This is the page for the person who owns copy that must sell. Five versions of one sentence, and what the ledger reads after each. The ledger is the laboratory’s model of the reader, not a measurement of one; what is measured is which of these orders the strongest pieces on the record use.
ONE SENTENCE · FIVE VERSIONS
The belief meter.
You’ll keep the money.
A promise. Expectation rises; nothing in the world has been touched. The reader has lent you belief on credit.
RAISESYou keep $4,300.
A claim. It is proof-shaped, a number is in it, and it is still unpaid. Specificity makes a claim bigger. It does not make it proof.
UNMOVEDAccording to last year’s audit, readers like you kept $4,300.
A receipt. It names its source, and the source stands in the world. The debt from sentence one is paid down.
PAYSYou’ll keep $4,300. Last year’s audit showed it.
The same receipt, after the claim. The reader was moved first and the world was patched in behind them. It pays, but less, and it reads as patched.
PAYS, PATCHEDLast year’s audit showed readers kept $4,300. You’ll keep it too.
The receipt first, the promise second. The reader was shown the world before being asked to believe anything. Earned.
PAYS, EARNEDFIG. — THE BELIEF METER: DIRECTIONS, NOT WEIGHTS — THE PROMISE RAISES; THE CLAIM LEAVES IT UNMOVED; THE RECEIPT PAYS; PLACED AFTER, IT PAYS LESS; PLACED BEFORE, IT PAYS MOST
Order carries meaning because a reader’s clock runs one way. The same two sentences in the other order leave a different belief behind.
Hope near receipts.
Take every hope in the piece, every sentence that promises something the reader wants. Ask of each one: is there a real receipt within a few sentences of it? Strong copy has hope near receipts. The commonest failure at the top of the field is hope with nothing near a receipt at all: a promise the copy never pays for.
Two roads.
There are two ways to arrive at the ask with belief in hand. The high-wire piece promises deep and patches its proof in afterward. The conservative piece earns its proof first and promises no further than it has paid. Both reach the top. The summit is conservative.
The weld.
A weld is a receipt that answers the claim it stands beside. Proof near a claim is not the same as proof on it: a receipt that sits beside a claim about something else is topical and useless, and a receipt that answers the claim beside it is welded. And a welded receipt that arrives before its claim is earned; after, it is patched. Strong copy welds most of its receipts and earns a good share of them. A block of proof after a block of claims is the shape that fails.
Proof-shaped sentences.
Some sentences are shaped like receipts and touch no world. Experts say. Studies show. Our research proves. Imagine. Suppose. Each has the grammar of evidence and the substance of a promise. The reading grades them as what they are: the copy vouching for itself, a source too vague to stand, or a wish. A piece built on these reads rich and is bankrupt at the ask.
FOR THE COPY THAT MUST SELL
Five steps.
Mark every promise. Mark the ones with a figure and a clock.
For each, find the nearest receipt. Name its source. If you cannot, it is a claim.
Move the receipt before the claim wherever the copy allows.
Strike every experts say that has no expert.
Find the first sentence that asks. Read everything before it as the reader will: that is what they know when they decide.
Directions of every move are here. The weights are not, and will not be. The reading itself is applied at CopyScorer.