I think that three of the best principles of copy writing are …
Brevity
There is hardly a single wasted word in them. Brevity in our business is a precious jewel. About sixty years ago two men spoke at Gettysburg; one man spoke for two hours. I suppose there is not any one who could quote a single word of that oration. The other man spoke about three hundred words, and that address has become a part of the school training of almost every child. There have been thousands of prayers in the world, but the only one a great many people ever learned is sixty-seven words long. There have been many poems written, but probably the greatest poem, the one that has impressed the largest number of people, the Twenty-third Psalm, is only one hundred and seventeen words long. So the parables were short and human and that is why they have lived.
Simplicity
In the second place, they were simple. Consider their phraseology for a minute. A certain man had two sons; A man built his house upon the sand; A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho; etc. No three-syllable words; practically all one-syllable words. Tom Paine once said that no religion could be true if it had anything in it that would offend the sensibilities of a little child. I think it might be said, no advertisement is great that has anything that cant be understood by a child of intelligence. Certainly all the great things in life are one-syllable thingschild, home, wife, fear, faith, love, God. The greater the thought we have to express, the more likely we are to find simple words.
Sincerity
The third thing about the parablesthose great human interest advertisementsis, of course, their genuineness. Emerson said, What you are speaks so loudly that people cant hear what you say. Of course, one of the greatest principles of effective writing is to believe yourself what you are trying to make others believe. Somebody asked me in that same course I was giving at the University, What do you think is the first requirement for success in advertising, I said, Good health. That is nothing to laugh about. I cant conceive how a dyspeptic could write good mince-meat copy or a man with rheumatism could write about the joy of riding over mountain roads in an automobile. You have to have good human equipment to enjoy the things you are trying to sell or you cant make other people enjoy them. I believe the public has a sixth sense of detecting insincerity, and we run a tremendous risk if we try to make other people believe in something we dont believe in. Somehow our sin will find us out.