In a fast moving world like ours, the Internet and other technological inventions have improved world-wide communication and have led to an abundance of information, but also to a copious amount of advertisements. Therefore, it has become increasingly difficult for companies and persons of interest to stand out from the crowd with their products and services. Consequently, advertising has changed over the years and made copywriting essential for the success of promoting a product or service to the potential customers. Advertising is everywhere. You find advertisements in magazines, on television, on the Internet, on billboards, on the radio or in your mailbox. It comes in form of posters, short films, pop-ups, emails and brochures. People look at these advertisements differently. While some might see them as useful information, others view them as annoying and superfluous or simply as a manipulation of the consumer. However, the success of a good advertising campaign is undisputed. What causes the customer to buy the advertised product? Good and strategic copywriting plays a vital role in consumers’ choices. In order to design successful copy, many aspects have to be considered. The image, the choice of words, grammar and the style of lettering have to differ from other ads to be noticed at all. These aspects affect the reader’s decision to read or not to read the body copy. If the writing is neither catchy, nor dramaturgy is built up, the reader will not take a closer look at the whole ad, let alone buy the product. The use of advertising language is an old practice. In ancient times market criers walked through the streets and tried to get attention towards the sale of their products (Deign, 2003). Real advertisements, as we know them today, appeared in the seventeenth century, for products like coffee and chocolate (Deign, 2003). In the early twentieth century, ad agencies appeared. They started producing commercial messages, including copy and art works. In the fifties, television commercials appeared (Deign, 2003). Today, a large part of advertising moved to the World Wide Web.weiterlesen