A publisher in a palaver

‘Our business is publishing’, Springer boasts on their homepage, a claim that’s short, direct and smashingly assertive. They’re not just saying that they have a business-like dedication to publishing: they’re also saying that the business of publishing is dedicated to them. Springer’s the boss and other publishers should budge over.

If only the rest of their writing was so sharp. Some is nonsense, like this line from their Company Information page:

The world is full of publishers. Some move forward, some go backward, and some even seem to go nowhere at all. But at Springer we move in our own unique way.

I would love to know more about how uniquely Springer moves. Do they drift up into the blue yonder? Do they scuttle sideways like corporate crabs? It is, I have to say, a brave company that admits it doesn’t go forward.

Corporate crabs in the paper industry

But there’s a more recurring fault with their writing than silliness. You can already see the fault in the sentence above. It’s that they carpet-bomb the reader with information, giving every angle and perspective and fact that they can think of. Here’s another example from their Mission Statement. Gird your loins: it’s a slog.

Throughout the world, we provide scientific and professional communities with superior specialist information – produced by authors and colleagues across cultures in a nurtured collegial atmosphere of which we are justifiably proud. [...]

We think ahead, move fast and promote change: creative business models, inventive products, and mutually beneficial international partnerships have established us as a trusted supplier and pioneer in the information age.

I know that this is a buffet of blunders, not the least of which is that their mission statement isn’t a statement of mission. But, for the purposes of this post, let’s focus on the carpet-bombing. The first sentence alone talks about their global reach, their collegial production environment, and the superiority of their information. Why are they doing this, and does it help?

I think they’re doing it because it’s the only way they know to differentiate themselves from other publishers. Loads of publishers provide universities with specialist information, so Springer has to provide scientific and professional communities with superior specialist information. Theirs is a simplistic more-is-more philosophy.

It’s the same problem I’ve had when writing Covering Letters for job applications. They’re bad pieces of writing almost by definition. To distinguish yourself from other applicants you have to have to cram in every fact and facet of your excellence. You can either mention your Cycling Proficiency Level 2 certificate, or you can write elegantly. More often than not, I end up writing like Springer, locked in an arms race of verbiage.

Now, in military arms races countries need to compete to make more sticks and sharper sticks (or Dreadnoughts or atomic bombs). But the thing is that if you’re writing copy for websites, only sharpness helps. When Springer stuffs more adjectives and ideas into sentences, it doesn’t make them more effective. It just makes their ideas more confused. It’s like trying to make your meal more tasty by adding every spice in your rack. You just end up bewildering the flavour.

A visual representation of Springer's style

And then there’s the speed at which they flick through their ideas. No reader can take in that many things at that rate. It’s like doing hyper-speed dating with concepts: you get half a second to say hi to each concept and then never see it again. Concepts need longer to ingratiate themselves with readers, to smile warmly and pat the reader’s hand.

So how might Springer go about writing more sharply? Well, fewer and slower. They could work out which are the best of their ideas, and make sure that each of those ideas gets a paragraph to itself. Everything else, however nice it might be, should get the chop. It would help to sharpen things too if, in addition to each paragraph being a unity, all the paragraphs together had a unity of focus. The focus was meant to be the company’s Mission Statement, but that got lost somewhere, and the Statement ended up just being a flea market of thoughts. In the end, they just need to follow the basic rule of writing: figure out what you want to say, and say it.