Hello again!
It’s been a while, I know. Unfortunately I’ve discovered that it is not so easy to find time to keep you all up to date with everything I do 40 something hours a week, but that doesn’t mean I’ll give up. I still want to share some experiences with you.
So today I want to talk about text editing as it is a big part of my job. Always has been. Whether I am reviewing a colleague’s important email as a favour or commenting on a future brochure – I love it.
At the same time, I can’t stand bad copy, full of typos and logic mistakes like these (straight from a native English copywriter, I must add):
(Click on image to enlarge)
I realize that people in ad agencies work with several different companies at the same time and they can’t possibly be experts in every field, but sometimes some critical reading of text would help already to find serious logic errors. If they don’t, I have to. Having also worked with the product before and having seen images of it, should have helped the copywriter realize that a bath where a cow can fit to stand normally with all four feet, cannot possibly be 30cm x 50cm. Unless we are talking about toy cows.
(Click on image to enlarge)
What happened here, I think, is that the copywriter wrote in a hurry and no-one reviewed it properly on the agency’s side. Everyone is busy, nothing new. But as a customer, I’d like a text to always make sense, not only seem logical when read diagonally.
Sometimes it makes sense to concentrate on separate parts of a sentence. Here, they have chose a construction “make life better“. Which should follow by for whom. “Make life better for your production” sounds already quite weird, but “make life better for herd health” is already ridiculous.
The only logical way to make this construction work here is to say, that it makes life better for the herd – the animals.
I’ve been trained to notice such things but does my explanation make any sense to you as well?
My second comment in the same small paragraph is again about logic, because to me, it seems strange to “read” a plan. I am not a native English speaker, but do people really say that? I’d rather say “see the plan” or “find a plan” etc. Then again, one can read a drawing, right? Feel free to prove my gut feeling wrong.
Another small example from the same long document:
(Click to enlarge)
Sometimes copy just isn’t good. And no-one needs mediocre or worse sales text with klichés. I might sound mean here, but those examples are meant as social media posts. And when you choose to only say a few words, they better be great. Do you agree?
Meanie over and out.