文案与商业写作2010inc.com编辑精选
为什么商业写作如此糟糕？
Why Is Business Writing so Awful?
导读
这篇帖子围绕“商业写作为何如此糟糕”展开讨论，指出根源常在于作者不理解产品与市场、思考偷懒、套用空话，以及语气与受众错配。它值得写作者读，因为写作问题往往先是理解与思考问题；文中还给出 Woot、Saddleback Leather 等具体文案例子和受众适配原则。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
动笔前先弄清产品或服务对客户的实际好处，否则容易用“行业领先”“最佳方案”等模糊短语填满篇幅。
- 02
删掉可以套在任何公司上的空话，用具体利益、场景和例子替代；字多不等于信息多。
- 03
语气不是越俏皮越好，要匹配受众、品类和购买风险；医疗等高风险领域可能更接受稳健平实的表达。
- 04
写作卡壳时先检查思考是否偷懒：用现成模型和术语替代对业务与读者的真实理解，文字就会空洞。
HN 评论精选
商业写作空洞常因作者不理解产品与市场，只能用模糊短语；好文案源于真正理解。
商业写作（那种告诉你“最佳品种、市场领先解决方案”的文字）之所以糟糕，是因为写它的人不理解自己的产品、市场，或者更糟，两者都不理解。你会发现这类商业写作字很多却信息很少，因为作者不知道写什么，只好用既像说了所有事又什么也没说的模糊短语。技术文档有时也这样，例如“Fznoozlator：对文档进行 Fznoozlation”。真正理解产品商业价值和客户的人，写出的文字会反映这一点，这也是 Woot 和 Saddleback Leather 的例子为什么好。为企业软件写广泛有吸引力的内容难得多，但熟练的营销者仍能讲清价值主张；问题是大多数熟练营销者宁愿割腕也不愿做那种无聊产品。
matrix查看英文原文
Business writing (the kind that tells you about best-of-breed, market-leading solutions) is awful because it is written by people who do not understand their product, their market, or worse, both. You'll notice that business writing of this type says very little in many words. That's because the author doesn't know what to write, so they resort to vague phrases that say everything and nothing. Technical documentation sometimes suffers from this too (e.g. "Fznoozlator: Fznoozlates the document"). Someone who truly understands the business benefits of their offering and their customers will write text that reflects that. That's why the Woot and Saddleback Leather examples are so good. It's a lot harder to write this sort of widely compelling content for enterprise software, but a skilled marketer can still communicate the value proposition well. Problem is, most skilled marketers would rather slit their own wrists than work on that kind of boring product.
文案语气要匹配受众和品类，不能把个别成功案例当通用模板；搜索热度不等于影响力。
我认为坏商业写作的标志之一，是把某个词条的谷歌搜索结果数等同于它的现实影响。这在 2000 年是个有趣说法，但在内容农场和重复链接的时代已没什么意义——我随便搜“Gargamel Robot Fan”都能得到 15000+ 结果。我喜欢 JF 提到的产品，但喜欢这些公司俏皮语气的客户群其实相当小：Saddleback 的包要几百美元，Woot 面向受过教育的科技人群，他提到的农场是超本地生意。你需要的是“受过广泛文科教育”与“有大笔可自由支配资金”的维恩图交集。我在糖尿病医疗器械行业工作，这是 1300 亿美元产业；有些公司尝试口语化，但多数人在健康问题上并不想要俏皮、随意或“真实”的语气。也许是被规训了，但人们似乎喜欢由科学家组成、显得“稳健”哪怕平淡的大公司。其他品类大概也类似。我喜欢 Saddleback 的文案，但它并不普遍适用。
replicatorblog查看英文原文
I think one of the first signs of bad business writing is equating the number of google hits for a term with its real life impact. This was a fun trope in 2000, but in an age of content farms and repeated links its kind of meaningless. e.g. I just searched for a random term "Gargamel Robot Fan" and got 15,000+ results. That said, I like the products JF mentioned, but I think the universe of customers who like the cheeky tone of the companies he mentioned is fairly small. The Saddleback backs cost hundreds of dollars, Woot plays to an educated techie crowd, the farm he mentions is a super local business. You've got this venn diagram of people with a broad liberal education crossed with folks who have large sums of money for big discretionary purchases. I work in the world of medical devices, specifically diabetes. It is a $130B industry and while some companies try to get conversational, the truth is most don't want a tongue in cheek/casual/authentic tone when it comes to their health. It might be conditioning, but people seem to like the idea of a massive company filled with scientists that seems "robust" if bland. I'm sure its similar in other categories. I love the Saddleback copy, but it is not universally applicable.
警惕用浮夸晦涩的术语掩盖空洞，商业写作也会“华丽地死去”。
引用 David Foster Wallace《Authority and American Usage》：“事实是，大多数美国学术散文令人震惊：浮夸、晦涩、封闭、膨胀、矫饰、冗赘、不合语法、滥用长词、极其古怪、遮蔽、模糊、充斥术语、空洞：华丽地死去了。”这句话完全适用于现代商业散文。
codingthewheel查看英文原文
"The truth is, most US academic prose is appalling: pompous, abstruse, claustral, inflated, euphuistic, pleonastic, solecistic, sesquipedalian, Heliogabaline, occluded, obscure, jargon-ridden, empty: resplendently dead." [David Foster Wallace, Authority and American Usage] This applies to modern business prose in spades.
写作空洞源于思考偷懒；先真正理解业务和读者，再动笔，避免套用现成模型和术语。
商业写作糟糕，是因为商业思考同样糟糕。面对理解复杂业务及其所处社会的任务，多数人退回到简单模型和简单语言，而且通常是从其他同样使用这些简单模型和语言的企业那里抄来的，这比真正原创思考容易得多。多数大公司员工没有动力去完整理解所在业务的复杂性，只需知道足够完成工作。企业里的例外者，是那些理解业务复杂程度远高于常人、并能把它放进对社会更大理解中的人。初创公司不同，激励也明显不同：不理解业务和社会就会失败。我想这解释了为什么许多前沿商业思考来自初创公司。我只能把对 37Signals 的追捧理解为商业界整体智识贫乏的表现。37Signals 所做的只是胜任且勤奋，并显然深入思考过自己的业务是什么、做什么、处在什么环境；这本来一点也不该稀奇，却成了稀奇事。
jlangenauer查看英文原文
The reason business writing is so awful is because business thinking is equally awful. Faced with attempting to understand something as complex as a business, and the society it must operate in, it's of little wonder than most people fall back on simplistic models described by simplistic language, usually cribbed from other businesses also who use these same simplistic models and simplistic language. This is much easier to do than actual original thinking. Most people working for most major corporations have little incentive to fully understand the complexity of the business they work in. All they really need to care about is knowing enough to do their job. Exceptional people, when you find them in businesses, are the ones who understand a far greater degree of the complexity of the business, and have been able to place that within the context of a greater understanding of society. Start-ups are different, where the incentives are markedly different: if you do not understand your business and the society it operates in, then you fail. I think this explains why much of the leading-edge business thinking comes from startups. I can only understand the adulation of 37Signals in terms of the intellectual squalor of business in general. All 37Signals has done is been competent and hand-working, and they have obviously thought long and hard about what their business is and does, and the environment it operates in. This should not be exceptional in the slightest degree, yet it is - and this speaks volumes about the low standard of thinking that permeates much of the rest of the commercial world.
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