Please Stop Doing This to Your Copy

Copy today is asked to do too much.

It’s supposed to be engaging and 100% accurate. Concise and thorough. Play nice with design and stand on its own. It has to inspire, clarify, persuade, reassure, and do all the things, sometimes all in a single headline.

That’s too much weight for one line of text. And when you pile on those demands, copy cracks. It gets long. It gets vanilla. It loses confidence.

Readers can feel it.

Because overloaded copy doesn’t sound confident. It hedges, over-explains, or tries to cover too many angles at once. It’s not lazy writing. It’s writing that’s been asked to carry impossible weight.

Copy can’t do everything

Copy often ends up carrying more than it should. Teams try to pack the whole story into one headline, one paragraph, one tagline. And when that happens, the message starts to bend under the weight.

• Headlines stretch to summarize the entire brand.
• Body copy buries readers in context instead of giving them clarity.
• Voice gets so cautious that it sounds unsure of itself.

When copy tries to be everything, it ends up saying very little.

Even great strategies can’t live inside a single headline. Copy has a job, but it doesn’t have every job. That’s why we use design, structure, sequencing, and storytelling across touchpoints. Copy can’t carry the relationship by itself.

When copy cracks under pressure

This doesn’t happen because of bad writing. Sometimes it happens because of the best writing—polished, careful, nuanced. But then the “what-ifs” start stacking:

• What about this specific audience?
• What if someone interprets it this way?
• Can we add a qualifier so it’s 100% accurate in every case?

Each request is valid. Each one comes from people who care. But the copy stretches to cover all of them. Four words become six, six become nine, nine become thirteen. Now, the headline is no longer confident. It’s cautious.

It might over-explain for the layperson, but still not feel precise enough for the expert. It might lean on jargon because plain language feels too exposed. It might try to say everything—and end up saying nothing.

And that’s the real risk. Not that copy is careless, but that it’s under too much pressure.

Overworked copy says: I’ll try to cover it all.

Confident copy says: here’s what matters right now.

Give your copy one job at a time

The fix isn’t more polish. It’s less pressure.

Copy can and should do multiple jobs across a system. But not all at once. A headline doesn’t need to summarize the entire brand. A CTA doesn’t need to carry the whole strategy on its back.

Think of it this way: multitasking copy is like trying to read Shakespeare while watching Game of Thrones. You won’t get the best of either.

Modern copy works because it’s sharper, faster, clearer—and because it knows its place in the system.

• One job per moment. Copy doesn’t need to carry the whole relationship. Give it one clear job, then let the next piece do its job.
• Lead with the point. The more you pile on, the less likely anyone is to notice the part that actually mattered.
• Plain language earns trust. Confidence isn’t about saying more—it’s about saying it clearly.
• Stop making copy play therapist. Structure, UX, and visuals exist to support the story. Copy doesn’t have to fix everything alone.

Confident copy isn’t multitasking. It’s focused. It does one job well, then passes the baton. Line by line, it works because it has the space to land. Together, the system tells the whole story.

How to tell if you’re smothering your copy

Think of this as the gut-check. A quick way to spot if your copy is carrying too much weight, hedging, or trying to do everything at once.

1. The One-Job Test → Look at your headline. Write down everything it’s trying to say. Cross out all but the most essential job.
2. The 5-Second Test → Show it to someone outside your team. Can they explain the point back to you in five seconds?
3. The Confidence Test → Read it out loud. Does it sound like a human who knows what they’re saying or a committee trying not to be wrong?
4. The Dependency Check → Ask: are we relying on copy to solve what design, structure, or sequencing should? If yes, rebalance the load.

Let copy breathe a little

Copy isn’t therapy. It can’t hold the whole relationship together. But when you take the pressure off—when you let it do its one job well—it becomes sharper, clearer, and more confident.

The best copy doesn’t beg to be liked. It doesn’t hedge or apologize. It doesn’t try to cover it all at once. It says what matters—fast. And it trusts the reader to come with it.

Stop overloading your copy. Start giving it space to breathe.