As copywriters and marketers, we often rely upon the written word to sway the emotions and decisions of our audience. Some consumers (and clients) are notorious for not knowing what they want, but you can rest assured that they’ll bring torches and pitchforks the moment they spot bad content, which is why good writers need to constantly hone their craft.
Although we can’t expect everyone to write at top-tier levels, it’s very easy to tell when a writer is not confident – and with how unforgiving audiences are with first impressions, leaving your reputation up to trial and error is too dangerous. Curious to see if you have any bad habits that need fixing? Read on!
Sir Explains-a-lot
There are many times when a writer needs to explain something to their audience. Whether due to an unfamiliar subject, for background context or for some reason in-between, the best writers are able to explain just enough so that their audience can follow along comfortably.
However, unconfident writers are unable to restrain themselves when they explain. They feel the need to explain everything there is to know – perhaps the quantity of knowledge creates the façade of confidence or perhaps they thought that their audience were truly too clueless. Whatever the reason, overexplaining will only weigh down their writing.
Let’s try an example about the rise of NFTs. How much detail should we put include?
a) Explain what the abbreviation NFT is, how they relate to cryptocurrencies and why they got popular during COVID
b) Explain the history of NFTs and cryptocurrencies, how they work via blockchain, why NFTs are a secure investment, COVID’s effect on global economies and how it led to the sudden interest in NFTs, why NFTs have tanked in 2023…
If you picked (b), we need to have a talk. Although NFTs are a form of cryptocurrency, delving into the history of cryptocurrencies and their extensive security measures are not relevant to the topic. You could lightly cover how NFT transactions and ownership are protected, but it should only be a supporting argument. Secondly, we’re only talking about “the rise of NFTs” – talking about their downfall is irrelevant to this story and should be saved for a future article.
Not only does overexplaining detract from your main arguments, there’s also the possibility of the following happening…
Unending sentences and disconnected thoughts
If you’ve proofread before, you’ll know how annoying it is to try and get through run-on sentences.
It’s not too bad when it’s just a pair of independent clauses improperly tied together… but when you have multiple clauses (and each trying to make a separate point), then it becomes a tedious gauntlet of mental gymnastics.
To join together two or more independent clauses, conjunctions and/or punctuation need to be used – more importantly, we need to be careful that the clauses are relevant to one another.
1. Jim went to the grocery store; he picked up milk, cheese and bread, then he went home after.
2. Jim went to work today; the Battle of Normandy was brutal… D-Day was one of the bloodiest days in the history of warfare
The first example works because it tells a sequence of what Jim did. The second does not because Jim going to work has no relevance to the Battle of Normandy.
Writers are often expected to be able to bridge points that don’t directly tie in with one another, but smashing the clauses together in the example above will only confuse your readers. In such cases, we can try and think about causality or how clause B can be brought on by clause A:
· Jim went to work today. During his commute in the overcrowded subway, he recalled the stories his grandfather told during his service in World War II – his platoon of terrified recruits and disgruntled officers stuffed onto fleets of landing crafts at the Battle of Normandy. Although Jim was in no danger of dying, he couldn’t help but feel empathetic for the mass of emotions in his grandfather’s mind at the time.
However, just because we can string together long sentences does not always mean we should do it. If a simple sentence can do the job just as well, the simple option is usually your best bet.
Passive pushovers
Although you won’t get thrown into copywriting jail for using adverbs and the passive voice, they are a weak choice that won’t get your writing noticed.
· Passive: The summit was attended by the President and several other prominent leaders.
· Active: The President and several other prominent leaders attended the summit.
· With adverbs: The summit venue was carefully decorated with flags of all the attending nations.
· Without: The summit venue was adorned with flags of all the attending nations.
The passive voice is flawed because of the way the sentence is configured: the object is being acted upon by the subject.
People naturally think in the active voice – we think and say “I’m going to the store” and not “the store will be visited by me” – which means the subject is often the first thing we expect to perceive. Since the subject is essentially “the star” of the sentence, pushing it into the back of the sentence only delays the reader’s comprehension.
Let’s move on to adverbs.
Adverbs are a wordy fix for poor verb choice. In our example, the option with the adverb had to use three words to convey the same meaning as one strong verb. Furthermore, adverbs have the problem of telling what the reader to think instead of demonstrating it. If we wanted to convey that the room was well-dressed with flags, we might list out some of the flags that were present, what they looked like, or perhaps even their symbolism if it was relevant to the themes of the summit.
You can use adverbs occasionally, but it becomes lazy writing if readers can spot adverbs repeatedly!
Syntax sloths
A variation in sentence structures are essential for making writing enjoyable to read.
If everyone sentence was like this, it’d be exhausting to read.
It would also be very repetitive, because the tempo is the same.
Go ahead and try it out, it’s like trying to read bad poetry.
Who needs iambic pentameter, when we can have this.
This is only 5 lines in – imagine if there was pages of this.
When constructing sentences, we have 4 types of sentence structures to work with:
· Simple sentences
An individual independent clause, such as “Greg brewed the coffee today.”
· Compound sentences
Two or more independent clauses joined together via conjunctions or punctuation, such as “Greg brewed the coffee today, but John prepared the coffee yesterday.”
· Complex sentences
An independent clause with a dependent clause, such as “Greg brewed the coffee today because John didn’t.”
· Compound-complex sentences
Two or more independent clauses with at least one dependent clause, such as “Greg brewed the coffee today, but John prepared it yesterday because he couldn’t sleep a wink.”
Since dependent clauses can also be placed before an independent clause, you have plenty of sentence variations to play around with – so there’s no reason to sound like a broken record when writing.
There’s no denying that writers have a lot to juggle for their audiences, but it doesn’t excuse sloppy writing. At best, audiences will see bad writing as a lack of confidence… and at worst, a lack of skill. In either case, that is definitely not the kind of first impression you want to make!