Did you know that medical students are drugging visitors in a popular tourist spot and stealing their kidneys? Or that the toilets in a major U.S. airport are teeming with venomous spiders? Or that people don’t read anymore, so you need to keep your copy as short as possible?
YOU REALLY SHOULDN’T BE WRITING YOUR OWN COPY
No, I’m not questioning your ability to write. I’m suggesting that it may not make sense for you to handle your own writing projects. Why? Several reasons:
WANT TO BE LOUD AND CLEAR? WRITE FOR THE EAR
People accustomed to writing for the eye often don’t realize that writing for the ear demands an entirely different approach.
ARE YOU TELLING THEM WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW?
Are you wasting precious time in ads, direct mail, and brochures telling prospects what they already know?
Instead, tell them what matters. Talk about benefits, not features. Don’t say your product uses a three-handled veeblefetzer unless you can explain what that will do for them. “The three-handled veeblefetzer lets you core twice as many radishes in the same time.”
PLAIN ENGLISH BOOSTS TAX REVENUES
Not that long ago, I heard about a very impressive effort by officials in Washington State. At a time when tax revenues are hard to come by, those officials boosted use-tax revenues by a whopping $800,000!
Did they raise rates? No. Hire private investigators? Uh-uh. Try torture? Nope.
RESUMES ARE LIKE ROMANCE
Not long ago, I spoke to a group of high school students about resume writing. My goal was to help them understand what resumes really are – a tool that allows companies to quickly eliminate people from the application and interview process.
I spoke with some experience, having been the resume screener at several jobs. When the company would run an ad and 200 resumes showed up in response, the first responsibility is to cut that number to something manageable. So I’d spend five to ten seconds with each resume, determining whether it went into the “maybe” pile or the trash.
CHEAP PAINT JOBS
I suspect that anyone who has ever lived in an apartment or a college dorm knows that toothpaste offers a fast way to hide nail holes and other small injuries to the walls. And anyone who has ever tried to sell a house has probably heard that slapping a quick coat of paint on the walls can make the house look newer and fresher. Nearly everyone who visits a dentist subjects his or her teeth to the most vigorous brushing an hour before the appointment. We also seem to have a growing percentage of the population who thinks a body spray can replace a good-old-fashioned shower.
Those are all quick cover-ups, and we all know that they don’t really fool anyone. Oh, they might divert our attention, but when we look (or sniff) more closely, we see the truth very clearly.
HOMONYMPHOBIA
The English language may be complex, but it offers users an expansive vocabulary. The benefit of that isn’t the ability to impress people with five-syllable words; it’s the remarkable precision that all those words make possible.
But English also has convoluted rules of phonetics. And one place people – including professional writers – tend to get tripped up is in the area of homonyms. If your memories of third grade have become a bit hazy, homonyms are words that sound alike, but are spelled differently. More important, they have vastly different meanings – and your trusty spellchecker isn’t smart enough to recognize whether you’ve chosen the right one.
THE MUSTARD STAIN
Are typos a big deal? True typographical errors, misspellings, incorrect homonyms and the like all get lumped together under the rubric of “typos” these days. Many people seem to accept them the way we’ve come to accept a certain percentage of rodent parts in the processed food we buy. (You do realize that the government allows a certain amount of pest contamination in food, don’t you? There are actually acceptable levels of rodent “excreta” and insect parts in what you’ll have for lunch. Bon appétit!)
Those pesky typos have a more insidious side. While we might brush them off at a conscious level, they send a message to the subconscious that controls our beliefs and attitudes.
IN GOOD VOICE
When you’re creating market and communications materials, content and design are important, but there’s a third consideration that deserves your attention: the voice used in the materials. No, not talking about the voice talent used in radio commercials – it’s the voice of the items you put into print.
What do I mean by voice? Ads, brochures, direct mail letters, and other communications tools stand in your place. They sell and inform for you when you can’t be there to do it yourself. In a way, you’re quietly sending a trusted employee into the homes and businesses of your customers and prospects.