10 signs your web writing sucks

99.9% of writing on the Internet is utter crap.

We’ve known £100 million companies with content that looks like it was excreted from the rear end of an illiterate baboon.

The problem is common with websites, because usually the owner has to supply their own text. All too often, this role falls to the least literate, most overworked person in the company – someone whose peak in their writing career consists of a particularly awesome Facebook post.

Here are ten all-too commons signs of poor writing for the web:

1. Multiple exclamation marks!!!!!
   You looks like an attention deficit teen writing a text message. Exclamation marks are only used one at a time, and judiciously. Two sentences in a row! Is not cool!
2. I’m getting there
   Imagine your audience is an angry mob about to set you on fire. Talk fast. Edit out anything you don’t need, like this.
3. Clichés
   Their real meaning has long since given way to laziness. “No problem too big or small?” Please. That’s a euphemism for “we’ll take any work, we’re desperate!”
4. Wall of text
   Headings, paragraphs, bulleted lists: if you don’t have any, your content will scare people away before they’ve read it, and with good reason.
5. Spelling mistakes
   FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
6. Over-protective
   Stop qualifying everything. “Almost”. “I guess”. “Probably”. Not every statement you write has to be undisputed fact, and your readers can handle this. Otherwise you’re just boring.
7. Marketese
   Don’t tell me you’re a “leading provider of synergistic vertical solutions”. No-one knows what that means, nor do they give a rat’s bottom. Write clearly, in a language we understand.
8. Forgetting your poor reader
   They’re a real person too, and – suckered as they might be – they’re reading your text for a reason. Every sentence should be useful, entertaining, or both.
9. Why use 5 words when I could use 50?
   ‘Nuff said.
10. I don’t know how to use an apostrophe
    Stop. Walk away from the keyboard. If you’re a grown adult and you haven’t learnt basic grammar and punctuation by now, you never will. Writing just isn’t for you.

Why you should care

We live in an age where people get bored reading a lengthy text message. People are quick to comment on what they can judge in a blink – like the images on a page – but rarely criticise writing. Text isn’t sexy. Any doofus with a keyboard can type.

Sadly true.

Of course, any doofus can draw too. Fire that stupid graphic designer, buy yourself a pack of wax crayons – you’ll save a fortune!

Good writing is invaluable. Think of your copy as filling the role of your spokesperson, talking to anyone who stops at your website. Does your website sound like a master orator, an over enthusiastic snake-oil salesman, or a delinquent teenager?

If your organisation isn’t blessed with the time and expertise to write well, do yourself a favour and hire a professional. Good writing is good communication, and it pays for itself.