The Six Worst Copywriting Mistakes

Any literate person can write marketing copy. Nobody needs a license to write, nor are there any gatekeepers to say that you can’t. Landing a job at an agency takes dedication and work, but if you own your own business, all you need is a laptop.

The vast majority of small-business owners write their own copy, and in-house marketing teams are often made up of people with little if any formal training in writing. Even veteran agency copywriters make mistakes, especially if there are no in-house copyeditors. Errors abound. Many of the largest enterprises publish marketing copy that’s rife with misplaced commas and typos.

If your business or agency doesn’t have editors on staff or on retainer, you’d be well advised to make a diligent effort to ensure your copy is as sparkling and clean as you can make it so you don’t embarrass yourself or your clients.

Misusing Punctuation

We all learned how to punctuate sentences in grade school, but virtually nobody—not even professional writers—gets it right every time. Even senior copyeditors need to consult The Chicago Manual of Style once in a while.

Most readers won’t notice if you misplace a comma, but they will laugh at you if you don’t know how to use quotation marks or apostrophes properly. If you’re promoting a bank, don’t offer “free” checking. And if you’re selling bananas for two dollars a pound, remember that you’re selling bananas, not banana’s. (That last mistake is so common in supermarkets that it has a name: the grocer’s apostrophe.)

If you don’t know how and when to use a semi-colon or a colon without looking it up, you shouldn’t use either.

Corporate Gobbledygook

You simply must use the kinds of words your customers use rather than your own internal jargon. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, they’ll leave. Health insurance companies use the word “provider” when they mean “doctor,” but patients don’t. And if you use a phrase like “foot solutions” when you’re writing about shoes, customers will think you’re ridiculous.

So start by writing in English.

Spelling and Grammar

Spelling mistakes are the easiest to correct, but they’re also the easiest for your customers to spot. Spell-checking software can help you, but it can’t save you. (It has no idea that you typed “to” when you meant to type “too.”)

The fact that everybody misspells words once in a while does not give you permission to call it good because Microsoft Word says your copy is clean. If clients or customers spot several misspellings on your corporate or small-business website, they’ll wonder if sloppiness is pervasive throughout your entire company—and they’ll be especially worried if you sell software or food.

Keyword Stuffing

Readers may or may not know what keyword stuffing is, but they’ll know something is off if you do it. You are not going to get away with using the same words over and over again so that Google will find you. Professional copyeditors won’t let you get away with using even an innocuous word twice on a page because readers notice the word echo.

So balance your need to use keywords with your need to write naturally and organically.

Using Twelve Words When Seven Will Do

Copyediting is like poetry in at least one way: you need to ruthlessly search and destroy words you don’t need. You have precious little real estate to begin with, but even if you were writing a novel, bloated sentences are awkward and kludgy. Put them on a diet.

Ignoring the “Return” Key

For goodness’ sake, don’t drop gigantic blocks of text large enough to kill a human being on your readers. Break everything up into snack-sized pieces whenever you can, and remember to press the “Return” key when you can’t. Walls of text look like a chore to read, and they usually are.