Readers - like all of us - are busy people. They want to know if and why they should continue reading your text. So in your copywriting, you need to grab their interest quickly, and not make them read through several lines of secondary information before you get to the point.
How do lists increase the readability of your writing and help your audience understand your message?
Some of the most effective tools for clearer business writing are so obvious we tend to overlook them. Take bullet points, the unsung heroes of the print world.
Isn't the web great? There are all sorts of great writing tips out there. I came across this excellent - and funny - article about writing for the web. It cocks a bit of a snoop at some of the web-writing theories about how people read online.
We were doing one of our writing workshops in London earlier this month. One of the most illuminating exercises we do is headline appraisal. May sound dull, but it's actually good fun. We take a bunch of headlines from local, national and trade press, and discuss what makes some of them work and why some of them just leave us cold.
They say three's company (don't they? It might be two, but for our sakes, let's say three), and when it comes to fluid, high impact writing, three is certainly the magic number. The rule of three is simple. It says that when you're describing something - the features of a new service or the benefits of a new product - a list of three characteristics is always the most effective.
Good writing is all about clarity - getting your message across clearly and concisely. But in the wrong hands, words can often cloud, rather than clarify, the intended message.
English is renowned for its quirky, often logic-defying spelling rules. Gives it character, a mark of our mongrel heritage, we're told. It doesn't make it any easier to write, though. One common area of confusion is when seemingly the same word has two spelling variations - one with a 'c', and one with an 's'.
One of the key purposes of business writing is to write in a way that reinforces your brand. It's also one of the main areas where much business writing often fails. If your brand is about dynamism, energy and modern thinking, your writing needs to support that. So that means using appropriate language, tone and structure.