Staying Current with Intro Styles

Everyone's in a hurry. And: Everyone already knows all the

introductions that have ever been written online. If you're writing a blog, a how-to, an interview transcription, a research piece, an article --- be sure to get right to it. Skip the three or four paragraphs of cliches that used to be required openings. Your readers already know why they want to fix the toilet, learn how to outline a novel, who Einstein was, why you missed the signs that your ex was a narcissist, why love is better than hate, and why women should know how to change a tire. 

A one or two sentence intro is fine --- but no more than that. This isn't high school English, it's the web. Digitally oriented writers already know this. 

Say you want to know how to change 72 dpi to 300 dpi in Photoshop. Any good how-to article will simply start with "Go to Effects>Document Raster Effects Settings and either check high Quality 300 DPI or do a custom setting and use..." Hello and thank you. 

As opposed to an article, perhaps, on how to earn extra money if you've lost all your equity investing in companies promising to avert incoming meteorites from hitting earth. "So, you want to earn extra money. Perhaps you made a bad investment in anti-meteorite companies. Or maybe you were a victim of the housing bubble. Perhaps your ex got the settlement you were dreading. Now you need to earn more money. Perhaps you want to pay off your credit card debt. Or maybe you have a tax lien on your house..." 

You see what I mean? When you write copy, you will lose readers if you don't get right into the solution they are looking for. They already know they are broke / their dishwasher is leaking / their condo management has decided your dog is too big. They just want the answers. 

You help your readers by being direct, and you help yourself by keeping your readers!

Follow that Car!

To never have another bad day in your life, avoid using the following words and phrases in your copy:

Never use the word location three times in a row. 

Never refer to an artist as, say, "the greatest living performer of his generation." You will instantly lose your credibility.

Remember that in copywriting, the words new and improved are translated by the listener to it still doesn't work and don't buy it if it's the last thing on the shelf. 

Never begin a sentence with the word well.

Whether you're writing a screenplay or scripting the last joke of the evening news, never refer to anyone as "doing the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink." 

Don't rhyme things.

Don't create a title for your article with a play on words using a current ad or movie title. For instance, a brain improvement article should not be called How to Be the Most Interesting Man on Earth.

Don't use an aphorism that everyone accepts because they've been hearing it since infancy, when in fact it actually has no relevance, and mostly no meaning. Examples:

Life goes on.

Be happy.

Suffering is good because we learn from it.

You've got to get out more.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Have a nice day.

Technology makes our lives too busy/crazy/hectic.

It's okay that he walks in his sleep - he's a creative type.

He minded his own business and just seemed so nice. 

(c)2016 Suzann Kale

Web Content: Never Start a Sentence with "Well"

You don't want to be the writer who begins your product marketing page with three long paragraphs about the problem, followed by the solution paragraph starting with "Well, ...". 

Don't:

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a flood? You're walking down the street minding your own business, when suddenly water starts gushing toward you? It's a bad feeling.  

Or perhaps you're sitting at home watching the rugby game and your dishwasher overflows. You run around trying to mop it up, but it just flows and flows, and suddenly water is all over your house. Yikes. 

Well, there's a solution to all this!!! A way to keep your home safe and be safe walking down the street as well. It's called the MasterUmbrellaTM and it will save you aggravation and money, and keep your shoes and carpet dry at the same time!

Any web content - your blog, a self-help article, product description, ezine article, business report, department description, marketing copy - needs to:

1. Get to the point right away. (In grade school we were taught to begin with opening paragraphs and lots of filler. And for certain kinds of reports - scientific papers, observations, medical description - you still want to start with descriptions. But for most web content, just get right to it. Otherwise you will lose your reader.)

2.  Never begin a sentence with "well" under any circumstance. If someone's pointing a gun to your head, still do not type the word "well."

3.  Break up your web content with illustrations, template design, color, mixed fonts and sizes, charts, diagrams, or tables. Reading copy on a screen is tiring enough - don't let your article be the one that finally puts the reader to sleep.

4.  If possible, try to avoid having the reader keep turning the page. Some web content is designed for advertisements, and when you're writing in that context you'll often have to format each of your 10 money-saving car-buying tips on 10 separate pages, in order for the company to display more ads. But if you're the boss of you, don't make readers keep hitting "next." You will lose them.

Own Your Syntax

 It's about self-worth. If you write it, you need to own it. Otherwise, why bother?

Let's examine this #1 offender: 

"We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

Could this possibly be any more offensive? Let's break it down.

We apologize... - Using the pronoun "we" is like saying, "It wasn't me, it was other people. I personally don't even know how to turn on a woodchipper. I don't even know what a woodchipper is."

"for any inconvenience..." - The word "any" leaves it open as to exactly how much inconvenience there actually was. Maybe not too much. And the word "inconvenience" is both a euphemism and a cliche. It's like saying, "I may have put your foot into my woodchipper when it was grinding down a giant elm, and on the off-chance that it might have made you the teeniest bit cranky, hey, we understand that you're too emotional."

"this may have caused;..." - means "We totally think you're lying about your foot being shredded when we put it through our woodchipper, but our lawyers have written up this statement to keep you from suing us."

If you've done something to upset someone, you will make the situation worse by using insincere, cliche-ridden lawyer-speak. Corporate media people, please take notice.

(c) 2016 Suzann Kale