Mhmm…
What if you can consistently create line after line that keeps your reader’s eyeballs glued to their screen unable to resist reading your every word…
Now… wouldn’t that be something!
I can’t promise you will be able to do that immediately after reading this but… I can promise that if you apply the principles of what I’m saying your writing is going to be a lot less boring.
Writing for English class and writing for business are two different kinds of writing.
And I’m here to show you how to write sentences for your specific business that grabs your readers by the head and makes them want to read whatever you wrote.
So let’s get started below…
The Writing I’m Talking About Is Really Different from Your High School English…
Every single person that ever went to high school knows about English class whether they liked it or not.
We all had to read a book and then go in-depth to figure out the meaning behind the words like a quote from our best friend George Washington…
“It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”
George Washington.
And then we had to figure out the meaning like…
- Okay, he probably means that you should own up to your faults…
- Or depending on when he said this, there could be a completely different meaning…
- Or maybe he just wanted to sound cool…
Now, I personally like this quote and think it’s a good sentence but… it’s not what we are going for when we write for a business.
Because when someone glances at your advertisement or your store they aren’t going to take the time to analyze whatever you wrote.
Nope
In business writing, they are going to be either interested immediately or they will completely ignore it.
And it makes sense. It’s shown that worldwide digital ad spend is going to be around $375 billion dollars by 2021 (which means there’s a ton of advertisements).
And no one is going to even consider your advertisement unless it’s worth it for them.
So we want to create sentences that are…
- Able to read with crystal clear clarity
- Easily understand what our product is and why they should buy it
- And not having any extra thoughts thinking about our sentence structure or symbolism that might affect our purchases.
We just want sentences with good ‘ol plain English that people can understand our product easily.
Think About Who You Are Writing These Sentences For
Now before you write some amazing sentences that razzle and dazzle your readers you gotta first understand who your readers are.
If I was writing to a bunch of female teenagers… then I am going to use their language such as “Your Sexy AF” or “LOL epic fail…”
Just like what Cosmo does below…
If you posted that to your grandparents they are either going to be shocked to death (or laughing to death if they are like mine…)
Or… if I was a golfing maniac I would probably be interested in this article by Golf below…
And I sure as hell never saw the words “Buckle up” in my classic English books but it doesn’t matter if I am a George Gankas super fan.
The reason why these are great sentences is because it speaks in their specific reader’s language interestingly enough to grab their attention.
Whether it’s…
- Cheesy,
- Surprising,
- Or Plain ‘Ol Weird…
The name of the game is to grab the reader’s attention that is relevant to what you are writing.
How To Write A Good Sentence 101
The basics of writing a proper English sentence is having a noun first and then a verb.
BUT… if you re-read my article you are going to see some grammatical mistakes (just like this sentence)
Because my goal isn’t to get praised by English scholars but for YOU readers to enjoy this article while learning something.
That means all you have to do is understand me clearly so even if I do something like…
- “Hey Freind, Yuo Look Fnie”
- Meow. Moo. Oink.
It grabs your attention BUT… it’s not the easiest thing to read. As long as there is a purpose to what you are doing that makes sense then try it out! It might work better than you expected.
1. You Gotta Have Rhythm To Your Writing
You want your words to dance in your reader’s mind. Maybe a little tango. Get the groovy moves going… that sort of thing.
Like take a look at this block of text below…
“Hi, I’m Anthony. I’m seventeen. My socks are black. My sentences are dull. But, if I have more rhythm there’s more color. By varying the sentence length it feels a lot nicer to read. It feels like your mind is dancing freely in the cold, blue sky (and adding parenthesis makes me add my own little thoughts…) Then all of a sudden I can make you stop reading abruptly like this. Thud. Doesn’t it read a lot less boring now?”
I started to make my sentences a lot less bland by…
- Adding adjectives
- Varying the sentence length
- Adding parenthesis
- Varying sentence structure
- …and so on.
When writing your sentences the first goal is to make it very clear on what you are trying to convey about your business. After that then you can start playing around with rhythm.
Because even if what you wrote is crystal clear, if it sounds monotonous and boring then your readers aren’t going to be engaged to read the next sentence (which means death as a copywriter…)
2. You Should Start Adding Swole-Inducing Power Words
Power words are just words that have a lot of power and weight behind their words.
Take for instance the word “mean” for example…
What if I changed it up a little bit and used the words “humiliated” or “shamed” or even “disgraced.” There’s a certain meaning and connotation behind each word.
The visceral image of humiliating someone and making them cry, or shaming and disgracing someone from their family…
Those words really do pack a lot of punch with just a change of words. And the beauty of power words is that they already paint a picture in your reader’s head.
I’ll do one more example for you (since I’m so nice…)
Take for instance run and compare it to…
- Sprinted
- Dashed
- Crawled…
Doesn’t it add more life than just plain ‘ol boring run?
Now I can go on a rant about why you should start adding power words but I also created a +1,039 power word list here to help spice up your language game.
3. Facts Make The World Go Round
If you are writing blog posts than facts make you stand out from your competitors.
But if you can also use them in your advertisements then they are truly powerful.
For example, If you are able to write something like “My product is 52% at cleaning white stains than XYZ” and then you have the research to prove that…
BOOM! Your product is going to fly off the shelves.
Facts make it sound like you are in charge. That YOU are the authority in place. That YOU know what you are talking about because some wishy-washy good flowery sentences about how I personally feel doesn’t mean jack.
Let’s take an example of these two sentences below…
- Consumers engage around 11.4 pieces of content before they are ready to purchase
- People read a lot of content before they are ready to purchase…
The first one stands out just a teensy tiny bit with more firepower. Doesn’t it sound like I know what I’m talking about?
Now for a blog post, my sources may not be the most credible BUT… it shows readers that you actually took the time to find material to back up your content.
4. Have Your Words Create Mental Movies In Their Minds
I don’t want you to just create pictures in your reader’s mind. I want you to write so that they see the next best-selling James Cameron movie in their heads.
This means writing sentences that…
- Use power words
- Evoke emotion
- Paint a series of picture
And what you do is that you can’t create a movie with just one sentence. You need to combine multiple sentences together with images of their own to tell a story of their own.
When you take the time to craft the description of the words of the product you are trying to sell and they can actually envision (not just with a picture) but how they think it’s going to be…
Then you are going to make that customer salivate at just the thought of buying your product!
Here’s an example with food (since I’m a foodie…)
Let’s say you are a sugar-craving junkie and we are going to describe two kinds of cake…
- This yummy cake with some frosting for $14.95
- This carefully hand-crafted scrumptious cake with a warm, moist interior that melts in your mouth with the slightest touch. The beautiful and carefully arranged vanilla frosting made with only the purest of vanilla beans topped with decadent artisan chocolate with the words “I love you…” perfect for any romance all for only $19.95.
If you like cake, hopefully, the second sentence was able to paint a clearer picture (otherwise I failed at my job as a writer and teacher)
Maybe even a movie of the cake rotating in your mind at the thought of you eating this cake in your mind…
We want to create mental movies because what we imagine in our head is a lot more powerful and convincing than seeing a tasty picture of the cake.
5. Evoke Emotions To Move And Sway Your Readers
If you can make your customers feel something after reading your advertisement then you are going to be going places because…
People buy based on their emotions and not on their logic!
We want to move them. Make them feel touched. Fill them with joy and tears and even think about a happy future with our product.
They might make excuses about how this new spatula has stainless steel for easier pancake-scooping and effortless lifting… (but deep down you know that you just want a better spatula because you just want it.)
Look, there is usually around a 23% increase in sales if you can evoke some sort of emotional response from the viewers.
And how do you evoke an emotional response with the reader using only sentences?
By truly understanding the reader.
And this is especially true with…
- Pain points
- Solutions
- Desires
- Worries
- And that sort of jazz…
When you can understand that then you will be able to move them. I promise.
Let’s give a real-life personal example of what I mean.
I have always wanted to figure out how to get more traffic to this blog of mine. My first year at my blog was a disaster with my total traffic being an abysmal 1,000 visitors.
Now, if I saw a headline that said: “Boost your monthly traffic to 10,000 monthly visitors in 6 months…” I would be a little skeptical but since I’m desperate I would still be interested nonetheless.
And then it goes on to describe every single thing that frustrated me like…
- You’ve written the best content 52 times over the past year but there was still no traffic
- You tried out multiple methods from Google but none of them worked for you
- He’s done the same exact things as me and finally figured out how to make it work for him… (you see what I’m doing here?)
Well, through just his sentences it feels like he truly understands me and my problems and that he may be able to fix it this time.
If you want your readers to listen to you, start by truly understanding them and then show that in your writing.
6. Make Promises To Your Readers
I want you to take it one step further after truly understanding your reader and start making BOLD promises in your sentences.
Promises really come in two forms when writing for businesses…
- You promise that this product is actually going to work like you say it is and…
- The promise of a guarantee that you will refund them if they don’t like it.
When you start promising readers in your actual sentences like…
- I promise you that this knife can cut the stale bread like jelly…
- I pinky promise you that this course will help you find your client in the next 30 days if you actually use these principles and work hard…
Then it shows that you are truly confident in your product people can feel that.
And what usually comes after that first promise is your guarantee like…
- I promise you a 30-day money-back guarantee
- I promise you a 1-year guarantee if my course didn’t work for you…
Now, the reason why I say BOLD promise is because your one year guarantee shows that you have a looot more confidence in your product.
And the funny thing is that there are going to be fewer refunds because…
- It puts the guarantee in the back-burner of their mind
- It shows you that you have that much confidence in your product that it’s awesome
- …And people tend to forget about the guarantee if they like your product.
So start making bold promises to your reader and if your product lives up to it then you will be rewarded.
7. Make It Specific (Besides Using Facts)
When you start writing words that actually move your readers you are going to have to be specific about your product.
The reason why we want to be specific is that it feels more trustworthy.
Which do you think sounds a lot better?
- Only 7% of people look at the third-page result on Google
- Most people don’t look at the third page on Google.
When you can make your words specific it carries this sort of weight and feeling to it.
You can also talk about being specific for…
- Describing your product
- Talking about your business
- Telling the story behind the product
- And any research and facts to back it up.
For example, I can talk about how my dog likes to eat rice.
OR… I can get into the nitty-gritty details and talk about how my dog begs to eat some rice and chicken teriyaki (after I fed some to him by accident…) and how his tail is always wagging whenever there is some rice on his doggy bowl.
By being more descriptive it tells a more complete story that readers will be able to visualize.
8. Keep it Sweet And Simple
As much as I love long prose, people have short attention spans nowadays (and I blame social media.)
This means that your sentences have to go be short and to the point.
Apparently, even blog titles with 6-13 words perform the best in terms of being seen.
If you noticed throughout this blog, my paragraphs are typically 1-3 sentences and a lot of my sentences are pretty short.
You don’t see me going on and on forever…
But short just like this. The reason why we want to keep our sentences short is that we want to be concise to get our point across with the least amount of words possible.
How To Write Sentences Properly (The Actual Mechanics…)
Now the techniques I’m about to show you is how to write sentences that are not boring.
Because the final goal for our sentences is to be read easily and clearly.
Now they may not be grammatically correct but… it’s a looot better than being a regular boring ‘ol grammatical sentence (or at least I think so)
9. Start Your Sentences With Transitive Words
I want you to start sentences with words like…
- And
- But
- Or
- Of course
And any other transitive words that sound natural when you talk.
The reason why we do this is that even though it’s grammatically incorrect… it’s how we talk in our everyday speech.
Think about the last time you told a story to your friend. And start noticing that when you pause that you probably start with the words “And” or “But” like…
“Then this huge dragon came out of nowhere all of a sudden. But suddenly, the hero came and slew it!”
We use it in our normal everyday language and it feels natural to say it.
Because when we are “reading” these sentences we are just really saying it out loud in our mind. And how we talk in our minds is usually how we talk to our friends and family.
10. Ellipses
Ellipses are the three periods like this…
Now, the grammatically correct way of using ellipses is to omit words from a quote like this:
“…And then she said Anthony was the most dashing guy ever…”
Where you omit some words because the quote was too long and that sort of thing.
Well, the way I teach it is to use it as a trailing thought… something that pauses the reader just for a second yet connects them to the second sentence.
Take a look below…
- You see… These ellipses made you pause before reading the second sentence compared to…
- You see, the comma gives you an abrupt stop to the flow of the sentence.
It just sounds better in my mind when you use ellipses.
11. Parenthesis
This is going to be the next weapon that I want you to use when writing sentences.
Parenthesis gives you a chance to look at the author’s thoughts in a way that an ordinary sentence can’t.
I can talk about how amazing my guitar skills are (and then in the parenthesis I can say how awesome I think I am…)
Not everyone uses it. I do because I like the way it sounds in my writing. Try it out and see if it works for you.
12. Italics and bold
This one isn’t so much a secret but I see a lot of writers don’t use it a lot.
I like to bold sentences that sound important or makes me sound like I know what I am talking about like…
“The main point isn’t to bold sentences. It’s to highlight the importance of this very sentence to your readers…”
And I like to use italics to emphasize a certain word or phrase (just like what I did here…)
13. Arrows and the happy face (Rarely Used)
Now, I rarely use these in my writings but it’s also nice to know just in case your business actually needs to use them.
- You can use arrows like this —> ← to point at something
- You can use text emojis like 😉 or (^_^)
- Or you can use actual emojis.
The only time I would use these emoticons is typically for advertisements like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
14. You Gotta Practice
And you gotta keep practicing to get better.
You can
- Handwrite ads by hand
- Practice writing subject lines to your email list
- Practice with 140 characters in Twitter
- Creating headlines for Youtube Videos
- Just writing a lot of blog posts like these…
And the more you practice writing, then there is a greater chance at improving yourself at writing.
Conclusion
I hope you learned a lot about how to craft sentences specifically for businesses.
We talk about how it’s waaay different from Freshman English class and the specific ways we can enhance our sentences by varying the rhythm and words.
And I also teach you some mechanical skills to level up your writing.
What tip did you find the most helpful?