You’ve read the kvetching about overdoing corporate quotes:

“Sprinkling quotes is one thing. Hosing them on is another.”

— John B. Campbell, former senior editor of Business Week

“I think of quotes as spices. Spices in themselves have no nutritional value. They make nutritious things taste better but, like spices, quotes should be used sparingly.”

— Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Washington Post

“Too many good ideas are buried in Dilbert-esque releases because … every corporate executive gets quoted.”

— Alison Harris, publisher, Call Center News

You know that quotes slow web visitors down.^[1] You’ve read that journalists ranked quotes last — dead last, after even the dateline and the boilerplate — on the list of important elements in a press release, in a 2014 study by Greentarget. You know in your heart that your executive quotes are horrible.

So why do we keep running so many quotes?

Why avoid overquoting?

Writers have heard the benefits of quoting so often, sometimes we believe that quotes are, in themselves, captivating.

Quotes can add credibility to your copy. They can also even make it more colloquial and interesting.  But as anyone who’s ever interviewed an engineer knows, the words that spew out of people’s mouths aren’t necessarily intriguing.

Because we’ve been taught to like quotes, writers tend to overquote. But overquoters:

1. Are less picky about choosing quotes. Overquoters use everything — the dull quotes as well as the crisp, compelling ones. That drags the story down. As Jim Ylisela Jr., president and co-owner of Duff Media Partners, counsels:

“Control the blather.”

2. Create a dull rhythm. Talking heads in business communications are as boring as they are on the nightly news. Think how much duller CNN would be if Anderson Cooper just sat at his desk yapping about hurricanes. Like TV news producers, writers need to break up quotes with compelling images and stories.

As Jack Hart, managing editor of The Oregonian, writes in A Writer’s Coach:

“Nothing dulls up a piece of writing like a stream of boring quotations.”

3. Mask the great quotes. Too many dull quotes hide the brilliant gems. Too much of a good thing is almost always a bad thing. Don’t overquote.

How can you avoid overquoting?

1. Put a quota on quotes.

To avoid overquoting:

• Limit quotes to 12% of total word count. That’s the amount of space The New York Times devotes, on average, to quotes. How do we know? We analyzed the quotes in all of the stories, except sports coverage, in a single edition of the paper.
• Follow the one-in-three rule. That is, use no more than one quote every three paragraphs. Better: Use even fewer.
• Don’t be afraid to use no quotes. Some 18% of The New York Times stories we reviewed had no quotes.

2. Paraphrase more often.

In most cases, writers are better at crafting phrases than subject matter experts. So why put all of that original source material, word for word, between quotation marks? Instead or running the original passage verbatim, why not paraphrase and summarize?

That means that in most cases, we should paraphrase the SME.

So never use quotes to just to move facts. That’s what this passage does:

Why quote a subject matter expert quoting a third party to communicate these facts? And then, why quote her some more to make the transition into the tips?

In this case, I’d paraphrase the whole quote and write something more provocative for the subject matter expert to say:

So when should you quote? Quote when:

• Someone important says something important.
• Someone says something unique or uniquely.
• You need to:
  • Support a new or controversial point that you as the writer don’t have the authority to present credibly
  • Communicate opinion, emotion and other things the “reporter” can’t say
  • Give your copy a human voice
  • Change the pace of the piece
  • Add creativity and color to your copy

Otherwise, paraphrase.

3. Curate quotes.

One way to keep your quotes short is to carve out the fascinating bits and paraphrase the bad sentence structure, writing centered on the writer, and the rest. Here’s how The New York Times does it:

Mrs. Cosby, who has been married to Mr. Cosby since 1964, said in a statement that the man portrayed in recent accounts is not the “wonderful husband” whom she still loves.

— “Wife of Bill Cosby Places Fault With News Media”

 Tony Isidore of the advertising agency Young & Rubicam persuaded the mayor to admit publicly that he had made mistakes performing the “second toughest job in America.”

— “David Garth, 84, Dies; Consultant Was an Innovator of Political TV Ads”

In March 2011, Mr. Ruqai sought permission to return to Libya with others, referring to the Libyan uprising against Muammar el-Qaddafi and saying they must “move out sooner rather than later” to avoid becoming prisoners of war.

— “U.S. Seeks to Use Letters Found in Bin Laden Raid in Terrorism Trail”

4. Leave quotes out.

Chris Smith, the brilliant copyediting guru at Entergy Corp., offers this technique for reducing the number of quotes in your copy:

“One way to decide whether to include a quote is to temporarily delete it and read the revised piece. Then ask, will a reader learn more if I restore the quote? No? Then leave it out, or find a better one.”

Sometimes a string of quotes can be effective. (Think “My Dinner with Andre.“) But usually, it isn’t. Remember, it’s hard to maintain a line of thought or a narrative flow if you’re constantly trying to squeeze in one more quote.

Jacqui Banaszynski, Pulitzer Prize winner and Knight Chair at the school of journalism at University of Missouri, suggests moving quotes from a web story into a “quote rail,” or sidebar, to get them out of the way.

A PR pro tells her executives: “We’re leaving out the quotes so you can get the comments started.”

Hey: Whatever it takes.

And remember: 18% of New York Times stories have no quotes.
_____

^[1] Jacqui Banaszynski, “Newswriting for the Web: Words That Work Online on Deadline,” A Poynter NewsU Webinar, Nov. 18, 2009

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What’s the least important element in a release — less important even than the dateline or the boilerplate?

Quotes, say one in four reporters surveyed in a study by Greentarget. According to Greentarget’s research:

• 13% of journalists never use quotes from releases.
• 31% rarely use quotes from releases.
• 28% use quotes from releases only when they’re on deadline and can’t get an interview.
• 28% use quotes from releases regularly.

What’s their beef?

• 50% complain that the language doesn’t sound natural.
• 34% say the quotes aren’t substantive enough.
• Only 9% have no complaints about the quotes.

“Please don’t make me wade through a bunch of boilerplate, taglines and patting-ourselves-on-the-back quotes to find out if the news release is relevant,” begs one journalist surveyed by Greentarget.

Another writes: “I dislike press releases that have ‘spin.’ I just want the facts. Not a sales pitch, not canned quotes about how fantastic the person/company/event is.”

‘Don’t sound natural’

“Most quotes in press releases sound like the teacher in Charlie Brown cartoons: ‘Wah wah wah wah.’”

— A frustrated PR pro

These aren’t unreasonable complaints, considering the wah wah that passes for quotes in releases these days.

Here are three quotes from releases posted on PRNewswire recently. (I could show only one in my PR Tactics column, because these suckers weigh in at more than 100 words each — 20% of my word count. Think about that for a minute.)

Wah wah, indeed.

Transform the wah wah.

How do you get the wah wah out of your release quotes? Make quotes:

1. Short.

While PR quotes measure in the triple digits, journalists use much shorter quotes. In fact, the average length of a quote in a recent issue of The New York Times, not including attribution, was between 19 and 20 words, according to a 2015 Wylie Communications analysis. The most common length: seven words.

So “peel the quote back to one great sentence,” counsels Jacqui Banaszynski, a chaired editing professor at the University of Missouri.

How about:

“Hot rodders, racers and other street performance enthusiasts will now be able to do something better [we can’t figure out what from the release], thanks to our merger,” Callahan says.

2. Rare.

Don’t use quotes to convey basic information, as in this release on the Hip Hop Hall of Fame:

“The program curriculums are currently being designed and prepared to launch first class this fall with all classes online in 2016,” stated Pierre Voltaire, the Educational Program Coordinator Consultant.

Instead, paraphrase.

3. Personable.

Clearly, no human ever uttered the words, “MSDP provides the ideal partner for Holley, a Lincolnshire portfolio company that is the leading manufacturer and marketer of performance fuel and exhaust systems.” Just as no human has ever sought “customizable, comprehensive literacy solutions.”

Write quotes that sound human, not like a computer spit them out. Here’s one to model, from a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in the New York Daily News about the declining health of 9/11 rescue workers:

“I’m begging for someone to help me,” Valenti said. “I do not want to die.”

4. Creative.

Quotes should sound like more than just the most basic parts of human speech. Make your executive seem eloquent — even interesting. Here’s a New York Times quote by former New York mayor Ed Koch on political consultant David Garth:

“I said, ‘Listen David,’” Mr. Koch recalled, “‘You want me to kill my mother? Tell me what time and where?’”

Now, that’s a quote that reporters won’t shoot down.

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