You don’t have to search for famous examples of bad copywriting when it’s all around us…even in my kitchen! Since I’m in a mood and I’ve recently picked apart another piece of bad copywriting, let’s do another. This is copy from food packaging that was in my kitchen. I changed it a bit to keep it anonymous (and it was juice, not cereal), but the gist of it is the same: What’s wrong with this copywriting? Spend some time with this. Read it a couple of times. What jumps out at you? First, there’s the headline: Put Good...
Originally written October 2017, Updated January 2024. As someone who wants to help people develop better business writing skills, I have no shortage of raw material to work with to point out how to write better! As proof, this email showed up today. At first glance, you might think, “Now this reads fine! Why is she going to pick this apart??” Well, I’ll tell you, after I let you read it through… Dear____, I hope your year is off to a great start. I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is [employee name] and I will...
Originally published November 2017, Updated January 2024 When I tell people I’ve started BetterFasterWriter.com, they all nod knowingly, because they either work with poor writers or they sense their own writing could use improvement. How about you? Are you nodding along, knowing that poor writing is pandemic in today’s business world? Do you see the same lack of effective business writing skills that I see? Putting up with poor writing is annoying, but there’s a longer term negative impact that results: loss of credibility, for the...
Originally Published October 2017, Updated January 2024 Today’s topic is kind of technical: misrelated constructions. Ugly name, I know. It sounds like some kind of grammar geek speak. But if you want to improve your business writing skills, this is one mistake you don’t want to make. (Although it can be funny when it happens, as you’ll see…) What’s a misrelated construction? A misrelated construction happens when a word or phrase that’s supposed to be connected to a certain word or phrase isn’t and ends up connected to another word...
Why search for a good copywriting tip when too many copywriters don’t even do this one simple thing? C’mon, copywriters. We can do better than this snippet of copy that I grabbed from a web page: It doesn’t make any sense, right? You discover the changes so you don’t have to discover the changes? Huh? And when you consider this is meant to be marketing and persuading a potential customer, it’s even worse. Why these copywriting mistakes happen This kind of mistake is inexcusable in my book. And I can think of two possible...
