Oldies are Goodies

So now Christmas is well and truly upon us: we know this because the eagerly-awaited John Lewis advert has been screened. Hence, it’s Christmas. The visual impact of that particular ad is amazing but when we think about some of the iconic ads that have been aired over the years, perhaps we better remember the words that accompany them. “Beanz Meanz Heinz” was conceived over a pub lunch in 1967. "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" was first thought up in 1932. “Does Exactly What It Says On the Tin” is 19 years old and is still going strong.

Of course, there are others that are also memorable, possibly for being horrendously annoying a very long time. “Waaaasssuuupppp?” is the obvious one that springs to mind. The ad featured a lot of men shouting the phrase down the phone to each other: but it became a worldwide phenomenon with millions of people copying it. Out of interest, do you remember the product?*

My point is that a memorable or catchy tagline is a major selling point for products and services but not many of us can afford a TV ad campaign (or, for that matter, a highly-trained, possibly overpaid ad executive from a top agency). Most of us can, however, afford a website to advertise and publicise what we have to offer. A well-written, carefully-worded webpage is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to get your message across and to move up the rankings on Google. If you aren’t too good with words, then let someone else do it. Why? “Because You’re Worth It” (1971).

*Budweiser.

The curse of being able to read accurately

I see that Lynne Truss is giving up on lecturing people about punctuation. She’s not giving up on punctuation, just on lecturing people about it.

 

It’s a shame. It is ten years since her book on the subject, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, came out and of course she cannot be expected to carry the torch for punctuation single handed.

 

The book cannot maintain its currency for ever, even though its contents will certainly hold good for many years (we could hope for ever!). Shops stock other books; people move on and buy other books.

 

In her weekly article recently in the Sunday Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/lynne-truss/10382533/Lynne-Truss-its-no-longer-useful-to-be-able-to-read-accurately.html) Ms Truss cites several examples where missing or incorrect punctuation could have led to misunderstandings.

 

The trouble, she says, is that people expect you to be able to understand what they’re trying to say. The keywords is trying. People like Ms Truss who understand punctuation understand what people have written, not what they’re trying to write. It is a curse.

Girl Spots McDonald's Errors

A ten-year-old aspiring writer was astonished to find errors on a poster while enjoying a meal at McDonald’s with her family.

Emily Cox read the poster which advertises face painting sessions for children. The first error which she spotted was a superfluous apostrophe in the word Saturdays. She then realised that there was an apostrophe missing from “children’s holidays”, and noticed various other mistakes.

The budding proofreader commented: “I was quite surprised because they are a big company and there were a lot of mistakes. I like to read stories and would like to be an author when I’m older but I haven’t made up my mind completely yet.”

Emily’s mother Angela expressed her surprise that a company such as McDonald’s had made such mistakes on a corporate poster. She said that she and Emily had enjoyed “a very interesting and funny conversation” after the clever girl had explained why the poster was incorrect.

A spokesman for McDonald’s confirmed that the company would be withdrawing the poster and that it would be sending Emily books as a reward for her grammatical astuteness.

She said: “We apologise for the grammatical errors on one of our posters and congratulate the clever, eagle-eyed girl who spotted them.”