Category Archives: Grammar & Syntax

Sexy Ways to Seduce Your Audience

Slip into something comfortable. Preferably something velour. Lay back on this leopard skin couch. Relax. Notice the subtle aroma of incense wafting about you.

How was your day? I prepared a nice candlelit dinner. Can you hear the booming baritone of the incomparable Barry White? It’s drifting into the room at dulcet volumes. The lights are dim and your eyes adjust. Go ahead. Grab one of the chocolate caramels on the coffee table in front of you. Feel it dance upon your taste buds.

If you aren’t feeling a slight hint of surreal sensuality, I haven’t done my job correctly. Everyone knows sex sells. But are we losing our understanding of that concept?

That depends on your definition of ‘sexy’.

Today, big brands like GoDaddy (woof) use blatant sexual imagery to sell. But sex sells itself. If that’s your strategy for seducing your audience, you better start over. Consider this: researchers at Iowa State University found that “viewers of programs with sexually explicit or violent content were less likely to remember commercials immediately after watching and even 24 hours later.”

As a writer, you should already have a grasp for why this is. Favoring your primary message is the best way to keep your reader on task. You want the reader to be turned on by your product. To accomplish this, seducing your audience takes place in undertones. It requires subtlety. Here are a few ways to get it done.

Consider alliteration an alluring aloe. Overusing alliteration translates to cheesy copy. Used sparingly, alliteration creates enticing, compelling moments of copy that add a layer of sexiness to your content.

Play with your diction. Everyone has words they consider emotional triggers. Want to sex up your copy? Use loaded words. A word like ‘succulent’ can evoke a strong response. Go ahead. Say it out loud. Succulent. Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

Massage some tight words. I’m consistently saying that strong copy is highly understandable. You wouldn’t speak in Shakespearian dialogue to a modern audience, for instance. But a colorful word every now and again can add some flair to your copy, even if it’s a bit more high-brow. Provide substantial context clues. And have a clear understanding of your audience before you head down this path.

Take us to another world. There’s no better way to seduce your audience than to get sensual. Use sensual stimuli to take your readers out of their desk chairs and transport them to another world. You can accomplish this by describing how things smell, taste, feel, sound and look.

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4 Great Writing Errors from American History

God bless ‘Merica. Happy Fourth everyone! I’ll be celebrating today by overindulging in food and drink. There ain’t nuthin more ‘Merican than that.

This country’s seen its up and downs. The ups are great. But the downs are equally as important. After all, what’s history worth if we can’t learn from it.

Without further ado, I present to you four truly ‘Merican writing errors.

1. For a second there, Thomas Jefferson forgot the meaning of the word ‘independence’. There is perhaps no greater document in American history than the Declaration of Independence. But no one gets it right on the first draft. Turns out Mr. Jefferson’s original draft of this now legendary document referred to the future Americans as ‘subjects’. Luckily for us, he changed the word to ‘citizens’ — a term much more indicative of freedom.

2. Faulkner had one hell of a time with spelling. Turns out some of the greatest American authors needed an editor as badly as the rest of us. According to Random House editor Albert Erskine:

I know that he did not wish to have carried through from typescript to printed book his typing mistakes, misspellings (as opposed to coinages), faulty punctuation and accidental repetition. He depended on my predecessors, and later on me, to point out such errors and correct them; and though we never achieved anything like a perfect performance, we tried.

And he wasn’t the only one. A quick look at some of Hemingway’s unedited correspondences shows the legend’s own problem with spelling and grammar.

3. The Chicago Tribune embarrasses itself in 1948 presidential election. Thomas Dewey went toe-to-toe with Harry Truman in the 1948 presidential election. And the Chicago Tribune trusted the polls, falsely reporting that Dewey had won the election. In reality, Truman snagged victory from the jaws of defeat, permanently etching the Trib’s place on journalism’s Wall of Shame.

Leave it to Truman to drop an atomic bomb on Dewey’s hopes and dreams.

4. T.S. Eliot plagiarized ‘The Waste Land’. It’s considered one of the greatest works of poetry in history. And it’s mostly plagiarized. Yep, turns out ‘The Waste Land’ is a waste of time. Of course, Eliot was eventually naturalized as a British citizen. But he was born an American, and so he makes our list.

5 Weapons to Destroy Buzzwords

I promise you that this innovative, thought-provoking post will create a new level of synergy in your cutting-edge copy.

Alright, so this post is obligatory. But as a man driven to help your business communicate more authentically, I have decided it is a must.

Buzzwords have no place in a writer’s toolbox. Unfortunately, good writers tend to read a lot. As a result, these painful bastards might slip into your diction. It’s the price you’ll pay for competitive research or general goofing off on the internet.

Join me next week for my thoughts on bad puns.

Digital marketing demigod David Meerman Scott helped start the war against buzzwords back in 2007. (Here’s the updated 2009 version.) For the most part, Scott aims his sights at PR folks. And we all know how much I love PR folks. But PR reps aren’t the only ones guilty of using buzzwords. It could happen to you. A good offense is the best defense.

Check out my 5 weapons to destroy buzzwords.

1. If you have no proof, nuke that sucker. We’re often tempted to make outlandish claims about our companies or products. Where’s the harm in calling ourselves leading, cutting-edge, the best, the largest or premiere? In 9 out of 10 cases, you’re either lying or including no proof of your claim. You think you can get away with it by making the claim as generic as possible. I’m telling you right now: it slows down and sinks your point. Avoid these types of words.

2. If it isn’t specific and descriptive, get out the dynamite. Your company and product may be generic. Is that how you want to present it to people? And it’s catastrophic to write generically-worded copy if your product is outstanding. Forget words like unique, customer-centric, dynamic, flexible and revolutionary.  You should even erase award-winning from your vocab. If the award is relevant to the copy, you have better options, like…

3. If you’re telling instead of showing, let the cannons rip. This tip isn’t unique to business writing. Lively writing across any medium requires you to show, rather than tell. Words that tell are usually hollow, shallow and meaningless. Many of the words we’ve discussed so far fit the bill here. If you’re the best or the only, you better be prepared to back those assertions up by showing readers why they’re true.

4. If it’s cliche, give it a swift kick in the balls. FYI — don’t drink the kool-aid if you don’t have the bandwidth to accomodate low-hanging fruit coming down the pipeline. You have an email address, right? You probably hear these kinds of cliches daily. Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not replicate them.

5. If it says nothing, get medieval on its ass. Perhaps this assertion is a culmination of the rest. Still, it’s worth saying: putting words on the page doesn’t mean you’re saying anything. Business is all about communication. Make sure you get your point across. Avoid words that say nothing.

One, Two or Three Spaces Between Sentences?

Don’t be a butthead.

Think McFly, think!

I had a fun debate with an ex about this one. I’ve always used a single space between sentences. In the business world, these corporate robots are constantly placing two, three, even FOUR spaces between their sentences.

The ex was adamant that you had to use two spaces between sentences. Of course, she works in PR and is consistently exposed to a bunch of chuckleheads masquerading as writing professionals. I kid. Sort of.

One space will do. Why are you forming such a wide berth? You have enough words on the page. You don’t need to leave room for later additions. A period denotes the end of one sentence and the start of the next. A little extra insurance really isn’t necessary.

So why do so many people do it? Ah, thanks for asking. It’s a pretty interesting anecdote.

An article in Slate puts this argument to rest like a boss. According to Slate writer Farhad Manjoo,

The problem with typewriters was that they used monospaced type—that is, every character occupied an equal amount of horizontal space. This bucked a long tradition of proportional typesetting, in which skinny characters (like I or 1) were given less space than fat ones (like W or M). Monospaced type gives you text that looks “loose” and uneven; there’s a lot of white space between characters and words, so it’s more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule—on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence makes text easier to read.

To quote the great old balls Biff Tannen, “You sound like a damn fool when you say it wrong!”

Copywriting Is Dead

Have you ever assembled a piece of furniture? Reading the directions is like taking a blow to the head from a drunken frat boy.

Reminds me of the old days of marketing. No one talked like a human. Companies loved the sound of their own voices. Business is catching up with the world of social media, and it turns out people would rather hear from real human beings.

Copywriting is dead — at least in the traditional sense of the practice. What I hope this blog will impart on its readership is that you can all finally drop the act. Throw formality out the window and start speaking to your target audience in a voice they can relate to. And don’t be afraid to end a sentence or two with a preposition.

You’re asking, “Who the hell is this guy?” I’m just a man, like any other. I’m also a freelance writer. I’ve ghostwritten a business book, created web copy for entire websites and dabbled in writing mediums you’ve never even heard of.

I write good, and I’m here to help you write gooder. So let’s get this thing started.