:  Draw attention to the customer benefits
:  Break up the monotony of long blocks of text
:  Create visual interest

Possibly related posts

• The one thing you must stop doing right now. (0)
• Survey: Your opinion wanted (0)
• A single question to change your perspective (3)

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.

Possibly related posts

• Are you talking their ‘love language’? (0)
• What great web copy is NOT (0)
• The one thing you must stop doing right now. (0)

As many of my regular readers know, I like to keep a swipe file of things I think are well written. They serve as inspiration for me and can get my own writing moving when it gets stuck.

While I prefer to share the positive, every now and then I run across something so ridiculously bad that I have to share.

Like this example from Agency.com. This well-known interactive agency’s home page says this:

“effective interactive marketing campaigns, world-class websites. both are important, but what’s really important is both.”

Huh? I mean, I get it after I read it a couple of times but it’s just, well, dumb. Tell me what your first impression of this “tagline” is and share your own examples of things that have given you pause (for the wrong reason).

Possibly related posts

• Why you should rework "fine" copy (0)
• What’s your big, bad, ugly? (2)
• The one thing you must stop doing right now. (0)

A site that I worked on last year finally launched (whoohoo!) but much to my dismay they changed my original copy (gasp!).

Now, I’m not naive enough to think that my copy will remain intact all the time. (Oftentimes it does.)

Legal folks poke at it. Department heads tweak. Management dabbles. When it comes to copywriting, some companies like to have every cook in that kitchen.

IF you’re going to do this, let me caution you to have a professional on-staff or freelance writer take a final run through of the copy.

Otherwise, you’ll end up with what I saw online today: unparallel sentence structured, mucked up messaging and inconsistent punctuation. (And I’m holding back a little here.)

Sometimes ya just gotta trust the writer, okay?

Possibly related posts

• Why you should rework "fine" copy (0)
• I forgot to remember that: 8 copywriting basics (0)
• The one thing you must stop doing right now. (0)