I find it interesting how often clients baulk at the idea of spending any money of a copy writer for their websites. “The copy is good enough,” is a refrain I hear again and again.
So I decided to google good copy and came across Samuel R Delaney‘s book; About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews. One his key observations is the crucial difference between “good writing” and “talented writing,” the former being largely the product of technique, the other a matter of linguistic and aesthetic sensitivity.
Delaney says “Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind — vividly, forcefully — that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t.”
Therefore the question becomes whether a business website should make vivid and forceful things happen in their clients’ or prospects’ minds… I think it should and so all power to the talented writers.