I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is:

Summer 2012.

And now you’re thinking:

“Alright, so that was when you got your first full-time writing job – good for you. Are you going to do some self-indulgent waffling about your past now, or just get on with it and give me some writing tips?”

Your wish is my command. In no particular order, here are…

25 golden rules for sounding professional and commanding attention through the power of the written word in 2025

1. Remember that no one cares about you. They only care about what you can do for them. Most people and businesses either don’t know this or ignore it completely, and rabbit on about nothing but themselves. Do the opposite, and you’ll stand out.
2. Make your sentences shorter. Aim for 25 words or fewer. You can do it, I promise.
3. Make your paragraphs shorter. The “Enter” key is your friend. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with one-sentence paragraphs.
4. Choose the active voice more than the passive voice. A quick way to spot the latter is to search for the word “by”. “My homework was eaten by the dog” is passive, whereas “The dog ate my homework” is active – and punchier.
5. Stop thinking big words make you sound clever… or that your clever readers want big words. One study (Oppenheimer, 2005) found that using needlessly complex language can lower people’s confidence in you. Another study (Trudeau, 2012) showed highly educated readers, such as those with doctorates and master’s degrees, actually preferred plain language more than people with lower levels of education.
6. Use hyphens and dashes properly. Hyphens are for joining words together, like “dog-friendly hotel.” Dashes are to add emphasis – and break up sentences.
7. Pay more attention to rhythm. This can be as simple as writing a short sentence. Then a shorter one. And then one that’s longer than the first two combined, adding variety and interest to your writing and keeping the reader hooked.
8. “Don’t address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they’re alone. Pretend you’re writing each of them a letter… one human being to another, second person singular.” That’s a quote by advertising legend David Ogilvy, and the one piece of writing advice I refer back to more than any other.
9. Accurately describe the actions you want people to take. For example, “Stay tuned for more” only works for broadcast media like TV or radio. You don’t tune in to articles and PDFs.
10. Exploit the curiosity gap in your headlines, subject lines, and openers. Write them in a way that holds something back, and makes readers feel like they need to know what that something is. People love to hate clickbait, but it’s effective for a reason. And it’s only “bait” if it doesn’t deliver on what’s promised. You won’t make that mistake.
11. Write out initialisms in full more often than not. You probably don’t need to tell your readers that “BBC” stands for “British Broadcasting Corporation”. But non-financial planners don’t know what a SIPP or a VCT is. (For the benefit of non-financial planner readers: self-invested personal pension, and Venture Capital Trust.)
12. Use subheadings more. Write them in a way that tells people what your post, article, or webpage is about without them even reading the main/body text.
13. Use bullet points more. They’re easy for people to read at a glance, and useful for breaking up long sentences with multiple connected points. (And be consistent. If one bullet starts with a noun, all should. If one bullet is a full sentence, don’t make the next one a fragment.)
14. WRITE. HOW. PEOPLE. SPEAK. The simplest way to do this is to use contractions. I grew up on a council estate in a family of steelworkers. I also, in my journalist days, interviewed the privately educated co-founders of the luxury British brands consortium Walpole. Take it from me that, regardless of background, everyone says “I’ll”, not “I will”; “Here’s” instead of “Here is”; and “Don’t” rather than “Do not”.
15. Find a way to work “free” or “new” into your writing. They’re the two most powerful words in the English language.
16. Be interested in science, specifically behavioural science. Reading Dr Robert Cialdini’s research into the so-called science of persuasion completely changed how I approach writing.
17. Swap complex words and phrases for simple ones. “In order to” means the same as “to”. “Help” sounds nicer than “assist”. The plainlanguage.gov website has a full list.
18. Look out for opportunities to remove the word “that” from your writing. Take this sentence, for example: “Let her know that you love her and that she means the world to you.” You can make it more succinct without altering the meaning like this: “Let her know you love her and she means the world to you”.
19. Consider writing calls to action in the first person. In a study by Unbounce, switching “Start your free trial” to “Start my free trial” resulted in a 90% increase in clicks.
20. Change "straight quotation marks" to “smart quotation marks”. They’re more legible and match other characters better. Most importantly, changing them is a subtle signal to your reader that you care about your writing, so they should pay attention.
21. Understand that the goal of your first line of text is to get people to read the second line. And the goal of the second line is to get people to read the third line. Waiting for them at the end is the bit where you ask for their money or their time – but they need to stay interested long enough to get there.
22. Get better at writing hyperlinks. Since they’ll appear blue or some other colour that contrasts with the rest of the text, your reader’s eye will be drawn to them first. That means they need to make sense out of context. So not “Visit our website here for more information”, but “Visit our website here for more information”.
23. Structure your writing with formulas and frameworks. They force you to think about your reader’s situation and how your product or service can help, and get that message across logically and powerfully. Problem-Agitation-Solution is the one I use most frequently.
24. Think long and hard about whether (and why) you want to use title case. Capitalising Each Word Like This can look shouty and outdated compared to sentence case (capitalising only the first word plus any proper nouns).
25. Know that the message is more important than the medium. There’ll always be some new social media platform or tech innovation promising to change how we communicate. But the fundamentals of human behaviour haven’t changed since the Stone Age. If you can learn how to appeal to people’s fears and desires with words, it doesn’t matter where or how they see those words. The message – and how well it’s expressed – is the only thing that counts.

The best writing tip of them all: let a professional do it for you

Following any of the guidelines above will improve your writing, but it’ll require a little time and thought on your part. So, what if you just want to stay focused on what you’re already good and successful at instead?

Shameless plug incoming…

Team Yardstick is bursting at the seams with exceptional writers. Hire us (at competitive rates), and we’ll make your website, newsletters, social media posts, and more sound better and turn more prospects into clients. Arrange a no-obligation chat about what we can do for you by emailing hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or calling 0115 8965 300.