Writing is writing... right? So anything you put up on a website is also good for your brochure, no?

Not quite.

The copy you write for brochures is a bit different to what you might have on a website. The English you use can be, for one thing, a bit fuller than that of your website, which has to grab the reader's attention in seconds. You can afford to have less sentence fragments and slogans hanging in the air. When a potential customer has taken the trouble to pick up your brochure, you already have their attention... Well, initially, at least (so don't blow it).

Unlike with a website, there is a bit more room in a brochure to talk about your company and the history of service you have, but it's still very important that you write something punchy that gets to the point. I think we're just going to have to accept that the profile you want to include of the Managing Director's pet chihuahua might not make the cut.

I'm always concerned with giving the customer what they want up front, which means defining, as they'd see it: What can you do for me?

Customers want to know what they can get out of a relationship with you; information on your number of employees and your year of incorporation is, at best, secondary.

What you should try to do when you communicate with your potential customers is make them imagine the time after they've used you. Make them imagine looking back at what a fantastic job you've done for them.

It makes a stronger case than saying "If you use us, this is what we would give you" if you take away the element of chance. Make them think of when it's already happened and tell them how great it was.

Yeah, fine, Dan. Can't you give me anything specific, though? Perhaps a few, short sentences that have a number in front of them?

Thank you for asking. Yes, yes I can! How about a cheeky little checklist to refer to as you write your lovely brochure copy?

See how many of them you can tick off:

1. Decide: What it's being written for (informational? Promoting sales?)
2. Decide: Who it's aimed at (what kinds of companies, profile of people reading the brochure)
3. Decide: How many pages it has
4. Find Out: Where to get the information to write the new brochure (marketing division? Interviews with R&D staff? Engineers?)
5. Find Out: When the last brochure came out (is it out of date now? Can anything be repurposed?)
6. Find Out: When the new one is due to be replaced (in other words, what's its life-cycle?)
7. Clarify: When you need the copy to be finished (hey, don't laugh. A tight deadline can have a big effect - positive and negative - on the quality of what you write)
8. Work Out: The design (has the new brochure already been designed? This would affect the word count and the style of how you write it)
9. Check With: Your house style (many companies have a certain vocabulary and a certain way of describing things; you need to be consistent)
10. Steal From: Competitors' brochures (why not see if there's anything you can model for your brochure? At the very least you can find out what you're up against)
11. At all times you should be thinking of your customers. What do they want? What don't they want? What can you do to make their lives easier? What can you help them avoid?

Happy writing.

If you're the person responsible for your website's content, you know how hard it can be to get everything right.

You need to have the raw materials, the facts and figures around which you're creating your copy. You have to think about the tone of what you're writing and how it fits in with the rest of the site. You need to construct your argument carefully, deciding the audience you're writing for. You also have to make sure everything is completely consistent, style-wise. Do you say "you are" or "you're"? Do you have them both? "It is" or "it's"? Stuff that may seem over-analysed and not worth the trouble, but absolutely necessary.

That's why it's so maddening when you get ripped off. When someone trawls through your site, sees something they like, and then just steals it for their own site, maybe changing the odd word here or there. And what can you do? The Internet is global, so anyone, anywhere, could right now be looking at your site and thinking "I'll have a piece of that". What's to stop them changing a few things around and then passing it off as something they wrote themselves?

I'll introduce you to a site I use from time to time. It's called "Copyscape" and means I don't worry about people pinching stuff from my website anymore.

The site allows you to input your website's URL. Press "Go" and their search function will do a trawl of the Internet to see if your text has been stolen. It's completely free and will let you know where and by whom your stuff's been stolen. If you have a large site, their "Premium" service allows you to check up to 10,000 pages in a single click, for 5 cents per search. 10,000 flipping pages! What kind of psychopath has a site with 10,000 pages?!

Anyway. Me? I'm cheap, so I just use the freebie part of it. But why not have a look for yourself? I have no links with the makers of the site whatsoever, I just think it's a handy service. Check it out here:

http://copyscape.com/

Good hunting.

Today we're going to talk about some of the prefixes we use rather thoughtlessly in English, without ever really knowing what they mean. What's a "prefix"? The prefix of the word autobiography is auto. It's the bit at the beginning.

This list is by no means comprehensive, but does give guidance on a few tricky ones we may not be using properly. All examples taken from the Oxford University Press "A-Z of Grammar and Punctuation".

Not bad, eh? Who knew "crypto-" meant "hidden"? I didn't. Well, I sort of did, because I just wrote this piece, but you know what I mean.

One of the great things about learning English  as a native speaker is that you don't have to worry too much about things like objective and subjective forms; you pick up the correct forms to use completely naturally, without even thinking about how you're using them. It's only when you start to learn foreign languages that you have to worry about the nuts-and-bolts grammar that makes a language what it is.

One of the rubbish things about being a native English-speaker, therefore, is that it's actually quite difficult to get a good grounding in why we say the things we do. For example: when to use I and when to use me.

I is a subjective form (I'm following him - I'm doing the action in this sentence, so I'm the subject)

Me is an objective form (He's following me - He's doing the action in this sentence, so I'm the object)

Grammatically,  it's not possible to have an objective form of the verb to be. This means the answer to Who's there? should always be It is I. But would we really say that nowadays? Wouldn't it just sound archaic and pedantic? Wouldn't we, instead, say It's me, even though it's wrong?

God, I'd love it if we did, in fact, say IT IS I! in daily life. Sigh. Mind you, I'm still upset that we don't say "Zounds" any longer, so am perhaps not the best person to give advice in this matter.

English is always evolving and doesn't stand still. What's unacceptable for one generation is completely natural for another. I still shudder when I hear people use hopefully to mean I hope that will be the case, but understand that the usage has reached a momentum that can't be stopped. Bah!

A couple of times when it's obligatory, even now, to use I and not me:

Following as and than when writing: Emma is faster than I (although you'd say Emma is faster than me).

Following as and than and then continuing the sentence: Emma is faster than I am and has more hair (subjective form obligatory for both written and spoken forms).

Have me explained this well enough?

So we've established that Qwerty was created for a functional reason; not just to be quirky. Or qwerky, as it were (snigger).

In the age of electronic keyboards, however, this design is not relevant. You no longer have the problem of jamming to contend with, so no time saving there. What’s more, the physical separation of commonly used keys means that your fingers have to work hard and cover a lot more ground than they should -- hence my friend's RSI and retirement from being a P.A.

The set-up of the keys is not designed either for speed or the ergonomic wellbeing of your fingers, so RSI is a common problem -- either medically diagnosed or just dismissed as "I’m feeling a bit tired today".

These are two of the issues educational psychologist August Dvorak addressed in the 1930s when he came up with the "Dvorak Simplified Keyboard" layout. He's got the same surname as the composer (duh-vor-jhakk), but a different pronunciation (deh-vo-rack).

Here’s what it looks like:

Doesn’t it look weird having all those keys in the "wrong" place?! A, O, E, U and I in the home row? Heresy.

Forget how it looks; does it work?

You bet. The world’s fastest typist uses Dvorak and has been measured at a -- frankly -- unbelievable 212 words per minute. I'm not sure I can even think 212 words per minute! But if it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.

So here's what you need to do to use it yourself.

First of all, some good news: you don’t have to buy any new software; everything you need is already set up on your computer’s operating system.

• Go to this page and you’ll be able to set your computer to type using Dvorak in, as it says in the title, just 30 seconds.
• Look at this image to familiarise yourself with the different placement of the keys.

And that’s it! You’re all set. It'll feel a bit strange at the beginning, especially if you look down at the keyboard as you type. Your finger will be pressing on "s", but on the screen you'll see an "o". Don't worry about it. Not looking at your fingers as you type will help.

Not enough? Need just a bit more. Okayyyyy... Pretty demanding today, aren't we? All right, why not.

Here are two tutorial sites that will make it easy to learn how to touch-type with Dvorak:

• This website is very easy and lets you go at your own pace.
• The Power Typing page, on the other hand, times you and gives actual ratings and scores on how you’ve done. It’s fantastic. I highly recommend it.

It will be difficult at first, don’t get me wrong. You’ll be slower than you were… for a while. But once muscle memory gets used to Dvorak, you’ll be typing faster than ever before and with less effort.

STILL need some more? Still? Really?

Right, one more thing and that's your lot. Have a look at this site to get an idea of the effort you’ll be saving by switching from Qwerty to Dvorak. It’s worth it.

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One of the things you should probably do if you're trying to improve your website's position on the search engines is check out what your competition's doing and spy on them from time to time.

Some of what I’ve done on my main site has come through seeing what other websites (not just copywriters) have done and ripping them off. I believe the term du jour for that is "modelling".

Not the actual content of the site -- heaven forbid -- but things like design, use of white space, images, and also what they've decided to do with things like metatags (page titles, page descriptions and keywords). Most of the time I find myself making a revolted face and thinking "Well, I wouldn't do it that way", but you can learn as much about what you want and need to do by seeing examples of what you don't want sometimes.

Checking out a website's metatags can be very instructional and tell you a lot about what the website owner's intentions are. The three main parts to check are:

Title -- the bit you see in the blue bar at the very top of your screen when you look at a website. Very important for SEO, because the search engines look at it as your way of defining who you are and which keywords you want to be found for.

My site's homepage title is: "Daniboy - Marketing Copywriting | SEO Copywriter | Ad Writer". It's 60 characters long -- you should aim for up to 70 characters, maximum; anything more than that gets ignored by the search engines -- and tells you exactly what keywords I want people to find me for.

Description -- the two-line long blurb you see for each site when you have a page of search engine results. It's not given SEO weighting by the search engines, but writing a description that gives an accurate, interesting-sounding view of the page you want clicked will affect how many people looking at the page of search engine results actually bother to click on your link.

My site's homepage description is "My name's Daniel O'Connor and I'm a freelance copywriter. I've written for solo organisations and world-famous corporations. I can write for you, too." It's exactly 150 characters long, which is the length you should aim to hit. Anything longer than 150 will leave characters 151 onwards with the dreaded ellipsis of death that comes about when descriptions are too lon...

The search engines expect you to have original titles and descriptions for every page of your site, by the way. Just as every page of your site is unique (right?), so the way you describe it should be unique. No repetition of titles and descriptions. Yes, it is a pain.

Keywords -- not given any SEO weight, but an interesting way for you to judge the intentions of the person writing the page you're viewing.

My homepage keywords are -- and yes, I know this is too long and should be pruned -- "copywriter, copy-writer, copy writer, copywriting, copy-writing, copy writing, copywrite, copy-write, copy write, writing copy, write copy, technical copywriter, technical copy-writer, technical copy writer, SEO copywriter, SEO copy-writer, SEO copy write". I KNOW! How many possible combinations of "copywriter" can there be?

That sounds incredibly time consuming, though, doesn't it? Having to plough through the background HTML of every website you want to spy on looking for the stuff you need hidden in the code?

Here's an add-on for Firefox that will change the nature of your espionage. It's called SearchStatus and makes life very easy when you want to quickly check out what your adversary is trying to do with his/her/its site:

Here’s the link:

http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/

This is what it will show you once you download the add-on:

• Meta Tags -- as discussed above -- titles, descriptions and keywords
• See in Archive.org -- almost magically interesting: Archive.org takes regular snapshots of websites over the years and stores them in its cache. Use this function to see how a website has changed over the years
  
• Whois information -- see how long a website's been in existence -- it's important, because domain age is given a weighting in SEO. The older, the better
  
• Show sitemap.xml -- view all the pages on the website, even the ones that aren't linked to from the main menu (other than the ones that are specifically barred from public view)
  
• Keyword Density -- see how much the site writer is trying to pound the reader over the head with the repetition of their chosen keywords
• And much, much more
  

It’s gold, pure gold. You may not know what some of the things I’ve written above actually mean right now, but try it out and see. Check up on your enemies. I guarantee it’ll help your website’s SEO.

Oh, and hey, nearly forgot to mention: if you have read this far and thought "Nice, I learned something from this", why not click on the "Tweet" and "Like" buttons below? I will love you long time if you do this.

Okay, first thing: this entry isn’t going to tell you everything about commas. We’d be here for a week if I tried to do that.

Instead, today I’m going to be talking about how to use commas when you start a sentence with a subordinate clause.

A subobadiba-what?

Calm down, take a deep breath. Ready? Let’s consider it from the beginning. Look at the following sentence:

When you’re in town, drop me a line.

The most important thing I’m saying there is "drop me a line". So that’s the main clause.

The "when you’re in town" bit qualifies the main clause and is called a subordinate clause. So we're agreed that the above sentence makes sense, yes?

Now tell me if the following sentence is understandable:

When you’re in town drop me a line.

It does, doesn’t it? No chance of any misunderstanding, is there? In other words, it’s not always necessary to use a comma if you start a sentence with a subordinate clause.

~~:

What about when you start a sentence with a subordinate clause which ends in a verb?

Ah, that’s different. That can lead to misunderstanding. Have a look at the following:

After she finished writing, the website was updated.

That makes perfect sense. The main clause is "the website was updated" and the subordinate clause is "After she finished writing". No confusion there.

What about this, then?

After she finished writing the website was updated.

A bit tricky, isn’t it? It requires you to read the sentence back to yourself again, because you start off with the words "After she finished writing the website". It makes you jump to the conclusion that she wrote the entire website, and then hauls you back with some extra information that changes the meaning.

So this is what you should take from today’s blog:

• You don’t need a comma to separate a subordinate clause from a main clause, but having one is okay, too.
• You do need a comma when your subordinate clause ends with a verb.

Good times.

A quickie today. But it's a goodie.

If you're in charge of your website and how it appears on the search engines, you've definitely heard of Google's "Panda" and "Penguin" updates.

No? Well, simply, they were major changes to the algorithm Google uses to decide which sites rank well (and which ones don't). Meaningless, spammy links to your website were no longer given credit -- in fact, Google penalised sites it thought were using slimy methods to "game" their algorithm. Have a look at this page on my main website for more info.

Some sites saw their positions on Google go through the floor (which, of course, directly affected how many potential customers were finding them). Some sites actually did better than before.

Do you have any idea how your site did? No? Interested in finding out?

All you need to find out is a current Google Analytics account that is able to go back a couple of years. If you haven't yet set up an account or have only done so recently, this won't, I'm afraid, work for you.

Then go to Barracuda Digital's "Panguin" tool. It'll show you the dates of the major updates and how your site's traffic was affected in a very easy-to-follow graph. You'll no longer have any doubt about whether your site was affected by the updates.

It was a... sobering* experience for me.

*I'm using the word "sobering" in its less conventional "Heartbreaking, promoting suicidal feelings" definition.