So good the reader feels like you know them, understand them, and you are the right person to help them.

The goal of our writing is to pick the reader up where they are right now, and guide them to where we want them to go.

We want them to slide through the text with the least amount of jarring bumps as possible.

Using Corrective Negation (not X, but Y) is intentionally digging a 12-inch pothole in the smooth tarmac that is your text.

A brief lesson in Corrective Negation

I was inspired to write this blog post because in the last few months Corrective Negation has shown up a LOT in the sales pages and marketing content I’ve reviewed for clients, and I wanted to be able to say more than ‘don’t do this because it sucks for the reader’…. so now I’ve written this blog post so I can say ‘don’t do this because it sucks for the reader and if you want to know why that is you can go read this blog post.’

Corrective Negation looks like:

• You’re not X, you’re Y
• Not because X, but because Y
• That wasn’t flying. That was falling with style.

via GIPHY

Corrective Negation existed as useful rhetorical device in literature for a few hundreds years, got hijacked by online copywriters circa 2009, just a few years later it was so overused it had become a cliche, and then it was swallowed and regurgitated by AI.

And now, because it’s ubiquitous, whether you write the phrase unassisted or copy and paste it from an AI tool, either way it’s hurting the quality of your marketing.

Examples of it being used correctly:

#1 Reader Leaps To An Assumption

Writer: makes statement
Reader: cannot help but make an assumption based on that statement
Writer: has anticipated that assumption and corrects it

‘This sound, the sound of her own voice, felt familiar, not because it was her own voice but because it reminded her of all the times she’d gone to the market as a girl….’ – Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

Here’s the slow motion replay.

#2 Previous Sentence Has At Least Two Possible Meanings

This sentence has two meanings: ‘I didn’t call him because I was scared’

It could mean I didn’t call him and the reason I didn’t call him was because I was too scared to call him.

Or

I called him, but for a different reason, not because I was scared.

If I were saying out loud ‘I didn’t call him because I was scared’ the inflection of my voice would tell you which meaning, but in writing you can’t hear that.

So we could use Corrective Negation here to tidy it up.

‘I didn’t call him, not because I was scared, but because my phone battery was dead.’

#3 Writer anticipates inner monologue and wants to build connection and safety by echoing and countering that

The following sentence may trigger some negative self-talk:
You need a break from your partner. Not because you don’t love them, but because you need to rediscover who you are without someone else’s influence.

As soon as the reader agrees with the statement ‘yes, I do need a break from my partner’, their inner monologue pops off with unhelpful suggestions like ‘well obviously you don’t love them and your whole life is a lie’ (other people’s inner monologues are savage too right? Not just mine.)

So the Corrective Negation anticipates and redirects this internal tirade.

AI does not handle Corrective Negation well

• It doesn’t know what it’s like to be human, it’s not anticipating feelings, it’s just pulling in words that are likely to be a good match to follow on from the previous words based on a mathematical model.
  .
• It’s trained on decades of high-pressure sales copy written to get the most sales possible, regardless of how the reader might feel. Putting the reader into a state of shame was/is an effective sales tactic. But that might not be the relationship you want to have with your readers.

So you end up with sloppy efforts like:

’You want a quicker way to clean the dishes. Not because you’re lazy, but because you want to do something else with your time’

And the reader is left thinking ‘well I didn’t feel lazy until you suggested it, so thanks’.

Why You Should Avoid It – Even if you write it yourself

Here’s why.

1. It makes your reader disengage

Our brains are wired to pay attention to novelty, since we were more likely to be attacked by that new suspiciously furry orange rock that just appeared outside the cave, than the tree that’s lived next door for years.

So when text follows a predictable pattern we disengage.

And even if we do manage to read all the way to the end, nothing sticks.

Not because we are lazy, but because our brains force us to save our energy for less predictable, and therefore less safe, stimuli (see what I did there with that sentence structure).

2. It’s hard work processing the negative

When you lead with ‘Not X’ or ‘Not because X’ the reader’s brain starts spending energy creating an understanding of X, and then immediately needs to dismantle it to get to Y.

They may not be consciously aware of this friction, and it might not be enough for them to stop reading completely, but small moments of friction impact how likely the reader is to continue to the end, engage with your content in future, or choose to deepen their relationship with you.

What To Do Instead

3 quick fixes for ‘Not X, but Y’ sentences.

1 – Check the sentence that comes before the ‘Not x’ part – can you make that simpler and clearer so that the reader doesn’t need correcting.

2 – What happens if you just take out the ‘not x’ bit – does the text still make sense? Is it easier to read.

3 – Can you explain the ‘Not X’ section with more words, and without the negative. For example ‘Not because you don’t love them’ becomes ‘that might spark concerns about the health of your relationship’.

Connection Over Perfection

It was immense fun to geek out, research and write about this.

And please remember, I’m not aiming for perfection and neither should you.

Every piece of marketing content you write is an opportunity to build connection with the reader and move them closer to buying from you.

But you don’t need to get it perfect before you hit publish.

• Hire me for a one-off Copy Review to get actionable ideas to make your copy more effective (or get your money back)
• Join the Marketing On Purpose for 12-weeks 1-1 marketing mentoring and copywriting support