Are you the kind of person whose entire day is ruined when you see grammar mistakes in the wild? If so, you’re not going to like this.

In copywriting, you’ll want to rebel against a lot of those rules.

Now, I’m not saying we want to mix up their, there and they’re — I’m not proclaiming grammar anarchy. But the academic writing “rules” that people often cite as grammatical examples are better left in the classroom.

In marketing for your biz, your Brand Personality should guide your word choice, sentence lengths and yes, punctuation. Sometimes this means we need to break (or bend) some habits that have been ingrained in us since our earliest days.

For example, it’s totally okay to

• Start sentences with “and” or “but” to create emphasis and drama. And sometimes drama’s needed.
• Use fragments to promote readability. Helps people scan.
• End sentences in a preposition mimics the way we talk and creates a conversational tone when you want to.

The key is to define your Brand Personality first BEFORE you write anything, so you know how to write, and your readers know what to expect. It’s part of your overall Brand Strategy and affects not only your messaging but also your logo design, brand colors and fonts.

If you were taking a vacation, your Brand Personality would be the type of vacation you’d take. Is it fun in the sun or a winter wonderland? Family friendly? Adults only? Adventrous? Relaxing? What you take on your trip depends on the kind of trip you take. The same holds true when copywriting for your small business.

This personality is defined by 3 aspects: your voice, tone and mood. Your voice doesn’t change, but your tone may adjust based on medium. If you’re tone is on the casual side, you might spell it “biz” like I just did. If your tone is more formal, you’ll write out “business.

We also want to ensure clarity, and punctuation does just that. After all, there’s a difference between “Let’s go eat Chuck” and “Let’s go eat, Chuck.”

A creative writing professor once told me you have to know the rules before you can break them. I appreciate that. It’s not breaking the rules for the sake of breaking them. It’s about writing in ways that instill trust in your idea audience while persuading them you can solve their wants and needs. This starts with defining and achieving a Brand Personality that’s memorable, differentiating and authentic.