Copywriting tip: To get more customers to respond faster and increase your sales, write "like a kid"

I was meeting with a friend who was not a native speaker of English. She asked me to send her an email with links to some Web sites.

Then she made an amusing request:

“Write with simple words,” she said with a smile. “Like a kid!”

I smiled and promised her I would.

Then, I realized that is how I write anyway when I write copy. And how so many other copywriters I know who get great results write.

A few months ago, a copywriter friend of mine (who won’t talk about his household-name clients) sent me an ebook he had written about writing copy. Just for grins, I did a “readability index” check on the entire book.

(If you have Microsoft Word, you can do the same thing yourself. Go to tools>options>spelling and grammar, and under “grammar", check the box for “show readability statistics".)

This number shows what grade level in school you need to have finished in order to read a piece of text.

My friend’s ebook was written at the fifth-grade level.

Was he writing it for fifth graders?

Not at all. He just knew – or had developed the habit which made it look like he knew – that the easier it is for people to read what you write, the more they will read it.

Short words. Short sentences. Short paragraphs.

Working on my new book today, I dragged up a quote from Ernest Hemingway that speaks very much to this point:

“I use the oldest words in the English language. People think I’m an ignorant bastard who doesn’t know the ten-dollar words. I know the ten-dollar words. There are old and better words which if you arrange them in the proper combinations you make it stick.”

It was good enough for Papa. And it’s good enough for you.

(By the way – the above passage checks in at 4.7 – a fourth grader in the second semester ought to be able to read and understand it. In case you were wondering.)

Have a great weekend,

Cheers,

David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter

P.S. David Hancock and I have gotten RAVE reviews for our teleseminar “Publishing Secrets Exposed: Everything The Big Publishers Don’t Want You To Know About Creating A Best-Seller and Making A Ton Of Money”.

Some people have asked if they could buy the mp3 (and the transcript, which will be ready in a week), so we decided to offer it.

Really good information!

http://www.world-copywriting-institute.com/publishing

Comments

[Ankesh Kothari]

Dear David,

Thanks for the post.

I think writing so that everyone understands what you write makes sense. However sometimes - as paradoxical as it sounds - writing in a way that makes no sense helps in persuading people too.

Case in point: Joel Cooper, Elizabeth Bennett, and Holly Sukel - these 3 psychologists did some court room research and found out that jurors are more easily persuaded by witnesses that use technical language than witnesses that use easy-to-understand simple language.

As soon as I read about that, my mind raced back to Joe Sugarman. Sugarman often used technical language in his sales letters. In fact, if memory serves me correct, he used a lot of technical language describing the circuit of a watch in a full page ad once. Even the watch manufacturer said something to the effect: "what you say is right, but even I couldn't understand the language." And yet, surprisingly, that ad pulled in more than the ad without technical language.

Thanks for letting me disagree a wee bit.

kind regards,
Ankesh

(The link below is to an article titled "How Juries are Persuaed" giving a possible explanation of why technical language works -- click on my name if you would like to read it.)

[David Garfinkel]

Thanks for the comment, Ankesh. I love disagreement, when it's respectful, well thought through, and the disagreer has enough guts to say who or she really is!

You make a good point. I would like to point out to you, though, that the "witness" is not the "persuader" -- the witness is in fact a form of spoken intellectual justification for the plain, simple language of the attorney. Like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for the main message.

And with Sugarman, I think the technical language was confined to a paragraph or two. Again, like bringing in the "expert witness." Most of the copy was his normal, brilliant, simple, transparent, irresistible writing.