher whether the content is going to be humorous, satirical, controversial, cautionary, or simply informative. Then, for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes, the title needs to contain keyword phrases, which each of these titles does. At the same time, an important purpose of marketing blogs is inducing searchers to read the post, and for that, the title must arouse curiosity and interest.

Curiosity-piquing titles in this Popular Science issue include:

  • Get Ready to Sniff Disease
  • Engineered for Ethics
  • Running on Reckless
  • Eyes on the Earth
  • Re-defining Meat
  • Always on Duty

(Fascinating, curious titles, but you don’t really know what sort of content to expect in the article to come.)

One compromise is what I call the “Huh?-Oh!” two-part title, in which the first part is an attention-getter, with more of an explanation in the second part.

Examples of two-part titles from Popular Science:

  • All Together Now – Human Societies are the Technologies of the Future and Cooperation is the Fuel
  • The Extra-Dimensional Artist – When Visual Art and Augmented reality Merge

One popular misconception I run into as a business blogging trainer is that blog titles need to be what I would call “cutesy”, meaning they must have an enticing “ring” to them that arouses attention. My opinion – Cutesy belongs in baby clothes. Yes, blog post titles need to capture attention, but when readers click on a link, they need to find material that is congruent with what the title promised would be there.

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