The best copy

Here is a sentence copywriters hate: perhaps nobody needs to read this.

Sometimes the product, picture, price or context has already done the selling. Adding a paragraph is then less like persuasion and more like a waiter explaining the meal while it goes cold.

“No copy” is not an aesthetic religion. It is a demand that every word pay rent. Three words can carry an idea when the audience already owns the missing context. Ten can beat three when the product needs proof. Two hundred can rescue a purchase that frightens people. Length is innocent; dead weight is guilty.

Think of road signs. STOP manages brilliantly with one word because the road supplies urgency, context and a large red octagon. “Pension consolidation” enjoys none of those advantages. It may need a patient explanation before anybody risks moving their savings. Brevity cannot substitute for trust.

The dangerous writer does not love words. The dangerous writer loves the effect words can produce and is perfectly willing to sack them when something else works better.

Delete the warm-up. Delete “in today’s fast-paced world”. Delete the sentence announcing that the next sentence is important. If the headline and image have finished the job, leave before you talk them out of it.

Writing earns its place by changing what happens next. On a poster that may require four words. On a pension page it may require four hundred, an example and a telephone number answered by someone patient. The word count follows the obstacle.