Don’t make your readers work too hard (2)

Recently I received from Amazon.com an email that began like this:

“As someone who has recently made a purchase on Amazon.com, we have applied a $1.00 credit to your Amazon.com account, good towards any eligible Amazon Instant Video purchase, including rentals and new release titles in HD.”

When a typical educated reader sees the phrase “As someone who has recently made a purchase on Amazon.com,” he expects it to be followed immediately by the subject of the main clause. And he expects that that subject will be the same person as the “someone.”

But when that subject turns out to be “we,” the reader is confused for a moment. He wonders, “Does ‘we’ mean Amazon.com?” He re-reads the phrase and thinks, “No, because Amazon.com has not ‘recently made a purchase on Amazon.com.’ ”

So he guesses that the “someone” was he, the reader, and therefore “we” should have been “you.”

Now the reader guesses what the paragraph was trying to say:

As someone who has recently made a purchase on Amazon.com, you have been given a $1.00 credit in your Amazon.com account. It’s good towards any eligible Amazon Instant Video purchase, including rentals and new release titles in HD.

Or more naturally:

Because you have recently made a purchase on Amazon.com, we have applied a $1.00 credit to your Amazon.com account, good towards any eligible Amazon Instant Video purchase, including rentals and new release titles in HD.

The typical reader will take only a few seconds to go through this thought process. And, yes, he will probably guess what Amazon.com was trying to say. But he will wonder why the company made him work hard to decipher that sentence. He will be mildly annoyed and will conclude that the company hires semi-literate or lazy writers.

The Takeaway: Don’t lower your credibility by sending sloppy writing to your customers. Ignorance of grammar is a reliable indicator of weak character.

See disclaimer.