Its no wonder I have a permanent crick in my neck. Ive spent the last ten years shaking my head piteously at people who think they can write. Fellow scribes, let us gather now for a virtual group hug, as we console each other for the fruitlessness that is our existence.
Okay, Im being a little dramatic. But its true; innumerous individuals think they dont need my services. Guess again, friends! You need the Writer. Ive seen what happens when you give it a go on your own, and it isnt pretty.
To my CopyWriting cohorts: you know who I mean. Theyre the ones who keep you hunched over that keyboard, slogging away into the wee hours of the morning, only to send back a bastardized draft revision thats rife with bad grammar, sloppy sentence structure and headlines that wouldnt fly in an eighth grade English essay. Whats a Writer to do? Work your magic, of course! I never thought I had special powers. But maybe I do, because thats what pandering types tell me just after theyve grammatically raped another one of my brainchildren. Little do they know, the painstaking way in which the CopyWriter chooses his words!
Good CopyWriting carries some emotional weight; thats what gives it substance. The challenge an advertiser faces is to harness the emotion of the audience and spur them to action. Still, people often fail to recognize theres a distinct method to the madness. They tamper with your creation; they muck up your words; they carelessly trod upon your masterpiece! You protest, gently, but still they always win. Why? You cant prove them wrong. You can only barrage them with more words. See how confusing it becomes?
In Writing, there are two partners at play; emotion, and logic. Emotion is the silly-putty of communication; logic is that little plastic container you keep it in. Ill say it another way: word choice and sentence structure. The problem is such: there is no tangible way to defend your emotional method of persuasion (or word choice), and as the language continues to evolve, logic (or sentence structure) is also going out the window.
As the most subjective of subjects, language leaves room for misinterpretation. Bad Writing is like driving a car on an empty tank of gas, in the complete wrong direction. Without a solid vocabulary, one cant harness the language. If one lacks the sense of what to say when, where, and to whom, to produce a desired response; someone, somewhere, will be laughing. That someone might be me.
A strategic Writer organizes carefully. This is where all that stuff you learned in fourth grade English class comes in. That old schoolmarm wasnt drawing sentence diagrams on the board to torture you. She was trying to show you that words take different forms depending on their logical function within a sentence. This is how we employ order and organization to make meaning understood. Hes so dumb he cant even form a sentence. Hey, many people of above-average intell igence really cant form a sentence! Its one of the reasons people hire professional Writers.
Someone might see something like poorly written web copy and think, That dont impress me much (because today, poor grammar even finds its way into song titles). And maybe they wont know why theyre not impressed... but Ill know! It will be due to flagrant disregard for the English language, and outright disrespect for the poetry in motion that is good advertising.
If youre an accomplished Writer, then God bless! Fight the good fight, little soldier, for Im backing you all the way. If youre a destroyer of quality Writing: do us humble wordsmiths a favor and back away from the pen. We love to hear you talk, we really do! Your expertise make us who we are because you confirm what we say. Youre the proof in our pudding; our real, live reference book! We love to listen and learn from you, and we love to pass your information along. We wont take your credit. We promise! Im your copy cosmetician, and Im here to make you look beautiful.
Now, please - just give me back my pen!
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Author:: Dina Giolitto
Keywords:: CopyWriting, Writing, copy editing, Copyediting, Proofreading, CopyWriter, Writer, Editor
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