6. Keep It Active

Consider the following two sentences:

‘Savings of £2 million a year have been generated by the new procedure.’

‘The new procedure has generated savings of £2 million a year.’

Both say the same thing, but the second sentence uses an active rather than a passive voice. In the first instance, X is done by Y. In the second, Y does X. Notice the latter is shorter, simpler, more direct and more powerful. It is easy to write in the passive voice because it sounds more long-winded and ‘authoritative’; as a result, it is commonly used in management documents and the like. This is not the way your copy should read. As I have already mentioned, when writing copy you are not trying to impress people with your wordiness, but attempting to grab their attention and get an emotional response from them that will drive them to act. Using the active voice will ensure your copy is unambiguous, direct and personal. There may be exceptions to this rule. If you are writing a report or a management document, you might feel justified in adopting a passive voice because it will result in language your audience will feel more at home with. Even so, I would probably argue that use of the active voice would still make your text more effective; try switching some of your sentences around to see how they read.

Using Anglo-Saxon

In a similar vein, Crawford Kilian, author of the excellent Writing for the Web, advocates using Anglo-Saxon root words rather than Latin root words where possible. His rationale is that the latter were introduced into the English language by the Roman administration and in many cases replaced shorter, ‘vulgar’ Anglo-Saxon terms which are quicker and easier to read and carry a much higher emotional charge. To demonstrate how effective this technique is, consider the following Latin root words that I used on purpose in this paragraph – and their Anglo-Saxon counterparts: