Why a copywriter should write in an HTML editor

The article can be written in any text editor or on paper. A good article can only be written in a text editor in which the function of visual formatting of the text is disabled or does not exist.

I have to resort to the services of freelancers in my work - my company provides naming services, conducts and plans PR and marketing campaigns - it does not matter. It is important that I read and edit many texts every day. At the same time, I don’t even have to start reading the text to understand its quality - just look at it.

If the text contains words in bold (except for the title), italics, color or size of a larger size, then such a text can be sent for revision without even reading. It will definitely have logical errors, emotional poverty and a poor syllable.

I had to write my first article in a newspaper on a Brother electronic typewriter. She had a black-and-white LCD screen, a typo correction function (within the line) and two “daisies”: with Russian and English layouts (in order to switch to another language, it was necessary to change the “daisy”). After I got a computer and for over a year I wrote articles in the text editor MS Word 5.5 for DOS.

After ten years of work as a journalist and editor, I came up with a simple rule - formatting the text replaces its content. This is cheating. This is a way to express emotion without words. This is a great skill for the designer and a bad habit of a copywriter.

How to identify a good copywriter the first time:

• He sends the text in pdf or txt format. Each of these formats has its own advantages, it is a matter of preference.
• There is a headline in his material. Paragraph formatting supports the logical structure of the text. The absence of paragraphs, uneven paragraphs - all these are signals of the broken presentation logic. Solid text is not worth reading.
• The material does not have visual formatting. It is desirable that it be absent completely, except for the design of the title.
• The material does not contain or use minimally emotional punctuation marks - exclamation and question marks, dots and semicolons.

Writing text that meets the criteria listed in MS Word is difficult. The notebook is too ascetic.

An ideal alternative is an HTML editor. There are many, there are paid and free versions. You can use snippets for repeating designs; (address data, signature, administrative markup). For editing, it is convenient to use line numbering; some editors allow you to count the number of characters and words.

If you have to make a choice between several copywriters (we assume that the quality of the texts is approximately the same), ask, among other things, in which programs they work.