eBay Copywriting Short Course: Step Six - Conversational Tone

A good basic writing approach includes conversational tone.

If you write like you speak, you´re way ahead of the game. Many of us, however, were cowed by tweed-clad English teachers and encouraged to write "fancy." We were taught that big words convey a wide array of nuance and feeling, that a rich vocabulary is one of the keys to the inner circles of prep school elitism, that each sentence must be agonized over.

In fact, the opposite is true. Numerous studies show that short words and sentences (in speech and writing) leave an impression of intelligence on the recipient of the ideas.

One way to achieve a simple, conversational tone is to pretend that you´re writing a personal note or an e-mail to a friend about a cool product you´ve found. The method produces familiar, respectful, honest, and exaggeration- free results. Here´s a good example:

This bike was received as a trade-in at our shop. Even though it is a "99, it probably has less than 100 miles on it and was just an expensive garage ornament. In short, this bike is MINT!! This bike is in awesome shape both mechanically and cosmetically.

The Easton Elite 7005 Aluminum main frame is still shining beautifully with no major scratches. There is the odd small nick on it from rare use but other than that it is just like new. There isn´t even any noticeable cable rub anywhere to be seen. However, the "Spice" decals on the top tube have partly peeled off (note: not scraped). Rocky Mountain decals have always been problematic, though, regardless of model or year.

Tip: Craft your item descriptions as if you´re speaking directly to the person who is viewing your item listing and not as if you are addressing the eBay community at large.