Write for you

It helps if your copy has a natural, conversational style. To achieve this, as Jim Durfee has suggested, imagine you’re sitting opposite your prospect and then, in the guise of the brand you’re representing, write as you’d speak.

This means using language they’ll understand instantly. Which words are they? Well, of the 80 most-used words in the English language, 78 have an Anglo-Saxon root. These are the short, simple words we use every day.

You are reading this sentence for yourself.

Not for the company that wrote it. Not for its quarterly priorities, internal vocabulary or touching journey towards market leadership. Readers are selfish in the healthiest possible way: they want to know what changes for them.

Yet business copy begins with “we” because the organisation is standing closest to the keyboard. We are delighted. We have launched. We believe. By paragraph three, the customer has learned a great deal about the company’s emotional state and nothing about whether the product removes the problem that brought them here. “You” is not a magic word. Repeating it mechanically can sound like a stranger poking your chest. The deeper move is perspective: begin with the reader’s situation, use words they recognise and answer questions in the order they feel them.

Short Anglo-Saxon words help because they arrive without ceremony. Buy. Sell. Help. Fix. Long language is sometimes exact, but often it makes a simple thought wait for permission to speak.

Read the copy aloud to one imagined person. Where would they interrupt? Which sentence serves only the writer? What does the first paragraph make possible for the reader?

Then give them the page without its logo. Ask what they can now do, decide or understand. Write down their answer exactly. If they can only tell you that the company is delighted, the copy has reported the wrong person’s feelings.