Weekly Round Up #118
Your once-a-week digest filled with copywriting insights, AI tips, must-read articles, pretty cool copy examples, and much more!
Welcome to the 118th edition of the Weekly Round-Up — your once-a-week digest filled with copywriting insights, AI tips, must-read articles, pretty cool copy examples, and much more!
In this week’s issue:
Copy Tip: Stop apologizing for the em dash…
AI Tip: Save your best AI outputs
Writing is Thinking, But What Happens When You Let AI Do It for You? (via Psychology Meets Writing)
Communicating Your Brand Values (via Really Good Emails)
Your Prompts are Fine: Context Engineering is Your Next AI Problem (via Animalz)
You Can Scale a System. You Can’t Scale Chaos. (via The Copy Minimalist)
Podcast Pick: Show Me the Money Words with Copywriting Expert, Joanna Wiebe
Swipe File Additions
Job Opps
Copy Tip of the Week
Stop apologizing for the em dash…
There’s a growing instinct to flag the em dash as “AI-sounding.”
ChatGPT leans on it hard, so now every time one shows up, someone’s internal alarm fires.
The problem: the em dash has been a staple of good writing for decades.
Removing it because of association isn’t editing.
It’s pattern-matching disguised as judgment.
All punctuation controls two things: pacing and hierarchy.
The em dash does both at once.
A comma is a breath. A semicolon is a pivot. A period is a stop. An em dash is a spotlight.
It says: this part matters.
Copy is about directing attention. The em dash is one of the few punctuation marks built for that job.
AI Insight of the Week
Save Your Best AI Outputs
Most teams generate great AI outputs…
and then lose them forever.
That’s a mistake.
The best outputs are training data for your future prompts.
When AI produces something great, save it and label it:
What the task was
Why the output worked
What prompt produced it
After a few weeks, you’ll have a library of proven patterns.
The fastest way to improve AI output is simple: show it what good looks like.
Must-Read Articles
Writing is Thinking, But What Happens When You Let AI Do It for You? (via Psychology Meets Writing)
🔗
Why I recommend it: An MIT study found that people who wrote essays with ChatGPT showed the weakest brain connectivity of all three test groups—and 83% couldn’t even quote from what they’d “written.” If writing is how we think, outsourcing it isn’t saving time—it’s losing your creative soul.
Communicating Your Brand Values (via Really Good Emails)
🔗 https://reallygoodemails.com/school/communicating-brand-values-human-connection-marketing
Why I recommend it: If your last 6 months of emails are all promos and product pushes, your subscribers know what you sell — but not who you are. This talk (it’s a little long) breaks down how brands like IKEA, Boots, and Decathlon turn values into trust (and what happens when brands fake it).
Your Prompts are Fine: Context Engineering is Your Next AI Problem (via Animalz)
🔗 https://www.animalz.co/blog/context-engineering
Why I recommend it: Your AI outputs are probably mediocre not because your prompts are bad, but because the model doesn’t know enough about your brand, audience, or point of view. This breaks down “context engineering” — the system design work that separates generic AI content from content worth publishing.
You Might Also Like:
Talking Too Loud with Chris Savage
Show Me the Money Words with Copywriting Expert, Joanna Wiebe
🎧 Listen on iTunes | Listen on Spotify
Why I recommend it: Joanna Wiebe — the person who coined “conversion copywriting” — joins Wistia’s Chris Savage to break down why most marketers write copy backwards (art first, strategy never) and what the order of operations should actually be. If you’ve ever wondered why your headline isn’t landing or your emails feel flat, this 54-minute conversation will reframe how you think about every word you publish.
🔓 Want access to my entire swipe file database?
Subscribe here to unlock the magic link.Pretty Fly Copy
PATH PROJECTS
Format: Email
Why I like it: Great comparison email between two similar products. For a customer torn between these two items, it’s a great send. They should use this for a browse abandonment flow.
APPLE
Format: Email
Why I like it: The headline. Get it?
841 MEMORIAL
Format: Street Sign
Why I like it: One day this last week as I was sitting in traffic that was inching slowly forward every few minutes, I looked over and saw this sign in front of an apartment complex. Effective.
Career Opportunities
These remote opportunities are updated every week with copywriting and marketing roles ambitious job-seekers should definitely apply for.
Copywriter & Content Strategist at Homestead Studio
📍Remote (Mexico!!) **ℹ️ Agency 💸 Location Dependent
Temporary Sr. Copywriter at ISPY
📍Remote ℹ️ B2C 💸 $50 - $60/hr (USD)
Senior Content Strategist at Rasa
📍Remote ℹ️ B2B 💸 $130,000 - $150,000/yr (USD)
DTC Email Copywriter at Stimulate
📍Remote ℹ️ DTC Agency 💸 $35 - $50/hr (USD)
Creative Copy Lead at Native Pet
📍Remote ℹ️ B2C 💸 Not Listed
That’s it for this week! If you have questions or comments — drop a note below.
✌️
Matt
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