The Tribe of Adminsa home for wayward admins

What is website or copy scrubbing? It’s cleaning up the embarrassing errors that shoot right by us in our enthusiasm for today’s post. It’s eliminating that malaprop we picked up from Aunt Tilly and the eggcorn from Uncle Euclid. It’s saving us from ourselves. It’s putting deodorant on our copy before it goes out on a date.

Why does it matter? Here are some live-from-the-web examples:

How did i get it free you’re thinking? Its simple all you have to do is complete 1 offer which is as little as…

The writer clearly wants his copy to appear informal. Instead, s/he just looks ignorant. How can you convince people that you’re the authority if they think you’re ignorant? Your style can still be informal; look how much better this is with just a couple of minor changes:

Revised:

How did I get it for free, you’re wondering? It’s simple! All you have to do is complete 1 offer for as little as…

• The “i” is changed to upper case. If you really feel you need to do this to make it look like a text message, fine. But unless all of your prose is text style, you’re just going to look sloppy. Sit up straight!
• “For free” replaces “free.” “Get it free” implies that you yanked your leg out of the mantrap set by your girlfriend’s kinfolk.
• A comma is inserted after “free” because it needs to be there. Period.
• I cheated. I changed “thinking” to “wondering” because it’s better. You can change it back if you must. I say, if it has a question mark in it, you’re wondering.
• “Its” is the possessive of “it.” “It’s” is the contraction for “it is.”
• An exclamation point now separates a run-on sentence into two clear sentences, with the added advantage of more opportunity for that favorite of all ads – exclamations.
• Technically, I should have changed “1″ to “one.” You spell out numbers at least through nine, but this is copywriting, not prose. The author wants that digit to show, so I’d let it stand and ask him if it could be a word in bold instead…and shut up if he refused. He’s the writer, I’m the washer.
• “Which is as little as” is awkward structure. You could say, “which you can buy for as little as” or cut the whole thing short by substituting “for.”

It’s still informal and idiomatic without teetering into that other idio-word we don’t want to use.

Want a sample of what website scrubbing can do for you? Click this link now.

English is an incredibly difficult language; even native speakers struggle with it. I’m awed by people who can create a website in a second language – especially English! Still, they need a little help:

Not only producing an incredible sound to hear but also the console produce a powerful graphics beside that it has a beautiful shape.

I’d rather it said something like, “The console not only produces incredible sound, but powerful graphics, and to top it off, it has a beautiful shape,” but keeping true to author’s words, it should say:

Not only does it produce an incredible sound,  but the console also produces powerful graphics; besides that, it has a beautiful shape.

• The “ing” ending (present participle) is over- and mis-used by ESL speakers. Although its first use in the sentence above is not the classic misuse of the present tense, it is passive and awkward.
• “To hear” is redundant.
• A comma is added after “sound” to separate the thoughts, just as you would pause slightly when speaking. It should precede “but” when “but” is joining two clauses (thoughts, more or less) that could each be a complete sentence. It’s also unnecessary here, but I’ve left it rather than enter the fray of semi-colons and new sentences.
• “Also” is moved to in front of the verb (“produces”).
• “Produce” is changed to “produces,” which is the correct tense.
• A semi-colon precedes the next bit, called an “independent clause” because it could, if it wanted to, stand alone as a complete sentence. That’s what semi-colons are for.
• “Beside” is changed to “besides.” They have two different meanings. “Beside” means “next to.” “Besides” means “in addition to, also.” When added to “that” (besides that) it means “also,” which we’re not using again because one “also” is quite enough.
• The “a” is gone from “a powerful graphics” because “a” is singular and “graphics” is plural. The writer might have said “a powerful graphics card , but since s/he didn’t, that “a” is outta there.

Small changes – big result!

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Here’s another:

Many sites offer big bucks for this, but don’t be certain on it.

You can be certain of it, or you can count on it, but you can’t be “certain on it.”

Revision:

Many sites offer big bucks for this, but don’t count on it.

I’m still not altogether certain what the author is saying in the example above, but I think s/he means to say “many sites promise you big bucks, but don’t count on getting them.” I doubt the sites actually “offer” you big bucks – more likely they hold out the possibility of big bucks down the line…but I could be wrong.

Last up to the skewer:

Have we got to do trial and error ways?

This is just misunderstanding of English idiom. We could say:

Do we have to do this by trial and error?

or

Do we have to do this the hard way? But that might lead us down the wrong path.

And that’s what website scrub is.

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