Dissecting the grammar in advertising is like shooting fish in a barrel, as the saying goes (though I’ve never understood why one would shoot fish in a barrel). From an edited publication, you should expect editing. From a bunch of Mad Men, maybe you shouldn’t even expect writing. Creativity, of a specialized sort, yes. But not necessarily writing.
Poorly written ads have been around far longer than I have. The first such controversy I remember was over a brand of cigarettes, which at the time were advertised in print publications and maybe even on TV. “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should,” the slogan went. I was incredulous: Those things taste good? But adults were taking sides over “like” versus “as.” The “like” people said the ad sounded like people talk, and “as” would sound stilted. The “as” people said proper grammar was worth something, and standards were going to hell in a handbasket (whatever that meant), and if we didn’t use the language properly, who knew what atrocities would follow. (Must be something about cigarettes — there were also magazine ads with the line “Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!”)
This was my first exposure to prescriptivists and descriptivists — or, to put it in legal terms, strict constructionists and loose constructionists. Should we do things they way they’ve always been done because it’s “right”? Or should we change the rules to reflect the reality of how people use language, even if they’re “wrong”? I tend to lean prescriptivist, but it’s only a lean; both sides have a point, and though enforcing rules is often the role of an editor, so is making things readable and clear. So an editor has ample opportunity to experience everyone’s wrath.
But back to ads. Every once in a while one or more lines will jump out at me. On the radio, they’re like a dog whistle that most people don’t notice or don’t find bothersome. On paper, they make me want to get out the red pen. Here are some examples.
• “If you need to lose up to 30 pounds or more ….” Okay, I sort of get why Madison Avenue wrote it that way. It’s still stupid. Do you need to lose up to 30 pounds? Or do you need to lose 30 pounds or more? It’s not both. I’d like the makers of this weight-loss product to lose this sentence.
• “The detail and beauty is amazing.” “The number-one issue in patents are patent trolls.” The first example is from a jewelry chain. As for the second, I am delighted to imagine what a patent troll looks like. Not so delighted to imagine how the educated people at this law firm managed to forget one of the most elementary(-school) rules of English grammar: The verb can’t be plural when the noun is singular. And vice versa, jewelry chain.
• “See everything — like restaurants, shopping, and more.” My colleagues know I find redundancy annoying, irritating, aggravating, vexing, and exasperating. This line from an ad for a vacation destination is just the sort to which I’d take the red pen. It’s similar to the “30 pounds” line: If you must give an example of “everything,” say either “like [or ‘such as’] X and Y” or “X, Y, and more.” Not both. (Same with “et al.,” by the way, which is a Latin abbreviation for “and others” or “and other things.”)
• “Dentures are very different to real teeth.” What? If you’ve seen this ad for a dental product, you know that some dentist supposedly says this, though he may well be an actor saying lines. But who would say or write that? Every time I hear it, I talk back to the TV: “From! From real teeth!”
“Your audience has grammar snobs and regular people. Whichever way you write your slogan it’s going to look natural to one group and un-natural to the other,” according to a writer for a blog called Cheap Talk. The writer sides with offending the “grammar snobs” because that’s the slogan that will get at least part of the audience “to turn it over, diagram it and correct it…. There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
Is anyone surprised?
Copyright 2013 Ellen M. Ryan. All rights reserved.
Where there’s smoke, there’s ire
January 22, 2012The Post’s real-estate editor surprised me by putting my condos/smoking article online late Tuesday afternoon, ahead of Saturday’s print publication date. (See mini-rant three posts ago about this self-destructive practice.) The next day, other editors surprised me more. Just after lunch, I wrote a friend, “My next story (in print Saturday) was buried deep on the real-estate page … suddenly it’s on the front page online, with my name! Being of a private inclination, I’m not sure this is necessarily good, but it’s getting a lot of comments ….”
A lot of comments indeed. Within hours, the number had climbed to more than 200. Then it was 340. Then it plummeted to 280 or 290. Comments police at the Post removed some, and all of the many by one person have disappeared. In any case, by late Wednesday, the story (and my name) were off the front page, and the pace slowed to nearly nothing until the story appeared in print yesterday. Right now there are 365.
Thursday night I mentioned all this to another friend, who said something about the attention. “They’re not talking about the story,” I said with a wry smile. “They’re bashing each other.”
Commenters at the Washington Post are a bit more civilized than at the New York Post, but these are too often ad hominem attacks. One commenter on my story wrote of another, “You are stupid.” Another put up a tirade against every major racial and ethnic group. (Eventually that one got removed. “Gotta love the diversity in that post,” someone wrote, which made me snort.) A few dozen comments attacked “libs” or Obama even though the article has nothing to do with politics. People on one side called people on the other side “whiny,” “selfish,” “idiotic,” “crazy,” “disgusting,” “neurotic,” “brainless,” and “bigots,” among other things, and one wrote, ” … if you did die, I am sure the rest of us would appreciate the peace and quiet.” Whew!
Should newspapers and other media police their comments sections? It’s an ongoing debate in newsrooms. The Washington Post’s ombudsman has weighed in, and I think there was an online chat about the issue. The New York Post seems to be a free-for-all. The New York Times is either well regulated or has more thoughtful and polite readers – probably both. Our Post surely feels like it’s dealing with a moving target.
Consider, for example, not this story, which quoted several people but focused on an issue, but the one two weeks ago in the Post Magazine about Page Melton Ivie – a story that focused on a person and secondarily on other people and issues. Big issues: After a notable reporting career, Page’s first husband is permanently in a childlike state due to medical calamity, and Page was resigned to caring for their children at home and him at an assisted-living facility. Years later she reconnected with an old friend, and they eventually married, which necessitated divorcing Robert, though he now lives close to the new family in the Midwest, where all of them visit frequently, and Allan has his own real friendship with his new wife’s first husband. (I was stunned to realize, when the article mentioned Page’s birth name, that I’d known her, and even Allan slightly, in college, though we were a few years apart.) A lot of readers, including me, found the article moving, a testament to open hearts and open minds and the tremendous power of love.
It was disheartening to learn that other readers – many – were horrified. They called Page terrible names, accusing her of not taking her wedding vows seriously and tearing apart her family for selfish, carnal whims. They said she was an example of a throw-away society and deserved to go to hell for bailing on Robert when the going got tough. Never mind that she didn’t do anything of the sort and in fact spent years finding ways to keep her family together and even expand it through a painful and draining ordeal.
Poor Page – or anyone – to be on the receiving end of so many hateful, ad feminam comments. A column a week later blasted those commenters, noting how easy it is to lob firebombs from behind the shield of anonymity and wondering how many people would say the same things if they had to attach their real names. Those of us who naturally shy away from public fora (a sexist old saying was that a woman’s name should appear in print only upon birth, marriage, and death; I amended that for myself to add three-point bylines) will hesitate even more to toss a personal opinion into the lions’ den, leaving it inevitably to the lions and the blowhards. Or, wait … is that too insulting? Leave a comment. Good thing this blog is purely an academic exercise for which no one has the address.
Copyright 2012 Ellen M. Ryan. All rights reserved.
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Tags: ad feminam, ad hominem, anonymity, bylines, comments, editor, editors, front page, New York Post, newspapers, ombudsman, online chat, Page Melton Ivie, Post Magazine, real-estate editor, smoking, Washington Post
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