Kate Waddon Copywriting

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the dos and don’ts of writing.  This week we have a new way of making sure our words don’t run away with us – The Parklife Test, aka The Brand Check.

Russell Brand’s extravagant language has always divided people. Now he’s reinvented himself as a revolutionary, it’s still not so much what he says as how he says it that’s attracting comments. @danbarker tweeted that “Russell Brand’s writing feels like somebody is about to shout PARKLIFE! at the end of every sentence.”

If this makes no sense to you, cast your minds back to 1994. Blur’s single Parklife featured actor Phil Daniels reciting long-worded lines, followed by singer Damon chirruping “Parklife!” There is great entertainment to be had by reading a long-winded sentence and warbling “Parklife!” at the end; and this tweet had me giggling away to myself with its pin-point perfect accuracy.

Russell Brand’s language can be seen as rather crowded and exhausting. However, I admit that I’m enjoying seeing the injection of a new lexicon into politics. It’s all got rather depressing and doomy recently, as more and more politicians adopt the language of the apocalypse (we’re “swamped” and “plagued” most days apparently, by something or other). Any way of refreshing that is welcome.

But as ever, the criticism Russell Brand has received is a reminder to all of us to keep it simple. I know I’ve banged on about this before, but if people can’t understand what you’re saying (or can’t be bothered trying to decipher it), what’s the point?  I am much too old to remember most of the red-penned comments I received in my school essays, but the line “You seem to have swallowed a thesaurus” has stayed with me. OK, so I didn’t have much to say about the role of Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra – but padding it out with an insane amount of adjectives was clearly not the way forward. Lesson learned.

So, thank you Dan Barker – we now have a new useful check for verbosity. If I ever worry that a sentence feels a bit overblown, I’ll shout Parklife! at myself, and see if it fits. If it does, the sentence goes.

Life is imitating Facebook. The shortlist for the gorgeously geeky Chambers Dictionary Word of the Year comes from the lexicon of social media. The winning word “oversharing” (un)covers everything from naked selfies to newborn nappy-related updates from proudly blinkered parents.

“Oversharing” is defined by Chambers as “unacceptably forthcoming…about one’s personal life”. Chambers’ editorial director David Swarbrick described the word as “subtle yet devastating; a put-down few would want laid at their door”, and that these qualities make it “beautifully British”. American dictionary Webster’s had it as their top word back in 2008; however I agree with David Swarbrick that it has a restrained Britishness about it. It’s how a population with a tradition of understated language going back to the Anglo Saxons* deals with the explosion of self-revelation that social media has caused – we use a gently insinuating word that carries a huge weight of implied criticism.

Collins Dictionary preferred “photobomb”, which was also a close runner-up for Chambers. Since I misguidedly taught my six-year-old this word, no photo is unscathed. Six-year-old boys don’t just learn new words – they have to live them. (Is the same true of eighty-something monarchs?) Thanks to our handy little smartphones, Oxford Dictionaries’ 2013 winner “selfie” also did well.

Also in the running were “bashtag” (a lovely portmanteau word for a horrible trait) and “hipster”, redefined from its 1950s jazzy meaning  to “a member of the generation born in the 1980-90s who look down on their native middle-class culture, and self-consciously adopt a bohemian lifestyle “. That’s overdefining it – I’d go for “young bloke with big beard.”

The fact that many of the shortlisted words are interrelated in some way shows how a wide network has narrowed our focus. Compose a sentence from the following: overshare; selfie; photobomb; bashtag. Not difficult.

But hey, maybe I’m just “overthinking” – something done only by introspective types who would never, ever overshare.

To find out more, and for David Swarbrick’s quotation, see The Guardian’s article.

*”Litotes” in Anglo Saxon poetry – deliberate understatement. See, Professor Bradley, I did listen…

In all my recent portmanteau and pun-based ramblings, I can’t believe I left out one of the writing words-of-the-moment, “listicle”. As portmanteau words go, it’s a pretty rubbish one (come on, combining just one letter is a bit unchallenging) but it’s certainly popular.

The best way to define a listicle is “what Buzzfeed does”. List-based articles with titles such as “The 22 strangest things that have been banned around the world” and “17 perfectly passive-aggressive cakes” (two of today’s offerings on Buzzfeed) are pinging onto our Facebook pages faster than the 14 fastest rollerblading ducks (not yet on Buzzfeed).

Easy to read, and to be honest, pretty damn easy to write, the listicle is a mainstay of blogging and other internet-based writing. It’s been around a lot longer than that – women’s magazines for example have been offering us “Six ways to be a stereotypical-caricature-in-great-shoes” certainly since I was old enough to sneak a look at my mum’s Cosmo.

It was inevitable. Here’s my listicle about the benefits of writing a listicle.

1. It’s a great way to communicate. It’s not lazy journalism: serving up information in easy-to-digest chunks is a time-honoured method of capturing and keeping your reader. Short, often pithy one-liners are of-the-moment, integrate very well with social media, and work well with our busy/shallow/overloaded/thinking-in-tweets twenty-first century brains.

2. There is something for everyone. In a list, say, “10 things everybody hates about Christmas”, there will be at least one comment, one little truism, that everybody thinks “Ooh, that’s just how I feel!” Reader engaged.

3. Don’t tie yourself in knots putting your points in order. The listicle also differs from the old “Top Ten” approach by being non-hierarchical. Yes, have a killer opening item if you want people to read on, but you don’t have to worry about ranking things. It’s pleasingly democratic.

4. You don’t have to think of a title. For writers like me, who are pretty fast on the whole but can spend the rest of their natural lives trying to come up with a title, the listicle can be a godsend. The titles are eye-catching enough (I mean, 15 facts, about celebrity donkeys, all in one place? I’m in…) We all love a cop-out when it can be dressed up as a convention.

5. Who’s counting? A listicle stops when you run out of things to say, which is another difference to the countdown approach. For example Buzzfeed’s homepage today includes lists of 12, 15, 24, 43 and 19. Beautifully random, and not subject to the tyranny of editing your article by rounding up or down, just because 20 looks “more finished” than 19. Say what you need to say then stop.

Even if you don’t want to sit at your desk and compose “5 witty facts about my cat” this morning, the listicle produces a way of thinking that can be very useful. A list organises your thoughts and helps you focus on the key issues. Imagine you are compiling a listicle called “The five most amazingly fantastic gorgeous things about my business/product/services”. Write a bullet-pointed list with a sentence covering each of those five facts. There’s your basic starting point for marketing copy.

Embrace the listicle, despite its clunky name. It’s too fashionable to be around forever, then we’ll probably have to start reading in proper paragraphs again. And I can give you several reasons why that would be a pity.

Tonight I shall be sitting on my sofa ready for a good old rant at the screen. Yes, The Apprentice is back. As a copywriter in Cornwall I get to work with lots of fantastic start-up and established businesses, and know that being an entrepreneur does not have to be about black suits and backstabbing.

When I first set up as a copywriter in Cornwall, I was surprised and pleased by the entrepreneurial attitude. Self-employment was a cultural norm here (see my earlier post, Controlling Remote).  Cornwall’s largest industry these days is tourism; and hospitality and tourism businesses by their very nature tend to be run as small, independent concerns.  I’ve written copy for Cornish guesthouses, hotels, restaurants and holiday lets.

But we’re doing more down here than feeding, watering and making beds for our visitors. At the school gates, I get a daily snapshot of this. Most of the parents seem to be self-employed or freelance. Artists, farmers, graphic designers, retailers, beauticians, musicians… (Some people must have “normal” jobs, surely?) I’m copywriting for two young Cornish companies at the moment (more about them in a later blog) who make me feel humble with their talents, business brains and their sheer bonkers amount of energy.

A while ago, I was lucky to have a project on Scilly (as I quickly learned to call those beautiful isles), and met some incredibly motivated and switched-on entrepreneurs. Everybody I met seemed to run their own businesses, some in their early twenties, others managing small companies while juggling multiple kids and school runs involving boats. When I expressed my delight in this buoyant business community, everyone shrugged. “It’s what you have to do here. It’s not as if there’s lots of big employers.”  Necessity meets creativity, and that’s a factor across Cornwall, not just on Scilly.

Being an entrepreneur does not mean you have to carry a briefcase and stalk around London overusing “going forward”.  Remote locations breed their own brand of business folk. In flip-flops.

*In Cornwall in 2011, 25% of workers were employed in tourism and tourism-related businesses. In far west Cornwall where I live and write, it’s 31%. For those of you who like stats, have a look at Visit Cornwall’s report on the value of tourism to the Duchy.

Following on from my last copywriting blog post about portmanteau puns, here are some thoughts on puns in general. Why are some clever and some just cringey? Which ones fall into the so-bad-they’re-good category? Should we even go there? Here are my tips for successful punning.

Know your pun-ters

Punning is like making a joke at a wake – you really, really have to know how your audience will take it. A pun can be hideously inappropriate and change the tone of your writing completely.

I’m currently writing copy that will be translated into four languages – puns don’t translate. Plus, when a lot of your clients don’t necessarily read UK English, any UK-specific idiom is best avoided, including wordplay.

I permit myself some gentle punning for catalogue copy. After all, the client and I would look pretty po-faced if we had absolutely straight copy for novelty socks (the quaver ones “strike the right note” for musicians, by the way).

Don’t feel that you have to pun. Hair salons – please take note.

Hairdressing puns are never good. Cutting Room, Cutting Edge, Cutting Crew, Get Ahead, Just a Snip, and my favourite, eighties’ sitcom-inspired Hair Flicks are all well, hair-raisingly bad. Sweep them up, and bin them. It is not compulsory.

If you’re working on a strapline or headline, it doesn’t have to have clever wordplay to be eye-catching. Maybe try a bit of alliteration (but again, don’t overuse it), or perhaps just have confidence that your words and message are so good that they don’t need any gimmicks.

So, don’t be a hair salon. Don’t feel that you have to use a pun. Don’t pun-ish yourself (ho ho ho).

Read The Sun

Or maybe just take a quick glance at its headline. Whatever you feel about their editorial, politics or the fact they think that breasts are news, the good old Pun has the clever wordplay headline nailed. Sometimes, if I hear of a news event (the shallow-end of news, obviously. Royal pregnancies or politicians falling over) I search out The Sun’s take on it just for the joy of the groany-yet-genius headline.  Read and learn.

What are pun seekers looking for these days?

What’s the pun zeitgeist (I can’t even begin to think of a pun for that word…)? While writing my previous post on portmanteau puns, it seems that these frankenwords are the way forward at the moment, possibly because they suit the brevity of the pithy tweet. Recent examples include affluenza, netiquette and bromance.

Despite The Sun’s efforts, some puns just feel a bit dated. We Brits love a double entrendre – but watch out for those innuendoes. Times have changed since the Carry On days; and the contemporary naughty pun either has to be laden with irony or stunningly clever.

And if punning online, the usual internet rule applies: if your wordplay can be illustrated by a picture of a kitten, it’s purrfect (sorry).

Enough already…

Just know when to stop.I love an extended metaphor as much as the next person, but easy now – a whole web page or newsletter that has you creasing up over the sheer amount of clever puns you can fit in may just be plain irritating to most of your readers. For a blog post about punning, aside from the appalling title, I have used remarkably few (which has taken super-human effort).

Take a pun(t) and just go for it

If you feel that a pun would be appropriate, don’t be shy. Have fun playing with language, stay on the right side of flippant, and just enjoy imagining all those groans your finely-crafted wisecrack will set off.

As nineteenth-century essayist Charles Lamb wrote in “The Worst Puns are the Best”:

“A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.”

Bang.

This blog post is dedicated to my friend and fellow paronomasiac, writer and pun-mistress Vashti Zarach, originator of Punday back in our schooldays.

‘Tis the season of portmanteau puns. As we embrace Stoptober and prepare for Movember, I’ve been reflecting upon the current popularity of this quaintly-named construction.

A portmanteau word is simply a word made from two existing words coupled together. Also called “blend words” in linguistics, the term “portmanteau” was coined by Lewis Carroll from the two-compartmented suitcase of that name (he also created some splendid portmanteau words, including the lovely “galumph”, a triumphant gallop). Handily, portmanteau itself is a French blended word, from “carry” and “coat”.

The English language has a ginormous (see?) range of these words. There are plenty of old favourites about – motel, smog, brunch, biopic, moped. Here in Cornwall, we see a lot of mizzle. Animal crossbreeds provide an obvious source: the queen keeps dorgis; my cousin has a labradoodle. My own favourite portmanteau word is spork. I liked the word so much, I even bought one. You are currently (I hope) reading a blog (web plus log minus we).

Recently, celebrity “supercouples” have created a whole new lexicon of mash-ups. In the beginning there was Bennifer, and since then Brangelina and Kimye – and, gulp, Jedward.  Naturally, there are fashions. “Bro” is a current favourite in the world of portmanteau puns (“My Little Bronies” is a stand-out one…). I was pleased to see a Facebook page dedicated to “Making Bro Puns” – the brofficial page.

Like the bronies, if a portmanteau involves a bit of clever wordplay as well as a simple squishing together, it packs a greater pun(ch). Unsurprisingly, this is Good Stuff for slogans, and is currently being used to great effect by awareness-raising campaigns. We are currently in Stoptober, the NHS campaign to get smokers to quit for 28 days (erm, hello NHS? “Thirty days hath September” etc etc?).  As I don’t smoke, I am currently “Going Sober for October” (Macmillan) – a clever little rhyme, but I’d much rather have a portmanteau pun to live by for a month. I like the idea of “Choctober”, giving up all things biscuity (copyright S Brown, Penzance).

Likewise, I can’t take part in November’s biggest awareness-raiser. The global Movember campaign has been extremely successful, with 4 million moustaches grown since 2003 and £346m dollars raised, together with getting people talking about men’s health issues. I am not sure how Fanuary went, mainly because I’m too scared to Google it.

The above campaigns have chosen their words wisely. We like portmanteau words because they are funny, memorable, and seem to be that bit more sophisticated than your average bit of wordplay. For more lovely portmanteau words, have a look through the list from the Wiki-elves, and embrace this most pleasing of puns.

Am I alone in thinking that I’ve failed if I reach for the thesaurus?  Why do I feel that? It’s not cheating to use a tool in most tasks. A reference work that groups similar words together so you can pick the best one is surely a fantastic assistant for any copywriter.

However, I rarely use it for work. This is probably due to a mixture of professional pride, genuinely not needing it, and the knowledge that if I pick up my copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, I will spend the next two nerdy hours squealing with delight over the loveliness of words. Not productive.

To save time, occasionally I click on Mr Gates’ quick fix version. This is mainly when I run out of adjectives (see Making a Meal of Adjectives. Catalogue copy consumes more adjectives than my car does petrol). It’s OK, it does the job – but it’s not a thing of beauty like a proper, real thesaurus.

The modern thesaurus first hit the shelves in the mid nineteenth-century, compiled by Peter Mark Roget. I’ve always used a Roget – it’s a kind of geeky brand loyalty I suppose. Other editions are available etc, but he started it, so thesaurus-wise, he’s the daddy.

What sort of person compiles lengthy lists of synonyms and antonyms, and groups them thematically? Bless Wikipedia. I learned that the poor chap came from a family cursed with untimely deaths, and that Roget himself struggled with depression, using his list-writing from childhood to help him cope with the world (I was pleased to read that he lived far longer than most of his relatives, dying at ninety, and that his son carried on his work. He also designed a pocket chessboard).  It’s odd to think that one man’s coping mechanism has resulted in one of the key language reference works – and it probably makes me appreciate it more.

And anyway, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of assistance every now and then. There are a lot of words in the English language, and it’s nigh on impossible to call the right one to mind every time. So dust off the thesaurus and use it: it is the perfect reference book to inspire and guide. Unless you’re Susie Dent. She probably doesn’t need a thesaurus.

I was reading the packaging of my naan bread last night (a copywriter gets her kicks where she can). The naan bread was described as “vibrant”. Vibrant? Well, pretty tasty, but hardly full of the energy, life, colour and pizzazz we expect from such an adjective.

So inspired by this, I set off to look around the kitchen in search of other tasty adjectives. I’ve written some package copy in the past and know that there are few branches of writing where every single word carries such weight. I’m also writing catalogue copy at the moment, a similarly space-tight exercise, and one of the main things I have to do here is watch my use of over-enthusiastic adjectives. Trawling the food cupboards seemed like a helpful thing to do.

Firstly, the spice shelf. I’m not going to name names, but The Same Large Retailer responsible for the naan bread also offered me “potent” cayenne pepper and “earthy” nigella seed (no comment).  I agree with their “lively” sumac, but draw the line at the oregano being “pungent”. I don’t see this as a particularly positive word, scent-wise, especially since its recent use in Frozen to describe a man who smells of reindeer.

A trip to the fridge was disappointing, apart from the “ultimate” sausages which brought a certain Top Gear-style intonation to my reading.  The freezer was downright dull. Seems that chips are chips.

On to the cupboard. I forgave my coffee beans for being “zesty and buttery”. After all, coffee is one of those things, like wine, that has its own rich lexicon of descriptions; and have a look at Wogan Coffee –  I’ve added spoonfuls of adjectives to coffee myself.

Again I accepted the toasty, fruity, spicy etc nature of my wines. I remember watching Food and Drink in the late 1980s, and hearing Jilly Goolden describe a wine as tasting like the felt inside the cutlery drawer of an old sideboard. What? Crazy lady. This was a whole new way of talking about flavours, for most of us plebs anyway. We all laughed as her descriptions got crazier and crazier, but wow, was she right! I can still taste that felt. I loved her vocabulary; and the fact she started out as a freelance writer certainly will have helped…

Apart from a rumbling tummy and a desire for a pre-wine o’clock glass of blackberryish red, what did I get from my trip around the kitchen? Mainly, watch those little describing words. Don’t shove them in for the sake of it. The more foody and fancy, and let’s face it, “middle class” the food was, the more likely it was to be packaged in adjectives. You could argue that if a food is consumed less frequently, it needs more of a description for us ignorant little eaters. However, “potent” doesn’t get me much closer to an understanding of cayenne pepper. Good, honest “hot” does.

I bet you’ll be reading your food packaging this evening. May your meal be zesty, vivid, warming, comforting, intense and lively.

Today I have been mostly writing – SEO copy. SEO, search engine optimisation, is the means of getting traffic to your website from the search results on search engines – “naturally”, as they say, i.e. without paying. Writing content that contains frequently-searched keywords is a way of increasing traffic.

However, this process can throw up some interesting writing styles…Few things make me wince as much as badly-written SEO copy.

A problem of focussing too much on keywords is that sometimes the reader gets lost in the process. It’s no good ranking highly on Google and the other search engines if readers are then turned off your website because it is, frankly, unreadable. By the time someone has found your website, they deserve to be able to read it.  SEO copy can be clunky and cumbersome, with keywords painfully grafted on to the text.

Here’s a made-up example to illustrate my point. This is the home page for Ye Olde Pub*, a tavern hoping to raise its profile as a place for dining in York:

“Welcome to Ye Old Pub restaurant in York. We offer a great food, a range of beers and the best welcome in restaurant in York. If you’re looking for a great place for a meal out restaurant in York, then Ye Olde Pub is the perfect restaurant in York for you.”

See what I mean?

What can a copywriter do to help? I don’t pretend to be an expert in SEO. I leave all the technical stuff and keyword research to the experts. What I can do is ensure that any SEO terms you or your techy people choose to use become part of the text, not uncomfortable add-ons. It is also possible to “retro-fit” the SEO terms into existing copy – again, taking care that they become a seamless part of the text.

It’s not difficult to tweak Ye Olde Pub’s opening paragraph:

“Welcome to Ye Olde Pub, a warm and welcoming pub and restaurant in York, in the heart of the old city. We serve great food, have a wide range of beers and ales – and we feel that we offer the best welcome of any restaurant in York!”

So, driving traffic to your website is good – just make sure that when the traffic arrives, poor copy doesn’t make it want to reverse straight out again.

*Entirely my invention. The fact I chose pub grub as my example is an indication of where my head’s at today.

Having settled the matter of punctuation, I couldn’t resist compiling my own list of dos and don’ts. Because, ooooh we all love a list these days.

There are lots of lists out there giving copywriting advice. Many of them are very good. However my list is rather more random than that, and should probably be titled “Various Bits of General Writing Advice I’ve Been Given Over the Years”. So from school onwards, here are the wise words that have stuck with me. I don’t abide by them, or even agree with all of them – but I do remember them, which says something.

Never write a line you would be ashamed to read at your own funeral

I read this years ago in L M Montgomery’s marvellous Anne of the Island. Our heroine is given this advice by wise old Aunt Jamesina on the occasion of Anne’s first published article. I rather like it. However if the best they can come up with at my funeral is quoting from my manifestation dots piece, much as I love the dots, my life has probably taken a wrong turn somewhere.

If you’re really proud of a line, take it out

I can’t remember where I first heard this one. But come on – if I’m really proud of a line, why should I remove it? Just remember that there is a difference between feeling pleased with your efforts and needing to get over yourself.

The Mom Rule

This is a safety-net rule that I came across recently. Don’t write anything you wouldn’t want your “mom” to read.

Since my mum joined Facebook, I’m aware that my updates have been rather less grumpy and cynical. Mums have an influence. And my mum is particularly scary as she is a demon proofreader who homes in on typos like a gull on a pasty (Cornish copywriter simile).  I still get nervous when she reads my work.

I’ve also heard of the Mom Rule being used as a way to get a conversational style going. Imagine your writing starts with “Hey Mom” – it reminds you to keep your tone lively and engaging.  Missing the point I feel. However much writers love their parents, there’s a lot more creative freedom if you don’t imagine your mother reading it. Ever.

I wonder, did E L James worry about elderly relatives…?

Elmore Leonard – if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it

That’s just one of the many sound bits of advice from Elmore Leonard. His 2001 10 Rules of Writing is probably the definitive list and just makes such perfect sense.  Remember – “said” is your friend, adverbs your avowed enemies; and exclamation marks should be used only at moments of extreme crisis.

Write drunk, edit sober

Usually attributed to Hemingway. Great for the louche-drinking-absinthe-in-the-attic school of writing. Doesn’t work for flat roof websites. Don’t go there.

George Orwell – never use a long word where a short one will do, and if it’s possible to cut a word out, cut it out

Yes yes yes. We were all told this at uni. And ignored it, obviously. We Eng Lit students adopted the mantra “Be as overblown as possible”. (Our tutors must have winced as each freshers’ week brought a new influx of long-skirted girls idolising Angela Carter.) Age and experience have taught me that this is the best piece of advice ever for writers – if you actually want your readers to understand you, that is. As an Eng Lit undergraduate, you’re probably hoping for the opposite.

Feel free to break the rules

Mr Orwell again. Whatever the plethora of how-to lists tell you, nothing is prescribed. I am off to have half a bottle of La Fee then overuse some very long adjectives.