|
View PDF | Print View
|
Copywriting pillars to watch for
| One of the important pillars of most copywriting is brevity. Essentially, brevity means saying things in the most economical way. A good copywriter does not give the reader anything he or she does not need. Writing is like a good watch. You can be quite certain that a good watch does not have extra bits just for show. Every piece inside the watch is doing a job. Well, so it should be with copywriting. It should function smoothly, with no extra parts getting in the way. Generally in writing, short is better than long. Short words are better than long words. Short sentences are better than long sentences. Short paragraphs are better than long paragraphs. And why is this so? Quite simply, because readers comprehend more when you keep things brief. Possibly more than anything else, copywriters are engaged to write business letters. A key pillar here is to focus on creating an effective heading. For the completed copy writing to connect with the audience, sometimes the solution is to use a provocative quote in the headline. To gain attention, the quote should contain news, a startling statistic or something outrageous. The quote must be like the lead of a quality news story - it must raise a question or arouse curiosity to make the reader want to read the body of the letter to find out more. No matter how experienced the copywriter, sometimes finding the right quote is just not possible. Or at least, not possible in the time allowed for the copywriting task. On these occasions, other options that can be considered for most types of copywriting include headlines that: • Give news • Offer a benefit • Ask a relevant question • Announce a deadline • Feature a testimonial • Begin with ‘How to . . .' Obviously, professional copywriting has to adhere to reasonable levels of grammatical correctness. In most copywriting this is not normally a problem, however there is one form of punctuation that some writers can get confused about: apostrophes. This topic may sound boring, but where an apostrophe is used incorrectly the writer, or more likely, the client for whom the writer is writing, can be seen as very unprofessional. The main use of apostrophes relates to possession. A. The dog's bone = the bone of the dog (one bone, one dog). B. The dog's bones = the bones of the dog (two bones, one dog). C. The dogs' bones = the bones of the dogs (two bones, two dogs). Notice, the word ‘dog' is a noun. For the possessive, you only use apostrophes with nouns. You'll notice with example C above, where the plural noun ends in ‘s' i.e. dogs, there is no need for an additional ‘s'. Similarly, when a singular noun ends with an ‘s' you normally do not add an extra ‘s' as in Hawkins' newspaper or the genius' habit of getting top marks. (But to complicate matters more, this last is not an absolute rule, for sometimes you will see Hawkins's newspaper or the genius's habit of getting top marks). In the case of pronouns such as ‘its' ‘hers' and ‘theirs', there is no apostrophe because these are possessive words in themselves: • The dog enjoys its bone. • The bone is hers. Then to complicate matters even further, there is the matter of contractions. • Do not = don't • Cannot = can't Using an apostrophe for a contraction is a completely different use of this tiny punctuation mark. Discussion about apostrophes illustrates that copywriting is very much a detail business. You cannot produce copywriting that has impact unless you focus on the detail. Every word has to be deliberate. |
About the Author
Action Words is premium business writing company in Melbourne. Action words not only offers business writing and letter writing, but also business writing courses and SEO copy.
Rating: Not yet rated
Comments
No comments posted.Add Comment
You do not have permission to comment. If you log in, you may be able to comment.