Making simple writing complicated is commonplace; making complicated writing simple, awesomely simple … that’s effective copy. Are you an effective writer? What are your writing skills? We all know good writing when we see it and we cringe when we see the terrible writing. The worst thing is that the harder people try to write well, the worse their writing usually becomes.
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Remember: How Good Is your Learning from Failure?
Okay, a show of hands. Who else is still searching for that perfect, original angle that’ll make your writing stand out?
Yeah, most of us are. The fact is, writing great copy, no matter its purpose, is a very difficult and competitive field, and if you want to stand out, you need to be original.
Right?
How engaging are your articles? How fascinating? How persuasive?
When I started writing, most of it was pretty dreadful. Too corporate. Too technical. Too boring. Too many trains of thought. And of course, too much focus on telling everything I knew. And I know I am not yet the best I can be and probably never will be.
Pick a topic of interest to your community, do your research, construct a catchy title and write 700 words. Ready. Publish.
Writing really isn’t that simple for most of us. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are 9 secrets guaranteed to improve your writing.
You must make it simple.
Make it as simple and short as possible
To make your writing sparkle, you must cut long sentences and skip bland words. Each sentence should add value and encourage the reader to read on.
Read through your draft text to look for long sentences. Aim for a maximum of 12 words per sentence on average. Examine all sentences with more than 15 words.
Make Sure Your Numbers Are Correct
Go through all of your copy, looking at numbers on their own. $10K is very different from $100K. Read the numbers out loud, digit by digit.
Writing skills … every section head needs attention
Read all headlines and subheads separately as we tend to skip these when proofreading. Don’t forget to proof the subject line and, if a document is attached, make sure it is properly named.
Power words grab attention
Emotional, sensory, and unusual words stand out. Include at least one power word in your headline.
Creative writing skills … editing
Editing isn’t just correcting grammar errors. You need to re-arrange, clean, and polish your text.
You need to re-arrange, clean, and polish your first draft.
You need to write the missing parts. And throw away excess parts.
Editing can be a painful process because you’re rewriting text you’ve put together with so much effort. You throw away your favorite sentences because they’re redundant. You dig deep to find exactly the right words.
But editing is also fascinating. You uncover the beauty of your ideas. You create clarity and simplicity. You make your text more engaging, more credible, and more persuasive.
If editing, always proof again. Every single time you add a word to a sentence, re-read the entire paragraph.
If possible, use someone else as the second proofreader
We can’t always have a peer review our copy, but if it’s something super important, and you need an extra pair of eyes, ask a friend or co-worker for help.
If you are in an office, set up a proofreading chain with 5 people on it and have each person sign off after reading through documents.
Read Your Text Backwards
When writing, we usually become blind to our own mistakes since the brain automatically corrects wrong words inside sentences. In order to break this pattern, try reading your text backward, word for word. This will help you to check spelling and details, but not content.
Read Text Out Loud Slowly
When you read out loud, you are forced to slow down. You hear and listen for sentence correctness. Read each word of each sentence ALOUD and very slowly so that you are reading in a monotone. This will help to avoid reading what you THINK you wrote, vs. what you ACTUALLY wrote.
Proofread at Least Three Times
The first time you proof a document, it should be for clarity in content. Clarify unclear thoughts and expand any that need to be finessed. (Use a Thesaurus for better word choices.) The second time, look for spelling mistakes, tenses and homonyms (i.e., accept/except; their, there). The third time, check for punctuation and spacing.
Make sure you are not tired or RUSHED when proofing. Make sure to always re-read whenever you copy and paste a document, or a part of a document, into your correspondence.
Proofreading is a dying art, wouldn’t you say? Here is a great example:
Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter
This one was caught in the local newspaper recently and called into the Editorial Room. It took two or three readings before the editor realized that what he was reading was impossible!!! They put in a correction the next day.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
Do you have a lesson about making your writing better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
It’s up to you to keep improving your ability to write better copy. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on learning from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
How Good Is your Learning from Failure?
10 Extraordinary Ways for Learning to Learn
Continuous Learning Holds the Keys to Your Future Success
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