While waiting on line in the post office yesterday, I was flipping through the latest copy of DMNews. Susan Pepperdine of Pepperdine PR has a letter in the September 28 issue that really nails it. It’s in response to “Has New Media Changed Copywriting?” I couldn’t find the letter on the DMNews site so I’m reproducing it below. I couldn’t have said it any better; thanks, Susan.

You ask, “Has new media changed copywriting?” (Gloves Off, August 17, DMNews) I agree with “contender” Suzanne Darmory Dunleavy, who says that copywriting must still “be on brand, be on strategy, be engaging, target the right audience with the right tone and have a clear call to action.” Contender Steve Caputo, meanwhile, says that new media have affected the writing process in part because of “unprecedented speed.”

Unfortunately, speed seems to have become an excuse for sloppy writing. Yet reporters have always had to produce accurate copy — and follow Associated Press style — while racing against deadlines. Since my background is in journalism, I’m acutely aware of a daily parade of typos, misspellings, poor grammar and style errors. Careful writing in any medium still helps ensure (not “insure”) that your message is clearly communicated. When someone writes, “Your welcome” or “Please bare with me” — both of which I’ve seen lately — I think the company doesn’t care about quality.

Other mistakes I’ve seen:

• Confusing “Everyday low prices” and “Low prices every day.” (“Every day” should be two words in the second usage.)
• Using apostrophes to form plurals.
• Misusing “its” and “it’s” or “their,” “there” and “they’re.”
• Confusing “principle” and “principal” or “complimentary” and “complementary.”
• Not bothering to check the spelling of tricky words (“impostor,” not “imposter;” “mantle,” not “mantel;” “trooper,” not “trouper”).

These days the fingernails-on-the-blackboard error I see most frequently is “Get it for free.” Writers seem to like the alliteration, but the “for” is unnecessary.

One last quibble: Most stylebooks still hold that the word “media” requires a plural verb. So your article’s headline should have been, “Have news media changed copywriting?”

Ironically, DMNews printed “Associated Press” as “Associate Press.” (I corrected it in the version above.) I hope the typo didn’t cause Susan to grind her teeth to bare nubs. Or nub’s.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 9:16 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff, Quotes o' the Day, Rants 'n' Such.