Fight for your Write

By Jerry Rackley

Whatever the sophisticated definitions are, marketing is a form of communication. We should spend time figuring out how to integrate our marketing campaigns, segment our markets, position our products and all the other specialized things we do. Sometimes, however, we just need to pay attention to how we write. Regardless of where our messages end up, most of them start in written form. Writing, therefore, is an essential marketing skill.

As an adjunct professor of marketing at a major university, I wish I could assure you that the future of marketing copywriting is in safe hands. Alas, it is not. The opportunity I have on almost a weekly basis to review the written work of aspiring marketers doesn’t comfort me. Granted, my sample size is limited, but I find few of my marketing peers who disagree with my assessment.

I’m convinced that we as marketers have to fight for our write. Okay, the previous statement probably isn’t grammatically correct, but work with me – I’m trying to make a point. So let’s revisit Frank L. Visco’s rules on “How to Write Good”, originally published in the June 1986 issue of Writers' Digest:

1. Avoid Alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid clichés like the plague (they’re old hat).
4. Employ the vernacular
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren’t necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
12. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
13. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. Profanity sucks.
15. Be more or less specific.
16. Understatement is always best.
17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
18. One word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
23. Who needs rhetorical questions?

Though not exhaustive, this list is a great start for marketing writers to embrace. To complete it, I would add, “don’t use no double negatives.” My pet peeve is #20. What’s yours?