This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

Thats a great peace of copy writing Jason ;o)

I was just saying to myself earlier today that a needed to read a snappy bit of copy about how to write snappy copy.

good post

Very true – I would even edit that last part to say:
“Write for the scanner.”

I think you could remove “on the web” from that title and still be absolutely right. Most copy is written by marketing people who like to hear themselves talk.

What about meaningless copy?

I agree wholeheartedly with the post. And I’m a copywriter.

I know I need to get better, and I generally know what I need to do just that. But I struggle with larger company positioning goals and the need to tell a whole story on complex subject matter.

I imagine it’s the same uphill climb as a good designer that needs to get better at designing for the web.

For instance, there are lots of good looking sites that have been designed for the designer. For these to be truly effective, these too must be re-designed for the user.

Reminds me of the a presupposition in NLP : “The meaning of your communication is the response you get”. Further: “Others receive what we say and do through their mental map of the world. When someone hears something different from what we meant, it’s a chance for us to notice that communications means what is received. Noticing how communication is received allows us to adjust to it, so that next time it can be clearer.”

“Why most copywriting on the web sucks”

When you have dangling widows for headlines.

Or because it’s written by a developer who shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

I don’t mean to be a troll or a gadfly, but… does that actually mean anything?

I nominate Rex’s posting for one of those fancy 37S hats…

My officemate, Bill Wood, often says, “Is it written to read?”

When my nieces and nephews are yelling and screaming with the joy of whatever game they’re playing in the house, my sister says: please stop using your outdoor voice indoors. It’s the same with copy. The pitch has to match the proximity to the reader. You don’t have to use a stage whisper on the web. People will hear you if you actually whisper. Whether they believe what you’re saying is another matter.

Or maybe copywriting on the web sucks because most web writers (or so) arent formally trained, whereas most writers in the print medium are?

Anonymous Coward, this is merely a reminder or an observation, not advice on how one might effectively write for their reader.

By the way, my favorite essay on clear writing is “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell.

Funny post! So the profanity used in SVN blog is for us, the readers…nice.

Wow. My comment got a crown. I don’t even know what that means —but I’m very honored. With a name like “Rex,” I’ve always wanted a crown. Thanks.

Rex,

at iQ Content we give Writing for the web training. One of the exercises we use explores how each of the participants read online.

We try to demonstrate that while most writers focus on prose or wordy, flowery and fragrant language, the reader focuses on the reverse:

headings, bullet points, bolded text.

We use a lot of quotes to back up our teaching.

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it” – Elmore Leonard “I leave out the parts that people skip.” – Elmore Leonard, again “Never use a long word where a short one will do” – George Orwell (from Polly Ticks and the Engrish language, hat-tip to Beerzie) “I was going to write you a short letter but I didn’t have the time, so I wrote you a long one instead” George Bernard Shaw “Anyone who checks their own copy has a fool for an editor” – anon

Absolutely true, inward looking rather than outward looking. Oh, and less is definitely more too, now where did I hear that hmmm…

“I was going to write you a short letter but I didn’t have the time, so I wrote you a long one instead”

Laurence, isn’t this Mark Twain??

The reason: In most cases there is no cost effective numerical (objective not subjective) method to evaluate the quality or value of a piece of copy writing. Since it’s subjective the decision makers naturally trust their own instincts on best copy. A decision maker trusting their insticts is good behavior in most business decisions and a practice that is critical to their personal success in rising obove others in an organization. This is the explanation for why they are unwilling to surendeer copy writing contol. In a decision makers experience and training. . . to surrenduring control of something as important as copy writing removes thier trusted and necessary judgement from a determininant of success and is a sign of poor leadership (see the apprentice series for examples of this).

The Solution: integrate customer feedback into web designs by including modules to report back to decision makers, managers, copy writers. Modules should report relavant statistics such as number of seconds users choose to spend on a page and what they click on as a result (or if they leave the site). Flash can do this very well for example by adding an activity streem feature that writes the time and user action into a file using a cgi or other backend script. these statistics should then be used to justify changes to copy writing on a page. typical examples are to make a small change to the wording and measure how it affects aggegate user behavior to draw conclusions about effects of copy revisions. so for example a change that gets the user to click on the desired button faster is better copywriting and presumable clearer. Of course this must be interpreted to fit the data and care must be taken to interpret the statistics correctly. that is what makes it an art? cost for including activity streem feature in flash site $100-$8000 depending on site, architecture and statistical analyisis and reporting features needed.

A corollary: writers need to read like readers, not read like writers.

As a copywriter, I am bound to say this but most copywriting on the web sucks because it is:

1. An afterthought 2. Not considered a specialist skill 3. Assigned to people who can’t write 4. Improperly briefed 5. Left until the last possible moment (‘lorem ipsum’ anyone) 6. Written for the people who pay the copywriter 7. Written by / for marketeers, web developers or PR people 8. Not written for the web (downloadable PDFs anyone)

I could go on (and do on my blog) but before you blame the writer, look at the wider problem.

In fact, I wonder how many web site projects actually have a specialist copywriter with a proper brief working on the project?

Matthew

How about asking folks would they be willing to pay for content if it was better copywritten? If not, they should shut their pie holes and read my poorly written blog…

“Great find! Thanks for posting this, that’s my something new for today learnt.”

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Multimedia_and_Graphics/Misc__Graphics_Tools/iPhone_Video_Converter.html

I’ve sometimes found that writing for search engines can tighten up copy and also make the message far more grepable to a human. (Within reason of course.)

This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about entrepreneurship, design, experience, simplicity, constraints, pop culture, our products, products we like, and more.

I really hate ‘and more’. It is so tempting to use it nearly all the time, but much more satisfying to find an alternative.

My two cents on burnt edges. After looking at the web site, I am seeing that the insides cook more evenly and the edges would only be chewy edges, and not crusty and hard every. I’m not an edges fan, but I would be if they came out perfect like that!

I really hate ‘and more’. How about just deleting them? ”...and products we like.” The blog police won’t come get you if you write about something not listed. :)

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

We do writing for the Web training at EDS as well. I use the same quote, and originally thought it was Twain.

It is a quote that is often attributed to Mark Twain. Barbara Schmidt identified the source for this quote (Blaise Pascal). The original French reads, “Je n’ai fait cette lettre-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.” A literal translation into English is, “I made this longer letter only because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.”

Thanks for the other quotes – I’ll add them to my list. I particularly like, “I leave out the parts that people skip.”

I’ve sometimes found that writing for search engines can tighten up copy and also make the message far more grepable to a human. (Within reason of course.)

Yeah, right. I write a nice, clean piece of copy, using keywords subtly, and then some non-writer gets ahold of it and further “optimizes” it, and the result is crap!

Oh, and let’s not forget the tendency, in micromanaged businesses, to write by committee. That really does a doozy on the copy! But from what I can tell, most of our clients prefer corporate newspeak to clean prose anyway.

I say, write for the writer. Writing for the reader is so predictable. If you write for the writer, you never know what will happen.

Now, that’s creative.

There’s so much bad copywriting on the web in part because of the copywriting cranking factories. The web is now flooded with wannabe copywriters who fell for all these dreams of lounging around the pool with scantily clad members of the opposite sex serving them. When it comes down to it, copywriting is tough work. And on that note, it’s important to see that newbie copywriters just swipe a few ideas, sqish it together and presto, instant sales copy.