Present Elegantly - How to Make Your Writing Look Good
Lesson 17 from: From Structure to Style: Master Your CopywritingShani Raja
Present Elegantly - How to Make Your Writing Look Good
Lesson 17 from: From Structure to Style: Master Your CopywritingShani Raja
Lesson Info
17. Present Elegantly - How to Make Your Writing Look Good
Lessons
Chapter 1: Copywriting Fundamentals
1Class Introduction - Overview of the Course Content
03:50 2The Five Aspirations of a Superior Copywriter
05:28 3The Importance of Defining Your Intention & Audience
06:02 4The “Secret Sauce” of Good Copywriting
04:29 5Quiz - Chapter 1
Chapter 2: Simplicity
6Introduction - The Power of Simplicity
02:06Tight Writing - How to Make Your Writing Snappy
05:43 8Tell it Straight - How to Write Plainly & Straightforwardly
03:36 9Don’t Overcomplicate - How to Avoid Unnecessary Complexity
04:59 10Quiz - Chapter 2
Chapter 3: Clarity
11Introduction - The Power of Clarity
01:33 12Nailing Down Your Ideas - How to Fix Fuzzy Ideas In Your Copy
04:07 13Place Words With Care - How to Avoid Misplacing Words
03:49 14Be Specific - How to Avoid Ambiguity, Jargon & Abstract Writing
09:09 15Quiz - Chapter 3
Chapter 4: Elegance
16Introduction - The Power of Elegance
01:57 17Present Elegantly - How to Make Your Writing Look Good
04:10 18Narrative Flow - How to Structure Your Copy Beautifully
04:09 19Musical Writing - How to Give Your Writing Rhythm
05:31 20Quiz - Chapter 4
Chapter 5: Evocativeness
21Introduction - The Power of Evocativeness
02:28 22Add Variety - How to Reduce Monotony in Your Writing
03:10 23Be Bold - How to Steer Clear of Weak Words
03:34 24Create Pictures - How to Make Your Writing Jump Out
06:23 25Quiz - Chapter 5
Chapter 6: Editing With Style
26Introduction - Get Ready to Edit
01:31 27The Quick-Smart Editing System
16:11 28Quiz - Chapter 6
Chapter 7: The Road Ahead: What’s Next?
29How to Nurture Your New Skills
03:06Final Quiz
30Final Quiz
Lesson Info
Present Elegantly - How to Make Your Writing Look Good
Unfortunately, few writers pay enough attention to the aesthetics of how they're writing actually looks on the page after this lesson, you won't be one of those riders, you're going to know how to polish up your text so that they end up being as pleasing to the eye as they are to the ear. Now, there are many ways that you can make your writing look elegant from a presentational standpoint at the most basic level. You obviously want to clean up any messiness in your copy, starting with things like typos, spelling and punctuation mistakes, but beyond such obvious slip ups. There are other things to look out for, such as inconsistency or a lack of symmetry. For instance, you should also make sure that all of your headlines are in the same font type and that they're all exactly the same size and the same style, for instance, bold, italicized, underlined or whatever. Such details can be hard to notice at first, but you'll get better at noticing them with time. Now you can go really deep int...
o this concept of consistency and it's something that professional proofreaders are really skilled at, they will fix an opening quotation mark that is different in style from the closing quotation mark. They'll even go as far as to look for commerce that may have been mistakenly italicized after an italicized word. A few writers can bring themselves to care about such small details, but is this level of attention to detail that takes your presentation to another level, giving your writing a feeling of gracefulness and unity that often has its own resonance. Newspaper style guides often go into minute detail on these sorts of issues? For that very reason they discuss everything from how journalists should refer to a particular country to whether particular words should be capitalized or hyphenated headlines are also given a distinctive style. The economist, for example, writes it's headlines like this. Can the world find a good covid 19 vaccine quickly enough. Now the Wall Street Journal would write that same headline like this in the world, find a good covid 19 vaccine. Quickly enough notice the difference in the way the words are capitalized. Now, as I say, you can go really deep with this. Think about punctuation. Do you want to use the so called Oxford comma in your writing or not? What style of dashes do you want to have? Keep it consistent? What will be the average length of your paragraphs? I suggest you create style rules for yourself and try to stick to them at least throughout a particular piece of writing. If you introduce someone called john Stapleton in your text, will you refer to him further down as mr Stapleton? Or maybe just Stapleton, decide on your preference and then keep it consistent for every other name that you mentioned in the text. Do you write out numbers from 1-9 as words? But then use figures from the number 10 upwards. Many newspapers do this Will you say there is a 90% chance it will rain today using a percentage symbol? Or will you write out percent inwards? And if so, will you write it as two separate words or as one word? Keep that consistent throughout the text. Will you write UK and us with dots in between the letters like this or without any dots? Keep that consistent as well as you create your own style rules for different types of writing? Just remember that great writing like great food becomes even more delicious when it's presented beautifully. Now, as I said before, elegance has a deeper meaning beyond just the basic presentation of your content and the aspect I want to focus on next is the elegant ordering of ideas to make your writing flow gracefully.