From Meat to Mustard

A professional writer myself, I derive special pleasure out of a nicely turned phrase, a “word tidbit”, if you will.  And, while driving to an appointment with one of my clients the other day, I caught a really nice word tidbit on the radio.  The station was offering a New York Times news story about rising food prices. Now, inflation is a really serious subject, and I’m as concerned as the next person about spending more and more hard earned dollars at the grocery store. So, I didn’t like hearing news about food costing more and more. But I did like the way in which the reporter delivered that news.   Shoppers are going, he announced, “from meat to mustard”.  Wow! Four small words, and what a punch those words packed!  As much as I enjoy mustard on my meat, the image his words produced of my needing to eat mustard in place of meat really drove home the message about food prices.
The rest of the ride, I reflected how big a difference skillful use of language can make in every aspect of life.  In particular, since I was on my way to see a business owner, I thought about how, sometimes, in doing business, we get so tied up in manufacturing a good, marketable product, and in serving our customers’ needs, that we forget how much help the right words can be. In fact, when it comes to web-based communication, words, along with pictures, are a business’ only tools.
And that – that’s what a ghost blogger does for a living – works with words, turns phrases, tries to find words with the Wow Factor to “Say It For You”!