Slightly Askew

Axa is redefining standards. Not raising them. Nor improving them. Just redefining them.

Arguably, then, Robert Mugabe is also redefining standards.

And failing schools are redefining standards.

Grotty prisons, too.

Oh well.

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Pic by a shadow of my future self.

I may be making this up, but I recall a wonderfully utopian bike-sharing scheme descending on Ipswich many years ago. Bikes were bought, sprayed green, and left around the town at dedicated bike parks. No fee necessary; no deposit required. Take a bike, ride it around, and leave at any bike park when you’re finished. The scheme would create more healthy people and reduce traffic in and around the town. Brilliant.

Of course, as soon as the free bikes were available, they were all nicked.

Theory and reality are two very different things.

Same with copywriting. I read books on my craft, and they’re chock full of advice on cutting out words. Less is more, they cry. And who could argue? Brevity, after all, is the soul of wit.

Yet many clients don’t like brevity. They like pompous jargon – it’s what they used to. To them, copywriting is the art of ‘flowering up’ their words. So when I rip the flimsy petals from their beds of waffle, they don’t like it much. So the hogwash goes back in and their smiles return.

Which is fine, of course. Clients put food in my fridge. They can have whatever words they want.

So my brevity fix stays hungry. Twitter stories are fun: 140 characters leave little room for flannel. But six word stories? I’m having some of that.

Please miss the next train home.

That’s all.

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A good copywriting reminder dropped through my letterbox today.

It reminded me to use examples when writing about technical stuff. Because as clever as we all think we are, we don’t really understand a lot of the waffle that’s thrown at us.

But that’s not our fault; just a copywriter’s problem.

The item that arrived through my postbox was a leaflet about Virgin Media broadband. Apparently, it’s the mother of all broadband.

The sell is its speed. We all want faster broadband, whether it be for Second Life, BBC iPlayer, or grotty porn. Virgin Media supply it (the faster broadband that is, not the… oh, never mind).

But how fast is 20Mb?

(Your Dad will tell you that “it’s ten times faster than 2Mb”. That’s just the way Dads are.)

To most normal folk, 20Mb means diddly-squat. Sure, they know it means twenty megabytes. But that’s just a number and a unit. And, to be pedantic, it’s not even a unit of speed.

Virgin Media’s promotion uses the example of time it takes to download a music track. For 20Mb, the time is two seconds.

Two seconds to download a music track isn’t a feature of the broadband, it’s a joyous benefit. One that means something to the reader.

It’s one that the reader can easily pass on too. My mother isn’t going to tell someone that she’s just had 20Mb broadband installed and it’s fast because of those brilliant fibre optic cables. She might, however, tell someone that her Virgin Media broadband is so fast that she downloaded the whole Mamma Mia soundtrack in less than a minute.

Customers will talk about you, but only if you talk your customers’ language.

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Everything in moderation. That’s what my Nan says.

I suppose everything must include puns then. I have a love / hate relationship with puns.

Shit ones infuriate me. Especially when they’re written by people that have a good heart and should know better. You know the type of people: do a lot of charity work, organise a fundraiser over Easter, design a poster with clipart and Comic Sans (die Comic Sans! Die!), and call it an Easter Eggstravaganza.

Mediocre puns are like eating a pack of Tangfastic Haribo. Short term high, long term guilt. Mediocre puns are great initially, then they make you feel a little queasy, then decay into something altogether more sinister. Exactly like Haribo then.

Great puns, however, are worth every hour of idle pen-chewing they take to write. The Sun sports sub-editor who dreamt up “Super Cali go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious” (after part-timers Inverness Caledonian Thistle dumped Celtic out of the Scottish Cup) deserves Her Majesty’s sword on his shoulder.

We also have the Sun to thank for the fractionally less subtle “I’m A Mind Bender” headline, after Derren Brown declared his preference for the fellas. (Thanks Louis.)

And I stumbled across a local gem the other day; a pun that any copywriter would be proud of. I’d stick it on my fridge if it didn’t lack magnetism because of the cupboard door that conceals it from guests (because it’s really embarrassing having a fridge in your kitchen isn’t it?)

Anyway, back to the pun. I’ll give you the background: Lesley Dolphin is a DJ on BBC Radio Suffolk. So how does the first paragraph of her biog start, on BBC Radio Suffolk’s website?

Be a Dolphin-friendly tuner…

Copywriter, take a bow.

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Ah, the serial (or Oxford) comma

You may have heard Vampire Weekend’s take on it.

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?

Erm, I do.

No idea what I’m talking about?

Some people would write

Red, white and blue.

I prefer

Red, white, and blue.

The serial comma is the comma before an and or an or (the conjunction, darling) in a list of three or more things.

Without the comma, white and blue seem somehow related. And less important than red. The serial comma restores equality.

We’d say “red… white… and blue” with equal pauses, so why not let the comma denote that pause?

And when using semicolons to separate a list, it’s common practice to put a semicolon before the last and (or whatever conjunction you decide to use) - so why not with commas?

My real bugbear is that many copywriters pretend to worship the classic Strunk & White book The Elements of Style, yet decide not to use the serial comma.

Did these copywriters give up at page one?

Because on page two of that book it reads:

In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last.

Thus write,

red, white, and blue
gold, silver, or copper
He opened the letter, read it, and made a note of its contents

Who knows what fate has in store for my beloved serial comma. Its usage on these shores is slim, but our American cousins keep the flame burning.

At school, I wasn’t taught to use it. Thankfully I’ve seen the light. My schooling ruined my education.

And it’s lost me some friends (they were bizarre drunken conversations), but nobody said that finding clarity in writing would be easy.

Maybe I’ll send the words “I give a fuck” to vampireweekend@gmail.com.

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I was once - I say “once”, it’ll probably happen again - confronted by someone questioning my use of the word and at the start of a sentence.

When I questioned why the position of this little word caused a problem, the response was this:

My teacher at school always told me not to start a sentence with and.

Many of my teachers weren’t particularly clever. My English teacher often changed her mind to go with the general consensus of the class. I swear on at least one occasion she stole my answer and passed it off as her own. So forgive me if I don’t really care for what your English teacher taught you.

Sadly, a simple “fuck off” doesn’t satisfy people; you have to provide evidence. Fortunately I found some on the back cover of Bill Bryson’s Troublesome Words.

The belief that and should not be used to begin a sentence is without foundation. And that’s all there is to it.

Thanks, Bill.

The act of questioning someone else’s work is sadly commonplace. Long gone are the days when people were simply trusted to do a job well. Management consultants probably call it inclusivity. I much prefer interference. Or back-seat driving.

David Ogilvy sums it up brilliantly (as he often does).

Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

Thanks, David.

If your goal is to knock people’s confidence and generate average work, keep opening your mouth. Otherwise, it’s probably better that people wonder why you don’t speak than why you bother to at all.

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You’ve probably heard of search engine optimisation (SEO): it’s the art (or otherwise) of getting your site to rank highly in search engines.

The good news is that it’s not actually that difficult.  And, on the other hand, er… it is.

It all depends on what keywords you want your site to rank highly for.

Keywords are the words or phrases that a user types into Google (other reputable search engines are available, but I don’t use them).

The keywords you want to rank for will for will affect how easy it will be to rank highly.

If you want to rank highly for “fish restaurant” then you’re going to struggle.  Much easier is to include the town or county that your restaurant is in.  The search term “fish restaurant Ipswich” will be easier to rank for as there’s less competition.

It’s a lot more relevant too - someone isn’t going to drive from Newcastle just for the halibut.  (If they are, you needn’t worry about search engine optimisation - go open a few more restaurants).

But how do you know people search for the term “fish restaurant” and not “seafood restaurant”.  The answer, gentle readers, is Google trends.  Ideally though, you’d want to rank highly for both terms.

This where an SEO copywriter should do their bit.  An SEO copywriter, as you’ve probably guessed, does their copywriting with search engine optimisation in mind.

The first, and most important, thing to do is to look at the HTML title tag.

The title tag is what you see at the very top of your browser.  The words in the title tag are the words that appear in blue on Google’s search results pages.

A nifty title tag will include your restaurant’s name, what type of food it serves, and where it is.  Aim for 65 characters or less.  Something like:

The Captain’s Table | Fish & Seafood Restaurant, Ipswich, Suffolk

That’s exactly 65 characters long and includes all your keywords.  And more to the point, it’s still clear and easy to read.

That’s all for today’s lesson.  More on SEO in the coming days, weeks, and months.

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Don’t be a dullard.  I’ve probably read it before, I’ll probably read it again.  Make your stab at it interesting.  Please.

If you like looking stupid, continue to spell things the wrong way.  If you don’t, wake up and smell the apostrophe.

Linking to a site in the middle of text is good.  It offers the reader a way out of your boring copy, or provides evidence that you’re not talking utter shit.

Do not even think about using the word solution.  Ever.  You are a fucking gardener.  You do not offer gardening solutions.

Write like you talk.  Unless you speak like a fool.

Punctuation isn’t word-decoration for posh people, you thickie.

You want people to find you in Google for certain words - copywriting, for instance.  So use those words - like copywriting - every now and again.  You can even format those important words - like copywriting - in bold type to really ram the idea down Google’s throat.

But don’t use that word - you know the one I mean - that often, or Google will realise you’re a filthy, cheating, dirty spammer.  With a black hat.

Write lists with irksome headlines like Eleven copywriting tips to turn your ugly ducklings into an elegant swans!

Get your keyword into italics without anyone realising.

Use loads of paragraphs to mask your minimal output.

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