In today’s post, the serial comma—also known as the Oxford comma. For those of us who may become rather focused on such things, the debate about “serial comma, yes or no?” can be serious business. Commas are wonderful tools. They convey changes of direction, clarify sentences, indicate pauses, and flag upcoming dialogue. In marketing communications, [...]
Posts Tagged ‘copywriting’
Check Your Jargon—Please.
Your Highness: I’m clued in enough to laugh at those parodies of over-the-top business jargon that periodically make the rounds… but I’m also quite aware of the need to keep my job fit in by embracing the specialized language of my professional peers. What’s an English major turned midlevel marketing manager to do? My dear [...]
Sorry, No, That’s Not What You Mean At All
Your Highness: I’m not much of a writer but, like so many of your loyal subjects, I have a job that often requires me to write. I want to be professional—and avoid embarrassing mistakes. I need an on-call editor. Or at least a cheat sheet. Please help! My dear Subject, Ah, English! Constantly changing, constantly [...]
The Creative Brief: Step #1 in Great Marketing Campaigns
Work in marketing long enough and you’ll feel it: the pit in your stomach when you and your creative team start talking past each other. “The creative team isn’t giving us what we want,” you assert. “Marketing doesn’t know what it wants,” the creative team counters. There’s an easy way to avoid this too-common marketing [...]
The Art of Blurbing
They’re everywhere. Book jackets, of course, and ads for movies—but also, unlikely places, such as cereal boxes and sides of buses. Twitter is essentially built on them. Yes, we are surrounded by blurbs—short (usually), glowing reviews or micro-stories lauding this, that, or the other. When flooded with this many “inputs,” as a tech-y friend of [...]
Managing a Massive, Multi-Asset Marcom Project? Be a Partner to Your Copywriting Agency for the Best Results
When clients hire the Content Bureau to manage their massive, multi-asset marcom projects, it’s their ongoing engagement that plays a key role in the project’s success. In this post, one of the Content Bureau’s beloved clients, Kerry Anne Rothe, Senior Manager of Communications at PayPal, shares tips for how clients should partner with their copywriting [...]
If We’re Really Grown-Ups, Then Why Do We Start Working Harder in September?
I just received an unintentionally hilarious piece of mail. It’s a letter from one of my many credit card providers, telling me I’m “approved” for a free 2013 appointment book and pocket organizer set. I am to pay just $4.95 for shipping and handling. It was a nice gesture, and I should probably reciprocate by [...]
How to Write a Concise and Complete (aka Great) 25-Word Product Description
What can you do with 25 words? Write a note to your kids about how to reheat dinner. Make a grocery list. How about tell a complete, compelling story? It’s possible to finesse about two dozen words into a product description that’s not so high-level it glosses over everything, but also not so detailed it [...]
Substance Over Style
The 2012 print edition of The Associated Press Stylebook has been published. This news may have passed with little fanfare outside the world of publishing and editing but it’s a cause for rejoicing among some of us here at the Content Bureau. The AP Stylebook is nothing less than the bible of editorial resources. You [...]
Why I Love Bullets (and You Should Too)
With bullets, what’s not to love? They are bold, matter-of-fact, and reliable—kind of like my best friend. (My personal fave? The little square ones.) Most common in business writing is the traditional—but, dare I say, passé—black dot, followed closely by the slightly more updated version of the little black square. But bullets do allow for [...]
