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2016 was not a great year for words. According to Dictionary.com, there was an overarching theme in trending lookup data that wasn’t too surprising, but was terribly disappointing. The Word of the Year was xenophobia, defined as the fear or hatred of foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers. It also refers to fear or dislike of customs, dress, and cultures of people with backgrounds different from our own.

Sigh.

It doesn’t get much better when we consider the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth, an adjective defined as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. The runners up are equally dismal, from coulrophobia (an extreme or rational fear of clowns), glass cliff (used with reference to a situation in which a woman or member of a minority group ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high), and alt-right (we can’t even write that definition).

Even Merriam-Webster issued a warning in late November: “Fascism is still our #1 lookup. Number of lookups is how we choose our Word of the Year,” they tweeted. “There’s still time to look up something else.”

In other, better news, The Association of National Advertisers chose transparency as their Word of the Year. Consumers want to do business with brands they can trust, which speaks to the heart of transparency. It’s about honesty, integrity, and a true message.

At The Found Gen, we believe in the power of words and meaningful, intentional substance. Transparency is a good start. But we’d also like to see a few more content trends take tight hold in 2017.

• Less us, more you. We gravitate toward brands that treat their customers like people.
• Localism. The world can be pretty overwhelming. Why not start small, but with oversized ideas?
• Buoyant projects that rise and work for us. (See also: unsinkable.)
• Personalized, custom content. No more mass customization and wild attempts at reaching customers. You talkin’ to me? Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you. (Name that movie, friends.)
• Expiration dates. Snapchat is on to something. Content that self-destructs creates a fresh sense of urgency. Catch us if you can. We’re going somewhere awesome.

Until then, we’ll be here, focusing on the positive: a sharp rise in the number of people using “woke” as an alert to injustice in society, especially racism. That’ll do, 2016. That’ll do.

Because T.S. Eliot said it perfectly. “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice.” We are looking forward to hearing yours. If you’d like to borrow some of ours, just contact us. We’ve got a lot of excellent words in these parts.

Remember when the biggest distraction in your was not your inbox but your office mate’s compulsion for celebrating absolutely everything? “Josh got a promotion! We’re meeting in the break room for cake at 11!” Congratulating Josh – and Karen on her new baby, Dali on her relocation to LA, and Kai on his birthday – really added up in terms of time away from your real work. But still, those time sucks were nothing compared to the amount of time we waste in our inboxes.

And at least there was cake.

Using the Washington Post’s utterly depressing calculator, I figured out how many cake-less hours I’ve spent on emails: Forty thousand, or around four hours a day for the entirety of my career until I finally retire.

In that time, according to the Post, I could have learned two dozen languages or hiked the Appalachian Trail 100 times. Excuse me while I sob at the thought of all I’ve missed. But first, let me check my email. I heard a ping.

There are certainly ways to be better time managers when it comes to your inbox. Like auto-responses that inform your inbox visitors you’ll answer their note at your designated inbox-checking times of 11:00 am and 2:00 pm. Pretty soon, they’ll understand what to expect from you and maybe learn to be a little more intentional with their emails, too.

There are also apps that can help…if you use them. Inbox When Ready is my personal favorite. It hides your incoming and existing messages while you’re composing new ones, distraction free, and has a genius inbox lockout feature that prevents you from checking your inbox until a designated time.

Or, we can take a few tips from the military. That’s right: They’re tough as nails, and good with emails. Kabir Sehgal, US Navy veteran and author, suggests starting with the subject line, using words in all caps that tell the recipient exactly what the intention of the message is:

• ACTION: Compulsory for the recipient to take some action.
• SIGN: Requires the signature of the recipient
• INFO: For informational purposes only, and there is no response or action required.
• DECISION: Requires a decision by the recipient.
• REQUEST: Seeks permission or approval by the recipient.
• COORD: Short for coordination, by or with the recipient is needed.

In a matter of seconds, your recipient knows exactly what your email’s intention is, which may not only help reduce the time you spend writing email, but also save other people’s time, too.

At The Found Gen, we’ve got lots of ideas to maximize your message while minimizing your involvement. Trust us: You’re going to love the time we save you. Meet you on the Appalachian Trail?

Bottom line; reading has changed.  We skim.  We speed read.  We skip altogether.  Sure, when you are ready to devour the next chapter of your favorite novel like a piece of chocolate cake and are excitedly looking forward to curling up somewhere comfortable and take your time reading each page.  But the business blogs you follow?  The eNewsletters you receive?  The social media you scan periodically?  Less like cake, and more like a 5 Hour Energy; a little hit, then move on.

Readability tools ensure that if all they do is glance at your blog post (because you’re writing blogs all the time now, right?), they’ll be able to easily draw out, and remember, the most important points.

The following readability tools are basic, but extremely important.  They could be difference between readers digesting your content, or skipping the meal altogether.

Key Readability Tips

• Use bold type sparingly and only to help key ideas jump out to the reader.  Reiterating key ideas and quotes is often done in magazine articles and is just as effective in online content.
• Bullet points are a great way to paraphrase information and draw the reader’s eye to the most important points by pulling them out of the body of your text.
• Enumerations, or listing items by number, is more formal than using bullet points, but is best for ordering ideas or data.
• Italics, like bold type, help to draw the reader’s eye to important ideas.  However, they are most effective when used to highlight negative words like not, no, and but which can often be read incorrectly if the content is only being scanned.

Simple tools? Yes.

Essential tools? Heck yes.

Looking for even more writing tips? Or just plain impressed with the readability of this blog post? Come back and read some more.