SUBJECT LINE: How NOT To Be The Global Village Idiot!…
The world’s a big place. But it’s made a whole lot smaller by the Internet, social media and people’s minds.
Borders that bloody wars were once fought over and countless lives lost for, are relics of a different world. Well, online anyway.
One email can be sent in an instant to every country in the world (provided you have the right people on your list). Social media helps us to have friends anywhere they live on this wonderful planet of ours. And we all have freedoms our ancestors never had.
But even with all the freedoms we enjoy, there is a never-ending modern day war that is being fought on the virtual battlefields of Facebook and other online forums.
It is the Battle for Spelling Supremacy!
You know what I’m talking about…
Is it spelled or spelt?
Is it authorize or authorise?
Is it a Check or a Cheque?
Is it a tumor or a tumour? (According to Arnie… it was neither!)
There is an insufferable intolerance going on. And it needs to STOP!
To be honest, in the days before FB and being online, I used to be the same.
When I was in the Army, I was in charge of training Medics. It was my job to ensure only the best people graduated as Medics. These people needed to be able to operate under pressure and do it with little to no supervision.
A few of my graduates went on to be awarded with the Nursing Service Cross, which is the highest honour for Medical people. (I must have done a good job.)
Part of their training was being able to spell properly. We used the British-Australian spelling. And I was like a “spelling Nazi” with enforcing it.
We didn’t have anesthesiologists… we had anaesthetists. Women didn’t have estrogen… they had oestrogen. Our soldiers didn’t hemorrhage… they haemorrhaged. (Subtle differences, but important ones!)
Now, the ability to spell may seem insignificant to some. But when medical personnel spell words wrong… it results in a misdiagnosis or worse… the wrong treatment. (There is a huge difference between Hypothermia and Hyperthermia*, yet they are used interchangeably in the media. We’re just lucky they don’t treat patients!)
Also, because medical documents can be recalled at any time, it is important to be accurate with your terminology.
For example, when I was in the Army as a young, bright-eyed Lieutenant, I was in charge of a crusty old Sergeant. (He was a grumpy, gruff bastard!) He absolutely hated new Nursing Officers and told me he would only tolerate me because he had to. “I’ll respect your rank Ma’am, but never the person wearing it!” he said to me. He also told me there was not one thing I could teach him about anything.
It seems he was wrong!
One day while reading his patient notes, I noticed that he wrote…
“Patient has the shits!”
Now in Australia, “the Shits” can mean several different things… so it was an incredibly vague statement. And a medico-legal nightmare.
So I asked him what he meant. He rolled his eyes at me and said… “I wrote the shits because I couldn’t spell that other word!”
I replied “Oh, you mean Diahorrea… Let’s fix that! Here’s how you spell it and now sit in my office and write it out 100 times.”
Well… His face turned beetroot red, his veins popped out of his temples and he started to shake and he said in the calmest voice he could muster… “Yes, Ma’am!”
He never forgot how to spell diahorrea ever again. Oh, and he learnt to use a dictionary to look up words rather than have to write them out 100 times.
It seems I could teach him something after all.
Hey wait a minute… can you smell popcorn? (hahaha! …Break State)
Let’s have a look at something here…
So far in this email, I have used the English-Australian spelling. (and it may look a bit weird or distracting.)
But I don’t usually write my emails like this. It’s because I know Australian’s have a better tolerance to spelling differences than people in the US do (As shown daily on platforms such as FB.) Beside we are used to being hit with U.S English everyday in our inboxes.
To become a better writer, I had to cancel my “Spelling Nazi” membership.
It was hard to do. I had to drop my spelling perfectionism and learn to become Bi-Spellial (that is, being proficient in US spelling and the spelling everyone else uses.)
Why? Well, because my audience changed, so I had to change too.
Which brings me to today’s topic…
Knowledge Nugget #34: Know Your Whole Audience
The Global Village represented on Facebook is rarely respected or tapped into properly by business owners and marketers.
I see people post on pages which have a global audience using localized jargon or criticizing when other people write in theirs.
Recently with the change in Daylight Saving (or Daylight Savings, depending where you come from) there were Memes being shared around. But the problem was people in the U.S. had just turned their clocks forward and in the Southern Hemisphere, we were about to turn them back.
Oh, the abuse being hurled around was incredible! All because people were oblivious that there is a world outside their own. (They really do need to get out more.)
One of my friends recently posted his excitement that a company he was working for sent him a W-9 form. I wanted to be excited for him, but I had no idea what he was talking about.
So I said… “I’ve only heard of WD-40 but not a W-9 before. What is it?”
Well, faster than you can say “WD-40” I was inundated with explanations of what WD-40 was and finally what a W-9 form is. People couldn’t believe we don’t have the same form… but why would we?
We have our own country, our own Government and our own way of doing things. (But we do have WD-40 so we aren’t all that uncivilized.)
As I said earlier, the Internet has dissolved borders that have existed for hundreds of years. People are not ready to communicate to the Global Village it opens up… but they need to.
Just as I had to surrender my “Spelling Nazi” membership, they need to expand their geographical and cultural knowledge.
When people run webinars or try to book appointments, they often do them at a time which suits them. Which is fair enough, except in the Global Village, some people don’t like getting up at 2am or 3am for a meeting or webinar.
I once had a coach in the U.S. who would book times with me that were in the middle of my night… and then wonder why my brain wasn’t as quick or switched on as it usually was. He said he doubted my intelligence and commitment. Ouch!
If something is important enough, I’ll get up for it… but (and I speak for all the people in the “other” time zones)… a bit of time consideration would be great. You never know… it might even boost attendance as well.
Some people continue to wear blinkers though.
When I’ve spoken to people about these issues form a Global perspective, they say, “But I only write for Companies in the U.S” and you might think that gives them a pass… but it doesn’t. Where are their clients coming from? (Fair enough if they are regional companies, but many are not.) Global businesses need a Global Mindset… and a Global Heartbeat.
U.S English may be the accepted “norm” for the Internet and social media… but it doesn’t make it the only language used (And it only happened because of the default spell check is set to US English and people not knowing how to change it).
Being mindful of how your message is received is important if you are going to be understood and obeyed. And isn’t that what we want as marketers and copywriters… to be obeyed? e.g. “Click Here”… “Buy Now”… “Read More”
When it comes to communicating with the Global Village, I know one thing for sure…
Because I know my whole audience and what their everyday life is like, I will not be seen as the Village Idiot.
…But sadly, I can’t say the same for others.
Thinking everyone is like you or has to be like you is a dangerous place to live in this fast moving, ever changing village.
So are you aware of how you speak online? How set in your ways are you? Can you be clearer with the way you communicate? Do you consider other people’s time zones?
Until next week, be safe, take care and be Global!
Pauline xxx
Pauline Longdon
a.k.a. “The Copy Alchemist”
P.S. I had some drongo going off like a frog in a sock about his marketing the other arvo. He said it was a sandwich short of a picnic and was going down like a lead balloon. He wanted me to have a Squizzy Taylor at it for him. Although he’s a bloody flamming galah and got me smack dab in the middle of smoko, I took a quick squiz for him. It was a right royal Barry Crocker! It was as useless as tits on a bull! But before I could tell him what the problem was… he did the Harold Holt on me.
Yes, this is English and it’s a great example of regionalized jargon. But the thing is… you don’t see me filling up the interwebs with it (Although it would be a cracker if I did! I think the way Aussies speak is hilarious!).
I even change the way I physically speak when I’m in the U.S. so people can understand me (I heard Rebel Wilson copies me. She said in an interview that she can only do it for a few hours though because it hurts her jaw. Same with me). Now, I’m not selling out on who I am… I am just helping people to understand me. And isn’t that what it’s all about? Being understood.
P.P.S. I’ve seen people on FB criticize the Aussie accent and say it is the most disgusting accent on the planet. Often times this comment accompanies a video… which is of a Kiwi (New Zealander) speaking. Their accent is nothing like ours. (This is another case of not caring to know there’s a difference.)
But have you heard some of the accents in the U.S.? Us Aussies and Kiwi’s have nothing to worry about. My whole philosophy is… people in glass Taj Mahals should not throw stones.
P.P.P.S. * Hyperthermia is high temperature and Hypothermia is a low temperature. But the media often say that people who have spent the night in freezing conditions were suffering from Hyperthermia. It’s lazy and dumb. Spelling matters.
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