How English non-native speakers produce good copies for websites | Hacker News Reader

How English non-native speakers produce good copies for websites

5 pointskonsalexee5 comments

Hey there!

I was curious about one difficulty that I am facing when I design a new website either for a client or for my startup.

I find it hard to write good copy that will sound professional and catchy. As an English non-native speaker, I struggle to find the proper words and phrases to write a useful text for even my bullet points and the value proposition my startup is providing.

Have you ever faced something similar? If yes, how are you solving this? I would love to solve it myself.

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Keep it simple. Beckett was Irish and wrote in French to force himself to keep it simple and that won him Nobel Prize. You should do the same. Often you have Ideas about how you should write from your native language that will only serve to make you texts sound bad. Usually because you make things way to complicated. Use simple words, don’t use long enumerations (like this), keep sentences short, if you can leave out the adverbs and use an active voice. That should help you a lot. Then just read and reread the text and change anything in the text that stops you from reading. Bad word choices, unclear meanings and so on. Even if you don’t have native speakers around to proofread, everybody should have problems to understand badly written text. Repeat once or twice and your text should not suck.

Thank you for the input I will practice!

Being honest is an aspect of professionalism. There's nothing wrong with telling people that English is not your native tongue. Clients know anyway.

Clients may know but the thing is that the language we are using at our startups affect our conversions for example. A good copy may convert way more users!

In the case of a startup, hire someone to write the copy if the copy is a major impediment to growth. A startup cannot afford to wait around while a person learns two hard skills: writing good copy and English. Good luck.

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