Brian McArdle, Copywriter: Business Writing: The Kiss Principle

Brian McArdle, Copywriter: Business Writing: The Kiss Principle: "“Keep it Simple Stupid” The mantra all good writers should remember. Whether you’re producing a piece of marketing material, a sales prop..."

Business Writing: The Kiss Principle

“Keep it Simple Stupid”

The mantra all good writers should remember.

Whether you’re producing a piece of marketing material, a sales proposal or perhaps an educational presentation, there are a number of key questions to bear in mind when trying to keep writing simple.

  What is your angle? 

Any piece of writing exists to communicate a message to your readers. This message needs to be clear in your mind from the very beginning. It is the driving force behind your text. It should also drive the processes that produce that text as well.

  What is the appropriate structure for communicating this message? 

Note that this structure should be as simple as possible.

What background material should I include? It is now, and only now that you should evaluate any research material you might have. Most importantly , if there isn’t  a compelling reason to include some information within your structure, just cut it out.

  How long should each topic be? 

When writing each section of your piece, be extremely realistic about your planned word counts. Only say as much as is absolutely necessary to get your point across.

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As you can imagine, writing generated according to the Kiss Principle tends to be produced very efficiently. The great thing is that it also improves the quality of your writing.This is because, in general, the simpler your structureand the clearer your proposition, the better.The process of writing that eventually follows is,

after all, far more fluid and enjoyable. What’s more, the message tends to be clearer because it has been better defined and the structure tends to be more robust which, in turn, will help your readers enormously.

Brian McArdle, Copywriter: Business Writing: The Kiss Principle

Brian McArdle, Copywriter: Business Writing: The Kiss Principle: "“Keep it Simple Stupid” The mantra all good writers should remember. Whether you’re producing a piece of marketing material, a sales proposa..."

Get down and dirty with Grammar

'Understanding why certain writing techniques work the way they do can help you make the right decisions about the style of what you write. I’m talking grammar. Alright, PREPOSITIONS! There, I said it. 
Keep reading, though… I spent ages working this bit out, and it’s really useful.

These words (eg TO, WITH, BY, FROM) are some of the most useful and powerful in the English language. They allow us to explain the exact relationship between two words in a sentence.

Because of their role in the language, prepositions don’t mean anything on their own. Their sense of purpose comes from the words they refer to, and in the English language, those words traditionally come either side of the preposition (eg I’m going to the shops).

Ending a sentence with a preposition is a very common feature of modern spoken English, but the fact remains that when we see a preposition in print, we tend to expect another word to follow.

What this means is that a reader can be left with a sense of deflation when a sentence or paragraph finishes with a preposition – giving it a weak ending that can have the effect of undermining what is said in the sentence or paragraph that has gone before.

When writing for business, it pays to leave your reader with a sense of being uplifted, and this can often be achieved simply by finishing the sentence on a solid, positive note. The most effective words to put at the end of a sentence or paragraph are nouns and verbs.

Examples

Consider the following pairs of sentences:

‘This is exactly the sort of business environment that we tend to excel in.'

‘It is in exactly this sort of business environment that we tend to excel.’

And:

‘This is the kind of export market that we have high expectations of.’

‘We have high expectations of this kind of export market.’

The second sentence of each pair has a much stronger ending, and leaves the reader with a more positive, upbeat feeling.

Then again, it is possible to be too pedantic about this. Your language still has to flow properly. As Winston Churchill said:

'This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.' 

Brian McArdle, Copywriter: Get down and dirty with Grammar

Brian McArdle, Copywriter: Get down and dirty with Grammar: "'Understanding why certain writing techniques work the way they do can help you make the right decisions about the style of what you write. ..."

Brian McArdle, Copywriter: The start is the hardest part

Brian McArdle, Copywriter: The start is the hardest part: "Have you ever wondered how long the greatest, and not so great writers and novelists looked at the blank page 'Stately, plump Buck Mullig..."

The start is the hardest part

Have you ever wondered how long the greatest, and not so great writers and novelists looked at the blank page

 "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." - James Joyce, Ulysses


I wonder how long Joyce scratched his head before he came up with that, and the beauty is that you're catapulted into the story right away. If you are in terror of a blank page or  an empty blog here's a couple of techniques I use to unlock the  vast expanse of white A4

1: Just write anything; without thought of punctuation or full stops or sense, write for 5 minutes in a stream of conciousness and then relax and you will find that clear and coherent thoughts just bubble up. The stuff you've just tumbled out on paper - Freud might have a field day but don't even go there, just bin it.

2: Still stuck? Take a pen in the  hand that you  don't write with and copy a couple of lines from a book or a newspaper. The effort of making your "weak hand" do the work overtakes all other thought and when you finish your mind is clear and open to what ever you want to write.

Of course  a plan does help. When I sit down to write an ad campaign the first half an hour is the hardest work.
That's when you look at the product, decide what's great about it, what the benefits are (you always concentrate, not on the features, but the benefits) Then you apply a little creativity to communicate to the reader/listener what and how great it will be to get this duffel dangle,
      After that you've got a list of maybe ten ideas and it's just a case of writing them into fully formed pieces of copy. Like they say 1% inspiration  and 99% perspiration