If you choose the wrong word, you'll hurt yourself!
Using the wrong word in real estate marketing materials will hurt you in two ways.
First, it will detract from your message. Your readers might be going merrily along, absorbing your marketing message and even agreeing with you.
Then all of a sudden, there’s a word that doesn’t belong.
It doesn’t fit. It doesn’t make sense with the rest of the sentence. It’s like a big stop sign in the middle of the message.
All the momentum you’d gained is lost. Now they’re not absorbing your message, they’re stopping to figure out what you meant.
Worse – that wrong word will hurt you because they’re now wondering about you and your professionalism.
Perhaps you just can’t spell, and maybe that won’t matter to them – or maybe it will. Or perhaps you don’t pay attention to details, and that WILL probably matter to them. Choosing you would mean trusting you to help them with one of the largest transactions in their lives. It's important that you pay attention to details. A wrong word in an offer or counter-offer could lead to big trouble.
Word pairs that routinely trip up real estate agents:
One of the most common offenders is "Thanks for the good advise."
- Advise is a verb - it's something you do, not something you can give.
- Advice is a noun; it's what you give.
And then there was the headline that read “Is success alluding you?” OUCH
-
allude means to refer to something indirectly
elude means to evade or avoid
I’ve also seen agents say things like “When you choose to except an offer…” or “When your offer is excepted.”
- except means exclude
- accept means to consent to
And how about “It makes good since to…”
- since means because – or it could refer to a time period, as in “since she turned 21 …”
- sense (in this context) means sound judgment.
Another one I've seen frequently is "I most defiantly agree that..." This one may just be a common spelling error, because the definition of "defiant" is "boldly resistant or challenging." I'm not sure you can defiantly agree, unless perhaps you're taking sides in a heated argument.
The definition of definite is "clearly defined or determined; not vague or general; fixed; precise; exact; positive; certain; sure." I'm pretty sure that agents mean to say they "definitely agree" when they accidentally say "defiantly."
And don't forget about those perspective clients!
I know that no real estate agent would call anticipated future clients "perspects," so why do they say and write "perspective" when they mean "prospective?"
All of these word choices (and many others) put stop signs in the middle of sentences.
So if you’re ever unsure of a word – look it up. And if your vocabulary is such that you’ll use the wrong words routinely and without realizing that it's wrong, ask someone you trust to proofread and edit your work before you send it out.
Featured image courtesy of Stuart Miles @freedigitalphotos.com
The original of this post appeared at: Using the “Wrong Word” in real estate marketing materials hurts in two ways… - Copy By Marte
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