Communication is about transferring ideas. The writing should be close to invisible. The words that made this list are often stumbling blocks in your copy… the reader has to stop and think.
But when they stop and think about your word choice, they aren’t thinking about the ideas you’re trying to get across.
So without further enumeration about the following index of ostentatious diction I’ve compiled… here are 6 words never to use in copy.
1. Penultimate – I’ve never seen an example where I thought this word was well used. I’ve seen it used appropriately and I’ve seen it used incorrectly… but never well.
In all honesty, it was sometime after graduating with a degree in English that I discovered that penultimate actually means second to last.
It’s a word that makes people look stupid. Either the person who uses it looks stupid because they think it’s a more emphatic way to say “ultimate.” Or the reader looks stupid because he didn’t understand that the writer actually used penultimate correctly.
Either way, someone will look ignorant and someone will look arrogant.
It’s the writer’s fault for not communicating clearly.
2. Expeditiously – I think you mean to say, quickly, rapidly, or fast. But expeditiously?
Back in my airline days I used to have passengers ask why they couldn’t take off with their seats back… I’d give them the answer straight out of the airline manual. “So the aft passengers can expeditiously transgress the aisle in an emergency.”
I did it for fun and only with a few passengers who were just being grumpy… obviously I wasn’t trying to clearly tell them that having their seats back would slow down the passengers sitting behind them.
3. Abstruse – It’s one of the rare self-defining words. It means difficult to understand or obscure… and it is difficult to understand and obscure.
4. Enervate – Harry Potter fans may disagree with me on this one (it’s the name of a magical spell in the books), but most readers will get caught up. It’s better to just say drained, sapped, tired, devoid of life… heck, tuckered out is even a better choice.
Readers aren’t ready for 18th century literature… so use modern language.
5. Apoplectic – If someone is angry, just say they’re angry.
6. Irregardless – This one almost didn’t make the list because it’s not actually a word. It’s a mutant hybrid of the word “regardless” and a redneck trying to sound fancy.
I know some people defend this word as an evolution of the word regardless… but you’re really just adding syllables to a perfectly understandable word. Why ruin a good thing?
People don’t actually think you’re more sophisticated because you say, “irregardless.” They’re either going to think you’re smug, you’re stupid, or both.
There’s a lot of confusion about what I do… I’m a copywriter not a copyrighter. Yes, the two words sound the same but there’s no such thing as a copyrighter.
Here’s the deal: Almost anything you can write down…
- Literary works
- Musical works, including any accompanying words
- Dramatic works, including any accompanying music
- Pantomimes and choreographic works
- Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
- Motion pictures and other audiovisual works
- Sound recording
- Architectural works
…are legally owned by you. They’re called intellectual property. The purpose of a copyright is to register your claim as the author with the government. That just makes it easier to defend. But if you can prove you wrote in first in any other way, your claim of copyright infringement will stand in court.
Want to protect your intellectual property with a registered copyright? You don’t need me… just go to www.copyright.gov and submit your work along with the $35 registering fee.
Want me to do it for you? Fine… just send me $100 and the file. But seriously… it’s cheaper and faster for you to do it yourself.
Copywriters Write Stuff
The term copy comes from the old days in newspapers. There were illustrations and then there was copy. Journalists didn’t submit articles or columns, they submitted copy (newspapers still have copyeditors). Then advertising agencies came around and they realized that images alone wouldn’t sell the stuff in their ads so they needed to hire people to write some words to go with it… so they hired people to write the copy… thus was born the advertising copywriter.
Somewhere around this time, back in the 1910’s and 20’s, some bright guy invented direct mail… or junk mail. He found out that you could mail people letters and they would mail back money.
I imagine he started by mailing out 100 letters, for 5 cents each (wayyy back in the day) and 5 people read it, wanted it, and sent him money so they could get it (theoretically paying $2). So he spent $5 and made $10.
$5 in profit doesn’t sound like a lot… not even in those days… but then he had a brilliant idea. What if he mailed 1000 letters. At 5 cents each it would cost him $50, but if the same percentage of people bought, he’d get back $100. And it worked…
So the next time he mailed 10,000 letters… then 100,000… then 500,000.
500,000 letters cost $25,000 to mail (when postage was $.05) but he’d end up getting back $50,000. That’s a $25,000 profit, that’d be decent money today, but in the early 1900’s, it was life-changing, business-building money.
That’s the history of direct marketing in 150 words.
And here’s why people hire professional copywriters.
Poorly written sales copy won’t generate any orders. That means you could pay $50,000 in mailing costs and if the copy in that letter sucks, then no one is going to read it and no one is going to order.
But if the letter is exciting, entertaining and persuasive, a larger portion of the mailing list will reply and you get rich… so in essence, good copywriters make people rich.
Since the late 90’s when people figured out that they could sell stuff over the Internet copywriter has expanded to include several other types of writing… like article copywriting, email copywriting, search engine optimization copywriting, online video copywriting…
But the essentials are still the same:
Copywriters write words so customers keep sending in money.
I hope that helps clear it up.
