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,...
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...
The Copywriter’s Guide to Speaking
A copywriter, has the benefit of crafting a messages to convey exactly what he or she wants to say in just the way they want to say it. They meticulously consider every word, punctuation mark and line...
Write Anything Like a Senior Copywriter Would
This year marks our tenth year in business. Considering that two-thirds of all small businesses fail by year ten, that’s pretty good. Over the past decade, we’ve learned a lot about what people want...
A Great Tagline. A Great Company.
A few years ago, we were bouncing around the idea of replacing “Choose Your Words Wisely.” In retrospect, it was a silly exercise because we have a great tagline. But one alternative we quite liked...
What is Enjoyable Content?
Content marketing, as an industry, is obsessed with best practices to ensure effective content, not enjoyable content: Sometimes we think the complexity of content marketing rules exist solely as a way...
Judging the Fit of a Copy Editor
Smart businesses seek out the services of a copy editor because everyone in a company can use a second set of eyes. Yes, you want to avoid embarrassing mistakes, but that’s more the job of a proofreader...
Do you give great client feedback? Here’s how you know.
We build revision cycles into our copywriting quotes because we expect client feedback. We like to think we provide our clients with the best ways to phrase their messages, but they’re certainly not...
Adjectives and adverbs: Objective versus subjective
Mark Twain: “When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them — then the rest will be valuable.” Here are the Merriam-Webster definitions of an adjective and...
Fun with Translation — Google Style
Translation is a super-growth industry. Data from the US Department of Labour shows a 100 percent increase in the number of people employed in the translation industry over the past seven years, and 24...
7 effective political slogans, and one ineffective but ballsy one.
At the end of the day, all politicians have are their words. Well-designed political slogans can push a so-so candidate over the top if it’s mobilizing, motivating and simple enough to get behind. Let’s...
Don’t trust an AI copywriter
Last month, Chinese mega-publisher Alibaba unveiled their own virtual copywriter. It’s a computer program that they claim can generate 20,000 words of copy per second. Their promise to advertisers is...