As a wife, there’s almost nothing worse than having my husband say I look “fine.” Mind you, “fine” is not all that bad by the world’s standards. But, trust me, “fine” is bad by a wife’s standards.

While “fine” doesn’t mean hideous, atrocious or not-fit-for-public-viewing, “fine” is not good.

Not by a long shot.

And so it is with copy. Copy that’s “fine” is probably free of most grammatical errors and one or two or three read-throughs probably gets some of the basic message across — more or less.

But “fine” copy is not good copy.

One of my specialities is taking “fine” copy and reworking it into something that’s more readable, more engaging, more impactful.

I’ve been doing this a lot lately because once a client reads the difference between “fine” copy and “reworked” copy, there’s no going back.

So besides encouraging you to rework “fine” copy into something better, I wanted to give a few hints on how to do it. This is not a formula, by any means, just some of the things that could go into reworking copy to strengthen and streamline the messaging.

~ Read the entire copy passage, step back and summarize it into a single sentence.
~ Rewrite that single sentence into 1-3 sentences, leading with the benefit to your reader.
~ Write only enough words to say what needs to be said.
~ Edit the revised copy word by word, removing redundant and unnecessary words and phrases.
~ Read the copy aloud and continue refining it.
~ Let go of trying to “hang on” to some of the existing copy.
~ Tell a story with the copy.

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