A field guide for the age of the incredible shrinking message.
Some of the most important verbal messages we craft are also the shortest: headlines, titles, sound bites, brand names, domain names, slogans, taglines, company mantras, email signatures, bullet points. These miniature messages depend not on the elements of style but rather on the atoms of style. They require microstyle. Branding consultant Christopher Johnson here reveals the once-secret knowledge of poets, copywriters, brand namers, political speechwriters, and other professional verbal miniaturists. Each chapter discusses one tool that helps miniature messages grab attention, communicate instantly, stick in the mind, and roll off the tongue. As he highlights examples of those tools used well, Johnson also examines messages that miss the mark, either by failing to use a tool or by using it badly. Microstyle shows readers how to say the most with the least, while offering a lively romp through the historic transformation of mass media into the media of the personal.
Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little
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“With advice for writing compelling blogs, pitches, ads, slogans, and social-media postings, Johnson’s sophisticated, richly referenced, and example filled microstyle guide is distinctive, instructive, enjoyable, and inspiring.” (Donna Seaman - Booklist )
“Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little, is a work of pop linguistics… it synthesizes a wide range of current thinking from recent books about grammar, branding, cognitive science and Web theory. But it does so with intelligence and friendly wit. Mr. Johnson’s point is that words are for wooing, in ways both personal and professional, and his own prose is sociable enough to underscore that point and spritz it with a bit of sophisticated perfume. His book is here, like a dating guide, to whisper: You too can woo.” (Dwight Garner - New York Times )
“Are you microstylish? In the 140-character universe we now inhabit, you better be.” (Seth Godin, author of Poke the Box )
“What do Oscar Wilde, Steve Jobs, and Jello Biafra have in common? Each has mastered microstyle. With this riotous and readable book, Christopher Johnson helps you join the club. In no time you’ll be coining witty epigrams, imagining unforgettable brands, or crafting a distinctive identity.” (Constance Hale, author of Sin and Syntax )
“Think big. Write small. Read Microstyle.” (George Lakoff, author of The Political Mind )
“Useful and entertaining.” (Mignon Fogarty, author of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing )
“Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little, is a work of pop linguistics… it synthesizes a wide range of current thinking from recent books about grammar, branding, cognitive science and Web theory. But it does so with intelligence and friendly wit. Mr. Johnson’s point is that words are for wooing, in ways both personal and professional, and his own prose is sociable enough to underscore that point and spritz it with a bit of sophisticated perfume. His book is here, like a dating guide, to whisper: You too can woo.” (Dwight Garner - New York Times )
“Are you microstylish? In the 140-character universe we now inhabit, you better be.” (Seth Godin, author of Poke the Box )
“What do Oscar Wilde, Steve Jobs, and Jello Biafra have in common? Each has mastered microstyle. With this riotous and readable book, Christopher Johnson helps you join the club. In no time you’ll be coining witty epigrams, imagining unforgettable brands, or crafting a distinctive identity.” (Constance Hale, author of Sin and Syntax )
“Think big. Write small. Read Microstyle.” (George Lakoff, author of The Political Mind )
“Useful and entertaining.” (Mignon Fogarty, author of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing )
About the Author
Christopher Johnson is a blogger and branding consultant, with a PhD in linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
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More About the Author
Christopher Johnson is a writer and verbal branding consultant. He grew up and went to college in the midwest and then journeyed to California with all his belongings in a canvas duffel to study linguistics. (Yes, that's really true.)
Since receiving his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, Christopher has found many ways to apply his love and knowledge of words and grammar. He's been a brand language specialist at Lexicon Branding, a computational lexicographer for the Berkeley FrameNet project, a software developer for natural language processing projects in both startup and corporate research settings, and a professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago.
Now Christopher names companies and products and does other verbal branding work as The Name Inspector, and also blogs under that name. He likes to think of himself as a pop linguist. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife and two sons, and occasionally writes a book. (Actually, Microstyle is his first.)
Since receiving his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, Christopher has found many ways to apply his love and knowledge of words and grammar. He's been a brand language specialist at Lexicon Branding, a computational lexicographer for the Berkeley FrameNet project, a software developer for natural language processing projects in both startup and corporate research settings, and a professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago.
Now Christopher names companies and products and does other verbal branding work as The Name Inspector, and also blogs under that name. He likes to think of himself as a pop linguist. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife and two sons, and occasionally writes a book. (Actually, Microstyle is his first.)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hold The Onion,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little (Hardcover)
I bought Microstyle after reading the NY Times review, and found it to be an interesting but slightly repetitive survey of short marketing messages and funny one-liners.Most of the examples in the book are advertising slogans, mixed in with far too many fake headlines from The Onion and selections from Twitter Wit and the FakeAPStyleGuide. I kept waiting for a discussion of more substantive micro-communication. There was no mention of Iran, China, or other places where people have been experimenting with short bursts of text to organize, communicate with the world and avoid censorship. Surely the author has seen instructive examples of that type of communication, and I think the book would benefit by moving beyond branding, marketing and humor. Highlights were the three short chapters on rhythm, poetic patterns and sonority, but in general this book made me want to re-read Strunk & White. For a more elegantly curated collection of microstyle, try Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style. (As an aside, I bought the Kindle version because I could not stand to look at the book jacket. Microstyle applies to graphic design as well, and the jacket design is a clunky and nonsensical mixture of metaphors: ruled notebook paper, two kinds of typewriter text, digital type and a stylized magnifying glass, which might also represent a search icon. The author is able to elegantly dissect mixed metaphor in text, but his insights should have been aggressively applied to the cover.)
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Microstyle--a field guide to the art of writing little,
This review is from: Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little (Hardcover)
I twitter; I love language; and I also practice securitization, which is a micro-structural approach to corporate finance. Hence, the appeal of Christopher Johnson's book. What do I think? In brief, I like that his approach challenges my politically correct, traditionalist views on grammar and structure, which he labels Big Style. I like how he created action-oriented categories for classifying micro-messages. But what I didn't find was the link between categories and their effect. I guess maybe I should have been forewarned by the word "art" in the title. Perhaps what I was hoping for is science.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Useless -,
By
This review is from: Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little (Hardcover)
Goes on and on and on - violating his own first principal. No real structure, and the hints are old news. Very disappointed - I was looking to improve my own writing.
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