In these days of information overload, it’s worth examining the question of how well we’re doing at quality control. (Being involved in content writing, I have a horse in this race – full disclosure.) Craftsmanship, while clearly an older concept, is still worth exploring and, occasionally, making the effort to achieve.
Coming from the advertising industry, the word “Craftmanship” connotes spending the time to make things have an artfulness to them. I remember the days of using wax to paste advertising headlines to a slick piece of illustration board and then cutting each letter apart to more carefully space them so the headline read in chunks and had a solidity to it. Careers were built upon such obsessiveness. We took real pride in this and scoffed at the ads which clearly didn’t adhere to “The Code.”
- The Free Online Dictionary defines “craftsman” as -
A man who practices a craft with great skill. - It defines “craft” as -
Skill in doing or making something, as in the arts; proficiency.
This concept of proficiency has been around a while.
“Craft has been used as a verb since the Old English period and was used in Middle English to refer specifically to the artful construction of a text or discourse. In recent years, “crafted,” the past participle of craft, has enjoyed a vogue as referring to well-wrought writing. Craft is more acceptable when applied to literary works than to other sorts of writing.” (1)
Now, when we’re flooded with tons of content writing, YouTube videos by the ga-zillions, Tweets by the gad-bazillions, and an awful lot of emails, it’s worth examining the quality level of what our eyeballs are getting blasted with. Some might argue it ain’t pretty. I couldn’t disagree more.
In an earlier post, I argued that content writing is thin, and thin is in. I still believe this, just one month later. With an overwhelming number of competing information sources, and less time than ever to digest them all, your content writing had better be very good and very efficient.
The new craftsmanship is in finding ways to be considerately efficient with your content writing.
Being concise in this post, I think I’ll leave it at that and wish you a very nice and efficient day.
source –
(1) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/craft
Well “crafted” piece! I remember a time when we would craft several “headlines” for an ad and spend an entire day discussing and comparing the virtues of each!
[...] Craft in content writing. It’s not dead. Every age demands craftsmanship. The craftsmanship demanded now is in finding ways to be considerately efficient with the time of your reading audience. Read More [...]
[...] Craft in content writing. It’s not dead. Every age demands craftsmanship. The craftsmanship demanded now is in finding ways to be considerately efficient with the time of your reading audience. Read More [...]