I got my knickers in a right old twist there.
I was having a look through a completed project a couple of weeks ago and discovered the client had made a couple of changes. Gasp!
One of the sentences had become just a little bit longer. An extra couple of clauses had appeared as if from nowhere. A word or two had been deleted and exchanged for synonyms with a few more syllables. Nothing major but…
It annoyed me and I’ll tell you why.
Yes, I can write the sentence of a hundred clauses and make it sound elegant. Yes, I know big fancy words. But I don’t often use them. For a good reason:
great writing doesn’t always make great copy.
Let me show you what I mean.
Using complex words.
Unless you’re selling a specialist product or you have a very niche market, keep your vocabulary simple. You want to be as inclusive as possible and by using obscure, complicated or ‘academic’ words and phrases, you’re automatically alienating some of your potential audience.
That’s bad copywriting.
Ditto complex sentence structure.
The more complicated the sentence, the greater the chance you’ll screw it up. We’ve all done it. However, even if you’re a linguistic genius and every sentence is word perfect, longer STILL isn’t better. Your long, convoluted sentence has just bored your reader and they’ve clicked on to something else.
That’s bad copywriting.
Never-ending paragraphs.
All audiences are not created equal. Your magazine reader, who’s just settled down on the train for the daily commute could be considered a captive audience (although, don’t forget your ad is competing with every other ad, article and picture in the magazine) and may be happy to read loads of text. Your internet user is not. She is pushed for time, bombarded with information and just looking for a reason to click ‘close’. Your beautifully written but long paragraphs and text heavy pages have just given her that reason.
That’s bad copywriting.
So when you’re writing your own copy, try not to fall into these traps. Remember that it takes more than great grammar and syntax to sell a product. Great writing does not always equal great copy.
Although it is a good place to start…
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