Write the way you talk
Every text, with all the rules, is a personal product. So do not try to pretend. You’ll only cramp up. When my junior copywriters ask me how they should write, I always say:
Imagine you’re sitting at the counter and you meet a friend, and that’s who you’re telling the story to now. Sit down at the keyboard and write it down just like that.
You’ll see that the first draft of the text will read smoothly.
Never try to write ready for print immediately
A good text is never created on the first throw. Quite the opposite. Texting is a process.
If you try to write perfectly right away, you’ll only block yourself because you’ll get stuck on phrasing, sentence positions, etc. for too long.
The first text should “only” be complete and contain everything you want to say.
After that, shorten it. Ask yourself the questions:
- Can I make something shorter?
- Are there more attractive words? (Ah, there’s the synonym dictionary again).
- Where are duplications?
- Can I say it more simply?
Mark sentences that are too long
After you have the raw text, check the sentence lengths. Take a pen and mark all sentences that contain more than 20 words. Then think about how you can break up at least a large portion of these sentences into several.
Mark all commas
This is a simple trick to find out if there are too many nested sentences in your text. Try to turn unnecessarily inserted subordinate clauses into sentences of their own.
Mark all word problems
In the heat of the moment, our favorite text breaks such as employee satisfaction analysis are quickly written. So review the text and rewrite it consistently.
Rewrite your text
The improved text will be better and even faster if you rewrite it together with your corrections. Avoid “messing around” in the existing text document.
Conclusion
We can all write. And we do it, too. Every day and lots of it.
Whether it’s emails, love letters, meeting reports, business correspondence, or formulating questions for a questionnaire.
All these texts have something in common: the better they are written, the more successful they are. Besides a little talent, this requires a few simple rules and tricks.