The Economy of Words

If you know my writing, know me personally and you read the title of this piece, I know what you’re thinking: “What a joke! This guy has never seen a comma he didn’t drool over. I mean, just look at the structure of the first paragraph of this thing. He’s going to preach to moi about a ‘less is more’ approach to copywriting? I don’t think so, pal!”

Ok, you got me. I can tend to be a bit wordy, both in real life and on the page. But, as with anything else, I’ve learned over the years that there is a time and a place for everything. And since one of the services I provide is that of the written word, I have been able to more easily home in on which client prefers which style. Naturally, this extends across all platforms.

When one references an (or the) economy of words, what most swiftly jumps to mind is the reduction of unnecessary words. Instead of rubberizing long, strung out sentences and stretching them to their breaking point employing every punctuative trick in the book — including m-dashes, semi-colons, and the (occasional) parenthetical— for the sake of information cramming, one ought to take a more laconic approach to get the point across.

Why use ten words when you can use seven or five or even an emoji? It’s a fair point. But it’s also dependent on the client and (gasp!) the natural style of the writer.

Unless you’re a very, very good salesperson, delivering stripped down, bare-bones, no frills, borderline anemic content to a client who has expressed maximalist tendencies and wishes for their brand a certain amplitude won’t work. Conversely, delivering an editorial cornucopia is beyond useless to someone whose brand is on a language fast. Then, of course, there’s your writing which should be equal parts nimble and well-established.

It makes sense: different clients want different things, no two economies are the same and theoretically a client has read a copywriter’s work and possesses a baseline understanding of his or her style. That convergence of truths makes any hard and fast rules about word distribution and the, so-called, economy of words a hard thing to adhere to.

So whether you’re writing for your own brand or hiring a copywriter (Mainland is now accepting new copywriting clients, btw) understand that word count comes second to the overall objective of delivering copy and developing language that is compelling and audience appropriate.