Tone, Style & Other Copywriting Considerations

Writing a blog, you can be pretty loose with your writing style, tone and word choices. It’s a place to let your personality shine through, and let your readers get to know you a bit. But, if you’re writing copy, for a website or anything else, you have to tighten the reigns. It’s much more important to keep your audience in mind in copywriting than it is in blogging.

When it comes to copywriting, you may need to write about a wide variety of subjects. If you’re like me, you find yourself covering a range of topics as broad as the day is long—hydronic heating systems, eldercare, agricultural touch screen keypads, and on and on.

This is where it becomes important to keep your audience in mind when considering your writing style and tone. It’s perfectly acceptable to adopt a cold, technical style when writing about the specifications of a hot water heater, but when you’re discussing the assisted living options for someone’s dear old grandpa, that same style will be a problem.* Similarly, the warm, friendly tone you used to describe the homey amenities of an assisted living center will seem strangely out of place when describing how a five-wire resistive touch screen works. You’ve got to adapt your writing style and tone to suit the project at hand.

If you find yourself struggling to adjust to different writing styles, practice, practice, practice! Like anything else, you’ll only get better at writing by doing it more. Not to sound like an English teacher, but writing exercises are immensely helpful.^†

If you have difficulty writing technical-type content, try typing out, from memory, as many of the exact, specific rules of your favorite card- or board game** as you can think of—imagine that you’re writing them for someone who’s never played before. It’s a lot harder than you’d think.

If you find a more casual writing style to be somewhat taxing—plenty of people can’t get out of technical-formal mode—try good, old-fashioned stream-of-consciousness writing for a while. Whatever comes into your head, comes out your pen onto the paper (or out your fingers onto the screen). This, too, is harder than it seems until you really get going.

Changing your writing style from project to project isn’t difficult. Doing it well isn’t easy. You need to keep your audience (the “end user”) in mind at all times. If you need it, practice. If you don’t, practice anyway. Your writing will only get better—your boss will be impressed by the massive improvement in your work, and you’ll get a huge raise and a company car. ^††

* No one wants Pop-pop to be looked after by robots.
^† Though yes, they do seem lame when thinking about them. Actually doing them is far more interesting.
** If you don’t have a favorite card game or board game… you’re a weirdo.
^†† Guaranteed!***
*** Not guaranteed at all. But you will be better at your job. Which is good.

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