As Captain Renault (Claude Rains) says in Casablanca, “I’m shocked – shocked!” when I hear certain “truisms” about running a small business.

Here’s an often-repeated “truism”:
Never edit a client’s testimonial; you must use it as is, including typos.

“I’m  shocked – shocked!” whenever I hear this. I’ve been a professional writer/editor for more than 30 years, and I would never publish something in a website, brochure, or speaker one-sheet that contained typos, poor grammar, or run-on sentences.

Keep these guidelines in mind:

1. You can edit and polish testimonials with a light touch, so you don’t change the meaning. Ensuring they are “clean” is important for overall professionalism.
2. You can sprinkle in keyword phrases to enhance SEO and make the testimonials work harder for your website.
3. You can flesh out the clients’ full name, title, organization, industry and location, as appropriate, to convey more information and more credibility.

How to edit client testimonials: Here is a checklist to edit and organize your customer testimonials:

• Carefully proof to fix typos and more – It’s vital to fix typos, because this reflects on your professionalism. Correct all grammar and punctuation issues. Shorten run-on sentences. Get out your red pen, and don’t be shy!
• Shorten long testimonials – The goal is to have a variety of short testimonials that get to the point and are easy to read. My mantra is: “You have to be cruel to be kind.” If a testimonial is quite long, I suggest cutting it to just 3-5 sentences. That means sacrificing some content. But this is better than having super-long testimonials that people don’t read, because their eyes glaze over.
• You can rewrite a confusing testimonial, then get the client’s approval – If a testimonial contains good content but is confusing or poorly written, consider rewording key sentences. Then email the revised testimonial to your client for approval.
• Consider organization – I like to organize the testimonials to place those with the most impact at the top of the page. Also, consider alternating the testimonials from male and female clients as well as testimonials that address similar challenges.
• Include the client’s name, title, organization, industry or location – Make this testimonial work hard for you! In addition to the clients’ names, add their title, organization and, if relevant, industry or location. For example, if you are a business coach who teams with clients around the world, it’s exceedingly helpful to add the client’s location for every testimonial. (If you are in the healthcare industry, I recommend you show first-name only or initials-only to ensure privacy.) Adding the client’s photo next to the testimonial is a great idea, if this is appropriate for your business.
• Sprinkle in keyword phrases – For example, be sure to include your full name or full company name instead of abbreviations. And you can weave in the name of your product, service, or industry. This helps with search-engine optimization (SEO).
• Make one “standout” phrase or sentence bold – This is especially helpful for readers who skim. Be sure to select different points to highlight; you don’t want every bold sentence to say “they’re great” and “they’re the best” and “what a great team.” 
• Create a “Testimonials” page on your website – If you have more than 6 or 8 testimonials, I firmly believe you should have a “Testimonials” page on your website. When you add a  new testimonial, place it at the top of this web page, so the content is a bit different every time a website visitor happens to visit.

Many of my clients are writing books at the same time they are working with me to clarify their brand and write their website copy (especially professional speakers and corporate consultants).

A couple of years ago, a client’s proofreader saw my website copy and, as a favor to the client, took his red pen to the copy, following the Chicago Manual of Style. Unfortunately, this didn’t do the client any favors. In editing the website copy, he essentially tried to pound a square peg into a round hole – it just didn’t fit.

Website writing is marketing writing

Editorially, some things are different for marketing copy (including website copy) than for books or white papers, where you must strictly follow the Chicago Manual of Style. Now when I give my clients website copy to review, I always preface the copy with my Website Editorial Styleguide.

Writing for websites is different than writing for other marketing pieces

Ironically, we strive for great website copy knowing that no one reads websites! In reality, people skim website content, then sink their teeth into the details once they are snagged by content that is interesting and pertinent to them.

This means the copy must be extremely easy to read. It must be “visual.” And it must be presented in a way that anyone, including skimmers, can grasp the key messages.

Follow this Website Editorial Styleguide if you’re writing your own website copy

• Write hardworking headlines with a benefit statement and, where possible, include SEO keywords
• Sprinkle in a lot of subheads, so skimmers can get the full story
• Keep paragraphs as short as possible, with as few as 2 to 3 sentences each
• Use bullets to present a list of brief, yet important, points
• Present all numbers as numerals (instead of spelling out): 5, 10, 126
• Show symbols where possible: 5%, $10
• Write sentence fragments, where it feels right
• Uppercase titles (such as Professional Speaker & Author) and other stuff that feels important (Strictly speaking, titles don’t “deserve” to be in uppercase except in very particular instances. For website copy, I like to uppercase titles so they stand out to the website visitor who is skimming, not reading. Plus, this does add import.)
• Avoid using italics (Small-point italics can be difficult to read on computer monitors and laptop screens. Also, italicized copy will convert to Roman style when the website developer pours the copy into the website program. This means they must chase down italicized copy and make the changes one by one.)
• Liberally use dashes in the copy, especially in headlines and subheads (Visually, this breaks a phrase or sentence into chunks, making the chunks easy to read at a glance.)
• Use the n-dash [–] instead of m-dash [—] (Website programs don’t recognize the m-dash and will replace a weird symbol in its place. The programs do, thankfully, automatically recognize and translate the n-dash.)