6 categories of suckitude

Nancy over at the Duarte blog is going off right now on Steve Ballmer's launch remarks for Windows 7. She took a transcript of what he said and marked it up with six categories of suckitude. They are:

Apple campaign references

Unnecessary filler words or phrases

Confusing words, phrases or statistics

Ballmer's references to himself

Upgrade fixes problems

Bold statement with no supporting information

Her mark-up reminds me of some work I did recently with a person who writes scripts for quarterly earnings calls. I was brought in to help him improve his writing. I'm not a teacher, and I don't have a how-to-write list. So I told him to just do the next one as usual, I would edit it, and then I would make some suggestions based on the kinds of edits I made. As Nancy did, I came up with six problem areas. I sent them to him in this chart:

LESSONS TO CARRY FORWARD FROM 3Q09 EARNINGS SCRIPT
1	EMPTY PHRASING	Eliminate “empty” phrases, sentences or paragraphs that take up space without saying anything. (“Before we get started…” “Let me highlight…” “We can’t tell you when these storm clouds will pass, but when they do…”)
2	SOFT WORDS	Be vigilant against “soft” words in key places. For example, “we will continue to strengthen…” is a more assertive way to close than “we will be well positioned to emerge…”
3	LAZY STRUCTURE	Watch for instances of “lazy structure” – such as bundling seemingly unrelated points into a paragraph that starts with “Let me highlight a few key points for the quarter…” It’s a stronger statement if you can begin that same paragraph with “We beat our own expectations in several key initiatives. For example…”
4	BURIED NEWS	Look for “buried” news – items that deserve to be mentioned earlier in the script, and move them up.
5	RUN-ON PARAGRAPHS	Check for paragraphs of a third of a page or more, and break them up.
6	UNNECESSARY COMPLEXITY	Always be alert for opportunities to use a smaller word, a shorter sentence, a tighter paragraph.

The following quarter, he pulled out this list and went to work on a new script. His improvement as a writer was dramatic.