Don’t let them notice your words!
When you’re working hard to write a blog post, a letter, or any other kind of marketing materials, your goal is, of course, to get your message across.
One way to make that happen is to write in such a way that your readers don’t notice your words. Instead, they should simply absorb your message. I know – you’ll want them to remember what you said, but that’s different than noticing the words.
If they notice the words, understanding may be lost. Why? Because when a reader notices a word or phrase it is generally for one of these reasons:
- It is misspelled
- It doesn’t fit where the writer put it
- The reader doesn't know what it means
And when the reader notices for one of these reasons, you’ve lost the flow.
Those “noticed” words act as stop signs in your narrative.
Your reader may have been reading along, understanding your message and perhaps even agreeing with you. Then all of a sudden, there’s a stop sign, and that flow vanishes. Now, instead of absorbing your meaning, they’re trying to figure out your words. What did you mean?
A misspelled word is the least troublesome.
Studies show that we often read the word that was intended as long as the first and last letters are in the correct place. So if we occasionally leave a letter out of a word, or get two letters mixed up, it might not do too much damage.
But that depends upon the word. If you misspell the word “prospective” and turn it into “perspective” it has a totally different meaning. The same is true for “advice” and “advise.”
Adding an apostrophe where it doesn’t belong is a common misspelling – and one that turns a good sentence into nonsense.
Take the following sentence, for example: “Joe and Sally enjoyed a peaceful ride on their horse’s.”
On their horse’s what? When you turn a plural into a possessive by adding an apostrophe, it makes it appear that part of the sentence is missing.
The best plan is to avoid misspellings.
Words placed where they don’t belong throw the whole narrative off.
And unfortunately, this happens regularly. For instance, when a person writes “there house” when they meant to say “their house,” the reader will likely stop and think “What??” After all, there and their have completely different meanings.
A descriptive word or phrase in the wrong place has a similar effect because it seems to modify the wrong word.
Consider these sentences:
“My parents bought a pony for my sister named Prince.”
“The woman placed her bet on the bay horse in the red dress.”
I see examples similar to these in our local newspaper on a regular basis.
If your reader doesn’t know the meaning of a word, it’s a double loss for you.
First, he or she will stop and wonder what that word means, so the flow of your message is gone. But worse, that reader may form a negative attitude toward you, because you made them feel ignorant.
They might be willing to admit that you know more about real estate and the local market than they do. But they don’t want to feel like you are just generally smarter or more well-informed than they are. And they sure as heck don’t want you showing them that you’re smarter by using words they don’t understand.
This is why one of the rules of copywriting is to use language that can easily be understood by a 6th grader. Unless you know your audience will consist of literary scholars, this is not the time to show off your extensive vocabulary.
So check your work. See to it that you’ve used words that are common to the everyday speech of your target audience. Then, if there are any long words or words you aren’t sure a 6th grader would know, change them.
And so… Before you hit buttons that say “send, publish, or print,” do these 3 things…
- Proofread for typos and spelling errors.
- Check to see that you chose the right words, and that all of your modifiers are in the right places. Read your work out loud and listen for speed bumps.
- Re-read to ensure that you have not included any words that a 6th grader would not be expected to know.
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