“Write without fear, but edit without mercy.”

Good copywriting conveys the value of your business, gets your message across clearly, and has a lasting impact on your readers. You want your readers to keep reading, return to your website, call you, or buy something. Copyediting is the art of improving writing so that readers are engaged and want to keep reading. The best-selling writers have copyeditors. The reason for this is simple — you can’t read your own writing like another person seeing it for the first time. Because you wrote it, you are unable to process it like a fresh reader. That’s what the reader is — a person seeing it “fresh.” Copyediting is all about advocating for the reader.

Writers should let their creativity flow. They should write freely. Engage the reader in a story or present an opportunity to act upon it, leaving the reader satisfied.

My goals for copyediting are simple:

• clean up the writing to remove any excess wording that slows down a reader
• change sentence length to keep a variety going
• choose action words and add some to engage the reader
• keep the reader interested

By applying a few different techniques, your reader will want to stay with you. Create an opportunity for them to return.

For the love of dogs:

I love working on all types of business writing. I find it intellectually challenging and rewarding. But my absolute favorite in life is anything to do with dogs. My love of dogs started early in life when my dad wouldn’t let us keep our dog, Missy. All the dogs in the neighborhood loved her and frequently came to visit. That’s not a bad thing, is it?

This caused a variety of issues in our backyard (in my father’s view) and little Missy was placed elsewhere. Heartbreaking. I suppose this also explains my love of rescues.

My love of dogs and advocacy for them is fierce, and rescues hold a special place in my heart.

I can’t think of a time in my life when the image of a dog didn’t immediately lift my spirits. If only I had a farm of rescued dogs. Talk about a happy place!