Updated: November 4, 2013
Not every copywriter wants to avoid offensive language. In some venues it’s what the audience wants and expects. If you’re a marketing copywriter, though, you’re not writing for an audience you choose.
Unless they tell you otherwise, chances are your clients would rather err on the side of caution when it comes to the possibility of offending potential customers – and before you start railing against political correctness, remember that clients aren’t paying you to fix society’s sensitivity toward certain words. They’re paying you to create content that reaches the right audience, and that’s trickier than you might imagine.
For a lot of people, certain ways of speaking and writing are common in their communities and families. More than once someone has publicly used a word or phrase they thought was completely innocuous only to find they’d unintentionally said something horribly offensive to a certain group of people. Readers of the content you create for your clients aren’t going to wait around for you to explain your intent. If you offend them, they’re going to go spend their money with another company, and all you can do is hope they don’t decide to help you take your content viral in all the wrong ways.
In fact, there are so many ways to unintentionally step in a pile of . . . internet controversy . . . that we had too much advice for a single blog entry, so part one of this series will address gendered language and techniques for using idiom, metaphor and slang. Next week in part two we’ll delve into tips for avoiding offensive language in your copywriting when referring to specific minority groups.
Mastering Gender Language for Copywriters
As a marketing copywriter you may not see an issue with using “she” as your go-to pronoun when talking about the nursing profession, but the male nurses out there aren’t going to love you for it. There are literally hundreds of similar examples of how gendered language can be unintentionally offensive to readers, which is why it’s best to avoid writing that makes assumptions about gender whenever possible.
Formal writing for education and journalism have their own specific guidelines, but for the general online marketing copywriter who creates blogs, knowledge centers and other various content throughout the web, the lines get blurred a bit.
Traditionally we’ve followed Associated Press guidelines for marketing copywriting, but one of the most fun parts of writing for a medium like a blog or website is that we can play fast and loose with the language a bit. What’s not fun is alienating your clients’ potential customers, which is why you need some inclusive options in your copywriting toolkit:
- The phrase “he or she” – Cumbersome and very situational. Think “formal blogging,” like what you might create when marketing for a law firm.
- Alternating pronouns – You can switch back and forth between he and she. Not the cleanest compromise, but it can be useful if you’re writing how-to’s or other informal educational materials to keep your writing inclusive but uncluttered.
- They – acceptable for most blogging and social media situations, as well as landing pages, eCommerce descriptions – pretty much anything that isn’t strictly formal. Even the angriest online grammarian in the comments section will usually give you a pass on this usage.
- Avoiding it altogether – There’s always the option of seeing if you can rephrase your sentence or adjust your approach to avoid having to use a singular pronoun at all. Some consider this the easy road, but just like your clients aren’t paying you to offend people, they also aren’t paying you to work extra hard on one blog entry when you could be producing more copy to bring them traffic and business.
Of course, avoidance isn’t always an option. In most cases you’ll know when you need to use gender and when it isn’t important to the content, but even then there are times when you can slip up.
For example, I recently edited a piece for an OB/GYN clinic discussing post-pregnancy care for new mothers. The article was thoughtful and well-written, but the writer had used what would seem like a completely harmless sentence including the phrase, “your husband can help.”
Seems like a perfectly normal phrase on the surface, but the use of the word husband assumes that the new mother is both married and straight. With one simple sentence that article could have alienated a number of the clinic’s potential patients. The writer wasn’t looking to offend, but our language gets filtered through our personal experience, which means we have to take extra care that our own assumptions don’t get in the way of fulfilling our professional copywriting duties to the best of our ability.
The general rule to follow: In a professional setting, your writing shouldn’t make assumptions about gender, sexuality, marital status or anything else that’s not explicitly implied by the content or topic.
Copywriting and the Importance of Knowing Your Etymology
This marketing copywriter’s misstep is one that’s frighteningly easy to make without realizing it. Lots of idioms, slang and metaphors that you’ll see in common use in certain parts of the world are mildly or even horribly offensive to groups of people, so your safest course is to never use them without understanding their etymology.
You probably think nothing of employing the phrase, “you’d have to be blind not to see,” but any time you do so as a marketing copywriter you are sending the blind community the message that your client is at best thoughtless and at worst callous. Throwing around language carelessly is not a luxury we have as professional copywriters, at least not if we want to do our jobs well and keep our clients’ business booming.
Luckily, you just need two things to guard against this mistake and keep your copy non-offensive:
- An awareness of your own use of these types of language. They can sometimes be so ingrained in common use that you don’t even notice them. Think about memes and gifs. We sometimes have entire conversations solely in idiom and metaphor. It’s all very Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
- The internet itself. The Online Etymology Dictionary is a handy link to keep on your toolbar, and in most cases just doing a phrase search will turn up any problems in the first few results.
Realizing it’s possible that you don’t know all the potential negative connotations of the words and phrases you use is half the battle. Just stay aware of your usage and thoughtful in your choices, and it’s easy to avoid unpleasant linguistic entanglements.
We’ll be back with part II in this series next week. In the meantime, remember that the pen is mightier than the sword, and wield your linguistic tools with care.
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gadogs says
Great insights Michelle!! I’ve often struggled with these issues. If you do slip up and unintentionally say something offensive, hopefully the audience will understand. However, it’s impossible to know until it’s too late. As far as gender issues, avoiding it all together is the best route for gender neutral topics. Using “they” or “your” or “their” is a good substitute I think. Like you say, a copywriter’s job is to develop content that builds an audience and leads people to conversions.