This wine rox!! #tastingnotes #grammar #scores
Which of these two fictitious wine reviews is more likely to make you want to buy the wine?
Aromas leap from the glass, redolent of a barnyard packed with cattle after a summer rain, interwoven with a hint of desiccated blackberries. The mouthfeel is about as smooth as sandpaper, the new oak accosts your palate as if you met it alone in a dark alley. The finish endures so long that as much as you try to remember your grandmother’s apple pie, you can think of nothing other than a humus saturated barnyard for hours.
While someone else might describe the wine this way:
Got so much luv 4 this wine…funky…full throttle…awsum finish…this wine rox! will blow yer mind!
According to Panos Ipeirotis of NYU, the first one might actually be more convincing. Why? Drawing on his research on crowd-sourced hotel reviews, he writes on his blog: “A well-written review tends to inspire confidence about the product, even if the review is negative. Typically, such reviews are perceived as objective and thorough.” Thus companies like Zappos that depend heavily on user reviews are paying a lot of money to automagically correct the grammar of customer comments. It does raise some ethical and copyright concerns but hopefully, just the grammar, not the content are being modified by the program (known as Mechanical Turk).
An interesting phenomenon to be sure. While I could see grammar and readability in tasting notes–either user-generated or from critics–making a difference on sales, wine writing (for better or generally for worse) has its own Mechanical Turk for smoothing out all those pesky words: the score. Just imagine if that second review above had a “98 points” after it. I’m sure that would b gr8 4 sales…LOL GTG.
On May 12th, 2011 at 9:51 am ,Dave Erickson wrote:
There is also a phenomenon known as “the conjunction fallacy.” How it works: People tend to make decisions based on storytelling rather than data. Tests have repeatedly found that most will judge a situation to be more probable if it is described in some detail, which makes it very vivid, even when a less detailed version of the same scenario is in fact more likely.
Thus: Detail beats “this rox,” even if it isn’t necessarily well written.
On May 12th, 2011 at 11:13 am ,Greg Hirson wrote:
The second review contains almost no objective information about the flavor of the wine. It is comprised almost exclusively of hedonic descriptions. The “funky” may not even be a flavor description but an emotional reaction.
On the other hand, the first review tells of a horrible-sounding wine – but it uses objective terminology describing the flavor of the wine. Sure, it is peppered with loaded adjectives, but at least they are concrete and meaningful. “Full throttle”?
That is why I think it is more effective. All the second review does is tell the reader that the writer thought the wine was good.
On May 12th, 2011 at 12:05 pm ,lori wrote:
I wouldn’t mind having my comments corrected for grammar–no one wants to look “stoopid.” But, this will certainly make me scrutinize reviews more carefully. Thanks for the heads up.
On May 12th, 2011 at 12:20 pm ,Christine wrote:
Neither one of those descriptions makes me want to try that wine!
Re comment editing: Newspapers routinely correct grammar, punctuation and spelling in letters to the editor. Making those corrections in comments seems to me to be the same thing.
On May 13th, 2011 at 10:26 am ,Joanne Saliby wrote:
I used to be astounded that wineries and wine bloggers would publish notes, descriptions and aricles so full of grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. I often sent corrections to websites and usually the errors were corrected. But it got to be a never-ending task!
My thought is, “How can I believe in a winery’s care in winemaking if those who write for and publicize the winery don’t take care in their writing about it?”
Awkwardly stated information as well as superfluosly descriptive phrases are turn-offs, slso. Neither of the above descriptions would cause me to look twice at the wine.
On May 13th, 2011 at 1:44 pm ,Chuck Antonio wrote:
There is a huge difference in writing styles between Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway, but both use prose as a way to express their art. Using “text language” to describe something as expressive as wine is not what I want to read, and for me, is not another form of prose. I may use if for my own notes – mostly to mask poor handwriting – but not for “publishing” my thoughts about any subject. A well written review provides a sense of identity with the product, but whether or not it is accurate is a separate issue.