This week: White papers vs. yellow papers vs. green papers vs. chartreuse papers? We figure it out. Then we’ve got a couple of side notes and a few footnotes and then we’re off to fight the good fight. Here we go.
Here's a hypothetical to start us off this week - you've been given the task of assigning a color to your report as part of its name. So, instead of a 'white paper,' your report will be...what? Do you choose a color that is symbolic of the contents, like calling an environmental impact report a 'green paper' or an undersea technologies brief a 'blue paper'? Maybe you choose a color that is reflective of the impetus for its creation, like calling a counter-proposal to a white paper a black paper or a dismissive reaction a red paper. Or maybe you just choose the color based on what color paper the document will be written on: yellow, beige, or blue (again).
White papers1 are curious beasts. They exist in a no-man's land between the marketing department and the executive branch. They define a company's position on a given issue, be that political, technological, or socio-cultural. They are also becoming ubiquitous and, as they do so, growing in genre and format.
I have, over the years, dabbled in writing for profit2 and when I was first starting out I had to rapidly expand my skill set to include white papers if I was to find any work at all. Because while white papers are not new, they have taken on something of a semantic shift over the past few years. Take a look at these definitions:
1: a government report on any subject
2: a detailed or authoritative report
1. an official government report, orig. one bound in white paper
2. any in-depth, authoritative report
Now, contrast those dictionary entries from these definitions presented in articles on how to write white papers:
A white paper is an authoritative guide that discusses issues on a certain subject, along with a proposed solution for handling them.
White papers are a popular and powerful tool for content marketers. They can be used to position your company as a thought leader, to present useful and persuasive research and information about your products and services, and to generate leads.
Notice anything different? Somewhere along the line, white paper has begun to expand from simply being an explainer to being a solution provider and lead generator. And, honestly, as evolutions go, this one isn't that surprising. Given that white paper is really just a synonym for report, adding in relevant sub-formats isn't much of a stretch. What I find more interesting is the evolution of the genre as represented by the change in colors. And we see this represented by the three choices in my hypothetical question above - does the color represent the content, the socio-political context, or just the color of the paper itself?
Content
While white paper is becoming a known commodity and is expanding its role, it's also spawning siblings left and right. The most commonly accepted of which3 is yellow paper - essentially a white paper but with all the technical details left in. In other words, you want CEOs and marketing teams to read your white paper, you want tech support and the lab guys to read your yellow paper. But even this division is not enough. Beige takes your yellow paper and gives it "a rewrite...for readability."
Socio-Political
This is where we see one possible route for differing colors to become standardized. Because this is where you see a lot of the definite article, indicating that this one particular white paper is in reaction to a different white paper and hence has an opposing color. For example:
The Red Paper was a counter-proposal made by the Indian Association of Alberta in the 1970s. In the paper, the Association calls for the preservation of “Indian culture through status, rights, lands and traditions” among other issues.
Even white paper itself can be traced back to a "the" - "The term white paper originated with the British government, and many point to the Churchill White Paper of 1922 as the earliest well-known example under this name."
Colored Paper
As stated above, white papers originated in the British Parliament. They have a tool called "blue books" which are lengthy reports on various subjects printed between blue covers. White papers were lighter (i.e. shorter), more informal reports printed between white covers, which led to the term white paper.
We see this kind of shorthand a lot, in a lot of different contexts. The term blue book alone has a separate, distinct meaning in the U.S. (big book of car values printed between blue covers) that has nothing to do with government reports. Or how about pink slip, a notice that you have been fired from your job, originally printed on pink paper. Or a green card, which is, in the U.S., an official document4 that allows you to live in the U.S. without being a citizen and which was originally printed on green card stock.
ROY G. BIV
So where does this leave us? Linguistically, in much the same place as always - we've added to our collection of words that mean a collection of words by exploring how a common term is beginning to branch out and acquire near-synonyms and siblings and we've identified three methods by which said phenomenon is happening.
Socio-culturally, however, I think we're in an interesting place; in what might be considered one of my wilder flights of fancy, I can see research firms scrambling to snap up an unsued color and confiscate it for their exclusive use, only that's already happening: "Orange Papers are the research and development publication from Everyday Massive. Art intersects science in this deep-dive into the human mind and the future of work." And while I haven't looked up all the colors, I had a weird flashback to the dot com land rush of the 1990s5 while reading Everyday Massive's statement.
It can't be too long now, can it? Research firms and data journalists will begin snapping up every obscure color from Crayola's big box in an effort to differentiate their white papers from everyone else's white papers and, meanwhile, all us little people will be left sifting through the rubble, trying to figure out if that chartreuse paper is the same as this mauve paper and if we even care. I suspect we won't but I call dibs on drunk-tank pink just in case.
Stay curious,
J
Side Notes:
Two quick things this week, the first, if you are into marketing research, and, really, who isn't, Wunderman Thompson Intelligence has released their annual trend report. This year's report is called "The Future 100: Trends and change to watch in 2022." Aside from being beautifully presented, it is a look at what we're going to be hearing about over the next year by people who know how to read the tea leaves. They don't get everything exactly right, but they've been right enough over the years...
Second, I want to make sure everyone knows that it’s okay to not know how to say a word. I also want to specifically recommend using YouTube channels like “Pronunciation Manual.” See, I hear from a lot of people who, like me, learned a lot of their vocabulary from books. And when that happens, given that English pronunciation is a hodge-podge of 46 other languages, you often just goes with what feels right, and then, years later, when someone says, “oh, you mean…?” your face goes red and you stutter and you take your vocabulary and you go home. There’s no need to. There is virtually never a single correct pronunciation of any given word and anyone who tells you there is needs their prescriptivist ass kicked. So, use the tools available, learn the new pronunciation and decide if you feel like using it. That’s all. Rant over. Go forth and speak without fear.
White papers are also, according to Wikipedia, an example of Grey Literature - "materials and research produced by organizations outside of the traditional commercial or academic publishing and distribution channels." One of the odd joys of writing this newsletter is making these little discoveries, not least because I've been writing about them without ever knowing there was an umbrella term for them.
As opposed to this newsletter, which I write to distract myself and, presumably, you, from the ever-horrifying dumpster fire that is modern life.
According to my Googling this afternoon. Even then, however, I was able to find at least one source that argues for this type of technical report to be called a blue paper.
Although not the official name.
In the early days of the web, as people began to realize just how much marketing value could be derived by a good domain name, a land rush broke out to secure the best words as top-level domains.
Thank you for settling an argument I had with a brother-in-law a decade ago. He needs to have his prescriptivist ass kicked.