When I was 19, I interned for a local newspaper and I wrote several articles for the publication. My boss would edit my articles before they were published, but I would always be somewhat offended when she edited my articles because she would unintentionally take out my personal spin on the topic I was writing about. I was too scared to actually say something back then, and it's a shame because I'm sure she had no idea what she was doing. She was altering my voice as a writer.
As someone who still writes in her spare time, I have found it to be extremely interesting to analyze the way that others choose to write. So, what dictates someones voice? I have chosen to analyze a popular blog in the world of public relations: Peter Shankman.
Peter Shankman is a world renowned entrepreneur, speaker and author. His expertise is in business, communications and public relations. In his blog, he writes about his opinions and thoughts, while also giving advice that can help those who work in the business and communications fields.
To show you his voice, I'm going to analyze two of his most recent posts and dissect his writing in each post.
1." Follow Them: People Who Piss Me Off, Volume 2!"
In this post, Shankman is talking about people who essentially piss him off. According to him, there are two types of people that piss you off: the annoying pests (mosquitoes) and people who motivate you. He chose to write about the people who motivate him and piss him off at the same time - if that makes any sense?
Let's take this excerpt from the post:
"Ryan Shell, you piss me off pretty much every damn day. You took an idea you had and turned it into a company. OK, I've done that. You've made it successful. Well, I've done that too. But you do it with a level of number-crunching, testing, and data-analysis that this ADHD poster child couldn't even DREAM of. I treasure our morning bike training rides together because I get to spend 90 minutes working out and learning more during my ride than I could ever learn by getting an MBA. Thank you."
In this excerpt, Shankman is sarcastic and funny, but he also uses capitalization, punctuation and figures of speech. For example, he starts by saying "you piss me off pretty much every damn day," which is meant to be slightly sarcastic because as we find out later in the paragraph, Ryan Shell and Peter Shankman are actually friends. He then capitalizes the word "dream" so to emphasize how much he looks up to Shell and strives to be like him. He also pokes fun at himself by admitting that he has ADHD, but he exaggerates in a comedic fashion by saying that he is the poster child for the disease, which is obviously not true.
Throughout this post, he also uses slang words like awesome, hell, crappy, which makes his writing style more conversational and informal while still supplying valuable information to the reader.
In this particular post, Shankman discusses the ever present dilemma of balancing work with everything else in your life. He uses the writer of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin, as a prime example of this balance.
There are several instances in the post where Shankman's voice shines through. For example:
"On the same note, I’m writing this from a plane on my way to Thailand for a speech and then boomerang back to NYC. I think I have three days there. It might be four, it might be two. I don’t know, because Meagan decided to go on damn VACATION THIS WEEK, and I don’t even know my name."
In this excerpt he again uses capitalization to stress the fact that Meagan (who I'm assuming is his assistant) is on vacation and it has caused Shankman a little bit of stress. He's funny when he states that he doesn't even know his own name without her. Obviously, he is not so stressed that he can't remember his name, but he is using exaggeration to take a likely stressful situation and making it funny. Now let's take another excerpt from the same post.
"I know what you’re saying – “Dude – You’re actually OK with being so busy that connecting with your best friend on a Saturday on the damn subway is actually ok?”
"I know what you’re saying – “Dude – You’re actually OK with being so busy that connecting with your best friend on a Saturday on the damn subway is actually ok?”
In this sentence, Shankman uses the terms "dude" and "damn," which are both informal, despite that the post is aimed at entrepreneurs. Shankman's strategy of using a conversational tone in his posts could be one of the driving factors of his blog's success. In my opinion, I would rather read an informative blog that is easy to digest and relatable. I think most people feel the same way.
Shankman is candid and not afraid to say what he thinks, but he does so in a clever way by mainly using capitalization, slang terms, sarcasm and exaggerations. His tone is informative, yet conversational, which is the perfect balance for a professional blog such as his.
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