Title: The Top Five Writing Mistakes Professionals Make Author: Judy Cullins Copyright 2004. All Rights Reserved.

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Category: Writing / Publishing

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Thanks, Judy Cullins, M.A.

P.S. To receive this special report from Judy Cullins, author of 10 eBooks go to: www.bookcoaching.com/reports/DistributeYourSelf-PublishedBook.shtml ============== The Top Five Writing Mistakes Professionals Make Judy Cullins ©2004 All Rights Reserved

Yes, you know your subject. You also need to think about entertaining your audience, and making your book or other writing easy to read. If your writing lacks organization and compelling, vital sentences that convince your readers to keep reading, they will leave your book or Web site immediately. There goes your "word-of-mouth" promotion.

Try my "Check and Correct" for These Top Five Mistakes

1. Stop passive sentence construction.

When you write in passive voice, your writing slides along into long sentences that slow your readers down, even bore them.

Before you put your final stamp of approval on your writing, circle all "is," "was" and other passive verbs like: begin, start to, seems, appears, have, and could. Use your grammar check to count your passives. Aim for 2-4% only.

Correct: "Make sure that your name is included on all your household accounts and investments." "Make" and "is included" --the culprits. Create more clarity with this revision," Include your name on all household accounts and investments to keep your own credit alive after your divorce."

2. Stop all pompous language and phrases.

Well-meaning professionals often use word, "utilize." You see this criminal in resumes, military directives and medical or lawyer documents. "Utilize” not only puts people off because we don't relate to "jargoneze," but because we want simple language. Think of Hemingway who knew that one or two syllable-words work better than longer ones.

Many people feel uncertain when dealing with copywriters. Like any artform, writing is subjective; instead of black and white, most business owners and marketing managers see indistinguishable shades of grey. But copywriting possesses one key element that most other forms of art don’t – a commercial imperative.

Because copywriter’s audience is driven by realities of business market, so too is copywriter. Although good ones love to write, they don’t necessarily love to write about toilet paper and real-estate. Copywriters – in particular website copywriters – write because it’s their job. And like any job, copywriting has very defined objectives and parameters which determine how copywriter works, and kind of material they produce.

So, if you need black and white, this is where you’ll find it.

There are two primary commercial realities for a website copywriter. Understand these realities, and you’ll understand writer. Ignore them, and your job will take longer, be more frustrating, be less engaging, and earn you less money.

REALITY 1 – READER-FRIENDLY AND SEARCH-ENGINE-FRIENDLY A website copywriter needs to adhere to certain guidelines to ensure your website is both reader-friendly and search-engine-friendly. This is black and white.

Because most websites rely on search engines for their traffic, your website copywriter has to write for two broad audiences: human and computer. This introduces a number of complexities because, quite often, these audiences want different things.

For instance, with humans, less is generally more. But with computers, more is more. Humans need to understand, so fewer words better. Search engines, on other hand, are programmed to think that anything important enough to be ranked highly has to have a lot of words. A website copywriter must balance these conflicting requirements. Your copywriter will work faster and more efficiently if you don’t demand too few words or too many.

TIP: If your site needs both humans and search engines, try not to set your heart on less than 100 words per page or more than 300 words. Generally speaking, somewhere in middle is a nice compromise for both audiences.