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Dianna Huff on her MarCom Writer Blog pointed me to a great rant on copywriters who use jargon. By “jargon,” we mean sentences like, for example, “Performance metrics consistently indicate an exceptional consumer-measured response to the proliferation of our creative deliverables.” Why not just say, “We’re selling more since we started running the new ads”?

Why not, indeed! I believe there are reasons. None are very good reasons. But maybe saying what they are, laying them bare, may encourage you to avoid them. And to write well. And so without further ado, here are 5 not-so-good reasons why copywriters use jargon.

1. They don’t know what they’re talking about. If you don’t actually understand the subject, you can always cover up your ignorance with fancy language. That’s not going to gain you points as a copywriter, though. The only thing that works is to learn the material first. If you actually understand something, you can probably explain it to a 10-year-old. I was recently discussing with my 10-year old daughter the wave-particle duality of matter and energy. Of course, I didn’t use terms like “wave-particle duality.”
2. They think big words make them sound intelligent. Big words don’t make you sound intelligent. They make you sound unintelligible. And for a copywriter, that’s death. Even worse– Yes, worse than death. Worse, they can make you sound like you’re trying to sound intelligent. It’s like a 30-year-old woman wearing clothes from the Junior Miss department. That’s at best pitiable and at worst offensive. Unless you’re writing to an audience (like doctors) that actually need the 25-cent words, stick with words that the average layman can grasp without using a dictionary.
3. They think lots of words make them sound intelligent. See above. Use shorter sentences and fewer words. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery was talking about design, but the same principle applies to writing. This maxim we may not be able to live up to. But it’s still an ideal worth recognizing. Or to paraphrase Mark Twain, I would have written in shorter sentences, but I didn’t have enough time.
4. They don’t want to be understood. The BBC political comedy Yes, Prime Minister made a great gag out of this. The civil service, when they wanted approval for something unpopular, would hide it in the thicket of a 400-page bill amongst a stand of Latin nouns. Come to think of it, that’s how U.S. politicians work, too… Anyhow, the point is that if you need to pawn a problem onto someone else, it may seem best not to be understood. Because if he actually grasped the full import of what you were asking him to do, he may not agree to do it. Now, while this makes a great comedy routine, in real life it’s incredibly unprofessional and destroys trust faster than almost any other tactic. Don’t do it. The best manager I ever had, if she taught me anything, taught me one lesson: It’s better to be honest and direct than to beat around the bush.
5. They don’t know how to write. There are a few simple rules of style that can punch up almost any writing. Use the active voice. Avoid adverbs and nouns that refer to actions. Use strong verbs instead. Things like that. Though simple these rules are, there are plenty of so-called writers who just don’t know how to write. They’re incompetent, and they don’t even know it. And their ignorance keeps them from becoming competent. Fortunately, there is a way out of this conundrum, to wit, a good, swift kick in the incompetence. For me, that swift kick came from Patricia T. O’Conner and her book Words Fail Me. And it changed my writing forever. But that’s a different story.

A copywriter has to write copy that readers can understand quickly and easily. If he can’t, it doesn’t matter how compelling is his story. It doesn’t matter how elegant the graphic design. It doesn’t matter how great the product or service. No one will care. So make sure to give your writing style the attention it deserves.

-TimK

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 3:16 am and is filed under Copywriting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.