Comments on: Adspeak http://english.blogoverflow.com/2011/12/adspeak/ The English Language & Usage Stack Exchange Blog Fri, 04 Nov 2016 17:12:43 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.6 By: Luke Sheppard http://english.blogoverflow.com/2011/12/adspeak/#comment-20496 Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:38:52 +0000 http://english.blogoverflow.com/?p=350#comment-20496 I completely agree Ben – communication is EVERYTHING…

Except when it comes to “different to…”!!!! It’s “different FROM…” people!

]]> By: Luke Sheppard http://english.blogoverflow.com/2011/12/adspeak/#comment-20495 Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:36:50 +0000 http://english.blogoverflow.com/?p=350#comment-20495 Interesting article but the biggest gripe I’d have with that particular tagline is the lack consistency between the two sentences.

Why use the noun “style” and then follow it up with the adjective “clean”. Surely it should be “cleanliness”?? Ahhhhh, much better!!!

Very interesting blog – I’ll definitely be coming back!

EDIT: Ohhh, I’ve just read the comments above and I saw Debby’s – I couldn’t agree more Debby! 😉

]]> By: Ben Lee http://english.blogoverflow.com/2011/12/adspeak/#comment-8633 Fri, 22 Feb 2013 23:00:22 +0000 http://english.blogoverflow.com/?p=350#comment-8633 To me it seems that “More power, more style, more technology, less doors” is also deliberate word-play. I’d wager they wanted it to be a bit incongruous for comic effect. That strikes me as an interesting and memorable tagline, where as if it said “fewer doors” it would barely strike me as a tagline at all, much less an interesting one.

Also, “Style is an option. Clean is not.” isn’t even doing anything prescriptively incorrect. You are completely ignoring certain well-attested uses of the word “option” that make this statement completely correct.

Of course, I am a descriptivist at heart, and even instances of language usage that are clearly incorrect, while I can identify them, don’t usually bother me.

]]> By: Debby http://english.blogoverflow.com/2011/12/adspeak/#comment-474 Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:12:09 +0000 http://english.blogoverflow.com/?p=350#comment-474 Love your insight about the laundry detergent commercial, but the lack of alignment between “style” (noun) and “clean” (adjective) also irritates me. I can understand that the slogan writers may have wanted both words to have a single syllable for crispness and punch, but I would have preferred “Style is optional. Cleanliness is not.”

]]> By: JPmiaou http://english.blogoverflow.com/2011/12/adspeak/#comment-311 Sat, 24 Dec 2011 03:33:49 +0000 http://english.blogoverflow.com/?p=350#comment-311 One that bugs me every time: “funding was made possible by…” Either you’re providing the funding, or you’re making the show possible. I don’t know when or why they started using this conflated version, but it’s everywhere on PBS now. Grrr.

]]> By: FX http://english.blogoverflow.com/2011/12/adspeak/#comment-223 Sat, 17 Dec 2011 23:19:47 +0000 http://english.blogoverflow.com/?p=350#comment-223 How about “five items or less”? Here a rather well made (and well known) argument against prescriptivism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY (Language, Stephen Fry)

]]> By: hippietrail http://english.blogoverflow.com/2011/12/adspeak/#comment-165 Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:23:08 +0000 http://english.blogoverflow.com/?p=350#comment-165 I would say not just deliberately ungrammatical but wordplay, and everybody loves wordplay, even prescriptivists. You can make poetry out of wordplay.

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