How Many Writing Tips Are There?

If anyone could tell you about better business writing, it’s David Ogilvy, the Madison Avenue copywriting genius.

Interestingly, if you look for “writing tips from David Ogilvy,” you’ll find it’s not just five or seven tips. There are loads of them. 10 tips. 7 Tips. 12. Even 38 tips.

There’s probably something to be gained from all of them, but here’s a nice set:

1. The headline (or subject) does 80% of the work.  If it doesn’t sell what’s below it, it’s just in the way.
2. Long copy works when the product of the idea earns it.  Length isn’t the variable, Ogilvy says; relevance is.
3. Write to one person.  He says, “The more specific your reader, the more universal your copy is.”  I would not have thought that.  This might be a case of placing your faith in the master.
4. Specificity beats cleverness. Numbers and details build credibility faster than wordplay.
5. Subheads are a second headline ecosystem.  Use them to keep pulling your reader down into your ideas. Ideally, if someone reads just the headlines and the subheads, they will get your idea.
6. Research is the unfair advantage. Spend 80% of the time you allocate to writing something on research.
7. Sell the result, not the process.  “Hiring math majors is better than hiring English majors because they can spot numerical errors” versus “Math majors will get us closer to being error-free.”
8. Never be boring.  This would seem to be at odds with the “Specificity beats cleverness,” and perhaps this is why good writing requires a deft hand.  We often overcome boredom by including pictures and charts. A picture is worth . . .

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