Take your pick
Pick a piece of online copywriting you like. Even some of mine! Cut and paste it into a new document. Then print and read it. Odds are you’ll find it doesn’t work as well in print as it does in pixels.

Is this harder to read?
Writing for the web is different, because reading a screen is different. It’s harder than reading paper, so work to make web copy less difficult to read. Tempt the visitor to keep going.

Yours sincerely
The web is informal – when did you last see a webpage beginning “To whom it may concern”? Use the first person and active constructions. Take liberties with grammar and construction, as long as you know what you can get away with.

Byte sized*
Break a chunk of copy into short paragraphs – it looks less daunting.

Ask a designer
Any designer will tell you about the advantages of white space. That works on-screen too.

Love spiders
Pepper web content with headlines and sub-heads. It leads the visitor on. And it’s an SEO technique for grabbing spiders.

Key words and phrases
Only humans read print. But web pages are read by stupid software. It doesn’t understand what you’re saying, it just indexes words and phrases. So, repeat key words and phrases more frequently than you’d do for a human reader. However, spiders aren’t going to spend money with you so, for the sake of the humans out there, learn to repeat key words and key phrases unobtrusively.

Pixels, not print
Always proof check for typos and grammaticals by reading your copy as a print out. You’ll see more mistakes that way. Then proof read for sense and readability on screen, because that’s where everybody else will read it.

Keep it short
Bored yet?

*deliberate mispelling. But you knew that anyway.

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The words are those of Saul Pett, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. He never wrote web copy, but his sentiment is just as true for web writers. It’s what lies behind the tyranny of the blank page, or the Microsoft Word screen, empty except for a flashing cursor.

Every copywriter has his or her routine for getting started, and it’s something you have to develop for yourself. Look first to your assets, the things that make it easier to hit the keys.

You have a brief. Someone has told you what the objective of the web page (or the entire site) is – and if they haven’t, go back to them and talk it through. So, you know the effect you have to create.

You have an audience. Once again, you have been briefed on the target market that the website owner is aiming at, and why they might be interested in the proposition. If that wasn’t included in the brief, go back and define your audience.

You know the language to use. The audience brief should have included the language they speak – not Serbo-Croat or Mandarin – but the depth of knowledge they have of the product or service being offered. The deeper their understanding, the more specific the language you can use.

You have your research. You’ve analysed competitor sites, looking at key words, spotting points of difference. You’ve read the collateral your client already has. You’ve looked at competitor literature and webpages. You’ve considered what works, and what doesn’t. You’ve talked with potential users and stakeholders in the business.

And you have your greatest asset, a writer’s skill.

With those assets, it’s time to start clicking keys. It almost doesn’t matter what you write. This is not yet a draft, not even a skeleton. It’s just a pile of bones. When the pile begins to grow, you can arrange the bones, promoting some, discarding others, looking for new ones, until you have the skeleton of a narrative – the story that is going to convince readers to take whatever action is your client’s objective.

Now put flesh on those bones. Rely only on your own skills. DON’T CUT, PASTE AND EDIT MATERIAL FROM OTHER SITES. That’s not the action of a writer, but of a thief. And your readers will know that it’s stolen. It just won’t hang together. It won’t flow. It certainly won’t convince.

So, write it. Print it. Read it. Correct it. And then leave it alone, for as long as your deadline allows. What you do now is think. The hard bit.

Have you said enough? Have you said too much? Have you missed anything? Are all the keywords there, and at the right density? Is there a different, better way of convincing your audience?

When you’re through, rewrite. Rewrite until you’re convinced it’s as good as it’ll get. Sounds tough? It is. Dorothy Parker said “I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”

Only when you’ve satisfied yourself that it couldn’t possibly be better have you arrived at a first draft you can present to your client. And if they’re a good client, they won’t want you to rewrite it! Yeah, sure.

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It’s back to school time. Sorry. I know we’re supposed to be more relaxed about spelling and grammar nowadays, but for a website to work to the max, it must avoid alienating its target audience. And some people get intensely annoyed by what they regard as sloppy writing. So here goes. Five common mistakes:

It’s/Its
Only use it’s with an apostrophe, when it represents a contraction of it is. It’s easy to remember. It’s = it is.

Any other use of its, and there’s no apostrophe:

The store opened its doors for the first time.
It’s going to be a hard winter.
The team presented its new players.
No doubt – it’s going to be a great season.

Spell checker hell
It’s something to do with fingers. When we use a keyboard sometimes our fingers consistently enter a word wrongly. Usually the spell checker spots the problem. But where the wrong word is a good word, no alarms ring. My problems are two little words. For, and from. Often I type them fro and form. So do others – it’s a mistake often seen. Learn what your problem words are and make a point of looking out for them when proofreading. Here are a few more:

One – On
Name – Mane
Red – Ref
Fade – Fads
Two – Tow

Same sound, different spelling, different meaning
Lots of examples – too many , but here are a few. This is where an online dictionary (or even a paper one) is your best friend. If you’re uncertain, look it up.

Discreet – Discrete
Principle – Principal
Stationary – Stationery
Their – There
Affect – Effect
Weather – Whether – Wether (that last one is definitely worth looking up, unless you were born on a farm)
Border – Boarder
Born – Borne
Berth – Birth
Etc.

To/Too/Two
There should be no excuse for confusing to and two, but poor old too often loses its last letter. If you’ve used to and you could substitute the word also then add an ‘o’. And her mother came too. But too is also used to mean an excess. He has too much talent. That use is easier to spot, and causes less mistakes, but when your fingers are really flying, look out for it.

Inconsistent numbering
There’s a writing convention. Numbers up to ten are spelt. Numbers over ten are shown in figures.

There were five staff in the store.
We are launching 43 new products.

If you use that rule keep it consistent. It trips the reader up to see ten in one place and 10 in another.

But what should you do if you have both a large and a small number appearing in the same sentence?

The ten syndicate members won £23,000 each.

Rearrange.

There were ten syndicate members. Each won £23,000.

And don’t forget. Proofread.

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A little rule. 100% of people will read 10 words; 10% of people will read 100 words.

Not true of course, but a good guide to the penalty exacted by long copy.

So, a few tips on cutting copy. Not the full treatise, which will follow, but ways to lose a word or two without losing anything else.

In order to. What’s wrong with ‘to’?

We are doing this in order to achieve that. We are doing this to achieve that.

Same as. Same as is the same as ‘like’, sometimes.

Our products are the same as our competitors’ but cost less. Our products are like our competitors’ but cost less.

As well as. A phrase that can often be swapped for ‘too’ or ‘both’.

We supply red lorries as well as yellow lorries. We supply both red lorries and yellow lorries. We supply both red and yellow lorries. We supply red lorries, and yellow lorries too.

The apostrophe. It can save a vital letter or two.

They will be available in the New Year. They’ll be available in the New Year.

We will get right back to you. We’ll get right back to you.

Don’t state the obvious.

We’ll get right back to you. We’ll get right back.

Adjectives – don’t make lists (it smells like overselling).

This stunning, exciting, innovative new service. This exciting new service.

Articles. Definite and possessive articles are often understood in their absence.

The research shows. Research shows.

Our customers are clamouring for more. Customers are clamouring for more.

———–

There are many more ways of cutting copy, including radical rewrites. But  little wins, like these, can make a big difference. Read on, if you wish.

From a Transport for London web page:

Cycle revolution
Cycle journeys in London have more than doubled in the past decade, with a nine per cent increase in cycle journeys on the city’s major roads in the past year alone.
The new facilities will provide for growing cyclist demand and also help to promote cycling as an easy and convenient way to get around the Capital.
Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor’s transport adviser, said: “If we are to deliver a cycle revolution in the Capital we must ensure Londoners can park their bikes where and when they want to.
‘The availability of cycle parking plays a major role in helping people decide whether it is convenient to take to two wheels or not.
113 words, 628 characters

or:

Cycle revolution
London cycle journeys have more than doubled in a decade, with a 9% rise on major roads in the last year.
New facilities will meet growing demand and help promote cycling as an easy and convenient way to get around.
Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor’s transport adviser, said: ‘If we are to deliver a cycle revolution Londoners must be able to park bikes where and when they want.
Cycle parking plays a major role when people decide whether to take to two wheels.
82 words, 452 characters

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Social networkers will recognise the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2009, unfriend.

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site.

It’s fun to spot new words – although often they are uglier than three-week dead haddock (‘scrappage’ for example) – but be careful about their use in web copy.

The prime job of commercial web copy is to tempt your readers into a profitable relationship with you. The second priority is to get your site near the top of search engine listings.

While Google won’t care a whit about you unfriending scrappage, human readers quite possibly will. So don’t risk upsetting them. Keep your language simple, open, everyday, approachable*. And non-upsetting. It’ll stop people unfriending you.

*Errrrrr – one exception. If you’re just addressing a technical audience that’s on your wavelength, go ahead and use as much jargon and as many TLA’s as you need. They’ll be flattered to be thought of as part of an exclusive community.

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Ditch The Double Space

Hints and tips on this website are just that, not laws carved in granite. But here’s one guideline that really ought to be carved in granite, enshrined in an Act and passed by Parliament. NO DOUBLE SPACES AT SENTENCE ENDS.

Always put just one space after the end of a sentence. Years ago, when we used typewriters (they were introduced to stop us plucking quills from geese*), hitting any key advanced the carriage one space. And that space was the same distance, whether you’d typed a narrow letter like an ‘i’ or a wide one like an ‘w’. Depending on whether the next sentence began with a wide or narrow letter, sometimes it was awkward to see where a new sentence began. Computers are more intelligent than typewriters**. They know the width of the letter and so they adjust the space around it automatically. Inserting a digital double space now trips up the reader’s eye. They won’t thank you for it. Don’t believe me? Check below.

Always put just one space after the end of a sentence.  Years ago, when we used typewriters (they were introduced to stop us plucking quills from geese*), hitting any key advanced the carriage one space.  And that space was the same distance, whether you’d typed a narrow letter like an ‘i’ or a wide one like an ‘w’.  Depending on whether the next sentence began with a wide or narrow letter, sometimes it was awkward to see where a new sentence began.  Computers are more intelligent than typewriters**.  They know the width of the letter and so they adjust the space around it automatically.  Inserting a digital double space now trips up the reader’s eye.  They won’t thank you for it.  Don’t believe me?  Check above.

The single, not double, space is a rule that nonprofessional writers resist. Maybe because they think it looks professional. It doesn’t. See what authors, copywriters, journalists and editors do by checking any magazine, newspaper or commercial website. Count the double spaces you find – you won’t need to take your mittens off!

*Or, presumably, sparrows if you were writing the small print in insurance contracts.

**Actually, they’re not, but the people who write text display and word processing applications are. Just.

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