Can I really get another post out of the copy on a peanut bag? It seems I can. (And for those who are wondering, yes, I do get through a fair few peanuts. I read the packets while I’m illicitly munching them between meals.)

I’m sure many a client has heaved a sigh over their copywriter’s tiresome insistence that a comma must be inserted at some particular point. When I used to check the printer’s proofs at a publishing house, the production manager would be incredulous at the idea of incurring big cost for such a footling change. (The cost was for running out patches and ‘cutting in’ or even ‘doubling in’ on the imposed film before remaking the ozalid – ask your parents, kids.)

Yet there are times when this tiny punctuation mark can make a huge difference to the meaning of a sentence. And it may be that the sentence is quite an important one. Consider this text, which appears on a packet of salted peanuts from a leading UK supermarket chain:

Do not give this product to small children who can choke on nuts

The literal meaning here is ‘if there are any small children around who can choke on nuts, don’t give them this product’, with the implied meaning ‘if there are any small children who can’t choke on nuts, it’s OK for them’.

Now consider how the phrase should have read (with comma inserted):

Do not give this product to small children, who can choke on nuts

Here, the meaning is very different: ‘Small children can choke on nuts. Don’t give them this product.’

The problem stems from the use of ‘who’ in both restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. If we were talking about something inanimate, rather than children, we would have to change the wording as well as insert the comma. For example, note the difference in meaning between these two phrases:

He stopped the first car that was driven by a woman.
He stopped the first car, which was driven by a woman.

Loyal readers may recognise this as the sentence I used to explain the difference between that and which many moons ago.

As I hope I’ve made clear, these grammar points aren’t dead customs or academic debating points. They really do affect meaning, and if you’re giving health advice, that meaning is important. That’s why copywriters go nuts over ’em.

As UK readers may have seen, Gordon Ramsay and Pixie Lott are appearing in a major outdoor advertising campaign to promote milk. Each appears on posters and side-of-bus advertisements with their own catchline, with the campaign-wide slogan being ‘make mine milk’. The £7.5m campaign is being handled by agency Kindred. (If you want to know more about it, have a look at this Telegraph article or visit the official site here.)

In my view, some of the copy on this campaign doesn’t have a lotta bottle. (Ask your parents or click here.) And although there’s no use crying over it, I’d still like to float my opinions. (Float? Anyone?)

Pixie drinks lotts

The Pixie Lott poster features the impish blonde songstrel wearing a ‘milk moustache’ alongside the slogan ‘Pixie Drinks Lotts’. In my view, this is a really strong slogan. If you know who Pixie is, it delivers a straightforward persuasive message based on authority, made memorable by the simple pun on her surname. Crucially, however, you’ll still understand at least part of the message even if, like me, you stopped listening to new music around 1990.

Cordon blanc

Contrast that with the Gordon Ramsay variant. In this design, the narky Caledonian jus-drizzler is pictured with his trademark baleful frown and the tagline ‘cordon blanc’. Now, understanding this slogan involves quite a few logical leaps and bits of knowledge:

• You have to know who Gordon Ramsay is.
• You have to make the link between ‘Gordon’ and ‘cordon’.
• You have to know that ‘cordon bleu’ is a marque that denotes gastronomic excellence.
• You have to speak enough French to know that ‘blanc’ means white, and that it’s been substituted for the ‘bleu’ in ‘cordon bleu’.
• You have to make the link between whiteness and milk.

However, even after you’ve picked the bones out of that lot, I’m not really sure what meaning you’re actually left with. It’s kind of a joke, kind of an allusion, while not really succeeding as either. For me, there are just too many links in the chain – a chain that doesn’t really lead anywhere. And it’s asking a lot for the reader to work out what on earth is being said. How many 16-25 year olds (the main target demographic) know about Ramsay and Cordon Blanc – and speak functional French?

For me, the slogan highlights the danger of using plays on words in slogans or headlines (and perhaps in any other type of copywriting). Personally, I would lump all riddles, questions, gags, puns, quotations, allusions and foreign-language elements together under the heading of ‘things that make the reader think’. And that’s rarely a good idea.

Your reader may be busy, tired or fed up. They’re not particularly keen on hearing your message. They may be seeing it in a fleeting way, such as on the side of a bus. They may not get your jokes, or appreciate your allusions. In some situations, they may not even speak English as a first language. Do you really want to take chances with their attention?

However, there’s clearly a place for arresting, thought-provoking creative copy. The key question is whether the cleverness in the text helps or hinders the message. The right kind of quirky, snappy slogan gets the message across in a way that a literal or descriptive equivalent never could, breaking through the reader’s natural inclination to ignore marketing messages. But for every headline like that, there are a dozen where unwarranted ‘creativity’ or ‘humour’ has come between the reader and the meaning.

Of course, it’s easy to snipe from the sidelines. I get to spend all day writing PDF factsheets about B2B services – no-one asks me to come up with a memorable play on words that connects Gordon Ramsay and milk for their multi-million pound campaign. If I was put on the spot, I’d probably try and steer away from that incredibly tough brief and suggest something simpler and more direct – ‘Gordon laps it up’ or something like that. But what do I know?

The bigger the text, the harder it is to spot the mistake – as this online banner from Barclays Bank proves.

As most six-year-olds know, verbs and nouns should agree. ‘Overdrafts’ is plural so we’d expect to hear that they ‘heal’ glitches, not that they ‘heals’ them…

While we’re about it, how do you heal a glitch anyway? Why not ‘help your cashflow recover from a little knock’ or similar?

Barclays digital marketers, you can reach me on 01603 454111. And remember: if the designer types it, you check it. 

Does anybody still bother about the difference between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’? Clearly not Starbucks, who are distributing the napkin pictured below in their outlets as I write.

It should of course be ‘fewer napkins’. I guess, when it comes to grammar, Starbucks couldn’t care fewer.

The rule is very simple: if you can count what you’re talking about, you should say ‘fewer’; if you can’t, it’s ‘less’. Or, to put it another way, if the subject is plural, it’s ‘fewer’, while a singular noun requires ‘less’.

The following examples all highlight the distinction:

• ‘less alcohol’, but ‘fewer units’
• ‘less sugar’, but ‘fewer lumps’
• ‘less inaccuracy’, but ‘fewer mistakes’

The problem may be exacerbated because there is no such distinction in the other direction: we can say ‘more’ regardless of whether we’re talking about a number or not (as the Starbucks napkin illustrates).

Of course, this is the pedant’s view. Being charitable to Starbucks, they may have felt that ‘less’ was better in their situation and made a conscious decision to break the rule. It’s shorter (which is always better, ceteris paribus) and more memorable, since ‘less’ and ‘more’ are so often linked together or contrasted (e.g. ‘less is more’).

Perhaps people are becoming less concerned with this type of precision. But the point is that while adhering to the rules makes no difference to readers who don’t care, breaking them really grates with those who do. (Unless, of course, it makes you sound ludicrously stiff and formal, as with ‘whence’, ‘to whom’ and similar constructions.) For the same reason, we might observe unwritten rules like leaving the bottom button of a waistcoat undone, or scooping a soup spoon away from ourselves – people who care will notice.

So there’s a logical case for accuracy, just to maximise impact. Grammar rules!

The other day, I asked the Twitterverse its opinion on a particuarly hackneyed phrase I was considering using in a copywriting assignment. Predictably, the reaction was equivocal. I felt unsure myself. And yet I submitted the text with the phrase intact. (The client didn’t complain.)

The phrase was ‘at your fingertips’. Few would dispute its status as a cliché. It appears in Catch-22, which was published in 1961 (‘Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his finger tips’) and was surely familiar even then. So it’s clocked up a good half-century of use in print. A Google search turns up over 10 million results. By any measure, this is a familiar figure of speech.

I don’t want to rock clichés. But they’re making my readers buy

I was writing about a portable electronic device, so ‘at your fingertips’ had a literal relevance (unlike Joseph Heller’s metaphorical usage). But there’s no doubt that the phrase is what George Orwell called a ‘dying metaphor’ – a worn-out figure of speech that has lost its capacity to add colour to writing. But what could I say instead? Go literal and say ‘within easy reach’ or ‘close at hand’? Or informal with ‘right there where you need it’?

The problem is that none of the alternatives carries quite the same meaning. So I can avoid the cliché, but only by sacrificing clarity. Is that really a trade-off I want to make?

The project I was working on was a B2C landing page selling stylish electronic products as Christmas gifts. Traffic was to be generated with an AdWords campaign. For my money, there were three key perspectives, all relating (naturally) to the audience rather than me or the client.

• Mindset. Once they’re at a landing page, we know the audience is interested, motivated and actively searching for the product. They’re not in ‘socialising’ or ‘surfing’ mode. So there’s no need to ‘interrupt’ them, grab their attention or try to generate interest ex nihilo. They are, in effect, a voluntarily captive audience.
• Profile. People have different levels of literacy and vocabulary. For literate readers, ‘at your fingertips’ is painfully crass. But for others (my target audience), it’s a useful signpost. They don’t read a lot of books. They don’t analyse every ad they see. They’re short of time and buying presents is just ‘one more thing’. I need to inform and persuade, not entertain or intrigue. Trying too hard won’t add value, and could do harm. 
• Resonance. In terms of tone, I’m trying to involve the reader. So I want my words to be warm and welcoming, reassuring them that they’re in the right place. There’s no call for anything edgy, surprising or challenging.

In other words, I believe the cliché was the right choice for the task at hand (or at fingertip).

As copywriters, our aim is not to express ourselves, but to serve the interests of our clients and their customers. We choose the words that bring those two groups together for mutual benefit. Creativity and originality may be appropriate means to that end. But it’s our duty to do what works, regardless of whether we like it ourselves. Copywriters are servants, not artists.

But (you object), surely creativity and originality are worthwhile in themselves? My personal answer is ‘yes’. But that’s because I’m university-educated and aesthetically sensitive (in theory at least). And the idea of ‘worth’ is a value judgement that has nothing to do with what works commercially. If I want to be creative, I should do it on my own time. (That’s one reason why this blog exists.)

Anyway, why do clichés become clichés? Because they’re so useful. Orwell exhorted his fellow journalists to comb through their text for over-familiar idioms and replace them with something newer and fresher. But this misses the point. Clichés endure because they serve a unique purpose. Like favourite cardigans, they get worn out precisely because of their appeal.

To sum up: if a cliché is the right tool for the job, the conscientious copywriter goes right ahead and uses it.

‘Do you need a wee?’ I wonder how many times I’ve asked my little daughter that question. If only I was given a penny every time she stubbornly refuses to spend one.

And, in a different sense, many of my freelance, sole-trader or consultant clients face the same question: when to go for a ‘we’ and when ‘I’ is sufficient. In other words, they have to decide whether to position their one-person enterprises as companies (‘we’) or as individuals (‘I’) in their marketing communications.

Yes, behind the façade, ABC is just one man

There’s plenty of precedent for individuals speaking in the first person plural. In the days of the divine right of kings, sovereigns adopted the ‘royal we’ as an indication that they spoke on behalf of a nation, or as both of the ‘king’s two bodies’ (the notional ‘body politic’ and the physical ‘body natural’). The tradition continues today. In publishing, the ‘editorial we’ is affected by individuals opining on behalf of a newspaper, as opposed to expounding their own personal views.

Both these examples show that using ‘we’ puts distance between the authorial voice and the individual writer or speaker, while ‘I’ positions the author as a single person and nothing more. ‘We’ is used when a conceptual entity such as a company, newspaper or nation state is ‘speaking’, while ‘I’ denotes that we are listening to an individual.

So, which is right for your one-person business? It all depends on your own personality, how you plan to do business what you feel comfortable about in terms of marketing and promotion.

If you’ve got a catchy or memorable name (unlike me), there’s a case for trading under it. And if you feel comfortable building up brand equity in that name through self-promotion, networking and personal exposure (again, unlike me), then it probably makes most sense to use your own name. If you choose this path, you should speak as ‘I’.

On the other hand, if you want to distance or differentiate yourself from your work, and/or give the impression that your business is larger than it is, you’ll want to position yourself as a company and choose a non-personal name for it. This is the road I went down – as I’ve blogged elsewhere, I find freelancing much easier to handle with a clear division between ‘me’ and ‘my work’. Although ‘ABC Copywriting’ is nothing more than a legal/financial ‘wrapper’ around the work I do, I still find it easier to make decisions for the good of ‘the company’ rather than myself as an individual.

The half-way house would be to use your own name in conjunction with ‘associates’ or ‘company’ – positioning yourself as a firm, but making it clear that you’re the principal. Here you can use either ‘I’ or ‘we’ – but it’s probably worth choosing one or the other and using it consistently.

The issue is definitely worth thinking about, because there’s a risk of mixed messages. If you speak as ‘I’ under a company banner, who is speaking? An individual on their own behalf, or a director on behalf of the firm? Should we expect personal opinion, or company line? Equally, if you use ‘we’ when you position yourself as a person, it begs the question of who else is involved in your enterprise.

Stuck for the right way to communicate that USP in your marketing collateral? Cut out and keep this handy guide and use it whenever you need to think out of the box going forward.

1.    Solution n. No, I do not just write things for money. I deliver content solutions.

2.    Partnership n. We work with you, not for you. See also co-operation, relationship, working closely/hand in hand with.

3.    Proactive adj. Always trying to upsell the client in the name of ‘helping them achieve strategic objectives’? You’re a truly proactive partner. Always going the extra mile.

4.    Synergy n. What is released when two proactive solution providers work closely in partnership. 

5.    Tailored adj. Configured to and shaped around your individual requirements, like that dent you’ve made in the sofa. See also bespoke.

6.    Flexible adj. Remember Access? He was ‘your flexible friend’. And, if you’re a B2B copywriter, that’s what this word is too. See also adaptable, scalable, futureproof, customisable, configurable.

7.    Robust adj.  You’re offering me a technical solution, are you? Well, I hope it’s robust. (Always puts me in mind of a chunky robot.)

8.    Innovative adj. No, it’s not just new. We are blue-sky thinkers, and we’ve been throwing some shapes. That’s how we deliver innovative solutions. 

9.    Integration n. And how would you like that, sir? Seamless? Very good sir.

10. Strategic adj. Use it to say ‘big and clever’ without sounding like a six-year-old.

11. One stop shop n. Just like a department store, but with a diverse range of in-house capabilities instead of saucepans and jumpers. See also holistic, cradle-to-grave, comprehensive, under one roof.

12. Expectations n., pl. So, as a proactive, strategic partner, what do I do with these? That’s right – I exceed them. (Probably through continuous improvement.)

13. Key adj. Meaning ‘critical’, ‘central’ or ‘priority’, but shorter and snappier than any of them, and therefore done to death. (By me. I admit it.)

14. Added value n. The more I use it, the less sure I am what it actually means. Something to do with sums maybe, or tax?

15. Agile adj. Like a sure-footed mountain goat grazing on scrubby Alpine grass. Or a robust technology solution. See also responsive, flexible.

16. Modular adj. A modular solution is one that grows with you, supporting your strategic development. (Not one that wears Fred Perry and rides a Vespa.)

17. Dynamic adj. Everyone uses it. No-one knows what it means. Go on, define it. You can’t, can you?

18. RoI, Return on Investment n. Le roi est mort. Vive le roi! And long live this indispensable acronym too – it can make anything sound all financial and serious. 

19. Competitive advantage n. Plough through 592 pages of Porter and get clear on what this actually means. Then stop using it. (Hint: it doesn’t mean ‘doing things a little bit better, quicker or cheaper’.)

20. Leverage vt. Yes, it’s a verb now, not a noun. Now leverage your core competencies and make the tea.

‘Rules are made to be broken.’ Whoever said that clearly wasn’t a cricket fan. Or, you might think, a copywriter. But there are some rules of grammar that, while widely accepted and obeyed, can and even should be flouted when the occasion demands.

Split infinitives

‘To boldly go where no man has gone before.’ Strictly speaking, it should have been ‘to go boldly’, or ‘boldly to go’. But, as Gene Roddenberry well knew, either of those would have sounded ludicrous. If you want to really make an impact, there are times when it’s practically essential to boldly split infinitives no one has split before.

Prepositions (ending sentences with)

Without rules, our society would surely descend into chaos

‘Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.’ To comply with itself, this gem should read ‘with which to end a sentence’. But if you always did that, your copywriting would end up sounding like Brideshead Revisited.

Prepositions and conjunctions (beginning sentences with)

You shouldn’t really begin sentences with prepositions (‘with’, ‘of’, ‘for’ etc) or with conjunctions (‘but’, ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘so’, etc). But there are times when it’s essential. And desirable, to add punch and rhythm to your copywriting. So relax about this one too. 

Sentence without verbs

A sentence should always have a ‘doing’ word, or verb. But there are many sharp, conversational utterances that lack them, and if you want that tone in your copywriting, you’ll need to emulate them. Like this.

Missing out ‘that’

‘Everybody knows you can’t just miss out words’. No, everybody knows that you can’t just miss out words. But you can, as long as the meaning remains crystal clear to the reader. And shorter is nearly always better.

And here’s a few you can’t break: that and which, possessive apostrophes, decades (‘80s’, not ‘80’s’), its/it’s and their/there/they’re. If you don’t know what I’m on about, get yourself a copywriter!

The other day I noticed that the cars used by BSM (a leading UK driving school) carry this slogan:

Learn to drive

That’s right – just those three words. It seems almost too simple to be true, but if we unpack it we can see that this little sentence accomplishes four very important functions:

• It clearly defines the product (driving tuition).
• It communicates a key benefit of the product (you’ll learn to drive).
• It sets out a strong call to action, commanding the reader to act (learn to drive!)
• Through its basic, generic phrasing, it confirms BSM’s market positioning – the market leader, default option or natural choice.

Notice how this slogan respects its readers. Nobly declining to spin or sugarcoat its message, it gives customers some credit as thinkers and choosers, setting out the stall and letting them decide. Its simple, solid language makes counterparts like ‘For the road ahead’ (AA’s corporate tagline) sound pretentious and patronising. (Most effective slogans are simple, but not all simple slogans are effective.)

That magisterial BSM slogan in full

But is it really copywriting? After all, it’s ‘just’ a simple, everyday phrase. There’s nothing really there – no technique, no clever choice of words, no sophisticated appeal to the emotions, no carefully judged tone of voice. Was it even deliberately created? Did, perhaps, the designer just insert it as a placeholder until the real slogan was created?

It doesn’t matter. Great ideas are where you find them. ‘Yesterday’ came to Paul McCartney in a dream. And if this phrase did come from a copywriter, it was an exceptionally intelligent, brave and independent one. Someone who wasn’t afraid to put forward the right solution – not the one that made them look clever, sophisticated or hardworking. For their part, BSM deserve praise for setting aside corporate pride and brand insecurity so they could communicate with customers in the most direct way possible.

Achieving this kind of simplicity isn’t simple – nor is it easy, quick or straightforward. Pablo Picasso said, ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.’ Often, our first ideas are convoluted and confused as we try too hard to make something special, original or arresting. Then, over time and through many revisions, we discard what isn’t needed to arrive at the essential. When the answer comes, it can seem ridiculously simple. But that’s how we know it’s right.

I used to have a big problem with the choice between ‘that’ and ‘which’. Looking at many articles and advertisements, it seems I’m not alone – many writers and professionals regularly get this one wrong. A common problem seems to be overusing ‘which’ in place of ‘that’, perhaps because it seems more classy and formal. Or perhaps people think there’s no difference, and it’s just a matter of preference. Unfortunately, it’s not – one or other is always right, and they are never interchangeable.

Some years ago, an assistant editor (who I was supposed to be training) helped me out with ‘that defines, which describes’. This concisely sums up the difference: ‘that’ introduces an essential definition of the subject, while ‘which’ introduces an optional description of it. The following two sentences illustrate this nicely:

He stopped the first car that was driven by a woman.
He stopped the first car, which was driven by a woman.

In the first sentence, ‘that’ introduces an essential definition. Without the rest of the sentence, the meaning is completely different. But in the second, ‘which’ introduces a description, without which the sentence would still have the same meaning.

Note also that ‘which’ always follows a comma, while ‘that’ runs straight on. The comma denotes a pause in speech, as you can confirm by reading out the two examples above. So you can always say your sentence out loud, see if a pause is needed, and make your selection on that basis. (If you pause, there’s a comma and therefore it’s ‘which’.)

Finally, if you use Microsoft Word (doesn’t everyone?) you can simply turn on its live grammar check feature and it will highlight your that/which howlers (with green wavy underlining). I’ve just tried it on the examples above and it worked – in fact, this is one of the few areas where it’s reliable pretty much all of the time. But it can get confused with longer, more complex sentences, so it pays to know the rule yourself.