One of my favorite ezines–and just about the only one I read from beginning to end–is “New Thinking” by web usability guru Gerry McGovern.
This past week I helped a client by explaining his complex technical process using little tiny words. And by tiny, I mean single syllables. Short phrases. Dummy language, almost.
The clouds parted, angels sang, and his product offering became immediately understandable…and more desirable.
Where many copywriters and most amateur marketers complicate their copy to sound important, I work in the opposite direction. My passion is for helping people understand.
Well, Gerry McGovern has my back on this. From this week’s New Thinking:
There is a view among the intellectual elite that the general
public are just not educated enough to make important decisions.
This elite are often quite reasonable and progressive people,
and they fear mob rule, populism and xenophobic nationalism.[T]he Web reflects a world that is becoming more and more
immune to sciency-sounding words and legal gibberish.Deliberately complex content still has the power to impress some
of us some of the time. But societies are becoming less
susceptible to the language of deception, and the Web is at the
forefront of that changing reality.~ Gerry McGovern
Are you pulling people in with your language, or pushing them away? Or worse yet, are you pulling the wool over their eyes?
