Kranz On Copy: Insights and answers on copywriting and writing copy

Is there a title for your profession that sets your teeth on edge? One that's so fundamentally misguided and inappropriate that it makes you cringe every time you hear it?

For me, it's "wordsmith," a loathsome synonym for "writer" that becomes even more foul when it's used as a verb, i.e., "Let's 'wordsmith' this a bit before we send it to legal for approval."

I'm not unsympathetic to the original intention of the word, which was to remind people that writing is real work, like smithing, and not a casual dalliance for people who have a way with words.

But "wordsmith" is hateful nonetheless. Why? Because it suggests that writing is a superficial activity, a kind of polish applied to ideas, knowledge and strategies that have already been fully formed. By analogy, a "wordsmith" is to marketing what an interior decorator is to architecture -- an executor of trivia, master of the irrelevant and unimportant.

If you aspire to be a "wordsmith," you're aiming too low. If you allow yourself to hire a "wordsmith," you're doing your business a grave injustice. Here's what real writers really do:

1) Real writers investigate your needs, market, business and audience, then develop a strategy for connecting your business to customers.

2) Real writers create a structure that presents your message in as clear, simple and powerful way as possible.

3) Real writers manipulate tone, voice, vocabulary, point of view and a host of other rhetorical considerations to lock your message within the imaginations of your prospects and customers.

All marketing writers worth their salt do all three of these things -- and not of one of these three is remotely related to "wordsmithing."

"Wordsmiths" erode their own profession. What rubrics, titles and types undermine yours?