Best New Year’s Wish for PR Writers

By Don Bates, APR, Fellow PRSA

Every PR writer wants to write better. Every PR manager wants their teams to write better. Every PR client wants the same.

There’s a way to make this happen immediately and for free. You may know of it, but you need to use it. Make it your New Year Writing Resolution. Known as The OWL (Online Writing Lab), it’s housed at Purdue University. https://owl.purdue.edu/index.html 

Although developed for students and faculty, The OWL provides advice, counsel, rules, and guidelines for better PR writing. Here are a few headings to give you a taste of what’s covered: professional, technical writing; writing in engineering; healthcare writing; journalism and journalistic writing, and workplace writing. 

You’re counseled, but you’re also shown. There are templates and examples covering everything from syntax to strategic thinking. There are summaries of the major style guides (AP, APA, Chicago). There are astute advisories such as the following.

Best Advisory for All Writers: The Paramedic Method 

Originally developed by Richard Lanham in Revising Prose to edit any kind of professional writing, the 7-step method will make your prose clearer, more user-centered, and more persuasive. It will also reduce your word count and eliminate the passive voice and redundancies. I read Lanham’s book and applied the method. It changed my writing as nothing before despite the weakness of his own writing.

To apply the method, you take a paragraph or two and do the following:

1. Circle the prepositions (of, in, about, for, onto, into.)
2. Draw a box around [or underline] the “is” verb forms.
3. Ask, “Where’s the action?”
4. Change the “action” into a simple verb.
5. Move the doer into the subject (Who’s kicking whom).
6. Eliminate any unnecessary slow wind-ups.
7. Eliminate any redundancies.

Try It Now

Use the method in the sentences below to practice making your sentences more concise. Check your results against the concise solutions.

1. The point I wish to make is that the employees working at this company are in need of a much better manager of their money.
2. It is widely known that the engineers at Sandia Labs have become active participants in the Search and Rescue operations in most years.
3. After reviewing the results of your previous research, and in light of the relevant information found within the context of the study, there is ample evidence for making important, significant changes to our operating procedures.

Concise Solutions

1. This company’s employees need a better money manager. (Original word count: 25. New word count: 8). 
2. Sandia Labs’ engineers have participated in the Search and Rescue operations for most years. (Original word count: 23. New word count: 14).
3. After reviewing your research results, we found ample evidence for making significant changes in our operating procedures. (Original word count: 35. New word count:17).

Yes, these sentences could be recast to make them better, but the primary purpose of the Paramedic Method is to help us shorten what we’ve already written, not rewrite from scratch, although that is often what occurs once we take the 7 steps. 

In 2025, may your writing and the writing of those around you be better by consulting the Purdue OWL and by nursing what you write so it’s healthier for all concerned. 

Don Bates, APR, Fellow PRSA, conducts PR-writing workshops and individual and group PR writing consultations.