Remember that old headline grabber?  Sex … now I’ve got your attention?  Well this blog isn’t about that 3-letter word.  But it is about how to make your body (copy) so desirable your readers simply can’t resist it.  Incidentally, using headlines like that are known as ‘link bait’ and we’ll be covering them in another post soon.

However, if you are attracting people to your website or your blog, are you doing your best to keep them there?  There is a great deal more to good copywriting than just penning a few well-chosen words.

When someone visits your website, picks up your brochure, or even opens an email, your job is to make sure they stay and read what you have to say.  And that’s not just about the words.  How your copy is presented and how easily it can be read is critical.

When you’re writing your own copy, there’s a lot you can do to help.  To get you started, here’s three of the most common mistakes you can easily avoid:

Uppercase letters

When it comes to uppercase letters … avoid them!  In short measures, copy in uppercase letters looks like the writer is shouting.  This can be quite effective to emphasise the odd word – FREE – is a good example.  But overdo it and you’re inviting trouble.

When we look at words, we don’t actually read the individual letters.  We determine what the words are by subconsciously following the shape of the word.  This helps us to scan read very quickly.  It can be illustrated by some of the crazy sentences which are full of mistakes, yet perfectly understandable.

“In fatc spelign cna be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.”

When a whole paragraph is written in uppercase letters, you have to deliberately read each word to understand the meaning.  This takes time and is hard work.

READING COPY WHICH IS ALL IN UPPERCASE LETTERS IS VERY HARD AND MOST PEOPLE JUST WON’T BOTHER.  THEY WILL TAKE ONE LOOK AND GIVE UP VERY QUICKLY BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE THE TIME OR INCLINATION TO WORK THAT HARD. AVOID USING ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS IF YOU WANT YOUR COPY TO BE READ!

Aligning your text

Another common mistake is how the text is aligned.  If you look on your Word toolbar, you will see you have 4 options: left aligned, centred, right aligned (rarely used, so we won’t dwell on it) and justified.

Left aligned text is always recommended because it is much easier to read.  This is because we read from left to right and we can instinctively find the start of the lines.  The ‘white space’ it creates on the right-hand side also helps us read the text more easily.

Text which is centred on the page is much harder to read than left-aligned.  It prevents scan-reading and makes the audience work harder – that’s if they bother at all!

Centred text is frequently combined with uppercase letters, causing an even bigger problem for the reader:

READING COPY WHICH IS ALL IN UPPERCASE LETTERS IS VERY HARD
AND MOST PEOPLE JUST WON’T BOTHER.  THEY
WILL TAKE ONE
LOOK AND GIVE UP VERY QUICKLY BECAUSE
THEY DON’T HAVE
THE TIME OR INCLINATION TO WORK THAT
HARD. AVOID USING ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS IF YOU WANT YOUR COPY TO READ!

 

Justified text is also common.  Justified text is where the words are spaced out across the line to align with both the right and left margins, as I’ve done here.  It is difficult to read because it  creates gaps between words, particularly when used in narrow columns. This makes us read in fits and starts and prevents us from reading smoothly along the line.

Justified text is frequently used in books and magazines.  This works because generally good typesetting software is used, which is much more sophisticated than the average word processor.

Colour

Colour, if you have the skills to use it well, can be very effective.  But many websites and blogs are populated with an assortment of garish colour fonts, which basically ‘hurts your eyes’ and puts you off reading the content.  And all too often, this is combined with uppercase letters and centred text!

READING COPY WHICH IS ALL IN UPPERCASE LETTERS IS VERY HARD
AND MOST PEOPLE JUST WON’T BOTHER.  THEY
WILL TAKE ONE
LOOK AND GIVE UP VERY QUICKLY BECAUSE
THEY DON’T HAVE
THE TIME OR INCLINATION TO WORK THAT
HARD. AVOID USING ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS IF YOU WANT YOUR COPY TO READ!

It won’t matter if you are the best or the worst writer in the world, or if you’ve sorted out your features and your benefits – if you don’t make it easy for your audience to read your copy, you’ll have wasted your time!

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