We don’t judge poor spelling – and other copywriter myths debunked

The questions can be serious – “How do you respond to an unreasonable request from a client?” – or they can be daft – e.g. “If you had to marry a font, which one, and why?”. The idea is that at the end of each lunch-and-learn, the agency has a better understanding of the relevant team’s day-to-day highs, lows, conundrums, and side-quests.

Having just presented a ‘What Do You Do All Day?’ lunch-and-learn on behalf of the content team, I was taken aback by some of the questions submitted by my colleagues. They highlighted commonly-held misconceptions about writers of all kinds. I blame – among others – Peggy Olson, Carrie Bradshaw, and Jack Torrance.

So, I’d like to take this opportunity to do a bit of myth-busting, in an attempt to usher in a new era of peace, love, and understanding between copywriters and their colleagues, everywhere. Please note: For the authentic ‘What Do You Do All Day?’ experience, you should, ideally, consume your lunch while reading this. I’ll wait while you go and fetch it.

Ready? Let’s begin.

Bum rashes…

When colleagues send me something they’ve written, they invariably get wincingly defensive beforehand – “Please don’t be mean about my horrible writing!”

I understand this self-consciousness. Our department is the only one to which colleagues ever have to submit their work to get it ‘tidied up’. We writers aren't sending messy Adobe files to the creative team to have them finalized. Nor cack-handed code to the developer team to be made functional. I too would be wincing if things were the other way around.

Everyone in an agency can write – and needs to, constantly, as part of their job. But not everyone can write to the word-nerd level that sometimes is required. So yes, we notice if you’ve made an error in your writing. But we do not eye-roll, and we do not snicker.

We deal with your misplaced apostrophes and 50-word sentences with the detached professionalism of a nurse inspecting a bum rash. Awkward for the patient, and entirely shrug-worthy for the nurse.

…and Oxford commas

Here’s a confession: I only found out last month that the Oxford comma – a comma used to separate the final item in a list of three or more items – is mandatory in American English (unlike in British English).

How had I never learned this simple grammatical rule during a writing career spanning more than 20 years? How many copy editors had to angrily add absent commas on my behalf during that time? The wretched shame of it.

Further confessions: I can never remember how to spell ‘maneuver’. I still have to Google the who/whom rule. And, I couldn’t confidently tell you what an adverb is.

Having spoken to a few writers about this, I know I’m not alone in having embarrassing blind spots in terms of spelling and grammar. There’s nothing a quick, surreptitious Google can’t fix. But still, if my colleagues were to find out… I can only imagine the damage to my all-conquering words-champ rep.

So the next time you yell across the office to ask a copywriter colleague how a participial adjective works, just be aware that you may well be scaring the living shit out of them.

Frustrated artists, not

There’s a misconception that the average copywriter ‘sold their soul’ at some point; that they’d sooner be using their innate talent for wordplay to produce Booker-winning novels; that they’re artists at heart, cruelly trapped in a world of snide consumer manipulation.

I can’t speak for every copywriter everywhere, obviously, but on behalf of the ones I have spoken to about this: nah.

I’m perfectly happy being a copywriter and content writer. I mean, I probably wouldn’t do it as a hobby if nobody was paying me, but I’d still far rather be doing this than pursuing a more ‘noble’ career in literature. Just because books are made of the same thing as Google Ads – i.e. words – that doesn’t make them interchangeably appealing or achievable to me.

I’ll be honest, I find writing a 1,000-word blog pretty draining. A 90,000-word book would most probably kill me. And while I love books, I’m happy to enjoy them solely as a consumer, rather than a manufacturer. I love movies, music, and telly too, but I’ve zero interest in attempting to DIY them either.

I wouldn’t even be tempted if the money was brilliant, but it’s not: the average professional novelist earns just £7,000 a year. Even if I really cut back on luxuries – socializing, clothes shopping, not sitting in silence in the freezing dark every night – there’s no way I could make that work.

So yes, hand me that brief for industrial-radiator ads. Lowbrow sellout 4 life here.

Writer’s block, also not

The origins of this myth are obvious: pretty much every movie or TV show to ever feature a writer as a central character has, at some point, depicted them wrestling with debilitating writer’s block.

They yank half-finished pages from typewriters and screw them up in self-disgust. They yell at their tearful, worried spouse out of misplaced frustration. They have emotionally charged conversations with their publisher or editor. They brood. They booze. They stare blankly at a duck pond.

Writer’s block is pretty much the only way to inject any drama or jeopardy into writing, which is otherwise a deeply dull, painfully low-stakes activity to watch. In my experience, however, movies and TV shows massively oversell how common and catastrophic writer’s block is. Faced with an urgent, last-minute job, pretty much every copywriter and content writer you know can produce words at astonishing speed, like a magician frantically pulling endless colorful hankies from a top hat.

Writer’s procrastination, however? That’s definitely a thing. Faced with writing a whitepaper on a dauntingly complex subject, I’ll find myself doing all manner of unnecessary chores – rearranging cutlery, laundering cushions, detangling chargers – rather than just getting on with it. It’s not that I’m blocked. It’s just that I’m a big stalling idiot.