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  Sara Rosinsky • Shiny Red Copy

sara's Shiny red blog

I can’t stand “content.”

6/25/2021

5 Comments

 
Picture
Gravel. Goose down. Sawdust. Hay. These are just a few of the generic commodities you could stuff into a pillowcase, if you were so inclined. Any of it would become the pillowcase’s content.

When someone asks for “content” for a website or social media post, they’re essentially saying, “I don’t care what you put in there, just fill it up.” The gist is, “I need this empty space to stop being empty.”

Whoever came up with the term content sure didn’t appreciate the power of language. They didn’t recognize its ability to grab attention, stoke emotions, change minds, and incite action. The coiner of content wasn’t a writer—and probably not much of a reader. They surely won’t read this particular, erm…“content,” so I could probably take this opportunity to call them a troglodyte or doo-doo head.

But I’d never.
​
Now, as a copywriter, I should point out that originally, the term “copy” wasn’t all that great, either. The word hearkens back to the poor hunched, eye-strained scribes who spent their days and candlelit nights meticulously copying documents and books by hand. They had to write a copious amount of text. The root of both copy and copious is the Latin word copia, meaning abundance. It’s the same copia we see in our Thanksgiving-centric cornucopia—“horn of plenty.” (See below.)
Picture
But copywriters don’t copy. (The ethical ones don’t, anyway.) We write the words that get reproduced by printing presses or computer monitors. We create original text that’s worthy of wide distribution.

What we don’t write—or certainly shouldn’t—is mere fluff and filler. That would be no better than the common placeholder text “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet….” (That wording is called “Greek,” but it isn’t Greek. It’s some slightly mangled Latin from a treatise published by Cicero in 45 BC.)

Whether copywriters are writing ads or emails, posters or packaging, blogs or scripts or tweets, our words are meant to have impact. The sentences we so carefully craft are not inert stuffing; they accomplish goals. They tell stories. Gain interest. Build trust. Make sales.

Good writing does not, as the name content implies, merely fill a void.

Almost any name would have been better than content. Fuel, maybe. Magic, or gold. Honestly, I’d settle for the simple term that evokes all of that power and value to me: just words.

But we could have come up with something else. Splendor? Sparkle? Voltage? Vim? How about lexi, which sounds like sexy but is rooted in the Greek lexikos, “pertaining to words”?

No matter what, whoever came up with content should have hired a writer.
​
What would you have called “content,” given the chance?
5 Comments
Stjepan link
7/31/2021 09:03:31 am

I am not content with "content" either.

As you say, there are many ways to "fill a void" and, well, a lot of it is garbage. Or hot air.

I think the problem is not in the word itself, but in how it began to be perceived with the dawn of social media.

The quality of the content is key here and, in my opinion, differentiates the type of content which is simply a placeholder from something that's actually worth reading.

In this day and age, people hardly read at all, let alone have the patience to write. Even videos have to be under 5 minutes or they're considered too long.

Everybody is in a hurry to get nowhere fast.

One of the main reasons why I quit social media (I'll assume I was sorely missed at first - completely forgotten by now, I hope) is that I realized that while I really tried, most of the time, to come up with intelligent and witty or, at least, funny comments - they'd just end up in the pile of other space-fillers where the purpose was none other than to bump the post up to the top of the feed.

I thought to myself: "Why am I even bothering to synthesize an intelligent reply when 99% of people won't read it at all and will just like my post just to bump themselves up?"

I might as well had just taken a passage out of the "Lorem ipsum"!

Or, I might start writing for my own pleasure because that's why I'm doing it anyway. Autistic? Definitely! Onanistic? Maybe! Narcissistic? Never!

Therefore, I would say that it is perhaps one-sided to approach the quality of content solely from the perspective of the writer - you have to think about who your reader base is too.

My average blog post is around 10 A4 pages long. Most people won't read that, because, by today's standards, it's too long.

However, since I quit social media, I'm happily writing my blog (with comments disabled) and while I'm still not being read - at least I'm not running water to someone else's popularity mill.

Since October last year, I have written more than 500 pages of "content" and I assure you that as much as it isn't popular or trending and it doesn't "sell" - it was not written to fill a void - it was written to create substance.

There is a difference. Think of the Latin "substare" - to stand firm.

Think of a sculptor and think of a concrete mixer - they both work with similar materals (words) - but one will be art (for the artist, at least, fame is not a measure of a true artist's success), and other will fill a pothole in the pavemenet.

Substance, perhaps that is the word you are looking for.

Reply
Sara Rosinsky link
7/31/2021 10:38:46 am

Stjepan! Good to hear from you. You are correct on all counts, and I am ashamed because I'm so bad about reading your excellent blogs. 😔

Reply
Stjepan link
7/31/2021 08:13:21 pm

That's okay, Sara. I didn't write what I wrote to implicitly try to propel your guilt or prompt an apology.

Like I said to you once before - I write faster and more than most people can manage to read.

It sounds counterintuitive, it sounds like I'm saying that I walk faster than most people run, but it's true.

I find it interesting that the "duty" of writing, such as the one I have at work where a certain number of "technical reports" is a yearly requirement from all scientists, is considered worse than being assigned "freezer duty".

Freezer duty, by the way, is when you're on call if the - 80°C freezers break down for any reason. They prefer to do so on Saturdays, in the "wee hours of the night", as they say.

I love writing, regardless whether it's blogs, novels, poems, or technical writing - reports, articles, scientific publications,you name it.

Hell, I even dabbled in marketing material and sales pitches in my previous job.

And I do write for myself, I've been doing it since I was a teenager. It helps me organize my thoughts - especially in poetic form which is relatively restrictive in terms of length and style.

It also helps me literally (that's an inadvertent pun, I suppose) materialize my thoughts and feelings into letters on paper, and then I can say - there it is - I've said it and I have it black on white - now I can move on to the next idea.

And yeah, sometimes it's about dealing with something, so it ends up being therapeutic, and sometimes it's about crystallizing an idea, so you can move on to the next one.

It's a cathartic effect that words cannot describe directly - but they can invoke it just by the virtue of being written.

It's rather paradoxical, really.

Going back to your points about "content" - I think that in this modern age - it's necessary to remember what the purpose of this content is.

Why bother to write more than a space-filler when the ultimate purpose is click-bait?

When I had to write marketing material - it was of utmost importance to get the message through in the quickest, clearest and shortest way. That's the business equivalent of one-liner jokes, which I never really appreciated. But that's how it works - because that's the purpose of such writing.

Just the same as the purpose of space-fillers is to garner "reactions".

I like to write stories. I like to stretch one sentence into a five-line paragraph.

And I said it before: I write what I enjoy writing about, not necessarily what other people like reading about. There's a clear difference in motivation.

However, when I tell people that I've published 5 books: 9 out of 10 will ask me - how many did you sell?
This, in a nutshell, is what writings boils down to in the heads of most people today.

If you can't sell it, for money or attention, or both - it's not worth doing - that's the world we live in today. Can you then really expect more from "content" than what it is?

It happens, from time to time, that other people truly enjoy what I've written, and it's a very rewarding experience, of course, but I always do my best not to allow such experiences to influence my writing too much.

Of course, I am enjoying a luxury of not having to write for a living. If I had to do that - my approach to writing would surely change - just as surely as my creativity would die.

Joe link
12/11/2021 06:56:10 pm

I would called content simply words of opinion. When we read article or blogs more often than not we are just getting someone's opinion. In some cases it's not even the blog owners opinion it's the opinion of someone else being copied or forward to there site. In today's world we are getting a consistent stream of facts just a lot of opinions.

Reply
Sara Rosinsky link
12/11/2021 07:38:36 pm

Sometimes opinions, sometimes facts, sometimes both.

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