Purple people?
Posted: July 7, 2009 Filed under: Language, writing | Tags: Copywriting & Creative, misplaced modifiers, squinting modifiers 4 Comments »Adjectives and adverbs (and adverb clauses) modify other words. Simple enough, unless you put them in the wrong place. A great example of a misplaced modifier is this one from Groucho Marx: “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.” Of course, the rest of the joke is: “How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.”
Much less obvious is a “squinting modifier,” a word that may modify either a word before it or a word after it in the sentence.
Brushing my teeth often is a nuisance.
Does “often” modify “brushing” or “is?”
In his famous song, Sheb Wooley sings of a “one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people eater.” Many people, sensible people, have wondered whether the word “purple” modifies “eater” or “people.” If you listen to the lyrics closely you discover the truth:
I said Mr Purple People Eater, what’s your line?
He said eating purple people, and it sure is fine
But that’s not the reason that I came to land
I wanna get a job in a rock ‘n roll band
Had “people eater” been combined to form one word–peopleeater–or perhaps hyphenated–people-eater–then you could determine that the eater was purple. But only if you could read the lyrics. Of course, the monster could very well be purple AND eat purple people. Sometimes food determines coloration. Shrimp-eating flamingos come to mind. Also, Gerber carot-eating babies.
How many times have you seen a sign such as “Old Book Shop,” or perhaps even “Ye Olde Booke Shoppe?” Is this a shop of old books or merely a book shop that is old? Likewise, I know people who describe themselves as “rare booksellers.” This is clearly not their intention. They may, indeed, be a rare breed, but what they mean is, the books they sell are rare. Better, then, to be a “seller of rare books.” Of course, this kind of stuff can drive you crazy if you let it.
I noticed on my other blog, I called the Outer Banks “a small boater’s paradise.” Could I really mean that it is a paradise for boaters who are small? Probably not. I could have avoided the possibility by simply saying “a small boat paradise.” But that takes away the human element, doesn’t it?
“The Outer Banks is a paradise for users of small boats” certainly takes away all doubt. But I don’t like it. So I have to use my own judgment and decide whether my language is confusing or not. And whether I care if someone chooses to “misread” it.
A few more modifier problems I found while browsing the internet:
The patient was referred to a psychologist with emotional problems.
Whether wearing a turtleneck or a low-cut top with a push-up bra, guys like checking out our boobs.
They bought a puppy for the girl named Fido.
Three horses were reported stolen by the Memphis police.
The point is, as a writer you can easily miss squinting or misplaced modifiers because you know what you mean. In advertising and marketing, this can lead to miscommunication, which can be merely annoying or down right detrimental. Modifiers, like low-cut tops, deserve a second glance to make sure they don’t leave the reader squinting or scratching his head. Or wondering if a purple people eater could possibly be green.
Randy is a poet, and you didn’t know it
Posted: June 1, 2009 Filed under: Publishing, writing | Tags: Avatar Review, literary magazine, Poetry 3 Comments »Three poems in the new edition of the Avatar Review.
Song lyrics are just all right with me
Posted: May 25, 2009 Filed under: writing | Tags: song lyrics 2 Comments »I listen to song lyrics more than I should. They often disappoint. Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait” starts out
So open up your morning light
And say a little pray for I
God, me hate that.
Perhaps the lyric that gives me the most consternation is “Jesus is just alright with me.” It brings up all kinds of questions. First we have to look at this word “alright”. In formal English, of course, the spelling is all right. Taken literally, that would mean everything is right about Jesus. But more often than not, all right or “alright” means “okay,” it’ll do in a pinch. Jesus is just okay with me. In which case, you’d hardly write a song about Him, would you? The song was composed by a gospel singer around 1960. (The song was first recorded by the Byrds and then made semi-famous by the Doobie Brothers.) The lyrics talk about Jesus as “my friend.” So you get the sense that we’re supposed to take the lyric positively. So what’s that “just” all about?
There is another use of “alright”–as an exclamation. You say, “Kids, let’s go get pizza.” And the kids exclaim “Alright!” That would make a sort of sense in the song. Jesus is just alright! with me. The just there would be a kind of “you know,” a pause as the singer thinks of just the right word. Jesus is, you know, alright with me.” I guess “alright” could be a cool, understated way to say “awesome.” Could it be as simple as the composer wanting to say, “Jesus is alright with me” but needing an extra syllable to fit the music structure, and so he just stuck in a “just?” Anyway, the song comes across as just ambivalent about Jesus.
But I think we like that in a rock song. The worst songs are the ones with sentimental, perfectly understandable lyrics that wear themselves out in short order. Better to have a song like those from the band YES, who later on, I understand, admitted that their songs are fairly meaningless. They merely came up with thoughtful sounding phrases that fit perfectly into the musical structure, and the result was a sort of quasi-poetry that you can almost get, but never quite, as in this refrain from “Your Move”:
I’ve seen all good people turn their heads each day so satisfied I’m on my way.
Or the chess-infused lyrics that are all about the game and queens and such, but who really knows:
‘Cause it’s time, it’s time in time with your time and its news is captured
For the queen to use.
At least there is the invitation to explore the language and perhaps invent our own meanings. Unlike the in-your-face teen talk found in Kelly Clarkson’s latest beauty. Notice the phrasing in the song is a lot like three lines of a poem, drawn out and suspenseful but, of course, the words themselves make you think poetry is dead forever:
My life
Would suck
Without you.
Wish I could say the same, Kelly.
When a seasoned freelancer is your best choice
Posted: May 18, 2009 Filed under: Copywriting & Creative, writing | Tags: Advertising, Copywriting & Creative, freelance writing, hiring a freelance writer, marketing, writing 3 Comments »No matter what time of day it was, a certain wiseacre client would call me and invariably ask “Did I wake you?” Ha, ha, ha, (sigh). Little did he know (or care) that I got up at 5:30 am. He was joking, of course, but that kind of stereotypical view of freelancers is pervasive. The reality is, to be in business for yourself, raise a family, and supply them with decent shelter, food, and transportation, you’ve got to be pretty good at what you do and serious about it too.
So, in this difficult economic time when your company may be struggling, it might be worth noting that there is a solution to mediocrity, dwindling profitability, and high overhead: the seasoned freelance writer.
Here are four times when a career freelancer is your best bet for quality, speed, and affordability.
1. When you want experience and skills you couldn’t otherwise afford. The best freelancers are independent for a reason; they can make more money freelancing than they can working in a salaried position, and they have more freedom and flexibility, to boot. They’ve worked for the broadest range of clients and delved into the greatest variety of subject matter. Chances are they know how to best meet your communications objectives because they’ve been there before.
2. When you want a writer who welcomes the work. The harder a freelancer works, the more he makes. That makes for a happy worker. Throw extra work on a salaried writer and what happens? Oppression. Irritability. And if it doesn’t result in reduced productivity and lower quality, then it results in covert job searches. And, really, when you think about it, if you were going to make the same money whether you took on another project or not, wouldn’t you be tempted to work at your own comfortable pace and say, “I’m working to capacity?”
3. When you want a writer who doesn’t cost a dime. Sometimes it’s hard to know who works for whom these days. If you are looking for work to keep your salaried employees busy, then you are working for them! A freelancer requires no upkeep, no desk, no space, no benefits. You don’t have to pay him to chit-chat with co-workers, keep up on Facebook, go to the bathroom, or pick his nose. Think of all the time an employee can waste. Think of all the time YOU can waste making sure he doesn’t waste his!
You can use a freelancer only when it will be profitable for you, when there’s a budget for it, or when you can bill the time to a client. In the end, a good freelancer doesn’t cost you money; he makes you money. The ratio of “hours actually worked” to “hours paid for” is always 1:1 with a freelancer. What is it for a salaried employee?
4. When you want a lasting, long-term resource. Some people see freelancers as the option of last resort, folks who can’t get real jobs, who are unreliable and sleep until noon. I am sure this type of hippy-go-lucky writer exists. But he won’t last long. Having been in business for 23 years, I can tell you that a reliable independent writer can be found. The trick is to find a good writer with whom you can form a lasting relationship. That way he looks to you for ongoing projects, and you can look to him as a reliable source of creative services. It’s a nice symbiotic, permanent relationship. The company account stays balanced. The quality of the work is high. Deadlines are met. The boss or client is happy. And you get peace of mind. What’s that worth?
Your marketing and communications materials are like a three-legged stool supported by writing, graphic design, and production. If any one of those is weak, the whole piece collapses. A seasoned freelancer can help make sure your communications stand up and stand out.
A way to save newspapers?
Posted: May 8, 2009 Filed under: Publishing | Tags: Commercial Appeal, newspapers 2 Comments »My own newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, keeps announcing cuts. First they cut staff. Now they are cutting content and relying more on local non-journalist residents to contribute fluff. A local media blog, Mediaverse, wonders when the CA will stop printing on Mondays and Tuesdays altogether. This approach seems crazy to me. You lose readers so you cut content, which means you lose more readers, which means you’ve got to cut more content. And soon you don’t have a printed newspaper anymore.
Columnist Leonard Pitts warned in a story in March that the demise of the local paper will mean the undoing, in many ways, of the fourth estate.
…only the local paper performs the critical function of holding accountable the mayor, the governor, the local magnates and potentates, for how they spend your money, run your institutions, validate or violate your trust. If newspapers go, no other entity will have the wherewithal to do that. Which means the next Rod Blagojevich gets away with it. The next Kilpatrick is never caught. The next Diaz and Rivero laugh all of the way to the bank. And the next Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, two innocent men saved from death row by the indefatigable reporting of the Miami Herald’s Gene Miller, are executed.
You can read the whole story here. Of course, one could argue that if these papers go online, perhaps even thrive there, they can still do their job without ink. Maybe. But as I have said before, I don’t want to read the news online. I mean really read, page by page, article by article, the way I do now with the Commercial Appeal. I don’t want turn on my computer at 5:30 am, nor my TV. My choice, in such a case, would be a Kindle, I suppose. That would be the least invasive, most print-like alternative.
Fortunately, just as I had about given up hope, a story emerged (in my paper) about how some newspapers could switch to a new business model and operate as non-profits, as public broadcasting stations do. I find that intriguing.
WASHINGTON — One way to save some of the nation’s struggling newspapers would be to let them become nonprofits similar to public broadcasting stations, a senator said Wednesday as editors and other journalists painted a grim future for daily print journalism.
“We need to save our community newspapers and the investigative journalism they provide,” Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., told a subcommittee of the Senate’s Commerce Committee.
Under a bill proposed by Cardin, newspapers turning to nonprofit status would no longer be able to make political endorsements but could report on all issues, including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt, and contributions to support coverage could be tax deductible.
The proposal would allow newspapers to operate under the same Internal Revenue Service status that is used by churches, hospitals, educational institutions, public broadcasting and other nonprofit institutions, said Cardin.
Cardin has said that his aim is to preserve local newspapers, not large newspaper conglomerates. He said his bill does not constitute a government bailout for newspapers.
Former Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll said he supports the proposal, but he does not think many newspapers would be able to change to nonprofit status.
“This approach is certainly no panacea,” Coll said in written testimony submitted to the panel. “Even in the best case, very few of them can be expected to make this transition to nonprofit strategies.”
Former Baltimore Sun reporter and TV series producer David Simon told the panel that media outlets such as newspapers need to discover a new economic model to survive and thrive.
“High-end journalism is dying in America, and unless a new economic model is achieved, it will not be reborn on the Web or anywhere else,” Simon said.
I guess I have always found it a little odd that something as important as journalism could owe its life to car dealer ads. Yet, it is a model that has worked for centuries. Still, elevating journalism to the status of education, churches, and hospitals might be good, if expensive. One thing’s for sure, a newspaper with nothing in it isn’t worth paying for or advertising in. Content has got to be the first priority.
Mad language
Posted: April 29, 2009 Filed under: Language, Vocabulary | Tags: Dictionary, Language, new usage, words 2 Comments »Three segments and a short outtake from MadTV about language and perhaps the end of English as we know it. Too funny–and scary–not to pass along!
Ifs, Ands and Buttheads
Posted: April 28, 2009 Filed under: Copywriting & Creative, Language, writing | Tags: clients, Copywriting & Creative, Elements of Style, English, grammar, Strunk and White 9 Comments »Someone once told me (a client, actually) that we call them “clients” because we can’t call them a–holes. Indelicate, to say the least, and certainly not true of my current clients:-). But I have had a few such clients in the past.
One guy hired me when I was just starting out to produce a newsletter. It turned out to be part of a pyramid, multi-level, downline scheme. He was shifty and shady and left me holding the bill for printing. He told me my writing was “full of grammatical errors.” Like what? I asked.
“You can’t start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but,’ he declared. Yes you can, I assured him. I have a master’s degree in English, after all, so I should know. “Well, you better go back to skewl then!” he drawled.
There are still a few people out there who don’t understand that correctness isn’t always determined by the rules for formal English you learned in “skewl.” There’s a big difference between formal English and the conversational English we use every day in our speech and which is purposely leveraged by magazine writers, advertising writers, and others who write for the general public.
Why be informal? Because that’s how you connect with people on a personal level. It provides a sense of familiarity and friendliness. It makes what you write a little more interesting and compelling and accessible and human and engaging and, well, the list goes on.
Formal, academic English has its place. But so does the sentence that starts with “and” or “but.” And the sentence that’s comfortable with the preposition it hangs out with. Not to mention the sentence your English teacher would consider “incomplete.” Like this one.
The more at ease you become with your own language, the better writer you will be. And that means not letting the ghost of your English teacher or, worse, Strunk & White, haunt you.
For the linguists and grammarians who contributed to this NY Times article, S&W’s fifty-year-old The Elements of Style, with it’s narrow vision of what writing is, has become a dinosaur and even an unwitting deterrent of writing in general.
A disservice to education, says one. The first 14 pages are still gospel truth but the rest is baloney, says another. As someone who has never liked rules very much, I savor such insubordinate clauses.
Well, I’ve got to go. A client needs me. Seems his client is being a real client, as they say.
A compelling call to action
Posted: April 27, 2009 Filed under: Copywriting & Creative Leave a comment »
Found this at Good Slogan, Bad Slogan. Not a tagline that engenders confidence, perhaps, but it is fun.
Wordcracker: neologism
Posted: April 24, 2009 Filed under: Language, Vocabulary, Wordcracker | Tags: English, neologisms, new words, words Leave a comment »It means “new word.” New words are added to the English language every day, and folks say we’re nearing our millionth word. But I won’t go into a long dissertation about neologisms because Forbes recently hired linguists and others experts to do it. Lots of interesting articles about WORDS in the current issue. Check it out!
And for more from Wordnut on coining words, go here.
Hire a copywriter on the front end of a project
Posted: April 17, 2009 Filed under: Copywriting & Creative | Tags: copywriter, Copywriting & Creative, editing, hiring a copywriter Leave a comment »I am often asked by clients to look at an existing copy doc and make it better. They say it needs a little “editing.” Or they ask if I could just “massage the copy a bit.” I do what I can, of course. But more times than not, it’s like Quasimodo asking me to massage out that little kink in his shoulder.
Sometimes, the copy is given to my client by his client or boss, and my client quite rightly wants it to be better. Many times, the copy has been written by someone in house who really isn’t a promotional or persuasive writer. To save a little money, I presume. Or “try their hand” at it.
They have the headline and the visual and the copy, but for some reason the copy just isn’t working out and, well, could I just take a look at it? Many times, the problem is a bad headline or the concept (or lack of one) is poor; it doesn’t really communicate what’s important or, worse, tries to be cute to the detriment of meaning. Let me tell you, a bad headline can never be fixed with good copy. In fact, a bad idea will make your copy cry out in pain, no matter which masseuse you take it to.
When clients ask me to “massage the headline,” they really need a new one. And when they ask me to “edit” a really long, poorly written document, they need a complete rewrite. Sometimes they know this, of course, but believe that calling it “editing” or “massaging,” instead of “writing,” will make it cheaper to fix. It doesn’t.
Editing for grammar is one thing. But figuring out how to make someone else’s writing logical, compelling, engaging, persuasive and smart? That’s rewriting. And nine times out of ten, this kind of “editing” takes longer than it would have had the client given me the raw information and let me write it from scratch. Even worse, the result is always a compromise.
Do yourself and me a favor. Hire me on the front end. Let me be an architect. Not a repairman.
I once saw a rough-and-tumble girls’ high school volleyball team wearing t-shirts that said, “Friends don’t let friends cheer.” Rather hurtful, I guess, to their spunky, short-skirted, undulating classmates. But I can appreciate the attitude. So if, in a moment of frustration, I tell you that your (or your client’s) attempt at concept/copy is sub-par, remember, I’m being your friend. I just want you to know that you can save money–and save face–and maybe even save a client–by hiring a good strategic, conceptual writer in the first place. Do that, and no one gets rubbed the wrong way.
