Therefore it wouldn’t hurt to recall some of the advice by this great maven of advertising, especially in view of the current storytelling and content marketing trends. In this spirit, we bring you 10 tips by David Ogilvy for clear, precise and attractive writing, which he made in his memo on 07 September 1982, appropriately titled “How to Write”.
“The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well. Woolly-minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches. Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well,” Ogilvy wrote in the memo. Here are his 10 tips that ring true even today:
- Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
- Write the way you talk. Naturally.
- Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
- Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
- Never write more than two pages on any subject.
- Check your quotations.
- Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.
- If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
- Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
- If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.
Although many will notice that some of the advice are not quite practical in the hectic digital age we live in, like the one about waiting tomorrow to send a memo, in spirit all these tips are equally alive today as they were more than 30 years ago.
