Lead Creation Copywriting House Style:

• All the copy we write should have a ‘call to action’ – meaning, a section or
many sections that clearly and convincingly explain what we want the
reader to do and why they should
• Every document will have a headline and a subhead. Some documents will
have a ‘prehead’ as well which goes above the headline in a smaller font
size
• Unless otherwise specified use Calibri, 12 point font for body text
• Use multiple spacing at 1.2 for documents
• Paragraphs should not be indented with the tab key
• Body paragraphs should be justified
• Australian/British spelling is used and not U.S. spelling – eg. organisation not
organization – this must remain consistent throughout a document
• Small numbers in copy are usually spelled out eg. Seven not 7
• Big numbers, which might be used if quoting statistics for example, are not
spelled out eg. “50 000 employers said…”
• If you’re going to use an ellipsis in text, it is only three dots eg. ‘So…’
• Don’t overuse ellipsis or exclamation marks in your text – they are annoying
to readers.
• We use an em dash (—) with no spaces either side as standard, not an en
dash (–). Em dash is done by pressing the - button twice and then pressing
enter. Be careful because Microsoft Word will sometimes automatically
change them
• You can use ‘And’ or ‘But’ or ‘So’ or ‘Because’ at the beginning of a
sentence in sales copy because it is closer to the way people talk and
therefore easier to read – however, if you’re writing something formal it’s
better to avoid doing this (particularly in documents for professional
readers)
• Prices are written in numbers eg. $34
• Be careful with: Your and you’re; its and it’s; their, there, they’re; to, too,
two
• Bold/underline/italicise words or phrases that are important every now and
then
• You can add shading behind a paragraph of text by clicking format, borders
and shading, and going into the shading menu
• You can use:
breakouts
as little subheadings to break up your text as well, which makes it easier to
read. These breakouts should be interesting phrases or something that

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 needs to be drawn to people’s attention. If these were read on their own
they should also make people curious to read on
• The reason why we use bold/underlining/italics/bullets/lists/breakouts etc is
to create a second readership path through the document. So if people only
looked at the stuff we emphasised, they should still be able to get the gist of
what we want them to know – the main points should still be clear and they
should still know what we want them to do (eg. buy this) at the end
• Double quotation marks are used for direct quotes: “He’s the smartest man
alive”
• Single quotation marks are used for ‘questionable’ or colloquial
words/phrases
• If you don’t know whether the punctuation goes inside or outside quotation
marks, ask
• If you’re not sure whether two words are actually one word or not, Google it
• If you hyphenate a word once in a document, every other time you use that
word it needs to be hyphenated
• You only need to press the Enter key once to start a new paragraph, not
twice
• Do not press the space bar twice at the end of a sentence. Once only
• Be careful when you underline so that this doesn’t happen – eg the line
extends outside the sentence to underline nothing.
• If you’re not sure on spelling, grammar, punctuation etc Google it or ask
• If you need headlines, refer to the Dan Kennedy/Ted Nicholas Notes
• For any other questions you might have, feel free to ask Melanie or Toby 

General Info:

• All copy, except White Papers, must have the three meta-tags written when
you submit work. These are required for SEO purposes. They will be
explained in more detail later
• Don’t save multiple versions of the same document – save over your old file
so there is only one version. If you need to keep the old version for
something, put the word OLD in front of the filename
• Put a date after your document name when saving – the formatting of the
date should look like this: 010609 (& this would mean the first of June 2009)
• Whenever someone gives you work for the online environment, you must
know the keywords which are relevant to that client. If you don’t know
where to find these/what they are, ask Lincoln
• All files must be saved on the LC drive (formerly called the S drive)

S:\Admin & HR\Lead Creation Training Plans\Training Material for New

Copywriters/opt/scribd/conversion/tmp/scratch2532/30999533.doc