High-risk words to stay away from.

If a word is hard to pronounce, people will assume that whatever it represents is risky.

This comes from the results of a recent study published in Psychological Science. The subjects looked at  two made-up names for food additives and had to decide which would be more harmful. Another experiment did the same thing with roller coaster names, asking which ride would be more exciting and more likely to make people sick. It didn’t matter whether the risk was something desirable (a more exciting roller coaster) or undesirable (something harmful in your food) — hard-to-pronounce words = risky.

Definitely something to keep in mind when you’re naming a product or buying a domain name! It also means you should check out all the copy on your site and try to replace any hard-to-pronounce words with more familiar ones. Use the common names for things. If you absolutely have to use a word that’s hard to pronounce, say what it rhymes with, or give the pronunciation (pro-nunce-ee-AY-shun). It’s also a good idea to break it down and say what each part of the word means so readers will get familiar with it. Two points here:

1. People view whatever is familiar as less risky and more comfortable.
2. People make decisions even when they have no information to base them on, so they’ll decide based on things like the “comfort factor.”

Clicking through to a website, deciding to stay or go, reading the copy, and buying the product involves a whole cascade of decisions. So everything about your copy has to make visitors feel comfortable.

That is, unless you’re selling roller coasters. (Click here for a good article on the study.)

Here are a few more rules for good copy:

• Short words beat long words
• Short sentences beat long sentences
• Short paragraphs beat long paragraphs
• BUT mix it all up a bit
• Verbs beat adjectives
• Active voice (I did something) beats passive voice (something was done by me)