LET'S COMMUNICATE
Agriculture Communication Newsletter
December 2003, No. 96

CONTENTS

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS
PLAN YOUR MEDIA MESSAGE
WRITE THE RIGHT WORD
TECHNOLOGY TIPS BY E-MAIL

 

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

Whether or not you made any personal New Year's resolutions, consider these for your professional life:

* I resolve to target e-mails specifically to the group I want to reach rather than to "all." Chances are campus faculty don't have 4-H award pins, family and consumer science agents don't have a certain variety of soybean seed and REC staff don't need to know about the campus plant sale.

The list of Ag majordomo e-mail lists is at http://www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/directory/emailist.htm

* I resolve to write then edit, deleting unnecessary words and phrases, and clarifying for understanding. Our readers are busy people, so we need to get to the point in our writing. And, of course, we need to make sure our writing is clear and grammatically correct.

* I resolve to work with Ag Communication staff to prepare news releases for the media or for a media interview; develop newsletters, Web pages and other communication tools; and brainstorm marketing and communications ideas. Just a reminder!

PLAN YOUR MEDIA MESSAGE

Better information gets to the public when you plan what you're going to say in a media interview rather than just answer the reporter's questions.

• Prepare three or four brief positive points (your "commercials" or 3X5-card notes) on the issue -- even before it becomes an issue with the public.
• If the issue involves several NDSU faculty and staff, name a spokesperson or two.
• Repeat these messages multiple times in each interview.
• Try to avoid speculation, hypotheticals, personal opinions, acronyms and jargon.
• Rehearse.

Ag Communication staff can help you prepare your bullet points and practice conveying them in an interview. Contact Rich Mattern, Tom Jirik or Becky Koch.

WRITE THE RIGHT WORD

A few recent errors:

* a well organized program This should be hyphenated as a well-organized program. When two words express a single concept, and modify and precede a noun, use a hyphen to link the words in the compound. Of course, there are always exceptions. Don't hyphenate the adverb very and all adverbs that end in -ly -- a first-quarter touchdown, a full-time job, a very good time, an easily remembered rule.

* over 100 firms Over generally refers to spatial relationships, such as The plane flew over the city. Though over can, at times, be used with numbers, more than is more accurate and a better choice, as in I paid more than $200 for this suit.

* Commissioner of Agriculture, Roger Johnson, ... Formal titles that don't include an article (a, an, the) or pronoun shouldn't be separated from the name by a comma. Correct examples include N.D. Commissioner of Agriculture Roger Johnson made the announcement and The N.D. commissioner of agriculture, Roger Johnson, made the announcement.

* orientated Not a word. We call it orientation, but people are oriented.

* loose weight Yes, some of us have some weight that is loose and jiggles, but this story was talking about losing weight.

* this years event Year is possessive, not plural, so it needs to be this year's event.

TECHNOLOGY TIPS BY E-MAIL

Want to receive regular technology tips and tricks? Lorna Olsen, NDSU Information Technology Services trainer, shares great ideas through her ITS Technology Trainining News e-mail messages. Recent helps have been on Word bookmark shortcuts, Acrobat and scanning to PDF files, adding new text to PDF files, Corporate Time calendar shortcuts and transparent images.

Review the archives and sign up to receive the monthly ideas at http://listserv.nodak.edu/archives/its-training.html