Power Writing 101: Tips and Tricks to
Get You Taken Seriously!
by Dina
Giolitto
In my ten-plus years as a copywriting
and marketing expert, I’ve encountered plenty of
folks with a flair for writing. They were born having some
idea of where to put the words within the sentence, and the
sentences within the paragraph. They usually know what words
to use – when to say ‘bloom’ instead of
‘grow,’ or ‘confused’ instead of ‘befuddled.’
But having a flair doesn’t make them
an expert in the field.
I’m an expert ad
copywriter. But I can’t write a journalistic piece
to save my life. I have no experience in this area, and it’s
just not my bag. So I happily leave this task to the reporters.
Likewise, a retailer, marketer or salesperson should leave
the writing to the writer. Yet they seldom do.
A copywriter is forever trying to explain
why he inserted a word where he did, or why he chose one expression
over another. Frequently, a client or employer takes a writer’s
carefully constructed piece and turns it into a wordgarbage
wasteland. An atrocity... of verbosity!
If you’re such an offender, shame
on you! Let your writer do the job he or she was hired for:
to make you look good. But if you insist on meddling with
the marketing, critiquing the catalog and butchering the brochure,
you may as well learn how to do it right. Master the secret
to copywriting that packs a punch and makes people view you
as a credible source. Learn the tricks of the trade that will
get you taken seriously!
Use concrete examples
to prove your point. Repeating an idea in different
words leaves your writing flat and empty. "We’re
great! We’re so awesome! You won’t believe how
cool we are!" Why are you cool? Did you help a billion
people save money last year? Did you rescue an endangered
species from extinction? If you can’t back your claim
with solid evidence, no one will believe what you say. Be
specific! “I’m thinking of you”
might win brownie points, but “I’m thinking
of you in that little black dress you wore last weekend”—now
that’ll actually get you somewhere!
Resist the temptation
to cheer for yourself. You’re good, and you
know it. But if you must crow about it while doing your peacock
strut, tell it to your mother because no one else cares. The
world’s consumers aren’t interested in what you
can do. They’re interested in what you can do for them.
Don’t pepper
your writing with bad puns and kitschy wordplay. This
is a weakness of mine. Puns come to me at the strangest times...
in the shower, while I’m driving, as I’m trying
to fall asleep. I want to paint the world with my puns, but
alas, this is not appropriate! No one wants to click on their
financial advisor’s website and see him raving to everyone
in the free world that he’s “so money, baby!”
Puns are fun, but the true meaning of a well-turned phrase
is one that’s used at the right time and in the right
context.
Use the active voice.
I forgot about this for a long time, and my writing suffered
for it. The active voice lends a certain dynamic quality to
your writing. “The teacher wrote the words on the
blackboard” employs the active voice. “The
words on the blackboard were written by the teacher”
illustrates the passive voice. Don’t be passive! Avoid
any form of the verb to be, such as ‘is’, ‘are’,
‘was’, ‘were’. Practice this by literally
using your own voice. Read your writing aloud, doing your
best “announcer” impression. If as you read, you
find yourself lapsing into a sing-songy elementary-school
kid reading his essay out loud, you probably failed the assignment.
Get rid of the “asides”
in parentheses. They might look cute in an email to
a girlfriend, but ‘”asides” that stray from
the main point of an informative paragraph make you look like
a scatterbrain. Interrupting a thought with an unrelated remark
is distracting to the reader. It’s a comedic tactic
that plays out well in informal writing, but just doesn’t
fly in the real world.
Avoid the following: double negatives, redundancy,
dangling participles.
The double negative:
“It’s not impossible.” Why not
just say, “It’s possible.” A negative
plus a negative really does make a positive, even in writing!
Redundancy:
“We’re also offering free gifts to our members
too.” ‘Also’ and ‘too’
may be at opposite ends of the sentence, but they’re
serving the same exact purpose and that means one has to go.
Better: "We're also offering free gifts to our members."
Dangling participle:
Beware the dangler in this sentence! “Shivering
with cold, Anne’s hat barely covered her ears.”
Here, ‘Shivering with cold’ should modify Anne
because she’s the one who is shivering. The way this
reads now, Anne’s hat is the one with goosebumps. Acceptable:
"Anne’s hat barely covered her ears, and she
shivered with cold."
Employ parallelism.
Parallelism helps reinforce a point with repeated sentence
structure. Bulletpoints best illustrate parallelism. An example:
The product effectively:
- relieves headaches
- eases tension
- boosts immunity
Notice that each bullet follows the same
format: action verb, object of verb. To stray from this format
is to do a disservice to the bullet. Paralellism also works
in a sequence separated by commas. “I like pie,
I like cake, and I like pudding.” Another example:
“She enjoys climbing, hiking, and fishing.”
The incorrect version of this sentence: “She enjoys
climbing, hiking, and to fish.”
Avoid wordiness. Eliminate
the following words and phrases from your vocabulary, and
feel better about yourself: very, unique, being that,
utilize/utilization, a lot, needless to say, it goes without
saying, in back of, without a doubt, at some point in time,
as to whether, it seems to me, oddly enough. They’re
just filler, and they’re in the same category as their
credibility-stealing cousins redundancy, the double negative,
and the passive voice.
Go easy on the prepositional
phrases. “The girl who was sitting on the
porch of the house that was up on the hill, felt the breeze
as it was gently blowing through her hair.” Eegads,
what a mouthful! Correct this problem by breaking up your
ideas into separate sentences. "The house stood atop
the hill, and as the girl sat on the porch she felt the breeze
blowing through her hair."
Use adjectives and
adverbs sparingly. “What? But my English teacher
taught me...” Forget about what your teacher said. You’re
running with the big dogs now. Which is more interesting?
“The small, good-natured boy skipped happily and
grinned openly,” or “The boy skipped
down the hill, a grin playing about his face.”
Don’t repeat
words. I repeat: don’t repeat words.
Avoid hyphenating
words that shouldn’t be hyphenated. What is this
new trend that’s sweeping the nation? “Put-on
your coat.” “Please check-in before 9 pm.”
Hyphens are used to join two words that, when used in conjunction,
take on another word form. “Put on your coat”
doesn’t require a hyphen because you can also say “Put
your coat on.” ‘Check-in’
would require a hyphen if the sentence read like this: “Check-in
is at 9 pm.” This is because check and in work
together here as a noun. Hyphenation is tricky, I admit; even
as a grammarian I must consult my styleguide from time to
time. I suggest you do the same.
For the Love of God,
SPELLCHECK! Enough said.
Don’t over-exclaim
or use excess punctuation marks in formal writing or advertising.
And for God’s sake please don’t slip emoticons
in to help you convey a feeling. That’s what the vast
English vocabulary is for. When people see you dropping exclam-bombs
everywhere, they’ll think you’re cheap, tawdry
and lacking design capabilities. Remember, you can use big
bold fonts to make certain buzzwords jump right off the page.
Dashes – and
– ellipses... are not acceptable ways to finesse a poorly
constructed paragraph. There’s nothing wrong
with having two separate sentences instead of one that’s
broken up into sections. Dashes and ellipses are a copywriting
crutch. I’m tempted by them just as much as the next
guy. It’s so easy to insert a little pause in my rambler
of a run-on using those three cute little dots. The ellipse...
I love it! But I must control myself. Make a simple statement,
punctuate with finality, move on to the next idea. Don’t
underestimate the power of the period. We all need a break
now and then!
Don’t be afraid
to use contractions. More and more I come across emails
written by people who are either too lazy to use contractions,
or they are simply fooled into thinking it is going to make
them look smart. What’s wrong with the sentence I just
wrote? Contractions such as it’s, I’m, we’re,
you’re, they’re, couldn’t, wouldn’t
didn’t, doesn’t, aren’t etc. are a way to
sound conversational in writing. That’s how people talk.
What if you were making a formal speech? If you eliminated
all the contractions, you’d sound pretty robotlike,
wouldn’t you?
One space will do.
Those who are behind the writing times still type two
spaces after an end punctuation mark. Modern word processing
programs have eliminated the need for this, as they can sense
the need for a skoche more room after periods, question marks
and exclams. So as much as I applaud you for being fastidious
in your space insertion, you can stop it right now. Do your
clients a favor! They’re not doubling up on spaces in
their websites, so when you submit writing for them, don’t
you do it either.
This article is lengthy, but every single
sentence holds weight. Above all: practice, practice, practice!
Master these tactics, and you’re sure to establish yourself
as a writer with valuable insights, expert information and
a powerful message to the world. And a writer like that gets
taken seriously.
Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto, Wordfeeder.com
Copywriting and Marketing. All rights reserved.
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