Five Ways to Improve Tech Copywriting
Tech copywriting is a funny tightrope because you have two audiences with vastly different knowledge bases: the techies and the strategists.
Read the full article…Design Agencies Are Leaving Millions of Dollars On The Table
Designers at design agencies have a unique ability to stare at copy for days at a time and never know what it says. To them, it’s another graphic element, as it should be.
But what if design agencies could evaluate the copy as well as lay it out? What if they could truncate to it make it pithier and easier to fit? What if they could augment it to better complement a visual idea they had? What if they could go back to the client and say “we know what you were going for but here’s a better way of getting there?”
Read the full article…Companies that care about customers use a copyeditor
Marcus Gee wrote a great piece in the Globe and Mail about dangling modifiers. This line jumped off the page for us:
The smallest hint of confusion can give the reader “a breach in time to check mail, get up and make a sandwich, shoot a cat video.” English, he says, is a subject-verb-object language. “If you’re unclear in your own mind about the relationship between these components, or if you muddy it for the reader, you’ve fried the motherboard.”
Read the full article…You are what you post: A social media warning
Social media is the great equalizer of our time. It gives everyone the same opportunity to share their views, thoughts, wisdoms and gripes — and people take full advantage of that on a regular basis. But the power to say what you want when you want about whatever you want comes with consequences, ranging from public shaming to getting fired.
On the more benign end of the spectrum, consider the story of Alex Johnston, a political candidate for office in 2015’s Canadian federal election. She was called out for a ridiculous Facebook post she made seven years prior about Auschwitz. These posts came to light weeks before voters went to the polls. And while she was a long shot to win anyway, this revelation all but guaranteed a loss. While members of her party won surrounding ridings, she only captured 16% of the vote in hers.
Read the full article…Copywriting showcase: Toronto Pearson Airport
A few years ago, the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (they run Toronto Pearson) had a problem with noise complaints. They needed a copywriting team to give them messaging they could point people to and say “this is why we make so much noise, these are the factors that are fully out of our control, and these are the things we’re doing about what we can control.”
Sounds easy enough. Except that we had to essentially learn about airplanes, airplane noise, acoustics and how sound travels. Then we had to learn about how Toronto Pearson works. We learned how they mitigate noise through runways positioning, and the shared responsibility of everyone involved in getting a plane off the ground to noise abatement; from the air traffic controllers to the pilots to the airlines.
Read the full article…Lyrics: Copywriting Set to Music
Like great copywriting, great lyrics will make you pay attention.
Come mothers and fathers throughout the land,
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand.
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.
Your old road is rapidly aging.
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’
That’s from The Times They Are a Changin’ by Bob Dylan — whose lyrics were and are so powerful that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Interesting conversation starter about that lyric:
He placed mothers ahead of fathers. Keep in mind that this song came out in 1965 when society was still patriarchal. So to put mothers before fathers was a big deal, especially for a generation that had spent the past 20 years protecting an American ideal that was being questioned by a guy with a guitar who couldn’t sing.
Kawhi Leonard’s Shot — Heard Round The World
2.7 million Canadians watched Game 7 between the Toronto Raptors and Philadelphia 76ers, and all hopefully got to see the Kawhi Leonard shot.
It was magic — one of the great sporting moments in our city, and possibly even the country. Right now, only Sid the Kid’s Golden Goal at the Vancouver Olympics, Joe Carter’s Series-winning blast and Jose Bautista’s bat-flip even come close (the Leafs have had their moments, but it’s been so long that they’re hard to remember).
Read the full article…The Writing Revolution: 2005 to ????
Social media has done quite a number on the English language. In less than two decades, centuries of writing rules, conventions and accepted norms, most of which we were taught to treat as carved in stone, have been washed away as if they were doodled in sand.
What’s most fascinating about watching this linguistic revolution happen in real time is that it’s a first for humanity. Yes, language has clearly evolved since the grunts and yelps of early man. But in the past it’s taken multiple generations. For example, it took almost 200 years for thou, thine and thee to become you, your and yourself.
Read the full article…Anti-Social Media: Writing in Favour of Change to Social Media
The heat-seeking missiles are out and pointed squarely at social media. Writing in Time Magazine, Rachel Simmons likened social media to “a bathroom wall, letting teens sling insults with the recklessness that comes only with anonymity.”
Imperial evidence supports Ms. Simmons’ alarmism. A 2016 paper presented robust cross-cultural evidence linking social media use to body image concerns, dieting, body surveillance, a drive for thinness and self-objectification in adolescents.
Read the full article…Oscar-winning Movies for Writing Fans
You hear “Oscar-winning movies” and your mind immediately goes to the big four: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director. They’re the “majors,” the awards you sit through the whole telecast to get to. And they’re usually worth the wait. There was Tom Hanks’s beautiful tribute to two gay men in his acceptance speech for Philadelphia, Halle Berry’s emotional moment on stage after winning for Monster’s Ball and perhaps the best of the best, Steven Spielberg’s plea to the world’s educators to show Schindler’s List to their students.
However, if you’re a fan of the written word like we are, the highlight of the show is Best Original Screenplay. It’s often sandwiched midway through the telecast and rarely gets much fanfare. And the winners don’t see their careers skyrocket to new heights like Best Actor winners (Forbes found that an Oscar win can boost an actor’s salary by over 80 percent).
Read the full article…