The Anatomy.

The law, plainly.

Memory decays. An idea that is not struck again is lost, so strong copy strikes one idea from its first line to its last, in bursts and silences, never a steady beat. About half the field strikes the wrong thing: the product, instead of the idea that makes the product matter.

The sentence.

You keep the money. Say it at line three. Say it again at forty, at two hundred, at six hundred, in different words each time: the money stays yours, nobody takes a cut, it’s still in your account in March. The idea is the drum. The product that lets you keep it is not the drum; it is the vehicle the idea rides.

The object, named.

Coreference. Every time a text refers to the same thing again, by name, by pronoun, by paraphrase, the mentions form a chain. The longest chain is what the piece keeps returning to; the laboratory calls that its drum, and reads separately whether the drum is an idea or only a vehicle for one. The bursts are the spacing effect: an idea returned to after a gap holds better than one repeated in a block.

Struck. An earlier version of this page claimed writers strike the drum several times harder than speakers. The claim failed a later test and was struck. It stays here because the record does not delete its mistakes.

The law, plainly.

Expectation must rise before evidence can discharge it. Every promise is therefore a debt: it takes belief the reader has not yet given. Copy promises before it proves, and its claims run about two to one ahead of its receipts.

The sentence.

You’ll keep the money is a promise. You’ll keep $4,300 more this year is a bigger one: the figure makes it specific, and specific promises borrow more. By March you’ll keep $4,300 more is the fullest form, a figure and a clock. The reader can picture it, and the debt is now exact.

The object, named.

Tense and modality: the future and the modal verbs, will, could, can. A promise is a sentence about a world that does not yet exist. Rendering means giving a promise a figure and a clock; a rendered promise is one the reader can picture, and picturing is what lets them simulate it.

The law, plainly.

Belief moves only on evidence that reaches the world. A receipt is a sentence that names where its claim came from, and a claim without one is a promise in disguise, however specific its number.

The sentence.

You keep $4,300 is a claim: proof-shaped, still unpaid. According to last year’s audit, readers like you kept $4,300 is a receipt: it names its source. Experts say readers keep more names nothing, and imagine keeping $4,300 names a wish. Our research shows readers keep more is the copy vouching for itself.

The object, named.

Evidentiality: how a language marks the source of a claim. Some languages build it into the verb. English does it with according to and with the reporting verbs, says, reports, found, warned, and a reporting verb with nothing reported does not count. Receipts are gradable. A named person is one rung; an institution is a higher one; a filing, a docket, a journal, a date is the highest.

The law, plainly.

A piece of persuasion has to build the machinery that collects on the belief it borrowed, or the belief is spent for nothing. The ask is that machinery: the offer, the price, the door. Copy with no ask cannot convert, however strong its drum.

The sentence.

Start keeping it today is the ask. It arrives after the promise, after the receipt, and it spends whatever belief is left. Put it before the receipt and it asks with nothing behind it.

The object, named.

Mood. An ask is an imperative or a directive, a sentence whose job is to make something happen rather than to describe. Everything the copy borrowed and paid is settled at the sentence where it turns to ask.

The law, plainly.

A reader can only be asked in the second person and the future tense, because the ask is about what they will do next. When copy turns to ask, its best closing lines are all about you and all in the future. Orders open the close; promises finish it. And the story ends before the ask begins: the copy stops telling before it sells.

The sentence.

Start keeping it today. Then: You’ll keep the money. An order, then a promise, in that order. The most common closing sentence on the record is a vow in the second person: you will.

The object, named.

Mood and tense together. The close lives in the irrealis, the grammar of things not yet real (will, would, could, imagine), cast in the second person. The future forms, will, would, could, rise toward the close. The past, and the unreal past, sink away from it.