When your writing has to do something, every single word must pull its weight. This is why writers like me keep track of words that we notice have extra firepower with an audience.
Power words are words that have a strong chance of triggering an emotional or psychological response in the reader. Compared to normal words, power words will more likely tap into core emotional motivators like joy, fear, hope, desire, and curiosity.
They’re often used in copywriting to persuade people to take action.
But first, I need to make a public service announcement.
Avoid These Power Words for At Least a Decade
Give them a break — they are working so hard for everyone else right now. They are tired.
There was a point where these turned heads, but I would avoid using any of them for at least the next ten years:
- Robust
- Seamless
- Dynamic
- Turnkey
- Revolutionary
- Vibrant
- Transformative
- Delve
- Next-gen
Any power these words have is hanging on by a thread. You see them everywhere, which dilutes their strength and makes them — for the time being — useless for getting attention, attracting desire, or really moving the needle in any way for your reader.
These words also happen to be favorites of LLMs — so they are only going to appear more and at a higher frequency. People have started to notice. I’ll cite PG because he’s a careful writer and brings the stats:
You don’t want your writing lumped into the AI-generated crowd.
Not only does it signal your writing isn’t original (even if you wrote it yourself), it will signal to an editor, founder, or recruiter that your writing skills are easily replaced.
And, if you really do have a dynamic turnkey solution, then I can guarantee that there are 4.7 million more interesting things you can tell people about it. Those words and that phrase are not going to linger in your prospect’s mind.
Do power words really work?
Yes, if you use them carefully and intelligently. Run your own headline testing if you don’t believe me.
The truth here is very simple: All things being equal, a more powerful word will attract more attention and be more convincing than a less powerful word.
Consider the words that make up these two offers:
- Open this document
- Unlock new content
The first “offer” isn’t even really an offer — it’s a neutral instruction. The second offer uses the word unlock, which connotes hidden value, and the word new, which is associated with “better” in the mind of most people.
The power is literally in these words because of what they call into the mind of the reader.
Now you don’t have complete control over anyone’s imagination but you can make the educated guess that a significant portion of people will choose:
- Mastering over learning
- Guaranteed over expected
- Exclusive over common
I am telling you this as someone who has made money by writing for the internet. That means all of my writing has been judged against clearcut UX metrics along with clicks, impressions, and revenue.
There’s nothing subjective about my stance here. I have been able to see exactly how my writing choices performed on high-traffic websites, and more importantly, I’ve been able to make adjustments and see what happens next.
Power words are a major lever that you can use to give your audience more of a reason to care about your writing, advertisement, landing page, headline, and so on.
In this post, I used 137 power words. They are collected in lists, used in examples, and peppered throughout the text. In the next section, power words are bolded in all of those locations.
Once you are familiar with their mechanics, you will see power words in action in nearly all professional writing. Over time, you can create a personal power word collection that’s fine-tuned for your industry and audience.
137 Power Words To Attack Major Messaging Goals
I’ve divided up this massive list into categories based on what your writing needs to do:
- Power Words To Build Trust and Authority
- Power Words To Create Urgency
- Power Words To Sharpen Pain Points
- Power Words To Soften Objections
- Power Words To Convey Exclusivity
- Power Words To Get Attention
Power Words To Build Trust and Authority
Words alone can’t build trust, but they can help you maximize the credibility you draw from social proof, high-quality images of your products, and customer testimonials.
Common trust building power words include:
- Verified
- Certified
- Proven
- Endorsed
- Guaranteed
- Expert
- Specialist
- Evidence-based
- Research-backed
- Honest
- Open
- Ethical
- Transparent
- Unbiased
- Featured
- Recommended
- Top-rated
With building trust, any power words you use have to tie out to something real you offer. Faking expert endorsement, for example, is a terrible idea. Don’t promise an “unbiased review” and then you spend all the content promoting your own service.
On the flipside, if you pay someone to research something, then it’s research-backed. Sure it’s not a double-blind randomly controlled trial, but the writing is research-backed.
If you publish content online consistently, you will start to build authority — it’s inevitable if you are and it will happen faster if you can position that content as worthy of trust.
Power Words To Create Urgency
Let’s start off with the brazen urgency power words. You’ve seen all these before, and maybe even responded to their direct, shameless, gimmicky call to action.
These words work — they are worth using unless you have a compelling reason not to. Talk to anyone who works in advertising. Urgency is key. Here are some of the classics:
- Now
- Fresh
- New
- Must-See
- First-Ever
- Instantly
- Immediate
- Next-Day
- Limited
- Quick
- Immediately
- Tonight
- Hurry
- Deadline
- Must
- One-time
- Closing
We’re all familiar with how these urgent power words are used in sales pitches and ad copy. In online retail, for example, some ads are entirely an urgency play paired with an image to attract an audience likely to buy. Consider something like:
- 10 Must-See Summer Outfits | One-Time Sale Ends Tonight
- Closing Sale – All Appliances Must Go – Next-Day Delivery
These are great for what they are — but sometimes duty calls for a more sophisticated angle on building urgency with your audience.
Writers in communications, media relations, working on behalf of nonprofits, and so on — they can’t always afford the gimmicky, fire-sale connotations that come with “Act Now.”
Less sensational, but still useful power words to build urgency include:
- Critical
- Pressing
- Imperative
- Escalate
- Essential
- Compelling
- Rapid
- Emergent
These are all time-sensitive words that evoke deadlines, milestones that need to be hit, a clock that’s running out of time.
So you get a lot of the same crunch-time urgency describing an emergent problem or a rapidly escalating situation as you do from the “louder” urgency power words.
Power Words to Sharpen Pain Points
You can get on someone’s radar immediately if you can describe their pain with fresh words. There is an instant connection when someone sees their problem stated in a novel way.
These words can help you do that, to more sharply evoke the pain of the problem — to twist the knife — and implicitly reinforce the urgency of finding a remedy.
Here’s a set of power words to intensify the pain of a problem:
- Overwhelm
- Undermine
- Devastate
- Threat
- Disruptive
- Meager
- Constrain
- Costly
- Excruciating
- Complex
- Misleading
- Byzantine
- Bloated
- Mangled
- Perilous
- Sabotage
- Destroy
- Hijack
- Ignorant
- Deceptive
- Stress
- Pressure
- Loss
- Mired
- Archaic
- Outdated
- Unhelpful
- Bleak
- Slow
- Fake
- Faulty
- Struggle
- Risk
The entire game here is finding the pain point for hits hardest for the target audience. People complain online — it shouldn’t be too hard to find real, specific, quantifiable pain — read reviews, mine forums, and get a firm sense of what people hate.
Then remind people of that pain at every opportunity. Use these power words to amplify that pain. Here’s a quick example of punching up a headline with pain point power words:
- Generic: How To Prevent A Social Engineering Attack
- Decent: How to Prevent a Costly Social Engineering Attack
- Better: How to Prevent a Devastating Social Engineering Attack
How hard is that? I mean, the payoff isn’t huge, but the second and third headlines are better. The word devastating has its own center of gravity — it’s going to pull more eyes than not having it.
You could use different headline formulas and change the angle to warn of unprepared companies being destroyed overnight by social engineering attacks. There’s more you could do, but this is a good start and already an improvement.
Power Words To Soften Objections
Words from this category can help you reduce friction and reassure the audience. You want to use the emotions evoked by these words to work against doubts, resistance, and barriers the audience perceives.
Here are some of my favorite power words softening potential objections:
- Predictable
- Clear
- Gentle
- Easy
- Simple
- Customized
- Unintrusive
- Grounded
- Effortless
- Efficient
- Quick
- Frictionless
- Smooth
- Painless
- Streamlined
These words can help break down obstacles that hold customers back from going all-in on your product.
For example, say new customers are likely to have data they want to import into your software product — they probably know that migrating data from one solution to another is a massive time-sink.
You can’t tell them the process will be easy. That’s preposterous and would completely undermine your credibility.
But you can promise and follow through on a customized migration plan that enables a predictable, streamlined migration process.
Take care to pair objection-softening power words with concrete benefits.
For example, don’t just say that workflows are frictionless. That means nothing.
But you can easily make the case that your frictionless offboarding workflows ensure that access to company assets remains secure, with minimal room for human error.
Power Words To Convey Exclusivity
Exclusivity power words are easy to understand: people want things that are unique, scarce, or unavailable to everyone else. You can add a surprisingly useful dimension to almost any offer by reinforcing the desire to be included, or the fear of being left out.
To tap into this, use power words like:
- Latest
- Handpicked
- One-Time
- Only
- Our
- Access
- Private
- First-look
- Elite
- Premium
- Insider
- Vetted
- Invitation
- Exclusive
- Sought
- Prized
- Backstage
Unless you already have a following, you can’t just label something exclusive and expect anyone to care.
One easy strategy for power words in this category is to tie them explicitly with the benefit people gain with purchase, signing up, buying in, etc. For example, I’ve seen Substack authors with thousands of paid subscribers who offer early access to new publications along with the occasional member’s-only post.
Without exception, these successful authors are marketing first-looks at the latest stories, insider tips from vetted experts, handpicked stocks to short — for premium subscribers only. These flagrant appeals to exclusivity are working very well for these authors.
Power Words To Get Attention
The game here is to play right at the edge of what your market is used to — or just beyond it — and not cross the line into straight-up begging for attention like a tabloid.
Here are some classic power words from this category, along with a few that I’ve had luck with:
- Remarkable
- Unexpected
- Groundbreaking
- Shocking
- Uncensored
- Love
- Discover
- Explore
- Elevate
- Timeless
- Enhance
- Renew
- Hacks
- Raw
- Bold
- Inspire
- Cutting-edge
- Momentum
- Shocking
- Raw
- Threats
- Revealed
- Illuminate
- Embrace
- Thrive
These power words either have a built-in appeal that can help your writing, or they modify the other words that you are using in an appealing way.
Do you feel more compelled to click on a button that says “Visit Store” or one that says “Elevate your wardrobe”?
Would you rather “Learn about how our product keeps you safe” or “Illuminate the risks and stay ahead with cutting-edge protection?”
Power words in this category are just more interesting than other words. They have more pull.
The strongest example in my mind is about the word love. It’s really wild how much the word love can drive up a click through rate. I’m not just being sappy here.
We had a post on a new HR website about paid time off (PTO), and we switched around the headline phrasing to be something like “How to Create a PTO Policy Employees Love” instead of a more standard “How to Create a Great PTO Policy.” Traffic to the page skyrocketed so sharply that it actually lifted the entire site’s profile.
How To Use Power Words – A Proven Approach
All you need to get started is text that you don’t like yet.
This happens to me all the time. I’ve got the bones of a good idea, the text conveys everything required — and the writing is just dreadful. It’s boring, blah information that even I would scroll right past.
Power words are one of the best ways to reframe what your text is doing and invent something much more appealing.
If you know your target audience and have done market research, you’ll be able to do a better job faster, but you can get plenty far just using your ear and your imagination.
I’ll explain the process and then we will look at an example. Ready?
Go out and find a word that evokes the exact emotion you want — don’t worry how it fits into the terrible text yet — just find a powerful word or two that are in tune with what you believe your target audience cares deeply about.
Once you have that word, work it into the text. Be open to the idea of rephrasing and reframing the entire direction of the text to accommodate the power word.
When you are finished, the revised text will now be shaped around an emotion that has a good chance of triggering a response with your target audience. That’s a good thing.
Prioritizing the power word during sentence construction forces you to come at the topic from a genuinely emotional angle — this works better than finding a power word that you think resonates and shoving it in.
I’ll use an “unemotional” topic to demonstrate how this works, starting with this forgettable headline: 5 Ways to Save Money on Gas This Winter.
Some people will click this. It offers potentially useful information. But there is more the headline could be doing to connect with readers emotionally, no doubt.
That’s a missed opportunity because the audience of people who are interested in saving money on gas likely feel some or all of the following emotions:
- Anxiety about fluctuating gas prices
- Stress about stretching every dollar
- Guilt over the environmental impact of their driving
That’s just the tip of the emotional iceberg, and already we have plenty to work with. There are tons of words associated with these emotions, positive and negative, and all of those are potential power words for this headline.
Here’s a few variations I cam up with in about 5 minutes:
- 5 Free Ways To Save Extra Money On Gas This Winter
- Take Control of Gas Prices: 5 Ways to Save Money This Winter
- 5 Ways Smart Drivers Can Save Money on Gas This Winter
- Stop Overpaying: 5 Simple Tips to Save Big on Gas This Winter
- Escape the Gas Price Trap: 5 Money-Saving Hacks for Winter
- 5 Gas Saving Tips To Cut Your Carbon Footprint This Winter
All of these are potential improvements. It depends on the audience, where the writing is going to be — that’s all going to factor in.
The “free ways” headline could work just about anywhere, whereas the “gas price trap” and “money-saving hacks” headline would only be okayed by an editorial team that’s cool with clickbait.
