England – TechCommGeekMom

It was recently announced that in the UK, the Royal Family was going through a bit of a corporate merger and restructuring, one might say. Her Majesty The Queen is getting up there in age (she’s almost 88 years old), and while she still maintains a full schedule that probably would put people half her age to shame, it was announced that her communications office and the communications office of her son, HRH The Prince of Wales, would be merging. This inferred that 65 year-old Prince Charles, who’s of retirement age himself yet shows no signs of slowing down either, is slowly going to be taking on more affairs of the regency on behalf of his mother. While the Queen has vowed never to abdicate or give up the throne (and if she lasts as long as her own mum, that could be another 15 years), it looks like she might be winding down to a point that she is slowly transitioning the affairs of state to Charles, as well as delegating responsibilities to her grandchildren as well. According to the Sunday Telegraph, “Reports suggest the move should avoid clashes of coverage of royal events as younger royals perform more engagements, and spread expertise in modern media.”

For more information, read this article.

Even HRH Prince Charles is wondering how this transition relates to content strategy. "Do tell, TechCommGeekMom." — Even HRH Prince Charles is wondering how this transition relates to content strategy. “Do tell, TechCommGeekMom.”

So, all this is fine, but what does this have to do with content strategy, you may ask? Simple. This scenario really isn’t that different than any other company having to merge content written by different departments, like that of technical content writers and marketing content writers. Everyone in the merger or restructing needs to speak the same “language”, or to use a better description, they all need to use the same terminology. One of the issues that has been surfaced in recent tech comm talk in conferences and blogs is the idea of “silos”–different departments writing content, but not getting together to make sure that everyone is using the same terminology and language to communicate the company message consistently. This can lead to mixed messages in print, in multimedia, and online very quickly if everyone isn’t on the “same page”. Joe Gollner’s Adobe Day-Lavacon 2013 talk came to mind as I was thinking about this merger, and what it meant to have different departments sending out different messages.

Don't think too hard about it, Prince Harry. It's really not that complicated. — Don’t think too hard about it, Prince Harry. It’s really not that complicated.

So, the merger of the royal communications offices makes total sense, really. In an age where news is spread quickly throughout the internet, especially through social media, it seems like a proactive move on the part of the royals to start this transition. One office will need to juggle multiple products–in this case, the royal family members–by providing a single voice and consistent message to promote their activities or relevance, whether it be in print or by digital means. The royals are already a bit ahead of the curve of many corporations, having already set up fairly active websites and social media presence on the internet. They even have their own YouTube account and several Twitter accounts, for example! The communications offices are already on top of internet media, and this step seems like a modern move that many companies are still hesitant to make. Perhaps the royals, known for being a bit stuffy and overly traditional, might actually be cutting edge, and setting the example of how to move forward in the 21st century.

It’s something to think about.

I mentioned a while ago that I had several writing projects that were coming up, and the first of them is now published! I was asked by the STC-PMC to write a two-part article about the differences and similarities between American and British English. Of course, I think there’s much more to that simple debate, and this is a favorite topic of mine, so I gladly accepted the challenge. The bigger challenge was to try not to write an entire book!

To find the original article, see the January/February 2013 edition of the STC-PMC Newsletter here.

The article itself is below:

Is English an International Language?
Part 1

Is English an international language? Yes…and no. There is no question that English is a predominant global language. Half the world’s technical and scientific periodicals are written in English, as is eighty percent of the information stored in the world’s computers. There is no question that English is the most prominent language on the Internet, which has contributed to its continued spread around the world.

However, among English speakers, there can be huge differences, as if English speakers from different countries actually spoke different languages. The argument is often made that those who speak English do speak the same base language with just a few different spellings or colloquial idioms now and then. This is only partially true. While most of the world thinks of English in terms of American or British English, there’s also Canadian, Indian, Australian, New Zealander and South African versions of English to consider among others. Each version of English has further nuances that distinguish itself from another version. For the most part, an Australian can understand a South African, an American can understand a New Zealander, and someone from India can understand someone from the UK. But there will be moments that any one of those speakers could elicit a bewildered “EH?” amongst themselves in understanding.

Since most countries that speak English as the dominant language or a second language are former British colonies or Commonwealth countries, British English is usually the standard taught in schools. The exception to this, of course, is American English, which is usually taught in the United States and much of Central and South America as a second language. Even so, between American and British English, one would think that with a few small exceptions, they are essentially the same language, right?

What many Americans don’t realize is that British English has enough nuances that in several cases, we can’t understand our British brethren, and vice versa. For example, if a person came up to you in London and mentioned that he had a mate who sold so many crisps from his lorry that the crisps were falling out the boot and bonnet, would you know what that person meant? If you’ve watched a lot of BBC America or read enough books from the UK (as I have), then you might. An American would have to translate what the Londoner said, which was that he had a buddy who sold potato chips out of his truck, and the chips were falling out of the trunk and hood. Another example would be that if an American said that he would lose his pants over a financial deal, a Brit would misunderstand it to mean that the American would be losing his underwear over the deal, as “pants” is used to refer to underwear instead of “trousers” in the UK. Those are just two of many examples of how Brits and Americans don’t necessarily understand each other.

This divide is an important consideration in technical communications. Single-sourcing and translation are a large and continually growing component of technical communications. While software is becoming more intuitive about translating written content into different languages, it’s not flawless. Using a standard commonality in the language would be desired as a result.

See the March/April issue for Part 2.