I wonder sometimes if my clients are taken aback when they receive their first draft of concise copy. When you’re paying for something, you want as much for your money as you can get, right?
Not necessarily.
When it comes to copy, less really is more. Regular readers will have sussed that this is my golden rule.
In the interest of keeping things brief, I’d like to share this quick tip.
Checking for superfluous words is almost as important as your spelling and grammar checks.
Many of you probably don’t even notice these redundant and annoying little words creeping their way across articles, web copy and brochures but trust me, they are there. And they need to be dealt with! They add unnecessary bulk to otherwise snappy and elegant prose and I have to admit, they always make me picture the writer as a bored undergrad. Anyone else remember being stuck at your desk, unable to go to the pub until you’d reached the minimum word count on your essay?
Well, we’re not students any more, and the aim of the game is to get your message across in as few words as possible!
So what kind of thing am I talking about?
Here are some offenders I’ve noticed recently.
‘At the moment we are currently trying to tackle the problem‘
I nearly drove into a ditch the other day when I heard someone on the radio utter this. BBC Radio 2 no less!
What’s the problem? ‘Currently’ means ‘at the moment’ – there is simply no need for both of these expressions. To be all technical about it, it just sounds daft.
‘They returned back to the restaurant’.
This was spotted on a kiddie activity book at Pizza Hut. ‘To return’ means ‘to go back’ – the ‘back’ here is redundant. It needs to go!
‘The companies merged together’
This one’s obvious right? ‘To merge’ is to come ‘together’, once again we have a word that adds nothing to the meaning or style of the sentence other than length and as we know, brevity is the Holy Grail here.
So when you’re finalising any piece of marketing driven writing, liberate the pruning shears and get to work. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how smooth your prose can become if you do some swift dead-heading before you hit publish.
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