That’s a graffiti message I remember reading from a collection of writings on the wall (so to speak) compiled by Nigel Reese.
It sums up the where the language is heading these days (or has been heading, seeing as the collection was released in the seventies).
There doesn’t seem to be any crafting anymore.
No weighing of the words before hitting the keyboard.
No apparent nod to (let alone respecting) Twain’s lightning and the lightning bug*. Or lightning and lightening, for that matter.
[Disclaimer: I’m not a grammar nazi or an English professor. It’s just how I, as a Tamil medium student, learnt the language. Writing, I feel, is like playing tennis. Or an instrument. You just have to obey the rules as long as you’re doing it professionally.]
We grew up writing and rewriting copy, in David Ogilvy style, with his seventeen drafts regime.
We were told never to use words like ‘That’s not all’ or ‘What’s more’ to link sentences. Not even while writing brochure copy, as that was a lazy way out.
We were told that body copy should flow from the headline, linked syntactically and conceptually so it flowed better, with the last line looping back to the headline.
Ideally.
We were told to use tactile words, like ‘bristle’.
And we studied the works of masters such as David Abbot, Tony Brignull and Tom Thomas, among others.
In one ad, Abbot had used ‘on the contrary’ as a paragraph in a Sainsbury ad. I spent days trying to mimic that, and when I was able to, it was as satisfying as being able to learn and play a difficult piece on the guitar.
But not many care for the language or the crafting part of it these days it would seem from what you can see in the newspapers.
What’s puzzling is that sometimes it’s the clients who insist on poorly constructed copy. Happened a while ago to me, when I was ‘advised’ to just do it, as if grammar rules didn’t apply to “the client’. So it goes, as Vonnegut would say.
You can blame it all on laziness, smartphones, social media and the ever shortening attention span of the audience, but people still read, don’t they? I don’t think they would be against reading a well-written article in favour of an error-riddled piece. Just because it’s an insta post doesn’t mean it has to read like it was written by a distracted four year old.
Sometime ago I saw a headline that said ‘Path your way to success’. Since when is path a verb? You can beat a path, carve a path, forge a path, create a path but you can’t just ‘path’.
Here are some more examples:
‘Irregardless’. It’s not a word. It’s like saying ‘unirrelevant’. It’s regardless. A recent TVC on national TV almost condoned the usage of irregardless basing it on the said word sounding like irrelevant. Here’s the thing. Irrelevant is the opposite of relevant whereas irregardless is the opposite of good English.
‘Should of’. If you are writing that instead of ‘should have’, you need to go back to school. Like now.
‘It’s vs its’. Its is possessive as in ‘the metal has lost its sheen’. It’s is a contracted form of ‘It is’. If in doubt, use the expanded version, it’ll be clearer. Whenever it is sounds wrong, it’s quite likely its, if you know what I mean. There are a few good sites that can clear your doubts such as grammar girl. I keep ‘Elements of Style’ recommended by Stephen King and Fowler’s Modern English Usage recommended by my former boss many years ago. You could try these methods if you’re between it’s and its or discrete and discreet. And help bring back the good ol’ days.
- “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Mark Twain
