When you write copy on the internet, do you write whatever it is that comes into your head?
Or are you like most of us; constantly wrestling with the “do’s and don’ts” of writing effective English, that were drilled into you at school?
I ask because a paragraph from Ann Handley’s book, Everybody Writes, Your Go-to Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, addressed this very question.
In her book, Handley writes about the type of content that connects with readers when they’re skimming through their online feeds.
Did you learn this method to write essays at school?
And in her view, heavily structured English such as the “five paragraph essay structure” is definitely not it.
As Handley explains, the approach is:
so structured and formulaic that it’s boring to write and boring to read. Worse still, it implies there is just one right way to write and that other approaches to writing are wrong.
And that’s her point.
Better copywriters do this …
With attention spans getting shorter, connecting with readers on the internet is not so much about dotting your “Is” and crossing your “Ts” as it is “letting go” and writing your way.
What about you?
Do you write with the freedom Handley recommends?
Or are you a little like me?
Constrained by the hard and fast rules of writing you were taught at a school …
And needing to break those shackles to be a more effective writer on the internet?
Cheers
