Fresh content sold here

This week on LinkedIn, someone posted a picture of a sign for a store urging customers to place holiday orders now. The poster said she would cut out some of the words. That reminded me of an old joke. How old is it? I looked it up and discovered that it was printed as early as 1890. Here's how it goes:

A man opened a fish store and put up sign, “Fresh Fish Sold Here.” A friend told him there is no need to say here. The owner took out that word, leaving “Fresh Fish Sold.” Another friend said there's no need to say “fresh”—no one expects to be sold old fish. The owner took out that word, making the new sign, “Fish Sold.” Another friend said there's no need to say “sold”—no one expects him to give it away. That left just “Fish.” But another friend said it was not necessary to say that because it could be seen and smelled. The owner took out that word and the new sign was blank.

The punchline of the original story was that the business failed due to lack of advertising. But I would suggest two key takeaways.

One is that whenever you seek to satisfy everyone, you end up satisfying no one. Those of us who have had to satisfy committees with copy know all-too-well how true that is. One wants a more playful tone, while the other insists on something that's all business. One wants simple language, while another mistakes jargon for proof of expertise. Satisfying them all renders the final copy bland and forgettable.

The other is that while cutting out unnecessary words is the essence of editing, you have to really know what you're doing. Otherwise, you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater -- or should we say fish with the saltwater in this case?

To illustrate this post, I found that life truly does imitate life and that you can purchase a sign inspired by this story on Amazon for as little as $9.99.

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While it's possible to eliminate a word or two from your statements, knowing which ones to keep in order to capture the attention of your target audience is the key. That's what people who take the time to learn about your business and who buys from you have to know.  

That level of tailored insight instead of a forced one-size-fits-all mold is what I deliver for my customers and clients. It's why they find the content I produce for them continues to draw people in -- even a decade after it was produced.

The here for me is not a physical store but digital contact. Check out my site: WriteWayPro.weebly.com

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What Edison can teach us about SEO
7 Habits of Highly Effective Content Marketers
Think Marathon Rather Than Sprint When Planning Content Marketing
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Dr. Seuss adds a word to the dictionary

In October, Merriam-Webster announced that it had added 455 words. Many of them come from new terms associated with the pandemic and some from general popular culture. My favorite is this one:

"Oobleck : a mixture of corn starch and water that behaves like a liquid when at rest and like a solid when pressure is applied. Oobleck gets its name from the title of a story by Dr. Seuss, Bartholomew and the Oobleck, and is a favorite component in kids’ science experiments." 

This is almost like seeing the book Frindle come to life. No spoilers. If you haven't read it as a kid, you could still read it as an adult. 

This is not the first word coined by Dr. Seuss to make it into the English language. The word "nerd" first appeared in If I Ran the Zoo published in 1950.. He used it rather like Lewis Carroll used Jaberrwocky -- a made-up name for a made-up creature. 

And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-troo
And bring back an It-kutch, a Preep and a Proo,
A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!

In 1951, the word had already taken off with th emeaning that we assign it today. Merriam-Webster recounts:

  Newsweek carried an article about the latest slang that includes the word nerd. "In Detroit," it notes, "someone who once would be called a drip or a square is now, regrettably, a nerd, or in less severe cases, a scurve."

 Unfortunately, the book that book is among the 6 that are no longer published pictured here:

. 

Related: The literary origins of robots 

How to for LinkedIn profile

I'd warn people to not take this as an absolute, especially the word list. The one thing I learned from taking a month as a Premium Member was a glimpse into the type of words job listings include that the HR systems rely on for filtering. Some of them include words like "leadership," so if you don't have it on your profile, that's one less match for such positions. One more note on the photos: they forget to warn people not just to leave Fido out but to leave out other people. That extends to the parts of other people that appear in the background in an obviously cropped photo. Just no.


See leisurejobs.com/staticpages/18285/the-ultimate-linkedin-cheat-sheet/

Geek: from freak to chic

The word "freak" in the title is used in a specific sense. In the earlier part of the 20th century, a "geek" was a freak attraction at a carnival, a definition  that http://www.answers.com/topic/geek retains, though it does first offer the slang meaning more familiar to us today, someone who is inept, particularly in social settings, though s/he may be very accomplished technically or scientifically.

If you ever read the book or  see the 1947 film adaption  Nightmare Alley, you would encounter the term "geek" in its carnival sense and a symbol of the ultimate degradation a man can experience. (BTW this proves the Oxford  Dictionary of Modern Slang entry on the word incorrect, as it dates the US meaning of "fairground freak" only to 1954)

Houghton Mifflin Word Origins can only speculate on when exactly the meaning shifted away from the freak people paid to see to a person some may have tried to avoid:

The exact date is hard to pin down, but in student slang of the 1970s and later, a geek was someone who partied too little and studied too much. And when these geeks migrated to Silicon Valley and began building computers and writing software programs that made them millionaires, they gained respect.

http://geekcrafts.com/geek-glasses-roundup/ artlife on Etsy sells these 

And that turn around brings us to pride in self-identifying as geeks and the ultimate compliment paid to the type in  the form of "geek chic"

Although being described as a geek tends to be an insult, the term has recently become more complimentary, or even a badge of honor, within particular fields. This is particularly evident in the technical disciplines, where the term is now often a compliment, denoting extraordinary skill. Geek Pride Day has been observed on May 25 in Spain since 2006 (May 25 being the world premiere date of Star Wars and also Towel Day). The holiday promotes the right to be nerdy or geeky, and to express it in public without shame. A new convention, Geek.Kon, has sprung up in Madison, Wisconsin with a purpose to celebrate all things geek. The website BoardGameGeek is an online community of boardgamers who identify themselves as geeks at game conventions; they call their website "The Geek," for short. Technical support services such as Geek Squad use the term geek to signify helpful technical abilities. In recent history, some geeks have cultivated a geek culture, such as geek humor and obscure references on t-shirts. The so-called geek chic trend is a deliberate affectation of geek or nerd traits as a fashion statement. Nonetheless, the derogatory definition of geeks remains that of a person engrossed in his area of interest at the cost of social skills, personal hygiene, and status.

Related post: http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2012/02/vintage-vocabulary.html

Vintage Vocabulary

If you have a love of words, be sure to read through this post on the words that first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary back in 1951. That was the year of the nerd, fast food, Vegan, and 401 others. "Nerd" and the word's creation is attributed to none other than Dr. Seuss: "The origin is uncertain, but signs point to the 1950 children’s book If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss, which uses nerd as the name of a creature, as its inspiration."

The lines have "Nerd" capitalized as a proper name: "And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Katroo / And bring back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a Nerd and a Seersucker too!"

The word "Vegan" is listed as a proper name, as well; the meaning then was "an alien from a planet orbiting the star Vega," not someone who conforms to a particular type of diet.