text-centric: what's in a name?

When I started my freelance writing business I decided to call it text-centric because I though it was a witty description of what my business was about.

According to the Macquarie Dictionary:
text – "the actual wording of anything written or printed"
centric – "focussed on… a specific interest"

So text-centric = focussed on writing.

Trouble is no one really gets it except me. And worse, most people (including me sometimes) don't pronounce it properly. Many people say "tech-centric" and one friend insisted on referring to my business as "text-eccentric"!

Right from the word go I targeted web writing – first editorial content and then website copywriting. Back in 1997 the web was just getting fired up. Writing for the web seemed a good marketing niche and I wanted to be involved in the cultural shift that was taking place.

Some years later I was reading Nick Usborne's excellent book on web copywriting, Net Words, and I came across a couple of quotes which vindicated my choice of business name:

"The web was and is the most text-centric of all business environments." p 21

"How can a commerce site survive within an environment as text-centric as the Net without the heavy influence of a writer?" p28

Sadly, Nick's message about the necessity for website copywriters hasn't fully caught on yet, but gradually people are getting it.