Welcome to Issue 51 of Writing and Other Stuff, a newsletter by me, Kim Scaravelli, with a focus on writing content and nurturing your creativity. Thanks for reading. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to get your own.

Ever been to a restaurant where everything on the menu sounds spectacularly delicious?

A well-written menu is SOOOO sexy to me. And it's not just because I like to eat (although I do enjoy my food).

It's the language.

Food folks definitely know how to make words work! And you can learn a lot about persuasive language by paying attention to how they do it.

I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read How to Write Delicious Restaurant Menu Descriptions That Sell More Food. It's one of the best articles on persuasive writing I've seen in a long time.

Here's one of their examples on how to intensify a description.

Double-burger 2x beef patties, fresh bread, lettuce, hot sauce.

becomes...

Uncle Jim's Double Trouble 2 juicy beef patties flamed in whiskey and wrapped in warm bread, crisp lettuce, with a dash of sriracha

My mouth is watering! I don't just want a hamburger, I want THIS hamburger!

👏🏼And THAT my friends, is persuasive writing.

Juicy brings those beef patties to life and flamed in whiskey elevates them above the sad, average burgers that are just flipped on the grill.

Wrapped in warm bread feels like that burger is prepared with love. Crispy lettuce adds a snap of sound and texture.

And finally... that dash of sriracha has a gourmet elegance that plain old hot sauce can't aspire to.

I don't care what you're selling, or who you're selling it to... your content should show folks that you've got Uncle Jim's Double Trouble on your menu!

Cool quote

"Influence is just persuasion in slow motion."

Robert McKee

3 tidbits about menu words

Restaurant folks do their research. Here are a few fun facts I discovered about the power of words, from the perspective of selling food:

Customers are willing to pay more for items with quality adjectives in the description, such as “farm-raised”.
Customers will pay up to 15% more for the same food item with a fancier name.
The more information provided about each wine vintage, the more likely customers are to order wine.
Good copywriting can allow a restaurant to raise the price of an item by 70% without a customer complaint.

📣Words matter folks.

Stuff Worth Sharing

I'm currently obsessed with the Freakonomics website. It's filled with deep-dive articles on a zillion fascinating topics.

I've been reading their blog posts, but also the transcripts from their podcasts. Am currently chewing through past episodes of No Stupid Questions. One of the co-hosts is research psychologist Angela Duckworth. If you haven't read her book, Grit, you should!

Their stuff is consistently well-researched and informative. Plus, the writing is top-notch. Never boring!

For the Word Nerds

Since we're in a food-ish state of mind, I'm giving a shout-out to a food-related word I use more often than most people do: tidbit.

Say it a few times. Feel how it energetically hops off your tongue!

Originally, a tidbit was a small dish of pleasant-tasting food. Over time, the usage expanded and we started describing small pieces of interesting information as tidbits.

🙃I love the playfulness of this word. It's casual and fun without sounding too cutesy. And there's a gossipy sense to it, like you're sharing G-rated secrets with your reader.

Ponder these two sentences:

I share interesting facts about ____________.

versus...

I share interesting tidbits about ____________.

Or even better...

I share interesting tidbits about ____________ with you.

Do you feel the difference?

Replacing facts with tidbits added personality and humanized the writer. And adding with you made the exchange feel friendlier - one person talking to another.

Isn't it amazing how a single word can change the vibe of a sentence!

Thanks for reading. I'll see you again April 17th. In the meantime, if you like my newsletter, here are a few easy ways to show your support:

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