Cleaning up your copy

Ideally, your reader shouldn’t notice your copy at all. Within seconds they should be absorbed by the promises you are making. They are imagining how much better their life will be with your product or service to help them.

They read on because they want to learn more. Maybe how the story ends. Maybe for more news of how to make, or save, money; lose weight without dieting; enjoy their overseas property more; or become a better manager.

And they will do this despite knowing that this letter is a sales letter, that this email is a promotional email, that this ad is, well, an ad. Well they will, providing your copy meets one condition.

It must be clean (like the window, remember?).

What do I mean by clean? Simply this. The copy must be smooth and not clunky. It must be free of mistakes. It must not draw attention to itself.

Inevitably, there are times when we write copy that IS like a grubby window. And that’s the copy people start noticing, then ignoring, then, finally, binning. So let’s take a look at a few of the most common marks on the glass and what to do about them.

Careless repetition

This is a common mistake that you commonly see when the writer is dreaming of walking on the common instead of focusing on their copy.

I reviewed, for a publisher, a two-page sales letter that managed to use the word fantastic six times. An offer, however fantastic (and believe me, this really wasn’t), begins to seem a little desperate when it is described this way half a dozen times.

The two most common causes are laziness and other people changing bits of your copy without reading what’s gone before.

The cure is to read your copy aloud – it pulls you up short on all those repeated words. Plus, be creative. How many ways can you express the concept of half price?

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Clunky phrasing

I once wrote a subscriptions promotion for a publisher with a phrase introducing a key benefit like this: “As a subscriber to X, you enjoy…” Present tense. Assumptive close. Short and to the point.

The Editor changed it to “If you subscribe to X, you will be certain to be able to enjoy…” Hmm.

Again, reading your copy out loud will reveal this type of writing. The cure is to ask yourself how you would say this to someone face-to-face. The result is almost always a smooth-flowing, clean little sentence that slides straight past their defences unnoticed.

Speech marks enclosing figures of speech

There may, occasionally, be a case for using a well-worn phrase or cliché. But if you ARE going to do this, maybe because it helps you strike the right tone of voice, please don’t enclose it with speech marks.

What you are doing is putting your copy “under the spotlight” when it should be “under the radar”.

Your reader has to “stop in their tracks” to figure out what you mean when your meaning is “crystal clear” without the “offending items”

Cure? Delete ‘em all. Every last “man jack” of them.

And the rest

There are plenty of other grease spots on the glass. Spelling errors. Obscure words. Using all caps. Each slows your reader down and pulls them back from involvement in your copy and towards the copy itself.

And I’m telling you this because?

Just like the best fiction, the best copy is self-effacing. It fades into the background, leaving the reader to focus on the message.

In other words, you can’t see the window, just the view.

So keep your windows streak-free and watch out for pigeons. (And if you need a good window cleaner, call me on +44 (0)1722 413 900. Or email me at andy.maslen@sunfish.co.uk.)