How to Audit and Clean Up Copy Without Rewriting Everything
The Copywriter Column #239
Why January Is the Right Time to Clean Your Copy
You’ve probably felt it for a while now.
That quiet sense that something’s off. Not broken, exactly. But not right either. You look at your brand’s messaging and you can’t quite explain why it feels muddy.
The words are fine. The pages function. But there’s a weight to it. A sluggishness. Like the copy is working against itself somehow.
Well, you’re not imagining it.
What you’re sensing is accumulation. Most brands (and creators – like yours truly) keep adding copy but rarely remove it.
New campaigns launch.
Product updates ship.
Someone writes a new tagline.
Someone else tweaks the homepage.
A seasonal email flow gets bolted on.
And none of it ever gets subtracted.
Over time, messaging systems quietly accumulate contradictions and bloat. You end up with three versions of your value prop living in different places, none of them quite right. Product descriptions start reading like feature inventories. And old claims stick around even after the product has changed.
January is when all of this becomes impossible to ignore. – not because the calendar is magic, but because new year planning forces you to look at the foundation.
But here’s the good news: cleaning beats rewriting from scratch. You don’t need a brand overhaul and you don’t need to burn it down and start over. You just need a cleanout.
However, before we get into how, let’s talk about why this matters beyond just tidiness.
The Real Cost of Cluttered Copy
Messy messaging isn’t just an aesthetic problem. It’s a clarity problem. And clarity is how you earn trust.
When your copy contradicts itself across pages, readers feel it even if they can’t name it. Something feels off. The brand seems uncertain of itself. And if you’re not sure what you’re saying, why should they be sure about buying?
But there’s another cost that’s harder to measure: what cluttered copy does to you.
When you know the foundation is messy, you lose confidence in your own work. Every new page you write feels like you’re building on sand. You hesitate to send people to certain pages because you’re not sure they hold up. And you find yourself apologizing for copy instead of standing behind it.
That’s not a workflow problem.
That’s a “professional dignity” problem.
Cleaning your copy isn’t just about conversion rates or brand consistency. It’s about being able to look at your own work and feel good about it. It’s about removing the low-grade anxiety that comes from knowing things aren’t as tight as they should be.
That’s the real why.
Now let’s find the where.
What Copy Clutter Actually Looks Like (And How It Makes You Feel)
Copy clutter is rarely obvious to the people who created it. It accumulates slowly, one reasonable decision at a time.
But once you know what to look for, you’ll start seeing it everywhere. Here are some examples:
1. Multiple value props saying the same thing differently.
The homepage promises “effortless simplicity.” The product page says “streamlined and intuitive.” The email welcome series talks about “making things easy.”
Same idea, three different phrasings, none of them landing with any weight.
What this feels like: vague unease. You sense redundancy but can’t point to it. You wonder if the messaging is actually saying anything at all.
2. Product descriptions that read like feature inventories.
Every capability gets mentioned. Nothing gets prioritized. The reader finishes with no clear sense of what actually matters.
So, you read the copy and feel tired. You suspect the reader feels tired, too. But cutting anything feels risky, so everything stays.
3. Old claims that no longer match the product.
You updated the software six months ago, but the landing page still describes how it worked before. Nobody noticed because nobody audits.
This can feel like creeping dread. You know there are land mines in the copy, but you’re not sure where. Every time someone asks about a specific page, you hold your breath a little.
4. Shifts in tone from page to page or email to email.
One page sounds corporate. The next sounds casual. A third tries to be clever. The brand feels like it was written by different people.
Because it was.
What this feels like: embarrassment! You wouldn’t show the full site to someone you respect because you know the inconsistency is visible. The lack of cohesion reflects on you, even if you didn’t write all of it.
(Shoutout to all the content managers nodding their heads in agreement here.)
5. Long explanations where one sentence would do.
Three paragraphs explaining something that could be said in ten words. The impulse to be thorough becomes the enemy of being clear.
This probably makes you feel impatient with your own work. You skim your own copy because you know it’s bloated. If you don’t want to read it, neither does anyone else.
The team closest to the copy usually can’t see the clutter. They’re too familiar with it. But they can feel it. That heaviness you’ve been carrying? This is where it lives.
Start With an Inventory, Not Opinions
The instinct when you feel this kind of frustration is to start fixing things. Pick a page that’s bothering you and rewrite it. Make it better. Move on.
But… don’t do that yet.
The problem with fixing things piecemeal is you’re working blind. You don’t know how this page connects to that email connects to that ad. You can’t see the patterns because you’re too close to the pieces.
So, before you fix anything, you need to see everything.
Pull every active piece of copy into one place (e.g. homepage, product pages, email flows, ads, landing pages, about page, checkout copy, etc.). All of it.
Don’t edit yet.
Don’t judge quality.
Just gather.
The goal at this stage is visibility, not evaluation. You’re looking for patterns: repeated ideas, contradictory claims, inconsistent tone, unnecessary length.
Most people skip this step. They jump straight to rewriting whatever feels weakest. Then they wonder why the same problems keep showing up in different places.
The inventory takes time. Do it anyway.
What you see when you look at everything together is different from what you see when you look at pieces in isolation.
This is where the real picture emerges.
Use AI as an Audit Assistant, Not a Writer
This is where AI can be genuinely useful (and it’s not by rewriting your copy for you).
Once you have your inventory, you’re sitting on a pile of text that’s too big to hold in your head at once.
That’s exactly what AI is good at: reading large amounts of material and surfacing patterns.
Feed it sections of copy and ask specific questions:
“Highlight repeated claims or ideas across these pages.”
“Flag tone inconsistencies between these sections.”
“Identify sentences that over-explain simple ideas.”
“Call out conflicting promises or positioning.”
AI is excellent at this kind of comparative analysis. It can read through dozens of pages without getting tired and surface inconsistencies you’ve become blind to.
But here’s where you stay in the driver’s seat: AI can tell you that two sections make similar claims. It cannot tell you which claim is the right one to keep. It can flag a tone shift. It cannot tell you which tone is actually yours.
The audit surfaces the questions. You answer them.
Use AI as a second set of eyes.
Keep the judgment with yourself.
The Four Buckets to Sort Everything Into
Now you need a way to process what you’ve found. In true Matt fashion, keep it simple.
Every piece of copy goes into one of four buckets:
Keep as-is. It works. It’s clear. It does its job. Leave it alone.
Tighten and simplify. The idea is right, but the execution is bloated. Cut words. Shorten sentences. Remove qualifiers.
Merge with another section. Two pieces of copy are saying the same thing. Combine them into one stronger version.
Remove entirely. It’s outdated, redundant, or unnecessary. Delete it.
The goal here is subtraction, not cleverness. Most brands have way more copy than they need. This cleanout will succeed when you end up with less, not when you end up with different.
Every piece you remove makes the remaining pieces work harder. That’s the trade you’re making.
Less volume, more clarity.
Where to Be Ruthless First
You obviously can’t clean everything at once. Start where the clutter costs you most.
Product descriptions that try to say everything. These are almost always too long. Pick the three things that actually matter and cut the rest. If everything is important, nothing is.
Hero sections carrying multiple jobs. A hero should do one thing well: communicate your primary promise. If it’s also trying to establish credibility, explain the product, and drive a secondary action, it’s doing too much. Simplify the job.
Email flows written over multiple years. Welcome sequences are especially prone to bloat. Someone adds a new email. Someone else tweaks the subject lines. Nobody ever removes anything. Audit the full flow as a unit, not as individual emails.
Legacy value props no one can explain anymore. If you can’t articulate why a particular claim is on the page, it probably shouldn’t be there. “We’ve always said that” is not a reason. It’s an excuse!
Be ruthless here. Clarity comes from cutting, not adding.
Rewriting After the Cleanout
Only after the audit do you start (re)writing.
This is important: the cleanout has to happen first! Otherwise you’re just rearranging furniture in a cluttered room.
Once you’ve subtracted, you’ll have a smaller, tighter foundation. Now you can rewrite from the core ideas that survived.
A few principles worth keeping in your back pocket at this stage:
One primary promise per page. Supporting points are fine. But there should be no confusion about the main message. If someone asks what the page is about, you should be able to answer in one sentence.
One clear job per section. If you can’t describe what a section is supposed to accomplish in one sentence, it’s doing too much. Simplify until the job is obvious.
Shorter sentences by default. Long sentences create cognitive load (see this entire article as an example of what not to do). Short sentences create clarity. When in doubt, cut.
AI can help you tighten language at this stage. It’s useful for trimming sentences, simplifying phrasing, catching unnecessary words. But humans should decide what matters! The strategic choices, the priorities, the voice – those stay with you.
How to Keep Copy Clutter From Coming Back
A cleanout only works if you don’t let the clutter rebuild. This is where most people fail. They do the work once and then slowly let entropy win.
Don’t let that be you. Here are four tips to help you keep things in check:
Quarterly copy audits. Put it on the calendar. Walk through your major pages and flows every three months, even if nothing feels broken. Clutter accumulates in the gaps between attention.
One source of truth for value props. Keep your core messaging documented in a single place. When someone writes new copy, they should be working from that source. Not from memory. Not from the last campaign. From the source.
Clear ownership of messaging decisions. Someone needs to be responsible for saying no. Copy accumulates when everyone can add but nobody can remove. Give someone the authority to subtract. Copy directors are great at this.
Fewer people adding copy without removing something else. Make subtraction a habit. If you add a new section, ask what you’re cutting to make room. Addition without subtraction is how you got here in the first place.
This isn’t a one-time reset. It’s an ongoing practice. Brands that stay clear are brands that clean regularly.
Final Thoughts
Strong copy is not about saying more – it’s about making fewer things unmistakably clear.
The cleanout isn’t just about maintenance, it’s also about how you earn back confidence in your own work. It’s how you stop carrying that quiet weight of knowing things aren’t right.
Do the inventory.
Run the audit.
Make the cuts.
Make it routine.
Then you’ll be able to look at what’s left and feel solid about it.
Want to dive deeper into the principles that make copy actually work for your team?
I’ve distilled 20+ years of marketing expertise into a free micro-course called The Minimalist Copywriter’s Playbook. It covers the 5 core principles I use every time I sit down to write – ones you can apply immediately.
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Love the concept of 'accumulation' as the silent killer of copy clarity. That line about losing professional dignity when you know the foundation is messy really resonated becuase I've spent way too many hours apologizing for pages I wrote months ago instead of just fixing them. Your approach of inventorying before editing is basically the opposite of how most teams operate but it makes so much sence when you think about it.