Read with your ears

One of the biggest rookie mistakes a writer can make is thinking that people read with their eyes. They don't. The eyes are just the tool they use to read, but the writing is heard. Readers hear the rhythm of the language. They hear the cadence and the variation in sentences. They hear alliteration. They hear rhyme. It's a relic of a past when stories were not written but were recited and passed down from memory (in fact, this tendency to hear what you read is so prevalent that speed reading courses actually try to break the habit and get readers to process writing faster by not hearing it).

In advertising, we want people to hear what they read. As it was for our early ancestors listening to stories told around a campfire, language that is designed to be heard rather than seen is more memorable. This is why we remember song lyrics, often years after we've heard the song (if you lived through the disco era, this may not actually be desirable).

That's why advertising copy is written to mimic the way people speak. With sentences that begin with prepositions. And sentences that are fragments. And short sentences. Followed by longer, more developed sentences.

It makes for writing that's human. Familiar. And easy on the ears.