A Guest Post by
Rosemary ONeill
Do you know the origin of the word âboilerplate?â Neither did I, until recently. Apparently, in the early part of the 1900âs it was common for large chunks of text intended for mass reproduction to be distributed on heavy-duty sheets (or plates) of steel. Ads, press releases, and other standardized pieces would be stamped into the steel and sent to newspapers for publication. These sheets (or boilerplate) came to represent text that was to be printed with minimal (or no) change.
Today, many businesses use boilerplate text as a time-saver. It might appear in an email response, a customer support document, a press release, or website content. It may be saved in the company Google Docs as âcanned responseâ or âtemplates.â
Just as the publishing industry has moved away from carting around gigantic steel plates, the rest of us should leave behind the boilerplate language that drags down our communications and keeps us from freely expressing our business proposition.
Letâs challenge ourselves to start with a fresh piece of paper the next time weâre responding to a customer inquiry, a partnership deal, or a journalist request. Perhaps a fresh breeze of inspiration will flow across the page and create some magic.
Do you have any musty boilerplate paragraphs that need to go into the shredder? Yeah, me too.
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Author’s Bio: Rosemary OâNeill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work on the Internet. Check out their blog. You can find her on Twitter as @rhogroupee
Thanks, Rosemary!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
