Long Reads

Our changing language: are editors doomèd?

~ Charlie Hankers

An article by David Shariatmadari in the Guardian has inspired a bit of a buzz these past few days. It’s about the mutability of language, and how the quest for perfect English is a forlorn one. Read “Why it’s time to stop worrying about the decline of the English language” here (it’ll only take about 15–20 minutes of your time).

Copy editors and writers are inextricably tied up with the changing language. In my 20+ years in the business alone, I’ve seen English change – new words coming in, words changing their meanings and so on. I like the concept described in the article about generational change; words and phrases (or particular usages) that seem normal to teens feel alien and “wrong” to the older generation. They probably forget that they caused equal consternation to their own parents’ generation back in the day with all their groovy talk.

Are we gatekeepers or facilitators?

What is the role of the copy editor faced with an ever-changing language? The instinctive answer would be to resist change, and to enforce correctness where we see grammatical wrongdoing. But that misses the point of language, which is to express meaning in the best possible way to the audience it’s aimed at.

Copywriters know that if we’re writing copy aimed at retired people, the language, pace and tone will be very different to copy aimed at students. It’s not because elderly people should be spoken down to; it’s just that the language they feel comfortable with is different. We are, after all, in the businesses of informing and selling; brands that share values with their customers have a head start over the competition.

As copy editors and writers are the ones who decide what material is put in front of readers, we therefore have a role in shaping language, but we must also take care to reflect it. If we try too hard to stick to the rules we were taught at school, we’re destined to get wronger and wronger as we grow. It’s a weird concept that people working with language can actually get less experienced as they get older, but it’s true of those who remain too set in their ways.

statue of mother holding baby

Thou shalt not …

A classic example is not starting a sentence with a conjunction. It’s a rule so drilled into the young me that it helped me to learn what a conjunction is. But look; I just went and did it. And I do it all the time. There are still those who complain about it, but they are swimming against the flow. Ultimately, just ask yourself: does starting a sentence with a conjunction actually damage English language? Or does it allow you to break concepts into bite-sized sentences with natural flow and pauses, rather like spoken English? It also removes the need to cumbersome words like “alternatively” or “additionally” every other sentence.

Now ask yourself if the word or phrase you’re uncomfortable with is as bad as starting a sentence with “Or”. It’s probably no better or worse.

So what’s the point of editors?

All this brings us to the crux of the matter. If nothing is right and nothing is wrong, why pay people copy edit or proofread your work?

All marketing is the act of persuading potential customers that your product or service is the one to choose. An important factor is showing you’re trustworthy, careful, diligent and conscientious. Customers notice things like sloppy grammar, overuse of buzzwords (especially when trying to appeal to a younger audience) and awkward sentences. OK, some customers will notice. But why try to appeal to half an audience when you can attract the whole?

Don’t forget, the change of language is glacial – it’s not in a state of flux. As the article shows, it tends to change a bit every generation, but there’s always a core rightness that stays the same. Over time, those foundations shift, but stray too far and you lose your audience.

Analogy Time

Think of the scene in Back to the Future where [spoiler] the prom audience is given a sneak preview of rock ‘n’ roll in a blues-dominated era and they love it. But as soon as Marty drags the genre forward to one of rock ‘n’ roll’s offsprings (80s heavy metal) they stop dancing and stare at the stage in disbelief.

Something familiar has been modified, but there are enough anchors to where it came from for it to be understood. But in real life, people needed to understand the grammar of rock ‘n’ roll before they were ready for heavy metal. It took about ten years to happen.[/spoiler]

Another analogy is Formula One motor racing. Every year, the rules change slightly. Tyres change. RPM is limited. Aerodynamics get new regulations. But nobody would say that it’s no longer Formula One, even though watching footage from the 1950s makes it look like a different sport. But it’s this year’s rules you have to obey; not last year’s.

Write and edit for the moment you’re living in, because that will invariably be right.

Be natural

Good copy editors and writers understand this, and don’t try and preserve their style of reading and writing in amber. In fact, we love observing and using the changing language. We understand that there’s a natural pace to change, and that forcing modernity is just as bad as forcing tradition.

Image: Nick van den Berg

Which ranking factors are affected by copywriting?

~ Charlie Hankers

Because everybody wants their website to rank highly on Google, the SEO industry is now as important to companies as traditional marketing and PR always were. The boundaries are so blurred that most companies in one of these sectors usually seek to have expertise in the other two. To rank highly is to appear on the first page of a search for what your business does (although lower pages could also be deemed “high” in competitive sectors).

Search engines become popular when the results they give are most relevant to what they think the user has searched for. Resolving this impossibly complex decision has been the goal of every search engine in history, and it looks, for the time being at least, like Google has won. Essentially, its decision is based on how high quality and how trustworthy a source of information is. The way Google works it is to determine the number and quality of links pointing to a page or site. The more websites pointing to your website, the better quality it must be, as people don’t tend to like to associate themselves with rubbish.

The early years were tricky. All sorts of dodgy practices were put in place to increase the number – if not the quality – of links pointing to websites. But as time went by, Google became much better at determining which links were trusted, natural and valuable. Since it’s far and away the most popular search engine, let’s assume that customers are generally happy with the results.

Are there 200 ranking factors?

You might have heard that Google has 200 (or more than 200) ranking factors. These have long been considered to be things like:

  • your page load speed
  • how secure your site is
  • whether you have the name of what you do, rather than who you are, in your URL (which is why B&Q uses the domain diy.com, not BandQ.com)
  • whether a site has been blacklisted
  • whether a user has your site in its bookmarks

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Moz’s Gianluca Fiorelli points out that the famous 200 number is mythical. Repetition, deviation and plain untruths in the most popular lists of ranking factors (and a click-baity need to reach the magic 200) make such lists unreliable. And a huge factor in ranking is which device a searcher is using, and what their location is. Site builders have no control over that.

There are definitely a lot

That said, there are many factors that can confidently be determined to be signals that your site is of good quality. Since nobody outside Google knows exactly what they are, the SEO industry experiments and analyses data to try and come to conclusions. And we therefore have a pretty good idea of the elements of a site that add up to a better rank.

Ranking factors for which copy is important

With the above caveats in mind, here are the ranking factors that you should be able to improve through better use of copy.

Spam

Make sure every second word is a keyword to fool the search engines into thinking yours is the number one authority on the subject. That’s what we were all told in the mid to late 1990s. It took the search industry a while to figure out ways of ignoring or penalising spammy sites. But now they are very, very good at it, and will come down hard on sites that try to manipulate their language and links to fool the engines. Just write naturally, mentioning the key searchable factors a natural number of times, and Google will work out what your page and site are about.

Remember, it’s all about quality, trustworthiness and usefulness, and spam doesn’t satisfy any of those factors. If a human reading your page would feel dirty doing it, have a re-think.

Having a keyword in the title tag and URL

Google is much better at understanding synonyms than it once was, so this is of minor importance. But having some mention of what your business does or sells in the title tag and URL is useful. Starting the tag with the keyword might be helpful too. There’s certainly no harm in it.

Including keywords in the meta description tag

Not a ranking factor per se, but if searchers see the word they searched for in the description under the URL, they could be more likely to click through. That can mean more chance of interaction and conversion. Moreover, having a well-written meta description should make your search results listing more attractive, so rank becomes less important.

Having keywords in heading tags

H1 tags, or headings, give Google a lot of clues about the content of a page, and therefore the website. Including them in your H1s is important, but making them interesting and readable is a copywriter‘s job. Although H1s are the most important, don’t forget about your sub-sub-headings (H2s, H3s etc.).

How long and relevant the page copy is

The optimum length of an article is one of the most hotly debated topics in SEO land. Some say 300 words, others 500, others 1000, and some people will insist that the longer it is, the better. From a reader’s perspective, the article should be exactly as long as it needs to be. Waffling on to please the search engines isn’t a good idea, especially if you’re looking for backlinks.

Some studies suggest that if all else is equal, a page with 1500–2000 words will cover more information and therefore give the search engines a better indication of the page’s content. And that can result in higher ranks.

If people find your piece interesting enough to link to, it’s long enough.

Keyword density

This used to be an important factor but because it was optimised to death, it became less important. Don’t aim for a percentage as such. Just make sure you mention your keywords, write great copy and don’t spam yourself. And remember, words that mean the same as your keywords, or signify similarity, are just as good.

Duplicate content

Having the same copy on two or more pages has a negative effect. Where you’ve got similar things to say over several pages, completely re-write the copy on each one. If you sell blue sheds, red sheds and green sheds, don’t use your “what is a shed” copy on each page, followed by a sentence about the colour – come up with something new for each page.

Keeping content fresh

A constant supply of new copy is a good thing. It tells the search engines that your site is a living, breathing thing, and that it’s not been abandoned. Take time to write new content that demonstrates your authority in your industry, and gives a positive signal to Google. It also increases the likelihood of its being linked to.

Since repeat traffic could be a good indicator of quality, make sure you use newsletters and social media to let people know about your new content.

You can even give your static pages a refresh from time to time. Your “About Us” page, for example, might change as you take on new clients and expand; and your core services probably change over time, too.

Spelling and grammar

A pure ranking factor? Possibly, but if you want people to trust you and to keep those bounce rates low, make sure your writing makes sense, reads well and is correctly spelt.

Original content

Make sure your content is your own. Don’t be tempted to copy and paste text from other websites, even if you do go to the trouble of changing a few words. It’ll probably be flagged as duplicate copy, and might even get you a letter from a solicitor.

Readability

Like spelling and grammar, your site’s reading level probably isn’t a ranking factor in itself, but if you bamboozle your typical readership, it’ll show up in your bounce rates and inbound links.

Anchor text

This used to be a powerful factor until it was abused wholesale, so now it might be a tiny signal of relevance. Make the text in your links relevant and logical and don’t worry too much about it.

Bounce rate, dwell time and time on page

These factors are all concerned with how a user interacts with your page after being sent there from a search engine. They have similar but different meanings, as discussed here. Whether they are ranking factors is still debated in the SEO community, but do analyse your visits. You’ll see which pages visitors stick around with or use as the starting point for a journey around your page, and which ones they simply close or click back to the search results.

If Google sees a page where every visitor bounces after 2 seconds, then the promise of the results page isn’t being delivered, and that that page is not relevant to that search term.

Featured snippets

Have you noticed how sometimes you search for something and the answer appears in the search results page, rather than in a link to the site it came from? These controversial things are called snippets. They’re controversial as some site owners believe they are costing them clicks, because the user gets the answer without having to visit the site. But still, a lot of companies try very hard to become the one that’s chosen for a snippet because it makes them look authoritative (and the snippet will include a link if further reading is called for).

Snippets are chosen for the quality of the content and how accurately they answer the questions being posed by the searcher. So once again, good quality content wins.

Mentioning your locality

Google uses all sorts of signals to work out where you are, but if your business is geographically sensitive (a local shop or venue, for example), make sure there are mentions of the district, town, postcode, city, country etc. to help pinpoint where you are.

Quality counts

So in summary, make sure your copy is well written and researched, has good intentions and is not copied, stolen or otherwise duplicated. Write like a human and humans will respond, and your search ranking should – perhaps slowly – improve. Think about the content that you like to consume, and be inspired to better it.

Image: Liane Metzler

Hyphens, en dashes and em dashes: how to use them

~ Charlie Hankers

They might all look vaguely similar, but hyphens and dashes serve very different purposes. Here’s a quick rundown of their differences and how to use them.

Hyphen ‐

The hyphen is shorter than both dashes (although in some typefaces, it can look identical). It has two purposes in writing and typography: joining words and splitting words.

Joining words

When two words (or a word and a prefix/suffix) are being made into one, they are joined by a hyphen. Hyphens are often used to join two parts of an adjective to prevent ambiguity. Consider:

  • a cold-blooded animal (the blood is cold, not the animal that happens to have blood)
  • a second-hand clothes shop (the clothes are second-hand)
  • a six-year-old girl (the girl is six years old)
  • there were six year-old girls (there were six girls who were 12 months old)

When a hyphenated word comes into popular usage, it usually loses its hyphen. Nobody would describe an aircraft as being super-sonic any more.

Splitting words

In typography, if a word is so long that it would cause unacceptable word spacing if it were to go on the next line, it can be split with a hyphen. In word processors, you can specify that a hyphen is optional. That means that if the whole word fits on a line, it will not be broken, but if it doesn’t you can specify where it will split.

It’s good practice to split words as naturally as possible, so the reader gets an idea of the pronunciation. That usually means splitting at the end of each syllable.  For example:

  • man-slaughter, not mans-laughter
  • co-operate, not coop-erate
  • Mersey-side, not Mers-eyside
  • proof-read-ing, not pro-ofre-ading

Don’t split words with one syllable.

As a copywriter, I don’t really need to worry about this kind of hyphenation because I don’t really know where individual words will appear on the page. It’s a job for typesetters and designers.

Splitting hyphenated words

If a word is naturally hyphenated, it is bad practice to split it anywhere else if it doesn’t fit on the line. If the natural hyphen cannot be used to break to word, consider changing the letter spacing or word spacing.

Hyphens and word counts

A hyphenated word counts as one word. However, most word counts are specified for visual reasons, so don’t worry if you have a lot of hyphenated words and the count seems low. Usually, a single hyphenated word will count as two from a design perspective.

Do Hyphenated Words in Title Case Have Capitals?

Whether hyphenated words in title case* have both component words starting with a capital depends on the style. Technically, a hyphenated word is one word, so only the first letter should be capitalised. However, some styles demand that both, or all, component words, plus prefixes and suffixes, start with a capital.

* “Title case” is the heading style to this section, where each major words starts with a capital, as opposed to “sentence case”, where normal capitalisation is used (like all the other headings here).

En dash –

The en dash has three main purposes: as a bridge between items in a range; as a type of parenthetical symbol; or in place of a colon or semicolon. Its name comes from the fact that it’s the length of a lower-case letter n.

Bridging with an en dash

Where there’s a range of numbers, they can be shown with an unspaced en dash in place of the word “to”. It also works with letters, when they are being used alphabetically. So we can write:

  • The job will be ready in three to four days or The job will be ready in 3–4 days.
  • Complete sections A to E or Complete sections A–E

Note that there is no space before or after the dash. Typographically, however, the dash can be used to break over two lines, like a hyphen.

An en dash can also be used to denote journeys, periods of time or pieces of infrastructure. Again, the dash replaces the word “to”:

  • The Stockton–Darlington railway
  • The Victorian–Edwardian eras

Using bridging en dashes with units of measurement

If you’re using a dash to show a range of units, you only need to use the unit once.

  • 56–62 °C, not 56 °C–62 °C
  • 3–6 o’clock, not 3 o’clock–6 o’clock

If you want to avoid ambiguity by mentioning the unit twice, use the word “to” instead.

Note: a bridging en dash means “to”, not “and”

Avoid using an en dash to replace the word “and”, particularly when following the word “between”.

  • between 6 and 8 years, not between 6–8 years

En dash as a parenthetical symbol

The second use of the en dash is as a parenthetical symbol. Parentheses are the ( and ) symbols, often called brackets. That gives a clue to the use of en dashes in this context – they are used to separate a word, phrase or clause from the sentence that surrounds it. It’s useful for giving additional information or reminding the reader abut some previously mentioned fact. In most cases, the en dash can be swapped with parentheses, em dashes or commas and the sentence will work perfectly well.

Note that these en dashes are spaced; that is, they have a space before and after them.

  • The farmer – who had been watching closely – took aim and fired.
  • The farmer—who had been watching closely—took aim and fired.
  • The farmer (who had been watching closely) took aim and fired.
  • The farmer, who had been watching closely, took aim and fired.

However, if a sentence is long and convoluted, with several nesting parentheticals, it’s good to mix up the types to aid clarity.

  • The farmer – who had been watching closely and concluded (wrongly) that the foxes were after his chickens – took aim and fired.

is preferable to:

  • The farmer, who had been watching closely and concluded, wrongly, that the foxes were after his chickens, took aim and fired.
  • The farmer (who had been watching closely and concluded (wrongly) that the foxes were after his chickens) took aim and fired.

As a rule, the sentence should work equally well with or without the part that’s parenthesised.

  • The farmer took aim and fired.
  • The farmer – who had been watching closely and concluded that the foxes were after his chickens – took aim and fired.

En dash as a colon or semicolon

A spaced en dash can often replace a colon or a semicolon, and can be advisable if there are already (semi)colons in the sentence.

  • There was only one possible solution: jump.
  • There was only one possible solution – jump.

 

  • I like the summer; it reminds me of home.
  • I like the summer – it reminds me of home.

Em dash —

The em dash is the longest of the dashes, supposedly the length of a letter m (hence its name). It can be used parenthetically or to replace missing words or letters.

Em dash as a parenthetical symbol

The em dash has exactly the same parenthetical purpose as the spaced en dash above. Its use is purely a matter of style. Even parenthetically, it can be either spaced or unspaced, but note that unspaced em dashes do take up a lot or room and can look unsightly. The em dash is generally favoured in the US, whereas in the UK the en dash takes precedence; but there are no set rules here.

Em dash to replace missing words or letters

The em dash can be used to show hidden or missing text. That might be:

  1. to carry a plot (where the writer doesn’t want the reader to find something out
  2. where text is unknown or unknowable
  3. where expletives are used.

Examples:

  1. She finally worked out that C— was the murderer
  2. The ancient engraving said “Lorem I— dolor sit amet, c—tur adi—od tempor
  3. “Come back here, you f—g m—r,” she requested.

Photo: Kristaps Grundsteins

Readability analysis: accept, consider, ignore?

readability analysis computer
~ Charlie Hankers

Imagine the scene. A graphic designer submits some branding materials to a client. The client’s marketing guy feeds the image into a scanner and takes a sip of coffee as the computer does his its work. Ten seconds later, the progress bar reaches 100 and a bullet list in red, amber and green fills the screen. The visuals have been thoroughly assessed, and it’s not looking good.

⬤ Two of the rectangles have long edges that are 3% below golden ratio 
⬤ The model’s smile has an ecstasy coefficient of 0.73, 0.02 below optimum
⬤ The yellow glow is hex #f6f600, not the more pleasing #f6f300
⬤ 28% of the image is in the passive voice
⬤ “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” is not standard English
⬤ The kitten image satisfies the Schrödinger cuteness pudding by 95%

This isn’t a scene from Black Mirror. It is happening right now to graphic designers from Reykjavik to Wellington. And they’re mad as hell.

Actually, that’d be a lousy episode. But it is starting to happen to copywriters. I’m hearing of writers having their work fed through readability algorithms by clients as a first step to being signed off. I wouldn’t say it’s a common phenomenon just yet, but who knows. As a worker with words, I’ve been here before …

Spell Czech 😂

Back in the day, their was a debate among proofreaders a bout weather there daze whirr numbered thanks to spell chequers on whirred processors, and sentences like this one were commonly scene on many an Internet massage bored. Proofreaders would even discuss whether they themselves would ever consider using one. Naturally, most were offended at the mere suggestion of it (but of course we used them – why wouldn’t you?). Once the limitations and undeniable benefits of the spell checker became obvious, we all calmed down. And anyway, we laughed, there would never be such a thing as

Grammar Check!

Yes, we did know that the sentence was fragmented. We even considered correcting our correlative conjunction mismatches. But the rise of the grammar checker still took the writing and editing community by surprise. Checking grammar was much more difficult than comparing words with a dictionary (and ignoring homophones). It required an understanding of language that is extraordinarily difficult to achieve.

Flawed though grammar checkers are, I must admit to finding the technology remarkable, and I occasionally have a Kasparov v. Deep Blue moment when a particularly complex structural flaw gets flagged, even if 99% of the time it’s a flaw I’d have noticed on second reading. (And never forget that Kasparov lost 4-2, not 6-0. Grammar check mate.)

Readability analysis: the final insult

So here we are. We’ve had our spelling and grammar autocorrected, and now we’re having the very fruits of our trade – our sentences – analysed by emotionless digital gatekeepers. In fact, many of us are willingly submitting our work to the machines whenever we blog. We are allowing our sentences to have their essential components – verbs, voice, adjectives, flow, lengths – judged for correctness by computers.

Is there such a thing as good copy and bad copy? I hope so. No, I think so. Let’s just say you know it when you see it. We can probably agree on that.

But can the measure of good or bad copy really be determined by how far it strays from some arbitrary mathematical mean?

This development doesn’t seem to be satisfying demand from grammarians, publishers or website owners. It seems to be more like the spawn of the SEO sector. I’m not going to argue about SEO. I’ve met and worked with enough SEOs to recognise that they know exactly what they are doing. Their actions have tangible, measurable results, and they are lovely people.

It just seems to me that the rise of readability analysis comes from that mindset – from people who are sure that if they can optimise everything until any rough edges are removed, success will follow.

readability analysis computer

The cursed passive voice

I’m yet to be convinced that readability analysis has reached the stage where its results should be taken as gospel, just as spelling and grammar checkers can still make awkwardly clever mistakes.

The passive voice is a particular favourite of the tests. Yes, it’s good to be active and to have all your subjects and objects actively working on the sentence’s behalf. But passivity often carries a subtlety, a quiet confidence, a sense of not having to try too hard, a feeling that not every sentence has to be a call to action. It’s also a useful way of referring to previous statements without having to restate sentence objects or their pronouns. And it can bring the focus of a sentence to the object rather than the subject, because sometimes it’s the subject that’s more important. This guy gets it.

It can’t simply be stated that the passive voice is bad. Indeed, PV is good enough to be allowed in a recommended[by whom?] 10% of sentences, but go over that and all of a sudden your copy is suboptimal. Do you buy that?

Ultimately, it’s quite easy to identify passive voice algorithmically, and that’s where its prominence in tests comes from. If a sentence feels right to you, the human, it’s right. By all means run your copy through a readability checker, but have an open mind about its results – you risk destroying something beautifully imperfect.

Not the same as reading levels

I’m quite interested in reading levels when it comes to copy. Writing copy that a typical 11-year old would understand (even if it’s for an educated adult audience) seems like a sound concept to me. Your speech patterns and, to a large extent, your everyday vocabulary, are pretty much set in stone by that age. Great copywriters don’t necessarily know loads of fancy words – and they certainly don’t use them in their copy. They’ve learnt to use the words everybody understands efficiently, possibly in unexpected ways that carry new meaning.

Copywriters’ clients usually tell them who their target markets are, but frankly, if you can’t work it out for yourself, you probably shouldn’t be in the business. Good writers know their audiences just as well fashion designers, film-makers and comedians do, and accept that there’s certain language you can’t expect a given audience to respond to.

I think there’s probably a place for machine learning and algorithms to determine good reading levels, and the results I’ve seen can be useful; but the ultimate test of the quality of copy is how well it informs, entertains and converts in the wild. Here’s some good analysis from an avowed rival.

We’re not there yet

Anyway, I’ve said my piece. As I mentioned at the start, it’s still uncommon for clients to reject work on the basis of digital readability analyses. People might not all understand the intricacies of grammar or spelling, but they know when something is readable because, well, they can read it. Any danger comes from people using a digital readability test as their first sweep (as they would with a spell checker) and rejecting perfectly good work on the basis of its results.

Like all creatives, copywriters are good at taking criticism on the chin, and frankly we have it easy – rejected graphic design often means starting again from scratch, whereas we might just have to re-jig a few sentences. (I don’t even know how sculptors ever get to the point where they can submit their work.) Criticism from another human is real and valuable.

In terms of SEO, readability also isn’t a ranking factor per se, although an unreadable site will suffer a higher bounce rate, which is a ranking factor. It would have to be quite dire to cause noticeable bounce compared with, say, slow loading times or bad mobile friendliness, though. The best readability test you can do is to read it yourself and let a few other people read it and to act on their comments. They will be correct roughly 100% of the time.

Image: Sean Batty