Editing a long sentence to make it easier to understand

In my job as a copywriter, I often encounter very long and unwieldy sentences, particularly when my clients are trying to cram as many product features into as small a space as possible. It’s my job to unpick the seams of these sentences and suggest alternatives which are easier to understand and which you can actually read out loud without the need for oxygen!

These lengthy statements often fall into a pattern which I’ve called “Venn diagram style”. If a product or service does all these things AND all these other things, clients often place the product in the middle of the copy.

So for example, I might be presented with the following sentence:

“Designed to help you communicate with your customers, reach new audiences and sell your services more efficiently, Product X can open up new markets, boost your sales and retain customer loyalty to your business.” [NB This is a made-up example].

Fair enough, it’s not impossible to wade through and understand the message, but it does look a bit unwieldy and I’m all for simplicity when it comes to copy.

A simple way to unpack the Venn diagram style is to separate the ideas into two or more sentences.

For example:
“Product X is designed to help you communicate with your customers, reach new audiences and sell your services more efficiently. Product X can open up new markets, boost your sales and retain customer loyalty to your business. ”

Or the slightly more elegant:
“Product X is designed to help you communicate with your customers, reach new audiences and sell your services more efficiently. As well as helping you to open up new markets, Product X can boost your sales and retain customer loyalty to your business.”

Of course, I often have to persuade my clients that packing all their super-duper features into one sentence is not necessarily the best way to get the message across. Sometimes less is more. More effective. More eyecatching. It has more impact.

But when the clients absolutely insist that everything’s got to be in there somewhere, unpacking the Venn diagram is a useful tool.

New compound words

This week I was asked to look over some copy that included the word ‘webinar’ and it almost caused a physical twitch. I’m guessing the writer used it as a shorter way of saying web-based seminar.

But it started me thinking about my attitude to compound words in general. You see I didn’t like ‘blog’ or ‘podcast’ the first time I heard them either.

‘Blog’ sounds like what it is – a made up word, a contraction of web log and it just felt clumsy in my mouth. I objected to podcast initially because I felt it was inaccurate. You didn’t have to own an iPod to listen to one.

Needless to say I’ve overcome my first reactions and have adopted and use both terms. But it’s going to take some serious persuasion to get me to use ‘webinar’.

Nancy Friedman picks a word of the week on her Away with words blog. Last week it was upycling which I like and this week it's crowdsourcing – which I'm a bit undecided about. As a matter of personal preference, I recognise it's a purely subjective judgement. They're fun to collect though!