Advertising copywriters employ a few easy strategies to express ideas with more passion and brevity than we all learnt in school. These 9 pointers will come in handy when writing your next sales letter, brochure, or web page, without being overly instructional.
Avoid the wimpy verbs—is and be.
These “do-little” verbs just take up space and proclaim that something exists. So don’t waste your time writing. “A single omission can transform an average sentence into something amazing.” They remark that “a single little omission can boost a statement from ordinary to exceptional.” Avoid phrases like “We’ll be running the new programme from our Dallas office,” for example. “Instead, we’ll run the new programme out of our Dallas office,” says the company.
At the end of a series, put the longest item.
Begin with the simple and work your way up to the more difficult. It’s less perplexing and provides a more memorable conclusion to the statement. If you have a series like that, you may provide an example like “He was always later than Joan, rowdy and uninterested.” You’d say, “He was noisy, uninteresting, and always a few minutes later than Joan.”
Specifics are more convincing.
Only use mushy weasel modifiers like some, several, approximately, nearly, and other such mushy weasels if absolutely necessary for legal reasons. Specifics show your consumers that you understand your product’s capabilities based on tests, research, and outcomes, among other things.
Modify thy neighbor.
That is, the phrase that is next to it. Make sure your modifiers are related to the statement in question. You’ll avoid embarrassing statements like “I collided with a stationary vehicle coming the other way” if you do it this way. (The truck was not moving in the opposite direction; it was stopped.) You should tell the judge, “I was coming the other way and collided with a stopped truck.” (You’ll still get a ticket for colliding with a truck, but you’ll look sober.)
Single verbs frequently serve the functions of two verbs that are similar. Instead of “The computer was working and running smoothly,” choose “The computer was running smoothly.” Alternatively, say “He ran out of gas” instead of “He was empty and ran out of gas.”
Vary sentence length.
It can be tedious to read a series of phrases that are all the same length. Begin with a short or medium-length statement and progress to a lengthy, short, medium, or any mix of the three. Consider someone who speaks in a sequence of sentences that are all the same length. Robotic.
Are your sentences like the Energizer Bunny?
They just keep going and going. Because you’re giving legal or tough technical information, you don’t have to utilise serpentine sentences that never seem to end. “Lasers are created by the emission of energy from atoms in the form of electromagnetic waves, and they differ from regular light in a number of ways.” “When atoms emit energy in the form of electromagnetic waves, they produce electromagnetic waves.”
Go short and sweet.
When a one- to two-word version will suffice without sacrificing meaning, why employ a four- to five-word sentence? For example, “in light of the fact that” can be abbreviated to “because” or “because.” Word economy is especially crucial when paying for premium ad space in a large publication.
Don’t overstate the obvious.
For space travel, redundancy is advantageous, but not for writing clarity. “Anticipate ahead of time,” “totally finished,” and “vital necessities” will upset your readers while communicating very little information. It’s also a bad idea to combine two or more synonyms, such as “thoughts and ideas” or “actions and behaviour.” It makes readers wonder if you were attempting to communicate two distinct ideas or if you were simply trying to emphasise one term with a redundant synonym.
Remember these simple criteria the next time you’re stuck on a sales letter, a mailer, or a web page. They’ll help you communicate your message more clearly and convincingly. Keep in mind that the English alphabet consists of 26 letters. Make the most of them.
