Content marketing tools and training.
Even as a seasoned writer, I’m not immune to making simple but stupid mistakes. Take the word “jive” for instance …
Ever since I was kicking the slats out of my crib, I thought it meant “to agree with, to be in harmony.” But nnnnnnnnoooooo.
Jive is a language immortalized by the movie Airplane. The word that I should have been using was “jibe.”
Here’s the thing, the English language is full of pitfalls — simple errors that can alienate readers, turn off subscribers, and annoy buyers.
Ever read a blog post and think, “This writer seems to have some good ideas, but the grammatical errors are driving me crazy”?
(Pro tip: If you don’t ever think this, some of your readers probably do.)
Grammatical glitches make your writing harder to read, and they turn readers off.
Content may be king, but you’ll gain a lot more respect and credibility if your writing is just as brilliant as the ideas you convey.
And by brilliant, I mean clean.
We’re big advocates of conversational writing that’s engaging, persuasive, and fun. So that means it’s perfectly fine to fracture the occasional stuffy grammatical rule (and many times it’s preferable).
On the other hand, making some grammatical errors just makes you look bad, and hurts your effectiveness. Sometimes we even misuse words simply because we hear others use them incorrectly.
So, we’ve assembled the 15 most egregious grammar goofs into one helpful infographic. With this handy reference, you’ll never look silly again.
As a professional copywriter, there’s one question that tends to pop up constantly from my readers and clients … “Can you teach me to write like you?”
My knee-jerk answer is usually something like, “Um. No. There is no other like me! I reign supreme! Me! Me! Me!”
OK, I’m not really that egocentric.
But I do typically respond with something along the lines of “I’d love to teach you how, but I don’t know how I do it … I just do it.” And then I run off to a dark corner somewhere to eat sweet potato French fries like they’re going outta style.
When was the last time you wrote something with the intent to specifically motivate your readers to take action?
Admit it or not, we’re all in the same game.
Whether you want someone to buy your product, join your email list, retweet or +1 your post, you’re doing one thing — leading your audience down a path at the end of which lies the action they’ll take.
You want them to do something.
I’ve been blogging for six years now, and in that time I’ve noticed something — anyone can do it.
At first, I thought that this was a good thing. But then I realized that every good thing has a shadow side.
So here’s the downside of the accessibility of blogging: It makes the already-terrible writers much, much louder.
There are too many bloggers out there.
How can this be a good thing for you?
