Read Me

A meme, Dawkins wrote, is much like its biological cousin the gene. Like a gene, a meme is a selfreplicating unit of information. However, memes don’t replicate biologically; instead they’re passed around in the form of ideas. Dawkins described memes as the ‘basic unit of cultural transmission’. He notes: ‘Just as genes propagate themselves by movi

escaped your notice there’s plenty of poor writing

Plenty of real-world copywriting isn’t writing at all, it’s editing and reworking existing text. To get you comfortable in this role we want you to redraft the following chunk of copy – taken from a fictional airline print ad – in one of the structures we suggested earlier: •Issues>implications>actions •Past>present>future •Context>a

If you want to be a good writer you need to write every day.

The Planning stage is where you clarify the problem your readers are facing and the solution your product/ service/brand is offering.

Finally, a really useful technique for the Writing stage is to create a ‘core story’. This is just a fancy phrase for a document that contains everything important about your subject, written up under appropriate headings to a good (but not finished) standard. It’s a content pool that will itself never see the light of day – it’s almost certainly t

Past>present>future Explain how something came to be, what the current situation looks like and where it could go next.

If we had to summarize Read Me in one sentence it would be this: Write like you speak, but speak well.

Issues>implications>actions Ideal for short documents. You tee up the issues, explain their implications and suggest some appropriate action.

Context>analysis>conclusion>actions This slightly more detailed structure works well for longer pieces. An alternative version that’s particularly useful for anything report-like is Issue>background>current situation> conclusion>suggestions.