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Stop Leaning on These Five Copywriting Crutches

Even the best copywriters use clichés and rely on copywriting crutches. It’s inevitable, but it’s preventable. We’re trying to spit out a lot of copy on tight deadlines, and while our fingers may work faster than our brains, our brains will pop out any old stuff just to keep our fingers moving.

And that’s how clichés appear in our work. We don’t mean to do it, it just sort of happens.

But if you keep a few of the worst offenders in mind as you’re working, you may catch them just as they spill out onto your keyboard. And if you missed them the first time around, you’ll catch them on the edits.

Here are the five copywriting crutches and clichés we need to avoid.

1. Let’s face it

There’s nothing wrong with this, per se.

It fits where it’s used, no one is using it incorrectly, and it conveys a feeling of resigned acceptance of the problem at hand.

But it’s just so overused that it has been rendered completely useless. It’s like the Spin Doctors’ “Two Princes,” which got played over and over and over and over and over to the point that I hate it so much, I will drive my car off a bridge to escape it.

“Let’s face it” is the “Two Princes” of writing. It should be struck from your lexicon, burned to ashes, which you then jump up and down on, before putting them in a lead-lined box and dropping it into the Mariana Trench.

(I really hate this phrase almost as much as I hate “Two Princes.”)

Just pick something else. Anything else. In point of fact. In truth. You gotta admit. What are we even doing here?

In truth, it makes you sound like you’re not trying very hard. Pick something better.

Needs

Probably the most overused word in all copywriting.

You gotta admit — see what I did there? — it’s a versatile word. It’s both a verb and a noun. We have needs. We need things.

Except saying “needs” is like saying “stuff” or things.”

Every customer needs something or wants something. Or they desire it. Wish for it. Demand it. Prefer it. Delight in it. Obsesses over it. Yearns. Craves. Hungers.

There are so many different options available, but the best we can come up with is “needs?”

What you need is a thesaurus. (Let me recommend OneLook.com.)

Being “passionate about” something

How many LinkedIn profiles have you seen where someone is “passionate about” web analytics? Or email marketing? Or tax law? Or artificial intelligence? I saw a job posting that required applicants to “be passionate about short-form copy.”

Seriously? You’re passionate about that? Your passionate about gazing deeply into the limpid pools of Google Analytics reports? I should yearn for the delicate touch of a 280-character tweet?

This thing smolders within your heart like burning coals? You can’t stop thinking about email marketing and it consumes your every waking moment? Whenever the wind blows, you hear its name in the trees — Tax law! Tax law! — and feel its caress on your face, like the touch of a lover?

Either you’re the most boring person on Earth, or you’re overinflating your dedication to this particular job function.

You should be passionate about your family or your partner. You should be passionate about a sports team or an art form. You should be passionate about something so much that you dress up in funny clothes and scream like a maniac whenever you get to do it. That’s passion. Do you do that when you get to send out an email newsletter?

(If you do, please share a video of that.)

If you feel that way about email marketing, or whatever, more power to you. It takes all types to make the world go ’round. But I tend to just roll my eyes and assume you’re exaggerating.

Making history/is historic

Things do not make history. Events are not historic, especially if that event hasn’t happened yet.

Whose history? Who decided it was historic? There were two Black quarterbacks in the Super Bowl this year. So many sportswriters relied on the clichéd crutch of calling it historic, but it wasn’t.

Was it notable? Absolutely. Was it important? You bet. Was it long overdue and a wrong that should have been righted years ago, ever since Doug Williams became the first Black QB and the first Black Super Bowl MVP in 1988? You’d better believe it.

But was it a thing that historians are going to be writing books about and discussing at length in 100 years? No. That’s the historic stuff.

What’s the difference between HISTORIC and HISTORICAL?

A quick note on the difference between these two terms. Historic refers to things that are important that everyone should be aware of: the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War, the first Black president.

Historical is anything that’s from a prior period in time. A book published in 1776, a letter from a Union soldier, the first football game between Harvard and Yale.

While we’re on the subject, please GOD stop saying “an historic.” It’s not AN historic, it’s A historic. Sure, I know you heard the news people say it, but they’re bandwagon-jumping idiots who try to sound sophisticated and miss the mark. There’s absolutely no reason ever that you should say “an historic,” unless it’s to mock someone else who does it.

We use “an” before any word that starts with a vowel sound, and “a” before any word that starts with a consonant sound.

  • An umbrella, an MBA, an hour.
  • A unicorn, a university, a European.

Historic — unless you’re from Boston or are a 19th-century chimney sweep — is pronounced with the H sound very much intact.

Using adverbs and adjectives for EVERYTHING

There’s a very good chance you’ve sung the praises of a colleague, collaborator, or frenemy and you do so in the most glowing terms possible.

“I had an amazing, mind-blowing lunch at this delightfully cozy little bistro with my wonderful, delightful, mind-bogglingly creative friend, Churlington Beescoat.”

We gush, extol, glorify, and heap exaltations on our dear friend, Churlington, and we can’t say enough nice things about him because he is simply the Best Person Ever.

At least until next week, when we have lunch with our dear friend, Powderkeg Malone.

There’s a reason we don’t use a lot of adverbs and adjectives in writing. They’re a tool that new writers overuse, but they keep us from writing our best work. (Adverbs do, not new writers.)

If you have to describe a verb, then you’re using the wrong verb. Too many young writers try to wring out as much emotion as possible to tell you that their goldfish’s death made them cry really, really, really terribly loudly.

That’s not very sad at all. Maybe if you added another “really?”

What’s wrong with adjectives though?

They’re less problematic than adverbs, but there are times when you need to describe a noun. However, that’s not always necessary.

“A nutritious lunch” tells us what kind of lunch it is, but it’s not very interesting. “A lunch that would make my nutritionist nod in quiet approval” paints a more vivid picture. We get the sense that the lunch is sensible, solid, and even a little boring.

Instead of using adverbs and adjectives, come up with better verbs and nouns. You’re writers, for God’s sake! Expand your vocabulary. Come up with new words or use old words in new ways. (Just no business jargon, please.)

Recently, I saw Garrison Keillor talk about “purpling one’s thumb with a hammer,” and I thought that was the very best way to describe whacking your thumb with a hammer, because the word not only contains the action, but the result. You didn’t just hit your thumb, you hit it so hard that it bruised and bled underneath the nail. But those previous 12 words are contained within the single word “purpling.”

As content marketers, we need to use powerful language like that. We want to write powerful, persuasive copy that causes people to reach for their credit cards and purchase orders. And they don’t do that for really amazing, terrific, stupendous products.

As a writer, no matter what you write, you need to focus on the mechanics of your writing. Your word choice, your sentence structure, and your tone are just as important as your story, your narrative, and your characters. Maybe more so.

So avoid these copywriting crutches. Find a new way to say things and to be more interesting.

Let’s face it, your writing is going to flop otherwise.

Photo credit: Stocksnap (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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What is the Ideal Paragraph Length?

What’s the ideal paragraph length? Is there an ideal paragraph length? Are there hard-and-fast rules that govern how long our paragraphs — “grafs,” if you’re cool and/or “in the biz” — or can you just create paragraphs of different lengths willy-nilly, like some damn hippie?

The latest episode of Grammar Girl’s podcast opened with this horrifying story:

A while ago, I saw a comment on Facebook about professors who are teaching college students to make all their paragraphs the same length. The woman wrote, “There are professors at my school who deduct points, sometimes even letter grades, if paragraphs aren’t the same exact length throughout a paper. Because writing should be ‘balanced’ and it can only achieve ‘balance’ if all paragraphs are equal in length.”

Since this is one of the most preposterous things I’ve ever heard, I thought I must have misunderstood, but I asked for clarification and learned that the “uniform paragraph length rule” is so pervasive at this university that one professor uses a ruler to measure physical paragraph length in an introductory English class.

Let me say it right now, upfront.

There is no one ideal paragraph length.

According to Grammar Girl, both the Yahoo! Style Guide and the college handbook A Writer’s Reference (affiliate links) say the ideal paragraph length is between 100 and 200 words. However, “good writers treat this as a suggestion and not a hard and fast rule.”

The problem is, we live in an age of skimmers, not readers. If you’re a content marketer, blogger, or essayist, you don’t have the luxury of getting people to dig into a block of text between 100 and 200 words. Large blocks of text without any white space make our eyes glaze over — at least mine do — and we just zone out and get the early morning stares. A big block of text just looks boring as shit. People ignore long paragraphs because they’re dense, so we should avoid cramming in that many words, of which this is the 100th.

Seriously, that graf is exactly 100 words long.

That one was eight.

And that one was four.

Do you see the difference? Do you feel how much easier it felt to read the short one-sentence paragraphs instead of that 100-word monstrosity?

Like it or not, people don’t read, they skim. They prefer short paragraphs, not long chunks of text. Sure, you can slip them in once in a while, but people tend not to read them. Did you even notice I said “shit” in that 100-word paragraph up there?

Unfortunately, writing teachers tend to give young writers bad advice, which is why there are “rules” about paragraph length.

Just remember, there’s the right way to write, and the school way. And the two are frequently different.

Paragraphs Aren’t a Part of Your System, Man!

Paragraphs can — and should — be varying lengths. If you want to write 200-word paragraphs, go ahead. If you think you can manage several 200-word paragraphs in a row, be my guest. But I’ll bet if you were to do a heat map or readability study of your work, you’d find that very few people are slogging their way through that bog.

There are already several “rules of English” that we can safely ignore. Either they’re obsolete, the language has changed, or they never should have been a rule in the first place.

I’ll admit, I’m not a big fan of some of the changes that are happening to the English language. Like the fact that “literally” now means figuratively. (Seriously, go to Google and enter “define literally!” That irritates me to no end!)

Conversely, some things were incorrect in the first place, and they’re only now being fixed, like the whole “don’t end your sentence with a preposition” thing.

Teaching students that a paragraph must be of a certain length is also terrible teaching. Good writing will have paragraphs of varying length, from a couple hundred words (Yeesh!) to just one word. To teach otherwise is a disservice to your students because many of them will go through life thinking it’s a requirement when at best, it’s a guideline.

And before you tell me, “You have to learn the rules before you break them,” I would say 1) there’s not a real rule about paragraph length, and 2) you can teach people that paragraph lengths vary without blowing their minds.

They can make the leap from not knowing how long a graf is to knowing that it can be different. You don’t have to spend an entire semester teaching them this one rule, only to tell them, “Just kidding!” at some undetermined point in the future.

Bottom line: there’s no ideal paragraph length, and you can make them any size you want.

Seriously.

Photo credit: Qimono (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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The Secret of B2B and B2C Copywriting

I’m going to tell you a secret about copywriting.

It’s a secret that the copywriters don’t want you to know. It’s a secret the marketers and the people who hire copywriters haven’t figured out. It’s a secret the business owners and managers don’t even know exists. That secret is this:

There is no difference between B2B copywriting and B2C copywriting.

None at all. It’s complete bullshit. They’re exactly the same, because they use the same thing in both camps:

  • Words.
  • Emotions.
  • The ability to use one to tap into the other.

Oh, and a decent grasp of the English language.

If you understand and can use those things, you can write for both B2B and B2C clients. Even on the same day.

Your Target Audiences Are People

One of the irritating things about content marketers, besides their insatiable greed for data and analytics, is that they forget their users/visitors/hits/views are all people.

Their users are people. Their visitors are people. The page views? Made by people.

And people have thoughts, emotions, and complex inner lives. They want things and they’re afraid of other things. And they’re reading your copy because they either want something or they’re afraid of losing something else.

People are stirred by the same emotions whether they’re at work or at home, trying to decide whether to buy your SaaS software or large-screen TV. They’re motivated with the same methods, follow the same sales funnel, and can be persuaded with the same formulas. They respond to good stories, persuasive arguments, and important ideas, whether they’re at work or at home.

No one is a completely different person between work and home. Oh sure, they don’t do the same things. They may have a work personality and a home personality, but fundamentally, they’re the same people. High-energy Type A people are always high-energy Type A people. Laid-back Type B introverts are always laid-back Type B introverts.

And that means a copywriter who is adept at telling stories or is able to simplify complex information can do that for a B2B buyer or a B2C buyer, even when those buyers are the same individual.

Whether your customer is trying to decide whether to buy a gas or charcoal grill or trying to decide which cloud-computing service to use, they’re going to use the same critical thinking and decision-making skills to solve the problem.

That means your copy needs to be concise, coherent, and complete. It needs to be well-written and informative. It needs to fire up their emotions.

Good copywriters can do that for B2B copy, trying to convince a purchasing agent or a department head to make a decision on their particular product or service. They can turn around and do that for B2C copy, trying to convince a consumer to make a decision for that product or service.

To the copywriter, there’s no difference in how they do their job, how the copy is structured, and which kinds of copywriting formulas they use.

Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

There’s Not Much Difference Between Industries Either

Years ago, I used to work in the poultry industry — we sold poultry feeding equipment and watering equipment to farmers and poultry companies.

Over the years, several of the growers told me, “Poultry farmers are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and we do things our own way.”

At the same time, our company sold hog feeding equipment and watering equipment to farmers.

Over those same years, several of those farmers told me, “Pork farmers are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and we do things our own way.”

A few years later, I worked for a software company that sold software to state governments.

The people I called on told me, “Government purchasing agents are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and we do things our own way.”

Over the last 12 years, I’ve written for startups, Fortune 500 companies, and every size of company in between. I’ve written for techies, marketers, fintech developers, small business owners, lawyers, and software companies, and you’ll never guess what they all — ALL! — have said to me:

“__________ are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and do things our own way.”

At no point did anyone ever say to me, “We’re just like everyone else and we’re damn stupid with our money.” If they had, that one would be the different one, the only one not like all the others.

“But every industry is different by its very nature!”

Well, of course, every industry is different, Financial technology is nothing like hog farming. Women’s skincare is nothing like cloud computing. And marketing software is nothing like construction equipment. I know, because I’ve written for all these industries.

(But I was successful in all of them, despite being a newbie at one point.)

Industry knowledge is important to a writer because it makes their job easier. But it does not make them better. I’ve known veteran industry writers who regularly produce some of the most mediocre, boring garbage, and I’ve seen people who just earned their creative writing MFAs writing write circles around the veterans.

I’ve also seen the reverse to be true.

Industry knowledge does not make the writer, writing skills do. The ability to use language to tap into a person’s emotion and compel them to buy? That’s the real skill.

You can teach industry knowledge. The writer can interview a subject matter expert and craft a compelling story in 10 minutes. But the industry expert can’t learn heart and style — at least not in a 10-minute conversation.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for a good copywriter, focus less on their industry expertise. All that means is they know the industry terminology, but anyone can figure that out with a quick Google search.

Instead, hire a copywriter who knows how to write so they can make your blog articles and webpages interesting, compelling, and fun to read. Hire fiction writers, poets, screenwriters, journalists, and storytellers. Get the people who know how to make boring things interesting and how to make complex ideas easy to understand.

If you’re focused on the length of time a person has spent in an industry, you’re looking at the wrong thing.

Because everyone’s industry is just like all the others, and your customers are just like everyone else’s. The good writer knows that, and they know that tapping into a buyer’s buying motivation is the key to success.

Photo credit: Voltamax (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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Do Content Marketers Need to Know Their Flesch-Kincaid Score?

Straightforward exposition entices additional positive behavior. (That’s terrible.)

Simple writing converts better. (Pretty good.)

Short words sell good. (Too much, too much! Pull back!)

Content marketers, if you want your sales copy to generate more leads, it needs to be simple. It has to be good, it has to be interesting, and most of all, it has to be simple.

I would also argue it needs to be interesting, but that’s for a different article. Plus, there’s no software that can really measure that, although Google’s Time On Site and bounce rate stats may be a step in that direction.

As Neil Patel wrote on the Content Marketing Institute,

When users don’t like your content, Google doesn’t either. It works like this. A user accesses your website and decides (in a few seconds) whether she likes it. If she doesn’t like it, she bounces. Google records this information – short visit, then departure – for future reference.

Another user does the same thing – quick visit; then bounce. Another user does the same thing. And another.

Google gets the idea. Your website isn’t satisfying users. They aren’t engaging with it.

Google decides that your website doesn’t need to be ranking as high, and you start to slip in the Search Engine Result Pages.

So if you want your content to be accessible, it needs to be easy to read. If it’s easier to read, people are more likely to stick around for more than a few seconds.

There are plenty of other factors to consider — page layout, use of sub-heads, use of white space — but the number one factor for a readable, accessible page is the simplicity of the language.

Content Marketers, Know Thy Flesch-Kincaid Score

If you want to know whether your writing is simple or not, you need to know your Flesh-Kincaid score. Specifically, your Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Formula.

This is the score that represents the readability of a piece of text at a U.S. grade level, so it’s easier for teachers and parents to know how hard or easy something is to read. It basically matches up to the grade reading level required to understand the text. If you get a Flesch-Kincaid score of 8, your reader needs to be at an 8th grade reading level to understand it.

I checked out a few different writing samples to compare their Flesch-Kincaid Grade Levels.

Most mainstream newspapers are written at a 6th grade reading level, USA today notwithstanding. Other USA Today stories I checked ran between 10th and 13th grade, thanks to complex and long sentence structures, not overly complex words. That suggests problems with editing, not word choice. And I’ve found that most business writing clocks in at a 7th and 8th grade reading level

It’s not that our readers are stupid, or only have an 8th grade reading level, it’s that people don’t want to put a lot of mental bandwidth into deciphering more complex and convoluted articles. They don’t want to slog through a complex, jargon-filled multi-syllabic narrative. They want to read something easy.

And if your content is easy to read, they’re going to read it. If it’s not, they won’t.

How to Measure Your Flesch-Kincaid Score

There are a few ways you can measure your Flesch-Kincaid score. Microsoft Word users have that functionality built right in, so it’s easy to find. (Check the Show readability statistics box in your Spelling and Grammar preferences.)

For Apple users, use the Hemingway app, which you can use to identify not only your grade level, but the number of adverbs, uses of passive voice, and sentences that are hard to read and very hard to read (like this one). You can use the Hemingway app on their website, but I bought the $19.99 version on the Apple store. (It’s available for Windows as well.)

The problem with the Hemingway app is that they don’t give you decimalized grade levels though. If you want that extra accuracy, you can use the Readability Test Tool by WebPageFX. That’s the tool I used to get the scores above. My other complaint about the Hemingway app is that it doesn’t ignore html text; the Readability Test Tool does.

Content marketers, if you want your readers to stick around and read your work, it needs to be easy. Try to keep it at a 7th grade reading level or lower. That means concise words, succinct sentences, and compressed paragraphs. (That’s terrible.)

Sorry, I mean short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs. (Ah, much better.)

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Five Lazy Words To Cut From Your Marketing Copy

Many marketers suck their readers into the bog of humdrum with over-used words and industry jargon, hoping no one will notice they’re just coasting on properly spelled words and grammatical sentences. It’s a sign of writing laziness to trot out the same old phrases and buzzwords, using them just one more time, in the hopes of getting out of yet another marketing copywriting jam.

These words aren’t even buzzwords anymore. They’ve had the buzz driven right out of them. They’re words that every good copywriter must stop using if they want to stand out from the rest of the crowd.

Needs

Needs is the marketing equivalent of “stuff.” It’s so overused, government agencies are going to start using it. That’s nearly as bad as when your mom joined Facebook.

  • Check Teacher’s Pet for all your back to school needs.
  • Steve’s Auto Parts has all your automotive repair needs.
  • Visit Cackling Larry’s for all your old-timey gold prospecting needs!

This is the cardinal sin of copywriting. Never, ever say “needs” in your marketing copy. If you have to, torpedo the entire paragraph and rewrite it. If you can’t think of another word, switch careers.

Solutions

“Solutions” fill “needs.”

Need I say more?

Storytelling

“Storytelling” took off soon after the phrase “content marketing” did. And as the content marketing industry has become populated by the creative writing set, the word has become overused, even if the method has not.

I won’t go into the problem of blog posts written by “storytellers” that look less like stories and more like school papers or technical manuals, except to say this: if you call yourself a storyteller, tell stories. That’s different from Articlewriting, Blogposting, and Instructionexplaining.

Content marketers, stop saying you’re doing storytelling. Not everything is a story. You’re a writer, so write things. That’s a timeless, all-encompassing word that’s not in danger of becoming trendy overused jargon.

You’re not a storyteller unless you go to festivals wearing a black turtleneck and tell stories in that funny poetry-reading voice.

Rich

Content-rich, visually-rich, keyword-rich. It used to be an effective word, but it’s been so overused, it’s eye-rolling-rich. We say it when we should just say “full of” or “better.” But I’m even starting to see it to mean “meets the barest definition of.” As in “this book is word-rich.”

Why not say heavy, appealing, replete, full, packed, stocked, gorged, or my personal favorite, chockablock.

If I can get anyone to use the phrase “keyword-chockablock,” I will have lived a complete life.

King

Then-Prince (now King) Willem Alexander of The Netherlands going for gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Content is king. SEO is king. Social media is king. Marketing copy is king.

The phrase “_____ is king” is as ubiquitous as those damn Keep Calm and blah blah something clever blah t-shirts. Someone’s going to say it, then thousands of people are going to repeat it, to be followed by many more thousands going, “nuh-uh, the thing I said was king is still king.”

Nothing is really king. It’s important, it’s crucial, it’s essential, it’s even critical. But it’s not “king.” The only King is Elvis. Also, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands.

And please, for the love of God, do not replace “is king” with mission-critical.

The world is filled — FILLED! — with overused jargony phrases that make me want to tear an Oxford English Dictionary in two. But these are the five I think we should do away with immediately. If we can start here, we can improve content marketing for everyone, making the world a bright and happy place.

(While we’re on the subject, I’m not real wild about “content” either.)

Bottom line: Your marketing copy will suck and fail to engage or excite people if you use these phrases. So just quit and take your marketing to the next level.

(I want to add one more phrase to the list now.

Photo credit: Itzok Alf Kurnik (Flickr, Creative Commons)

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An Open Letter To Young Writers Applying For Writing Jobs

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that young writers’ cover letters sound sterile and devoid of any emotion, hag-ridden with mediocrity, boredom, and apathy. If this is what you’re trying to show your potential employer, then I think you’re not going to work for anyone.

With apologies to Hunter S. Thompson (more on that in a minute), if you’re a young writer looking for writing jobs, you can’t write a regular cover letter to get an employer interested in you. (Ditto for experienced writers. You just ought to know better by now.).

You can’t follow the same formula your career services advisor gave you, or the advice you’ve read in other career articles. (See LifeHacker’s article on how not to write a bad cover letter.)

Your cover letter has to kick ass. It has to be moving. It has to be so amazing that the hiring manager leaps out of her chair, clutching your letter in her hand, shouting, “Eureka! I’ve found him!”

Think about it: the one thing you’re good at, the one thing you’ve trained for and worked toward over the last several years, and you already show you suck at it with your cover letter. How much confidence is that going to instill in anyone? As a writer, it’s your responsibility — nay, your duty — to knock this thing out of the park.

You can’t open with, “To Whom It May Concern: I am interested in applying for the junior copywriting position I saw on your website.” Of course you are. Why else would you write a letter with your résumé and press clippings?

Do what you learned in journalism or creative writing and make your opening lead as dramatic and attention grabbing as you can.

Try, as Hemingway once said, writing drunk, and editing sober. Be bold, be daring, be a little crazy. Inkslingers are not known for being completely stable, especially when showing off for other writers. And you’re sending your best work to other writers who will silently, but instantly, judge you for the quality of your cover letter. So show off.

A letter that a young Hunter S. Thompson wrote to the publisher of the Vancouver Sun asking for a job is still making the Internet rounds with people reveling in its audacity, wondering if they could pull something like that off.

Of course, at age 21 Thompson was, as the Gawker called, an arrogant little shit. But maybe there’s something to it.

You may not want to go insulting your potential new employer by calling his people dullards, bums, and hacks, at least not if you want to make friends there. But there’s something to be said for letting your voice shine through.

TO JACK SCOTT, VANCOUVER SUN

October 1, 1958 57 Perry Street New York City

Sir,

I got a hell of a kick reading the piece Time magazine did this week on The Sun. In addition to wishing you the best of luck, I’d also like to offer my services.

Since I haven’t seen a copy of the “new” Sun yet, I’ll have to make this a tentative offer. I stepped into a dung-hole the last time I took a job with a paper I didn’t know anything about (see enclosed clippings) and I’m not quite ready to go charging up another blind alley.

By the time you get this letter, I’ll have gotten hold of some of the recent issues of The Sun. Unless it looks totally worthless, I’ll let my offer stand. And don’t think that my arrogance is unintentional: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I started working for you.

I didn’t make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Marquis de Sade had suddenly found himself working for Billy Graham. The man despised me, of course, and I had nothing but contempt for him and everything he stood for. If you asked him, he’d tell you that I’m “not very likable, (that I) hate people, (that I) just want to be left alone, and (that I) feel too superior to mingle with the average person.” (That’s a direct quote from a memo he sent to the publisher.)

Nothing beats having good references.

Of course if you asked some of the other people I’ve worked for, you’d get a different set of answers.

If you’re interested enough to answer this letter, I’ll be glad to furnish you with a list of references — including the lad I work for now.

The enclosed clippings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It’s a year old, however, and I’ve changed a bit since it was written. I’ve taken some writing courses from Columbia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the newspaper business, and developed a healthy contempt for journalism as a profession.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.

Most of my experience has been in sports writing, but I can write everything from warmongering propaganda to learned book reviews.

I can work 25 hours a day if necessary, live on any reasonable salary, and don’t give a black damn for job security, office politics, or adverse public relations.

I would rather be on the dole than work for a paper I was ashamed of.

It’s a long way from here to British Columbia, but I think I’d enjoy the trip.

If you think you can use me, drop me a line.

If not, good luck anyway.

Sincerely, Hunter S. Thompson

Not surprisingly, Thompson didn’t get the job, but don’t let that stop you. You don’t have to be as over the top as Thompson was 45 years ago (and especially don’t be as over the top as he was 10 years ago), but try to incorporate some of his boldness in your next cover letter.

After all, the stuff you’ve been sending hasn’t been doing you any good, so what do you have to lose?

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