Q: PB Note: I was recently steered to a reader’s site and her writing business used a word that looked like a misspelled version an every day word. I pointed it out, to which she replied that the word wasn’t in fact misspelled, but was a variant of the word. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’d never heard of the variant, and she had nothing on the home page explaining that it indeed was a variant. My reply follows…
A: Then you need to spell THAT out. I had the same conversation with a writer whom I was mentoring recently. His web site had a theme, which was very esoteric and at the end of one page, he had this very cryptic saying. I asked him what it was all about and he explained that it was part of a larger theme. I said that given that most people won’t be familiar with the theme at all, it’s entirely wasted there, and all it’ll end up doing is confusing people – NOT the state you want your prospective buyers to be in.
Same with your site. I didn’t know about that variant; it IS an obscure reference, and unless you spell it out, the overwhelming majority of people WON’T get it, and it WILL be perceived negatively (misspelled word on a professional writer’s site). Write for your audience, NOT for you. And explaining it not only turns it into an attention-getter, but the definition of it (in her case) gives you a good hook for your services as well.