3 Steps to Perfecting Your Copy

Here at sobananapenguin, we believe that it’s important to deliver 100% perfect copy for our clients. Not only does a polished piece of writing look good, it also holds amazing power when it comes to attracting business.
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No one will be able to fully trust your service or product if your website is full of mistakes, so let us share some of our copy-perfecting secrets with you.

Read, read, and read again

One of the best ways to improve your copywriting skills is to keep reading through your work, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, until you’re completely happy with it. This may sound tedious, but once you get into the habit of checking over your own work, it'll feel like second nature. 

​Grab an extra pair of eyes

In saying that, our eyeballs can get tired when looking at a screen, so sometimes the best way to write flawlessly is by getting a fresh pair to look over your work.
 
You could get one of your colleagues to read it over for you, or simply leave your desk, suck in some fresh air, grab a coffee and then come back to it. You’ll be surprised how much a five-minute break from your computer helps you to pick up on grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and weak sentence structure.
 
Another way of gaining a new perspective on your work is to change your font size/style or page margins after the first proofing. The realignment of text will trick your brain into thinking you’re reading something completely new, which aids the spotting of errors.

​Google it

We’re lucky to live in a world where a depth and breadth of information is available at our fingertips. Unsure how to spell a word or a trademark? Check on Google or Wikipedia to see if you've got it right.
 
Often, Google will come up with several ways of saying something, i.e. the American and English spelling, so be sure to go with the style that you are writing in. This also often happens with business names, in which case visit the company's website and spell it the exact way that they have. For example, whilst "sobananapenguin" is a proper noun, it's stylised with a lower case S.
 
Other common mistakes to look out for are wrongly hyphenated-words, unnecessary or clunky abbrev, and double  spaces between words.

​Use apps and websites

There's a whole heap of sites to assist you with your grammar, spelling and readability. Grammarly picks out the most glaring errors in a piece of copy; it’s free to use and is more meticulous than Word’s spellchecker.
 
For more advanced readability feedback, The Writer analyses your text and marks it on a scale that ranges from ‘Most Comic Books’ through to a ‘Harvard Law Review’. This is ingenious if you’re finding it difficult to speak to a specific audience or readership.
 
Then there’s Sporkforge, which is fantastic for finding recurring words and going through text with a fine-tooth comb. You can then use Thesaurus.com to find synonyms, or apply your grey matter to think up different ways to express your point. 

Hire the experts

​Then of course there are The Penguins. If you need a helping hand with your copywriting, we’re here to help. From blogs and web copy to brochures and press releases, get in touch and let us know what you need.