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The content of evangelism

I’m often asked about my job as a content strategy evangelist. What do I do? What’s the job about?  

Very little has been published about the role of evangelism within enterprises and there’s no standard way that evangelism is practiced. Evangelism can easily be confused with other roles, and not everyone who calls themselves an evangelist necessarily embodies of the principles of evangelism.

In my experience at Kontent.ai as their content strategy evangelist over the past several years, I’ve been aware there’s no template for how to do this. Which is very fitting, because evangelism’s focus is on blazing new paths, not in following a checklist of tasks. To be effective at evangelism requires you to define what it is you need to communicate and why it’s important to others.

 Evangelism can bring a unique perspective that other roles don’t address in a sustained way. What makes evangelism special?

Evangelism is about change

My job title of content strategy evangelist is an amalgam of two distinct roles that are rarely combined. To my knowledge, I am the first person in the content management software industry to have this role

My role combines different ends of the communications spectrum.  

As a content strategist, I am focused on the enterprise-wide coordination of digital communications — delivering content at scale.

As an evangelist, I am focused on personal-scale communications, addressing a small cadre of professionals who are responsible for their organization’s content strategy. I communicate to a select group of content leaders, through conference presentations, panel discussions at meet-ups, podcast interviews, and a range of writings. 

Evangelism aims to change the status quo by changing people’s ideas about established practices. The evangelist introduces new ideas to people who might benefit from them.  

I often must distill wide ranging and sometimes nuanced ideas. I see my mission as having two related aspects:

  • To articulate the promise offered by a new way of managing enterprise content
  • To do everything in my power to ensure every stakeholder involved can deliver on that promise

The evangelist’s goals are both lofty and broad. It’s challenging for any single person to direct such change. But I don’t believe you can be successful if your motivation is transactional, such as getting a certain number of people to take a certain action.  

My goal is not to get everyone to agree with me but to help motivated individuals change how they work successfully. Unlike traditional marketing, evangelism can’t be boiled down to a few success metrics, because evangelism aims to influence long-term processes rather than short-term events.

Evangelism differs from traditional corporate roles in numerous ways. For one thing, it involves discussing issues rather than a specific product. The issues typically involve the situational context in which a product might be used. My focus is on rethinking how people do things before getting into the details of what they do. I notice a growing number of people calling themselves “product evangelists” but in most cases these are traditional product marketing and promotion roles dressed up in trendier job title.

Secondly, the evangelist introduces new concepts for addressing an issue. The concept must be new and not simply a small improvement over standard practices (otherwise, it’s not evangelism but ordinary content marketing). It will be unfamiliar to most people and will require explaining. And the concept must be practical, providing tangible benefits. Evangelists are not asking people to sponsor a moonshot venture. They are offering a plausible future that the adopter can use and adapt to suit their needs. 

Business evangelism isn’t new — but it’s growing

 For several decades firms have hired staff evangelists, especially in technical areas. But more recently, the evangelist job title has become more common and diverse. As businesses rethink how they operate and deliver services — a epoch broadly referred to as “digital transformation” — they are looking at and evaluating new options. 

Numerous companies are introducing innovations to enable the transformation of enterprise practices. They need staff who can explain how customers to make use of these innovations. Before you can realize product-market fit, the market needs to understand what you are offering.

Before the current era of digital transformation was the era of computers in every home. Apple is credited with introducing evangelism to the software industry. The first highly visible corporate evangelist was Guy Kawasaki, then an employee at Apple in the 1980s, who donned the title of evangelist for a few years. He subsequently wrote a book, Selling the Dream, marketing his brand of evangelism, which he claimed to have been based upon the preaching style of the Reverend Billy Graham. Kawasaki drew attention to the term “evangelism” — and its contested meaning — outside the religious context. But he was (and is) a bad example of what evangelism should be about. Contrary to Kawasaki, evangelists aren’t selling a nebulous “dream.”  They are raising awareness of innovative solutions to current problems.

Evangelism is about building interest, not building buzz

Seemingly everyone wants to “make noise” these days, which is a problem. It’s a noisy world out there. Noise-making doesn’t accomplish much.

In contrast to vanity driven approaches that emphasize form over substance, evangelism avoids empty public relations or branding tactics. It aims for more enduring changes in how people think about issues.

Apple’s novice evangelist, Guy Kawasaki, acted more like a brand ambassador promoting Apple products than a true evangelist promoting a distinct point of view. His role was channel existing enthusiasm for Apple that was generated by the company’s founder, Steve Jobs. If fans couldn’t meet with Steve, they got Guy as a consolation. Kawasaki was a figurehead: a cheerleader ginning up a reverential customer base.  For those who remember those days, Apple was far from its behemoth status of today. It was a small company that managed to have a cult-like following. People routinely compared Apple at the time to a cult, with all the baggage that term implies — its fans could be obnoxious zealots prone to demean non-believers with harsh words. The closest current example I can think of are the Tesla fanboys who hero-worship and defend Elon Musk no matter what his shenanigans. It’s a bad template for winning hearts and changing minds.

Evangelism thus needs to be contrasted with evangelicalism or building an army of followers. The goal of evangelism isn’t to promote a rigid set of beliefs or allegiance to a person or brand. Rather, evangelism expresses a conviction about possibilities. It should promote reflection and agency, not doctrinal conformity.

In lieu of doctrine, the essence of evangelism is passion and insight.

To be heard and believed, you need to care deeply about what you talk about. When the legendary chef Julia Child died, her New York Times obituary described her as an evangelist for French food. That passion for the subject, without the self-promoting and personal branding, puts her in stark contrast to today’s “celebrity chefs”, who sell themselves as licensing ventures for spin off products. Julia Child communicated not just her love of French cooking, but let her audience understand why she cared so much about it and why they should as well. Beyond being a talented cook and explainer, she was a brilliant evangelist.

Evangelists must also be contrasted with “influencers” who position themselves as role models or identity-based personalities. Influencers trade on their personal popularity and name recognition, which means that maintaining and growing their popularity is their currency and their goal. 

Unless the influencer has staked their popularity on some position they’ve taken (as contrarian or campaigner), the ideas of the influencer are not the focus of attention. In many cases, the influencer has a tenuous connection to any idea, much like the celebrities who endorse any product that matches the demographic target of their followers. Many brands worry that the influencers they hire could voice problematic opinions that might embarrass the brand.

Evangelism builds on reputation

Everything that an evangelist says and does reflects back on their personal reputation and that of their employer.

Success in evangelism depends on the affinity between the person and the message.  

Evangelism not about a doctrine that can be debated independently of any person, because the ideas are too fresh and evolving to be codified as canonical texts or widely accepted truths. Evangelists discuss the future; they don’t debate the past.

At the same time, evangelism is about more than personal branding, or playing a role (the Marcus Welby phenomenon). An evangelist is more than simply a spokesperson.

The evangelist should be primarily known for the ideas they promote. The famous newscaster Walter Cronkite was widely trusted because he didn’t promote an overt agenda. An evangelist, by contrast, is trusted because of their convictions about an explicit agenda.

Credibility is an essential quality of an evangelist. The evangelist will be recognized as a thought leader. Perhaps the most eminent evangelist is Vint Cerf, considered one of the fathers of the internet in the 1970s who later joined Google as internet evangelist and Vice President. The internet may be over 40 years old, but its dynamism means that much about it is still evolving and undecided. It’s valuable to understand the background that has shaped the junctures we face today, which includes digital governance and the next generation of internet protocols. Evangelism is needed.

Evangelists introduce innovative ideas and highlight why they are appealing  

Other roles may promote points of view. But they differ from the evangelist.

Unlike an advocate, who asks others to support a well established position, an evangelist promotes something less well known and asks the listener not only to support the concept, but to adopt it, practice it, and embrace its consequences. 

Promoting change is hard to do and potentially risky.  If overly assertive, the would-be evangelist comes across as pushy or rigid. 

Evangelism must also be distinguished from activism, where winning can be more important than principles, and opponents can be attacked as villains. There’s little benefit in building a small army of followers if a far larger group thinks you’re a jerk. Evangelists must show they’re on the side of most people.

Evangelists are inclusive

The evangelist champions ideas they expect will have broad appeal for the group they are trying to reach.  

They must avoid setting up a “Marmite taste challenge” for their views, where people react to the ideas as they would to the taste of yeast spread: they either love it or hate it. An evangelist will be inclusive, not polarizing.

While evangelists don’t court controversy — being provocative for the sake of it —they can’t avoid engaging with detractors.  Ideas, by their nature, can be contested. And sometimes, old ideas that have outlasted their usefulness turn out to be the detracting competition.

Evangelists aim to disrupt the status quo because they believe the status quo isn’t working well. Those who defend legacy thinking may want to engage in ideological or theological debates, arguing that the established way anticipated everything that is needed and is therefore better. For them, the stakes might be high: employee skillsets and entire businesses can feel threatened by alternative ways of working championed by the evangelist.  

It’s important to not engage in winner-versus-loser thinking that’s common in much social discourse today. Those who are invested in the status quo will often take the position of “originalists,” contending that the decisions of the past were perfectly informed and have served everyone just fine, thank you. Moreover, the detractors will assert, these practices have been codified as “best practices” or are enshrined in some standard drafted by a committee two or three decades ago. There’s no need to change anything. It’s been written down as doctrine.

Originalists dismiss new alternatives in one of several ways. As:

1. Fads that will be quickly forgotten because they offer no real value

2. Deceptive marketing ploys that are potentially dangerous (and will be remembered in infamy)

3. Phantom novelty that doesn’t deserve attention because it’s a case of putting worthy old wine in modish new bottles

The careful observer will note that these criticisms are mutually inconsistent. 

With the third interpretation — concerning phantom novelty — the original practices supposedly already do everything the new one offers, but people don’t see this because the terminology differs. This stylistics defense can prompt a stylistics update. Defenders of original practices may update their terminology in an effort to make it more appealing and contemporary sounding. When they do this, they manage to do what they complain about: putting old wine in new bottles.  

New ideas invariably invite skepticism, as they should. Not all new ideas are good, much less better. But…

What’s new about a concept can sometimes be hard for industry veterans to recognize. Thery’re invested and habituated in thinking about things a certain way. It’s important to keep highlighting what’s different about new practices, because there can be resistance to accepting that newer ideas are viable options. Few truly novel ideas are instantly recognized as superior. It takes repeated elaboration for the value of an idea to become clear to different people. If you are genuinely convinced of the value of what you propose, there’s nothing disrespectful about evangelizing your position, even if not everyone is ready to accept it. 

A familiar challenge is finding a common ground between old and new practices. It may be tempting to gloss over differences and emphasize similarities, but this approach can hide critical conceptual distinctions that have a big impact.  

Focus instead on how organizations can adapt to changing practices. Sometimes implementing sudden wholesale change is not the best option for an organization.  

Evangelists are generous, not competitive, with their knowledge

Evangelism is not about promoting a cult of expertise. Evangelists shouldn’t be viewed as a know-it-all authority who has solved all issues and has the final answer to everything. Nor should they act like a mansplaining pundit who states the obvious.  

An evangelist is an explorer. Topics they address are on the edge of emerging practices. They advocate a new direction, not a cookie cutter solution.

An evangelist doesn’t work from talking points. They are an reflective thinkers, able to consider each unique situation in light of how they look at issues more generally. They don’t impose an approved way of dealing with these issues.  Rather, they seek new avenues to consider them.

As an evangelist I offer advice freely, without obligation, in contrast my previous work as a consultant. It won’t of course be as specific to a client’s situation as it would be when provided in a consulting engagement — I’m certainly not trying to put consultants out of work. But I do aim to provide the same level of trust in the advice I offer. In so doing, I help our clients become successful. 

Evangelists help people navigate uncertainties associated with transitions

Evangelist aren’t prophets or play the role of “seer.” They won’t forecast the inevitability of certain trends because they understand they don’t control them. A credible evangelist will avoid making bold predictions, which can devolve into “wishcasting” — statements of hopes rather than informed assessments of likelihoods. But they will be aware of current and past trends in their field and can draw on that knowledge to construct plausible scenarios.

An evangelist knows trends because he or she is directly participating in them. They see how early adopters are exploring new possibilities and are aware of the challenges that face the “early majority” who may have less knowledge or passion about new approaches. They also see the potential unlocked by wider adoption, where more infrastructure, learning, and synergies can unlock possibilities difficult to realize at the moment.

This hand-on perspective stands in contrast to the outsider viewpoint of industry analysts. Anyone pronouncing the next wave is probably not directly in the trenches building that wave. Too many industry analysts operate at a level of abstraction that is detached from the practical issues business folks are trying to solve. Hype cycles aren’t helpful. 

Evangelists are authentic

No organization is going to change how they do their daily work based on a short fluffy pitch. Evangelists need more than a 30-second elevator pitch or a 20-slide PechaKucha deck to change long entrenched ways of doing things. But given the transactional orientation of most business communications, many people confuse gaining attention with gaining agreement and commitment.  Evangelism is a long game. Success comes from getting commitment.  

Evangelists must go beyond the TED Talk formula — telling a scripted story about the one event that made the speaker realize something fundamental that would change their life. The first time you hear it, it sounds compelling. The third time you hear it, it sounds contrived — spun-up for the speaking circuit, and repeated because it gets a reaction from the live audience. But those who become interested in the topic start to wonder: what else is there beyond this one shopworn story? If it sounds too easy or too good, it likely is. Elizabeth Holmes, the recently convicted startup fraudster, mastered the life story pitch. If your message sounds contrived, it will hurt you sooner or later.

Evangelists acknowledge the messiness of change, and the challenges of unlearning legacy habits and practices. 

They can’t gain credibility if they are too rehearsed and tell too tidy a story and gloss over the realities people will confront.   Their authenticity is grounded in realism and based on their first-hand experiences.

Evangelists are trusted

Trust is based on many factors.  As mentioned earlier, you need credibility. People must respect your expertise about an issue. You must have things to say that seem worth listening to.

You gain trust when you are earnest and helpful.  And you won’t be truly helpful if your primary focus is on promoting oneself or your firm’s products. Plenty of sales and marketing roles promote products and can provide useful information for product buyers. The evangelist’s focus is different, and shouldn’t try to duplicate that work.

Evangelists don’t only speak and share information, they listen. I learn important insights through the trust I’ve earned with people. An evangelist belongs to a community who share a common cause in improving how to solve challenging issues by applying emerging practices.  

Evangelists gain trust by acknowledging what they don’t know. That’s easy for me because the issues I talk about are bigger than me individually. I’m often gratified to hear insights I haven’t previously considered during my discussions with peers.

It’s equally important to avoid mystification, such as suggesting that outcomes depend on so many variables that the listener couldn’t possibly understand how they all interact. The evangelist has failed if they ever suggest people won’t be able to understand what they are proposing.

Making changes involves moving into the unknown. Evangelists should inspire confidence that clients can incrementally master the granular issues and details they don’t yet grasp. But they should never make them feel they must buy into an idea that seems too magical to be ever comprehended fully.

Evangelists offer original thinking 

I believe that the quality of ideas has a huge influence on the outcomes that organizations achieve. Yet it’s hard to see much difference in the quality of ideas that various firms voice.

Firms work hard to make their products seem different, but few demonstrate leadership in their approach to the core issues their customers face. They lack a distinct point of view about how to solve issues.

As a content strategist, I’m keenly aware that we live in a content-saturated world that’s burdened by the sameness of group think. The internet is cluttered with copycat content optimized for clicks on social media and search results. Many organizations put much of their energies into continually shifting their tactics to game better results. All this content promises answers but too often disappoints once viewed.

We now face a existential reckoning regarding the tangible value of content. In recent months, we’ve watched the spread of generative AI such as GPT-3+ chatbots into the mainstream. Generative AI can instantly refashion legacy content into new content that superficially appears original but in reality is derivative.  

How can firms expect to be market leaders if their content is derivative copycat content? What’s the value of content if content is now “free”? Why should we care about it?

The burning issue no longer is the value of content in terms of its cost to make — it can be generated by robots on demand at little cost. Now the urgent question is how to develop truly original content that will stand out amidst the sea of synthetic content.

As a content strategist, I think intensively about the distinctive qualities of content and what makes content stand out in the herd of sameness. Good writing, while important, is not the decisive factor in how impactful content will be. Rather, it’s the quality of the ideas and information.

Few organizations realize the illusive goal of “thought leadership.” Yet the longing to be recognized as a thought leader highlights the premium that firms place on original thinking.

Readers want to learn things they don’t already know. They want perspectives that will challenge their assumptions so that they can be sure they are making the best choices.

Some companies commission external research agencies to develop original content because they lack that capacity in-house. And some companies will hope that AI will fill their thought leadership deficit. They would do better to hire a proper evangelist.

One sign that my work as an evangelist has been successful is when it gets emulated by competitors.  Once, my firm’s largest direct competitor copied a complex diagram I had created to explain a concept and, after changing the colors to match their branding, published it in their website (it was subsequently taken down). While outright plagiarism is rare, the copycat phenomenon is ever present.

Evangelists show relevance through meaning

An evangelist helps people clarify the complexity that they face.  

When learning about new options, people want to know what does this new practice mean for them, personally? How will they apply it?

Employees need to understand how concepts work in order to be able to apply them. Business history is littered with waves of changes that were driven by outsiders (investors, advisors, outsource consultants, etc) who imposed change on organizations without the rank and file ever fully understanding their details. The leadership in charge never “owned” the change and was never able to direct and control its evolution.

Until someone actually tries a new practice, they must rely on their imagination to envision how it works. They need examples or analogies that will engage their imagination.

Everyone faces different situations and has had distinct experiences, so no single example will fit every person’s unique use case. People will need to translate ideas to apply them to their own situations. Only once people feel they grasp a new concept because they’ve applied their own thoughts and perspectives to it will they be prepared to implement it.

An evangelist must know their audience and identify with their needs. They must be able engage people by sparking their curiosity. They’ll consider how to make the topic personally interesting in some way to the listener. That requires them to apply their own imagination and to develop deep empathy for those they are speaking to.

— Michael Andrews

Categories
Storytelling

Getting to know Indian English

As I prepare to leave India after nearly three years here, I’m reflecting on the many things that make India special.  The role of language, especially the use of English, is one of them.

More than a hundred million Indians speak English to some degree.  Yet surprisingly little has been written about Indian English.  Indian English is a distinct dialect of English. In theory, English speakers in India follow British English as specified in the Oxford or Longman English dictionaries.  In practice, Indians use many words and phrases that don’t exist in British or American English.

Indian English seems to lack its own identity, unlike the English in countries such as New Zealand, which has a population the size of a medium size Indian city.  When I lived in New Zealand, I was able to buy an Oxford Dictionary of New Zealand English that contained a handful of special kiwi words such as jandals (India’s favorite kind of footwear.)  But there’s no dictionary of Indian English, even though there are hundreds or even thousands of words and phrases that are unique, or have unique meaning, in Indian English. 

English has a unique role in India.  It is not one of the 22 “scheduled” languages that are constitutionally recognized and supported. (“Scheduled” as a specific meaning in Indian English: acts of national government have schedules.)  Yet English is an official language of government.  While it is the first language of a small minority of people, it is often is a second or third language that people learn in school.  It is a national language but culturally, a foreign language.  Perhaps that is why Indians feel it less important to codify Indian English, while the Canadians may want to define the distinct features of Canadian English, or the Australians or the Irish want to do so with their dialects. 

Indian English as Global English

Indian English is a growing presence within global English. If you doubt that, consider IBM.  IBM is headquartered in the United States, and considered an American company.  But IBM has more employees in India than in the US or any other country.  That pattern is increasingly true for many multinationals.  Their employees in India outnumber employees elsewhere.

 Today, most speakers of English throughout the world are not native speakers.  And India is on course to become the country with the largest population, and possibly, the country with the most English speakers.  All of us should become familiar with features of Indian English.  We will likely encounter them sooner or later.  

“India now claims to be the world’s second-largest English-speaking country. The most reliable estimate is around 10% of its population or 125 million people, second only to the US and expected to quadruple in the next decade.”

BBC

Features of Indian English

Three features of Indian English stand out to me.  First, one hears (or even more often, reads) usage that seems archaic compared with contemporary American or British English.  For example, an office within a high rise building may be referred to as a cabin, while customer demand is referred to patronage.  

Footfall is increasing after peaking in the late 1800s

The second feature is the use of Hindi words within English.  This is known as “Hinglish” — India’s equivalent of the “Singlish” spoken in Singapore.  In some parts of India people speak or write in Hindi sentences sprinkled with a few English words.  In other regions, or in print, the core sentence is in English with a few Hindi words or phrases included. Either way, the meaning is not obvious unless one understands the Hindi references.  

Mixing vocabulary is a common occurrence in many languages.  The French borrow English words, and vice versa.  One would expect Indian English to incorporate Hindi words.  Even British and American English have incorporated a number of Indic words, including such favorites as pajamas, juggernaut, and thug.   (For the linguistically curious, there’s also something called Indian French, spoken by a few thousand people in former French territories in India, that incorporates various words from different languages into French.)  

New words and meanings

The third feature of Indian English — by far the most interesting — is the invention of new words or meanings.  For example, Indian oil companies may refer to petrol or gasoline as “motor spirits.”  A plastic surgery clinic may refer to hair loss as “hairfall”– as though it were snowfall.  

Indian English may even be trendsetting

There are a handful of words that routinely appear in the workplace that are worth learning.    

  • Do the needful (do what is required, or take care of it): “The customer has a complaint. Do the needful.”
  • Updation (for updating or revision):  “Please await updation of the forms.”
  • Doubt (for question): “Do you have any doubts about what I’ve said?”
  • Upgradation (for enhancement): “The airport is undergoing upgradation.”
  • Felicitate/Felicitation (to publicly recognize): “We’d like to felicitate our guest speaker.  I’d like to ask Sri Devi join us on stage for the facilitation.”
  • Interaction (for discussion):  “The eminent scientist had an interaction with the students.”
  • Revert (for reply):  “Read the attached email and revert to me.”
  • Prepone (to schedule earlier):  “Let’s prepone the meeting for tomorrow morning.”

Concepts trump words

Sign in the mall last weekend

Even when words in Indian English seem to deviate from conventional usage, they often have a certain logic to them, if considered as the expression of a concept.  English is full of words that have acquired specific connotations that are strange when examined.  And word formations, especially the attachment of suffixes, are often idiosyncratic.  

I hope Indian English gains more recognition.  Maybe Oxford can create a dictionary of Indian English.  

— Michael Andrews

Categories
Storytelling

The Lazy Person’s Guide to Text Wrangling

Writing in plain text is increasingly popular. Writers of all kinds are adopting Markdown, the plain text writing format. They swear by the zen-like benefits of writing in plain text. WYSIWYG isn’t cool any more. Yet little attention has been given to how to work with plain text when editing material originating from many different sources.  The growing popularity of plain text opens new opportunities for the creative reuse of text content, because plain text is inherently portable, able to move between different applications easily. This post will describe how to edit plain text content when different sources provide raw text that is used to develop new content.

Reusing and repurposing text is helpful in many situations.  For a personal side project, I’ve been exploring content design options, using representative content, for a prototype.  I want to reuse public information from different sources and in different formats (e.g., lists, tables, descriptive paragraphs). This content offers possibilities to combine and remix information to highlight specific themes. Even if I were a fast and accurate typist, retyping large volumes of text that already exists is not desirable or feasible.  Cutting and pasting text is tedious, especially if the text is formatted.  I wanted better tools to manipulate text encoded in different formats, and change the structure of the content.

Digital text is generally not plain text.  Digital formats can, however, be converted to some flavor of plain text.  Content designers may acquire digital text that exists as HTML, as CSV (a barebones spreadsheet), and even as PDF.  Each format involves implicit forms of structure, at various levels of granularity.  CSV assumes tabular information.  Plain text assumes linear information.  HTML can describe text content that contains different levels of information:

  • Names, words, dates, numbers and other discrete strings
  • Phrases that combine several strings together
  • Sentences
  • Paragraphs
  • Headings and other structural elements

We can edit and fine tune all these levels using plain text.  Text wrangling makes it possible.

What is Text Wrangling?

Text wrangling converts and transforms information at different levels of granularity.  For example, information in a list could be converted into a table, or vice versa.  Text wrangling can restructure and renarrate information. It can also clean up content from different sources, such as standardizing spelling or wording.

Word processors (Word, iA writer, Scrivener, etc.) are designed for people writing fresh content.  They aren’t designed to support the reuse and repurposing of existing content.  When trying to manipulate text, word processors are rather clumsy.  Word processors fail when wanting to:

  • Generate content variations
  • Explore alternative wordings
  • Make multiple changes simultaneously
  • Ingest content from different sources that may be in different formats
  • Clean up text acquired from different sources.

Text wrangling differs from normal editing.  Instead of editing a single document, text wrangling involves gathering text from many sources, and rewriting and consolidating that text into a unified document or content repository.  Text wrangling applies large scale changes to text, by automating some low level transformations.  It uses functionality available in different applications to reduce typing and cut-and-paste operations.  This editing occurs during a “pre-drafting” phase, before the text evolves into a readable “draft”.  Editors can wrangle “raw” text fragments, to define themes and structures, and unify editorial consistency.

Tools for Text Wrangling

Many applications have useful features to wrangle plain text.   Ironically, none of these applications was designed for writers; most were designed for coders or data geeks.  As writing in plain text becomes more popular (in Markdown, Textile, AsciiDoc, or reStructuredText), more people are using coding tools to write.  These tools have enhanced editing features lacking in word processors, particularly the many “distraction free” apps designed for writing in Markdown.

Because none of the wrangling applications was designed specifically for text prose, no one application does everything I want. I use a combination of tools, and switch between them, depending on which is easiest to use for a specific purpose.  That sounds complicated, but it isn’t.  Plain text can be opened in many applications, and can be copied easily between them.

I use three kinds of tools to rework text:

  1. Spreadsheets (Google Sheets, Excel)
  2. Text editors that are primarily designed for coders (TextWrangler, Brackets, Sublime Text)
  3. Global utilities that are available to use within any application (TextSoap, Paste).

Before I share some tips, a few caveats (remember, I promised a lazy approach). These tips are not a comprehensive review of available apps and functionality.  Other apps provide alternative approaches, and some will be unknown to me. Because I use a Mac, my experience is limited to that platform  My preferences are motivated by a desire to find an easy way to perform a text task, without needing to learn anything fiddly.  Most developers would use something called Regex scripting to clean text, which is a powerful option for those comfortable with scripting.  I’ve opted for a quick and dirty approach, even if it is occasionally a messy one.  Lastly, apologies to my tech writer friends for my bloggerly presentation — I’m assuming everyone can locate more specific instructions elsewhere.   You’ll learn more from a Google search than I can provide you through a single link.

General Approach to Wrangling Plain Text

The basic approach to text wrangling is to work with lines of text.  Text editors organize text by line, as do spreadsheets (which call them rows). To take advantage of the functionality these tools offer, we convert text into lines.  Everything, whether a word, a sentence, a paragraph or a heading, can become a line that can be transformed.  Lines can be split, and they can be joined, to form different levels of meaning.

All text can be considered as a line, that can be transformed into different structures
All text can be considered as a line, which can be transformed into different structures

Some lines of text are just words or phrases — these lines are lists.  Some lines are complete sentences.  Working with sentences on separate lines is flexible.  It is easier to perform operations on sentences, such as changing the capitalization, when each sentence is on a separate line.  It is also easier to reorder sentences.  When finished with editing, individual sentences can be joined together into paragraphs.  Brackets has a “Join Lines” function (an extension) that makes it easy.  Just highlight all the lines you want joined together, and they become a single line of several sentences forming a paragraph.

Stripping out HTML and other markup

The first task is to get the content into plain text.  Working in plain text makes it easy to focus on the text.   If you have text content that’s encoded in HTML, you’ll want to get it into plain text, without all the distracting markup.  Even if you are comfortable reading HTML, you’ll find CSS and Javascript markup that’s irrelevant to the text.

Sometimes you can get plain text by selecting the “Reader View” in your browser, and copying or emailing the text and saving it.  Alternatively, you may be able to acquire tabular or structured text on websites from within Google Sheets, using “ImportXML” or “ImportHTML”.  These functions take a moment to learn, but can be very helpful when you need to get a little bit of text from many different webpages.

When you are working with text files instead of live content, you want a way to directly clean the text without having to first view it in a browser.  Open the file in text editor, highlight text, and use TextSoap to strip out the HTML markup.  TextSoap is a handy app that can clean text, and can be used with any Mac application.

Breaking Apart Phrases

Phrases are the foundation of sentences, labels, and headings.  If you need to wordsmith many words or phrases, it may be easiest to get these into a list, and work with them in a spreadsheet.  A list is essentially a one column spreadsheet.  By breaking apart the text in one column into different columns, you can modify different segments of the text, changing their order, standardizing wording and formatting, or extracting a sub-string of text within a longer string.  A common, simple example relates to people’s names.  Do you want to list an author’s name as a single phrase (“Ellen B. Smith”)? Or would you like to separate given name(s) and family name?  What order to you want the given names and surnames?

Spreadsheets can split or extract the text in one column into one or more new columns.  You can create a new column for each distinct word, which allows you to group-edit distinct words.  Or you may want to extract and put into a new column what’s distinctive or unique in each line.

Google Sheets has a function called “Split” that breaks the text in a column into separate columns.  When words are in separate columns, it can be easy to make changes to specific words.  “Substitute” allows specific words to be swapped.  “Replace” allows a sub-string to be changed.

Consolidating Phrases

Spreadsheets are good not just for breaking apart words, but for combining them.  You can take words in different columns on the same row and combine them together using “Join.”  “Concatenate” allows words from different columns and different rows to be combined.   This is an even more flexible option, because it lets you try unlimited combinations of words in different cells.  For example, you could play with different word hierarchies (broader or narrower words on different rows within a single column), or array a range of related verbs or adjectives across a singe row in different columns.  “Concatenate” can enable simple sentence generation.

A different situation occurs when you want to take information that’s within a table, and express it as a list.  A matrix table will have a column header, a row header, and a value associated with the column-row combination.  Suppose you have a table listing rainfall, with the columns representing months, and rows representing years, and the cell representing the amount of rainfall.  This information can be transformed into a single row or line.  In Excel, a function called “Unpivot” does this (Google Sheets lacks this functionality).  It presents all the information in a single row, such as “May | 2017| 2 cm”, which can be joined together.  These values can be transformed further into a list of complete sentences, such as “In May 2017, the rainfall was 2 cm”.  That list of sentences could become the beginning of separate paragraphs that discuss the implications of each month’s rainfall on the local economy.

Removing Redundancy

It’s helpful to put each discrete idea in the text on a separate line.  These may be names of topics, phrases, or facts.  During the text development phase, you’ll want to collect all text strings of interest.  Text wrangling tools can help you collect everything of potential interest, and worry later about whether you’ve already covered these items.

Suppose you need content about all of your products.  You can create a list of all your products, with each product on a separate line.  If you have many product variations that sound similar, it can be confusing to know if it’s already in the list.  If the list is a spreadsheet, it is easy to remove duplicates.  If the list is a text file, TextWrangler has a feature called “Kill Duplicates”.  To spot near-duplicates, sorting the lines will often reveal suspiciously-similar items.

Spotting duplicate or redundant paragraphs takes an extra step.  To compare alternative paragraphs, put them in separate files.  TextWrangler allows you to compare two files using the function “Find Differences”.  Both files are displayed side-by-side, with their differences highlighted.  This approach is more flexible than a word processor, which can assume you want to merge documents, or choose which document is the right one.

Harmonizing Style

A big task when assembling text from many sources is harmonizing the style.  Different texts may use different terminology.

Text editors, like word processors, have “Find and Replace” functionality, but they offer even better tools.  Find and Replace is inefficient because it assumes you have one word you already know you need to replace with another word.  Suppose instead you have many different words referring to the same concept?  Suppose you aren’t sure what would be the best replacement?  This is where the magic of “multiple selections” comes into play.

Brackets’ Multiple Selections feature can let you make many edits at once.  (Sublime Text has a similar feature).  All you need to do is highlight all the words that you want to change.  Then, you type over all the highlighted text at once, and see the changes happen as you type.  Words change on many lines at once, and you can try out different text to decide which works best across different sentences.  And to repeat: the highlighted words being changed don’t need to be the same word.  If you have some sentences that talk about dogs, some sentences that talk about canines, and some sentences that talk about mutts, you can highlight all these words (dogs, canines, mutts), and change them all to “hounds” — before deciding to say “man’s best friend” instead.

Brackets has a related feature called “Multiple Cursors” that is also amazing.  It allows you to place your cursor on multiple lines, and edit multiple lines at once.  Suppose you want to decide the best construction for some headings.  You want to know if saying “{Product X} helps you {Benefit Y}” is best, or “{Product X} makes it possible to {Benefit Y}”.  You list all the products and their respective benefits on separate lines.  Then you can edit all the headings at once, and try out each variation to see which sounds best.

Shifting Perspective

Many wording changes involve changing voice, or flipping emphasis.  Do you want to discuss a task using the imperative “invest” to emphasize action, or by using the gerund “investing” to emphasize a series of activities?  If you have many such tasks, you might want to put them in a list of statements, and try out both options.  You can then decide on a consistent approach.

In addition to the multiple cursor approach, you can edit multiple lines of text using the “Prefix/Suffix” functionality available in TextWrangler.  This allows you to either insert or remove either a prefix or a suffix to a line.  This could be useful with deciding on the wording of headings.  Maybe you want to see what the headings would sound like if they begin “Case Study: ” or whether they should end with “(Case Study)”.

Skeleton Frameworks

Plain text tools can help you reuse text elements again and again.  This can be useful if you have a template or framework you are using to collect text.

Sublime Text has a feature called “Snippets”, where you can store any text you want to reuse, and inject it into any file you are working with.

Another option is a small utility called Paste, which works with any application on a Mac.  It is like a huge clipboard, where you can store large snippets of text, give these snippets names, and reuse them wherever you may need them.

Adding Markup to Plain Text

Plain text is great for writing and editing.  But eventually it will need some markup to become more useful.  Several options are available to turn plain text into web text.

Many writers have adopted Markdown. You can add Markdown syntax to the text, and convert the text to HTML.

You can also add basic HTML elements to plain text using TextSoap, which is a utility that can be used in any Mac application. You simply highlight the words you want to tag, and choose the HTML element you want to use. This option may be desirable if you need elements that aren’t well supported in Markdown.

The most robust option is to use the tagging functionality available in some text editors.  You can add markup using Brackets’s “Surround” extension, where you highlight your text, then define any tagging you want to place around the text.  Sublime Text has a similar feature: “Tag > Wrap Selection.”  These features let you add metadata beyond simple HTML elements; for example, to indicate in what language a phrase is.

Limitations of Text Wrangling

Text wrangling techniques can be handy in many situations, but will be inefficient in others.  They are intended for early content development work.  As I’ve discovered, they can be helpful for assembling text to prototype content.

These techniques aren’t efficient for editing massive content repositories, or editing single documents that aren’t very long.  If you need to migrate large volumes of content, you’ll want some custom scripts written to transform that content appropriately.

Text wrangling focuses on redrafting raw text, rather than collaboration, which will generally get delegated to another platform such as GitHub. Word processing apps offer better support for the review of well-defined drafts, where comments and change tracking are important.  If you are editing or rewriting individual documents, especially in collaboration with others, tools such as Google Docs that track comments will be a better option.

Someday, I hope someone will develop the perfect tool to edit text.  Until then, using a combination of tools is the best option.

—Michael Andrews